"My vacation ends tomorrow," I reminded him. Oh, there was something not right here! "And I thought the idea was that I was going to work today?"

Gesar stared hard at me. "Anton, forget about work! Svetlana shouted at me for fifteen minutes. If she was a Dark One, there'd be an Inferno Vortex hanging over my head right now. That's it, work's cancelled. I'm extending your vacation for a week- go to the country and see your wife!"

In the Moscow department of the Watch we have a saying: "There are three things a Light Other can't do: organize his own personal life, achieve worldwide peace and happiness, and get time off from Gesar." To be honest, I was quite happy with my personal life, and now I'd been given an extra week of vacation. So maybe worldwide peace and happiness were only just around the corner?

"Aren't you pleased?" Gesar asked.

"Yes," I admitted. No, I wasn't inspired by the prospect of weeding the vegetable beds under the watchful eye of my mother-in-law. But Sveta and Nadya would be there. Nadya, Nadyenka, Nadiushka. My little two-year-old miracle. A lovely little human being… Potentially an Other of immense power. An Enchantress so very Great that Gesar himself couldn't hold a candle to her. I imagined the Great Light Magician Gesar standing there holding a candle, so that little Nadya could play with her toys, and grinned.

"Call into the accounts office, they'll issue you a bonus…" Gesar continued, not suspecting the humiliation I was subjecting him to in my mind. "Think up the citation for yourself. Something like… for many years of conscientious service…"

"Gesar, what kind of job was it?" I asked.

Gesar stopped talking and tried to drill right through me with his gaze. When he got nowhere, he said, "When I tell you everything, you will phone Svetlana. From here. And you'll ask her if you should agree or not. Okay? And you tell her about the extra vacation too."

"What's happened?"

Instead of replying, Gesar pulled open the drawer of the desk, took out a black leather folder and held it out to me. The folder had a distinct aura of magic-powerful, dangerous battle magic.

"Don't worry, open it, you've been granted access…" Gesar growled.

I opened the folder-at that point any unauthorized Other or human being would have been reduced to a handful of ash.

Inside the folder was a letter. Just one single envelope. The address of our office was written in newsprint, carefully cut out and stuck onto the envelope. And, naturally, there was no return address.

"The letters have been cut out of three newspapers," said Gesar. "Pravda, Kommersant, and Arguments and Facts."

"Ingenious," I remarked. "Can I open it?"

"Yes, do. The forensic experts have already done everything they can with the envelope-there aren't any fingerprints. The glue was made in China and it's on sale in every newspaper kiosk."

"And it's written on toilet paper!" I exclaimed in absolute delight as I took the letter out of the envelope. "Is it clean at least?"

"Unfortunately," said Gesar. "Not the slightest trace of organic matter. Standard cheap pulp. 'Fifty-four meters', they call it."

The sheet of toilet paper had been carelessly torn off along the perforation and the text was glued onto it in different-sized letters. Or rather, in entire words, with a few endings added separately, and with no regard for the typeface:

"The NIGHT WATCH should BE INTERESTED to know that a CERTAIN Other has REVEALed to a CERTAIN human being the entire truth about oTHErs and now inTENDs to turn this human beING into an OTHER. A wellWISHer."

I would have laughed, but somehow I didn't feel like it. Instead, I remarked perspicaciously, " 'Night Watch' is written in complete words…"

"There was an article in Arguments and Facts," Gesar explained. "About a fire at the TV tower. It was called night watch ON THE OSTANKINO TOWER."

"Clever," I agreed. The mention of the tower gave me a slight twinge. That hadn't exactly been the best time of my life… And those weren't the most enjoyable adventures I'd ever had. I would be haunted for the rest of my days by the face of the Dark Other I threw off the TV tower in the Twilight…

"Don't get moody, Anton, you didn't do anything wrong," said Gesar. "Let's get down to business."

"Let's do that, Boris Ignatievich," I said, calling the boss by his old "civilian" name. "Is this for real, then?"

Gesar shrugged. "There's not even a whiff of magic from the letter. It was either composed by a human being, or by a competent Other who can cover his tracks. If it's a human being… that means there has to be a leak somewhere. If it's an Other… it's an absolutely irresponsible act of provocation."

"No traces at all?" I asked again to make sure.

"None. The only clue is the postmark." Gesar frowned. "But that looks very much like a red herring…"

"Why-was the letter sent from the Kremlin, then?" I quipped.

"Almost. The mailbox the letter was posted in is located on the grounds of the Assol complex."

Great tall buildings with red roofs-the kind Comrade Stalin would have been sure to approve of. I'd seen them. But only from a distance.

"You can't just go walking in there!"

"No, you can't," Gesar said with a nod. "So, in sending the letter from the Assol residences after all this subterfuge with the paper, the glue, and the letters, our unknown correspondent either committed a crude error…"

I shook my head.

"Or he's leading us onto a false trail…" At this point Gesar paused, observing my reaction closely.

I thought for a moment. And then shook my head again, "That's very naive. No."

"Or the 'wellwisher,'" Gesar pronounced the final word with frank sarcasm, "really does want to give us a clue."

"What for?" I asked.

"He sent the letter for some reason," Gesar reminded me. "As you well understand, Anton, we have to react to this letter somehow. Let's assume the worst-there's a traitor among the Others, who can reveal the secret of our existence to the human race."

"But who's going to believe him?"

"They won't believe a human being. But they will believe an Other who can demonstrate his abilities."

Gesar was right, of course. But I couldn't make sense of why anyone would do such a thing. Even the stupidest and most malicious Dark One had to understand what would happen after the truth was revealed. A new witch hunt, that was what. And people would gladly cast both the Dark Ones and the Light Ones in the role of the witches. Everyone who possessed the abilities of an Other…

Including Sveta. Including little Nadya.

"How is it possible 'to turn this human being into an Other'?" I asked. "Vampirism?"

"Vampires, werewolves…" Gesar shrugged. "That's it, I suppose. Initiation is possible at the very crudest, most primitive levels of Dark Power, but it would have to be paid for by sacrificing the human essence. It's impossible to turn a human being into a magician by initiation."

"Nadiushka…" I whispered. "You rewrote Svetlana's Book of Destiny, didn't you?"

Gesar shook his head. "No, Anton. Your daughter was destined to be born a Great One. All we did was make the sign more precise. We eliminated the element of chance…"

"Egor," I reminded him. "The boy had already become a Dark Other…"

"But we erased the specific quality of his initiation. Gave him a chance to choose again," Gesar said and nodded. "Anton, all the interventions that we are capable of only have to do with the choice of 'Dark' or 'Light.' But there's no way we can make the choice between 'human' or 'Other.' No one in this world can do that."

"Then that means we're talking about vampires," I said. "Supposing the Dark Ones have another vampire who has fallen in love…"

Gesar spread his hands helplessly. "Could be. Then everything's more or less simple. The Dark Ones will check their riffraff-it's in their interest as much as ours… And yes, by the way. They received a letter too. Exactly the same. And sent from Assol too."