“The things they teach your crowd,” Lera said, and I realized she was as certain that I worked for the KGB as the young Frenchman in the Dungeons had been. We’re all children of mass culture. We all believe in its cliches. You don’t even need any documents if you behave like a secret agent in an action movie.

“Lera, I want to ask you to make an effort to recall all the circumstances of Victor’s death,” I said. “I know you’ve told the story over and over again. But please try.”

“We got into that stupid boat,” Lera began. “I almost fell over; it was a very awkward step down, a long way, and I couldn’t see the bottom of the boat in the darkness.”

“Tell me everything from the very beginning. Start from the moment when you got up that morning. Every detail.”

Lera’s eyes glinted mischievously. “Well…we woke up at ten; we missed breakfast. Then we had sex. Then we went into the shower and we got a bit carried away in there…”

I nodded and smiled benevolently as I listened to the girl’s story, which really did include all the details. And when she broke into tears, I waited for a few minutes without saying anything. The tears stopped and Lera shook her head. She looked into my eyes.

“We went into a pub, the Oak and Ribbon, and had something to eat. We drank a pint of beer each. It was hot, and then we saw the sign for that damned tourist show. Victor thought it would be interesting. Or at least that it would be cool inside. So we went in.”

Nothing. Not a single clue. I realized that Lera had been questioned by professionals before me; they had drained her, forced her to remember, asked the same questions ten times. What else could she possibly remember out of the blue now?

She started describing the boat again, the awkward step down into it, and I raised my hand.

“Stop there, Lera. That mirror maze-you said it was the most interesting thing. Didn’t anything odd happen in there?”

I didn’t know why I’d asked that question. Perhaps because I was still thinking about Egor. Perhaps I’d remembered the old wives’ tale that vampires have no reflections in mirrors.

“In the Maze of Mirrors…” Lera knitted her brows. “Ah! There was something. Victor started waving to someone. As if he’d seen someone he knew. Afterward he said he must have imagined it.”

“How about you, Lera? Did you see anybody you knew?”

She shook her head.

“No. There are mirrors on all sides in there. You really get lost among all those faces, all those people. And it gets a bit annoying after a while… I tried not to look.”

“Can’t you even make a guess at who he might have seen?”

“Could that be important?” Lera asked seriously.

“Yes,” I replied with no hesitation.

It was very important. It was a clear clue. If there was a vampire in the Dungeons and he was diverting people’s eyes, he could have been seen in the room of mirrors. And Victor hadn’t just seen someone-he had recognized him.

So what was dangerous about being recognized? Someone had gone into the Dungeons-what of it? Why had the vampire panicked and killed the unsuspecting student?

I didn’t know. Not yet.

“I think Victor thought he had seen a friend of his…not someone from here,” Lera said after thinking for a moment. “Because he was very surprised. If he’d seen someone from the university, he would have waved to him and shouted ‘Hi.’ But he just waved and didn’t say anything. You know, the way you do when you’re not quite sure if you’ve seen a friend or made a mistake. And afterward, when he couldn’t find anyone, he really seemed quite upset. And he said it was all nonsense. As if he’d persuaded himself that it couldn’t have happened. Anton, did Vitya see his killer?”

“I’m afraid he did,” I said, nodding. “It’s possible that was why he was killed. Thank you. You’ve been a great help.”

“Should I tell this to the police?” Lera asked.

“Why not? Only, if possible, don’t mention that I was here, OK? But you can tell them what you’ve remembered.”

“Will you tell me if you find the killer?”

“Definitely.”

“You’re lying,” Lera said, shaking her head. “You’re lying…you won’t tell me anything.”

“I’ll send you a postcard,” I said after a pause. “With a view of Edinburgh. If you get a postcard, it means Victor has been avenged.”

She nodded. I was already at the door when she asked, “Anton, if I…What should I do about the child?”

“That’s for you to decide. You must understand that nobody else should ever decide anything for you. Not the president, not your boss, not even a kind magician.”

“I’m nineteen,” Lera said in a quiet voice. “I loved Vitya. But now he’s gone. Twenty years old with a child and no husband…”

“You have to make up your own mind. But please don’t drink, in any case,” I said.

And I closed the door behind me.

Evening arrived, and I hadn’t slept the night before, which had been divided between airports and airplanes. I ordered another coffee from the bar, glancing regretfully at the beer pumps: One pint would be enough to make me completely dozy now. I phoned Gesar and gave him a summary of what I’d found out during the day.

“Look for a vampire in Victor’s circle of Moscow acquaintances,” Gesar mused thoughtfully. “Thank you, Anton, all his Moscow contacts have been checked already…All right, we’ll look a little bit harder. We’ll start digging as far back as kindergarten. What are you going to do now?”

“Go and catch up on my sleep,” I said.

“Any provisional conclusions?”

“There’s something going on here, Gesar. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something big.”

“Do you need any help?”

I was about to say no, but then I remembered Semyon.

“Boris Ignatievich, if Semyon isn’t too busy…”

“Is he missing Scotland?” Gesar chuckled. “All right, I’ll send him over. If he gets a move on, you’ll meet in the morning. Get some rest.”

I didn’t tell Gesar anything about Egor. I put my cell phone away with a quick glance at the charge indicator. Well, well-the battery was still almost full. In Moscow my phone went flat in a single day, even though I didn’t talk very much. But abroad, it worked quite happily for a week. Were the towers here planted closer together or something?

Now for another part of the job. An unpleasant part.

I took out the carving of the wolf and set it on the table.

Contact, help, advice?

I grasped the figure with both hands and closed my eyes. Perhaps that wasn’t how it worked?

“Zabulon!”

Was that someone’s gaze I seemed to sense?

As far as I recalled, Zabulon never responded immediately. Not even when his lover called.

“Zabulon!”

“Why are you shouting like that, Gorodetsky?”

I opened my eyes. There was no one there, of course.

“I need some advice, Dark One.”

“Ask.”

It was a good thing that almost no emotion at all is transmitted in this kind of conversation. Zabulon was probably chuckling to himself. A Light One coming to him for help!

“Zabulon, when the Mirror Magician came to you, did you summon him?”

That obviously wasn’t the question he’d been expecting.

“The Mirror? Vitaly Rogoza?”

“Yes.”

A pause. No, he knew the answer all right; he was deciding whether to tell the truth or to lie.

“A Mirror cannot be summoned, Light One. They are children of the Twilight.”

“Then what has to happen for a Mirror Magician to appear?”

“One Power has to acquire a significant advantage over the other. And it has to be a sudden imbalance, acquired too quickly. The Mirror came because Gesar was raising Svetlana’s level too rapidly, he brought Olga back into play, and…and he rewrote your future daughter’s destiny to make her the Greatest of the Great.”

“Is it possible to foresee who will be the next Mirror Magician?”

“It is. He is an Other whose own fundamental Power is minimal. He must have no love for the Light or for the Dark. Or, on the contrary, he must love the Light and the Dark. A human being, and an Other, who stands at the fork in the road and makes no distinction between Light and Dark. There are individuals like that, but they are rare. In Moscow there are two of them: Victor’s father and…your little friend Egor. But then, he’s already grown up now, isn’t he?”