It cost me a significant effort to move back up to the second level. It was usually easier to leave the Twilight, but the third level had drawn power out of me as if I were some ignorant novice.

Arina was waiting for me on the second level. She had already assumed her former appearance. She nodded and moved on-to the normal, calm, and cozy human world…

But I had to try twice, streaming with cold sweat, before I managed to raise my shadow.

Arina was sitting on a chair, with her hands resting modestly on her knees. She wasn't smiling any more-and in general she was as meek as a lamb.

"Can we manage without any more hocus-pocus from now on?" I enquired as I emerged into the real world. My back was wet and my legs were trembling slightly.

"Can I stay in this form, watchman?" Arina asked in a low voice.

"What for?" I asked, unable to resist taking petty revenge. "I've already seen the real you."

"Who's to say what's real in this world?" Arina said pensively. "It all depends on your point of view… Regard my request as simple female caprice, Light One."

"And the attempt to enchant me-was that a caprice too?"

Arina shot a bright, defiant glance at me and said, "Yes. I realize that my Twilight appearance… but here and now, this is what I am. And I have all the human feelings. Including the desire to please."

"All right, stay like that," I growled. "I can't say I'm exactly dreaming of a repeat performance… Remove the illusion from the magical objects."

"As you wish, Light One." Arina ran her hand over her hair, adjusting the style.

And the little house changed just a bit.

Now instead of the teapot, there was a small birchwood tub standing on the table, with steam still rising from it. The TV was still there, but the wire no longer ran to a nonexistent power-socket; instead it was stuck into a large brownish tomato.

"Ingenious," I remarked, nodding at the TV. "And how often do you have to change the vegetables?"

"Tomatoes-every day," the witch said with a shrug. "A head of cabbage works for two or three days."

I'd never seen such an ingenious way of producing electric power before. Sure, it was possible in theory… but in practice…

Anyway, I was more interested in the books in the bookcase. I walked over and took out the first small volume that came to hand, a slim one in a paper cover.

Hawthorn and Its Practical Use in Everyday Witchcraft.

The book had been printed on something like a rotary printer. Published the previous year. It even gave the print run- 200 copies. And it even had an ISBN number! But the publishing house was unfamiliar: TP Ltd.

"A genuine botanical text… Do you people really print your own books?" I asked admiringly.

"Sometimes," the witch said modestly. "You can't copy everything out by hand…"

"Copying by hand isn't the worst of it," I remarked. "Sometimes things are written in blood…"

And I took the Kassagar Garsarra down from the shelf.

"In my own blood, mind," Arina said laconically. "No abominations."

"This book itself is an abomination," I remarked. "Well now, well now… 'Setting people against each other without excessive effort…'"

"Why are you trying to incriminate me?" Arina asked, irritated now. "Those are all academic editions. Antiques. I haven't stirred up trouble for anybody."

"Really?" I said, leafing through the book. " 'Soothing kidney ailments, driving out dropsy…' Okay, we'll let you have that."

"You wouldn't accuse anyone who was reading de Sade of planning to torture someone, would you?" Arina snapped. "That's our history. All sorts of different spells. Not divided into destructive and positive ones."

I cleared my throat. Basically she was right. The fact that there were all sorts of different magical recipes collected together in the book didn't constitute a crime in itself. And then there were things like this: "How to relieve the pain of a woman in childbirth without harming the child." But right there beside it was "Killing the fetus without harming the woman" and "Killing the fetus together with the woman."

Everything the way it always was with the Dark Ones.

But despite these foul recipes and the recent attempt to enchant me, there was something I liked about Arina. In the first place, there was the way she'd dealt with the children. There was no doubt that a smart old witch could easily have found some monstrous use for then. And then… there was something melancholy and lonely about her-despite all her power, her valuable library, and attractive human form.

"What have I done wrong?" Arina asked peevishly. "Come on, don't string it out, sorcerer."

"Are you registered?" I asked.

"Why, am I a vampire or a werewolf?" Arina asked in reply. "Now he wants to put a seal on me… the very idea…"

"No one's talking about a seal," I reassured her. "It's just that all magicians of the first level and higher are obliged to inform the district center of their place of residence. So that their movements will not be interpreted as hostile actions…"

"I'm not an enchantress-I'm a witch!"

"Magicians, enchantresses, and Others of equivalent power…" I recited wearily. "You are on the territory of the Moscow Watch. You were obliged to inform us."

"There was never any of that before," the witch muttered. "The foremost sorcerers told each other about themselves, the vampires and werewolves were registered… and everybody left us alone."

That sounded strange…

"When was 'before?'" I asked.

"In '31," the witch said reluctantly.

"You've been living here since 1931?" I said, unable to believe my ears. "Arina…"

"I've been living here for two years. And before that…" She frowned. "It doesn't matter where I was before that. I didn't hear about the new laws."

Maybe she was actually telling the truth. It sometimes happens like that with old Others, especially those who don't work in the Watches. They hide themselves away somewhere in the middle of nowhere, way out in the taiga or the forest, and sit there for decades at a time, until the boredom just gets too much.

"And two years ago you decided to move here?" I asked, trying to get things straight.

"Yes. What would an old fool like me want with the city?" Arina laughed. "I just sit here and watch TV, read books. Catching up on what I've missed. I found an old friend of mine… she sends me books from Moscow."

"Well, all right," I said. "Then it's just the normal procedure. Have you got a sheet of paper?"

"Yes?"

"Write a statement. Your name, where you're from, year of birth, year of initiation, if you've ever served in a Watch, what level of powers you possess."

Arina obediently took out a piece of paper and a pencil. I frowned, but I didn't offer her a ballpoint pen. She could write it with a goose quill if she wanted.

"When was the last time you registered or made your location known to the official agencies of the Watches in any other way… Where you have been since then."

"I won't write it," said Arina, putting here pencil down. "All this newfangled paper-scribbling… Whose business is it where I've been warming my old bones?"

"Arina, stop talking like an old peasant woman," I told her. "You were speaking perfectly normal before."

"I was in disguise," Arina declared without batting an eyelid. "Oh, all right. But you drop that bureaucratic tone as well."

She rapidly covered the entire sheet with close, neat handwriting. Then handed it to me.

She wasn't as old as I'd been expecting. Less than two hundred years. Her mother had been a peasant woman, her father was unknown, there were no Others among her relatives. She had been initiated as a girl of eleven by a Dark Magician or, as Arina stubbornly referred to him, a sorcerer. Someone not local, German in origin. At the same time he had deflowered and abused her, which for some reason she found necessary to indicate, adding "the lascivious wretch." Ah… there was the reason. This "German" had taken the little girl as his servant and student-in every respect. And he had evidently not been too bright or too gentle-by the age of thirteen the little girl had acquired enough power to vanquish her mentor in a fair duel and dematerialize him. And he, by the way, was a fourth-level magician. After that she had come under the surveillance of the Watches of that time. But she had no other criminal acts in her record-if her statement could be believed, that is. She didn't like cities. She had lived in villages and made her living by using petty witchcraft.