They enjoy the very process of using magic. They’d use it to wipe their backsides if they could.

Then Others get older and wiser and start getting more economical, too. They realize that energy is always energy and it’s better to get up out of your chair and walk across to a switch than reach out to the buttons with a stream of pure Power, that electricity will cook your steak a lot better than magic fire, and it’s better to cover a scratch with a Band-Aid and only use the Avicenna spell for serious injuries.

And then later, of course, unless an Other is doomed to stay at the very lowest levels of Power, genuine mastery arrives. And you no longer pay any attention to how you light your cigarette-with gas or with magic.

I breathed out a stream of smoke.

Gesar?

Zabulon?

All right, it was useless to guess. I just had to do one thing: Remember once and for all that everything was going to be a lot more complicated than I thought at the beginning. That, and go back to my seat-we would soon be landing.

Over the English Channel we were thrown about a little, as usual. But we landed softly and went through the EU passport control in the blink of an eye. The other passengers moved to collect their luggage (apart from the uninitiated Egor, I was the only Other on the plane), but I dropped back a bit and found my shadow on the floor. I gazed into the gray silhouette, forcing it to assume volume and rise up toward me. I stepped into my own shadow-and entered the Twilight.

Everything here was almost exactly the same. Walls, windows, doors. Only everything was gray, colorless. Ordinary people in the real world drifted by like slow-moving shadows. Without knowing why, they carefully skirted around an entirely unremarkable section of the corridor and even started walking faster to avoid it.

It was best to approach the customs post for Others in the Twilight, in order not to make people nervous. It was shielded by a simple spell, the Circle of Inattention, and people tried very hard not to see it. But they might spot me talking to empty space.

So I approached the desk in the Twilight and only emerged into the real world when I was protected by the spell.

There were two customs officers-a Light One and a Dark One. Just the way there ought to be.

Monitoring Others when they cross borders doesn’t seem very logical to me. Vampires and werewolves are obliged to register with the local branch of the Watch if they stay in a town overnight. The justification for this is that lower Dark Ones too often give way to the animal side of their nature. That’s true enough, but any magician, whether he’s Dark or Light, is capable of things that would send a vampire running for his coffin in horror. Well, anyway, the tradition exists, and no one anywhere wants to change it-despite all the protests from vampires and werewolves. But I do wonder what the point is in monitoring the movements of Others from one country to another. That’s important for people-illegal immigration, smuggling, narcotics…even spies, if it comes to that. But it’s fifty years now since spies used to walk through border-control zones with elk hooves tied to their feet, and they don’t parachute into enemy territory at night now either. A self-respecting spy flies in on a plane and checks into a good hotel. And as for Others, we have no immigration restrictions, and even a weak magician can obtain the citizenship of any country without the slightest problem. So what was this absurd counter doing here?

It was probably for the Inquisition. Formally speaking, the customs posts belonged to the local Night and Day Watches. But another copy of the report was sent off every day to the Inquisition. And they probably studied it more carefully there.

And drew conclusions.

“Hello. My name is Anton Gorodetsky,” I said, stopping in front of the counter. We don’t use identity documents, and that’s a good thing. There are always rumors going around that they’re going to start putting a magical tag on everyone, the way they do with vampires now, or else make an invisible entry in the ordinary human passports.

But so far we still manage without bureaucracy.

“A Light One,” declared the Dark Magician. He was a weak magician, sixth-level at the very most. And physically very feeble: short, skinny, and pale, with narrow shoulders and sparse blond hair.

“A Light One,” I agreed.

My colleague from the London Night Watch was a fat, cheerful black guy. The only things he had in common with his duty partner were that he was also young and also weak, only sixth-or seventh-level.

“Hi there, bro!” he said happily. “Anton Gorodetsky. Serve in a Watch?”

“ Night Watch, Russia, city of Moscow.”

“Level?”

I suddenly realized that they couldn’t read my aura. They could have read it up to the fourth or fifth level. But after that, everything was just a blurred glow to them.

“Higher.”

The Dark One straightened up a bit. Of course, they’re all egotists and individualists. But they do admire their superiors.

The Light One opened his eyes wide and said, “Oh! Higher! Coming for long?”

“Passing through. On my way to Edinburgh. I fly out in three hours.”

“ Holiday or business?”

“An assignment,” I said without any further explanation.

Light Ones, of course, are liberal and democratic. But they too respect Higher Others.

“Did you enter the Twilight there?” the Dark One asked with a nod toward the human customs area.

“Yes. Will it be caught on the cameras?”

The Dark One shook his head. “No, we monitor everything here. But in town I recommend you to be more careful. There are plenty of cameras. Lots of them. Every now and then people notice us disappearing and reappearing; we have to cover our tracks.”

“I’m not even leaving the airport.”

“There are cameras in Edinburgh, too,” the Light One put in. “Not so many, but even so…Do you have the contact details for the Edinburgh Watch?”

He didn’t bother to mention that he meant the Night Watch. That was quite obvious.

“Yes,” I said.

“I have a good friend who runs a little family hotel in Edinburgh,” said the Dark One, joining in the conversation again. “For two hundred years already. Beside the castle, on the Royal Mile. If it doesn’t bother you that he’s a vampire…”

What was all this, nothing but vampires on every side?

“…then here’s his card. It’s a very good hotel. Friendly to Others.”

“I have no prejudices against vampires,” I assured him, taking the rectangle of cardboard. “Some of my friends have been vampires.”

And I sent one of my vampire friends to his death…

“There’s a good restaurant in terminal B,” the Light One put in.

They were so genuinely eager to help me that I wasn’t sure how to get past this solid wall of friendship and goodwill. Fortunately, another plane landed, and several more Others showed up behind me. Keeping a smile on my face the whole time-something to which the Russian facial musculature is rather poorly adapted-I went to collect my suitcase.

I didn’t go to the restaurant, I wasn’t feeling hungry at all. I wandered around the airport a bit, drank a double espresso, dozed for a while in a chair in the lounge, and walked to my plane, yawning a bit as I went. As was only to be expected, Egor was on the same flight. But now we demonstratively ignored each other. Or rather, he demonstratively ignored me, and I didn’t try to impose my company on him.

An hour later we landed at Edinburgh Airport.

It was already almost noon when I got into a taxi-one of those remarkably comfortable English taxis that you start to miss just as soon as you leave Great Britain. I greeted the driver and, on a sudden impulse, handed him the card from the “friendly hotel.” I had a booking in an ordinary human hotel, but the chance of talking to one of Scotland ’s oldest vampires (two hundred years is no joke, even for them) in informal surroundings was simply too tempting.