Nightwatch

«You think so?»

«I'm certain. You shouldn't have insisted on having your own way. I was the one who wanted to check the other passengers as well.»

The young guy swung around to protest, but it was too late—the hot currents of life energy were already streaming out of his body.

Chapter 1

The Oldsmobile was ancient, which I liked. But the open windows were no help against the insane heat rising from the road after the sun had been scorching it all day long. It needed an air-conditioner.

Ilya was probably thinking the same thing. He was driving with one hand on the steering wheel, glancing around all the time and chatting with everyone. I knew a magician of his level could spot probabilities ten minutes in advance and there wasn't going to be any crash, but I was still feeling a bit uneasy.

«I was thinking about putting in an air-conditioner,» he told Yulia in a guilty voice. The young girl was suffering worse than anyone else from the heat; she had a blotchy rash on her face and her eyes looked glazed. I was just hoping she wasn't going to be sick. «But it would have ruined the entire car; it wasn't meant to have one! No air-conditioner, no cell phones, no onboard computers.»

«Uh-huh,» said Yulia, with a feeble smile. We'd all been working late the day before. No one had gone to bed at all; we'd been stuck in the office until five in the morning and then stayed the rest of the night there. I suppose it's pretty mean to make a thirteen-year-old girl slave away with the grown-ups. But it was what she'd wanted; no one had forced her.

From her seat in the front, Svetlana shot Yulia an anxious look.

Then she shot Semyon a look of extreme disapproval. The imperturbable magician almost choked on his Yava cigarette. He breathed in and all the cigarette smoke drifting around inside the car was drawn into his lungs. He flicked the butt out the window. The Yava was already a concession to popular opinion—until just recently Semyon had preferred to smoke Flight and other repulsive tobacco products.

«Close the windows,» said Semyon.

A moment later it suddenly started getting cold. A subtle, salty smell of the sea filled the air. I could even tell that it was the sea at night, and quite close—the typical smell of the Crimean shoreline. Iodine, seaweed, a subtle hint of wormwood. The Black Sea. Koktebel.

«Koktebel?» I asked.

«Yalta,» Semyon replied. «September tenth, nineteen seventy-two, about three a.m. After a small storm.»

Ilya clicked his tongue enviously.

«Pretty good! How come you haven't used up a set of sensations like that in all this time?»

Yulia gave Semyon a guilty look. Climate conservation wasn't something every magician found easy, and the sensations Semyon had just used would have been a hit at any party.

«Thank you, Semyon Pavlovich,» she said. For some reason Yulia was as shy of Semyon as she was of the boss, and she always called him by his first name and patronymic.

«Oh, that's nothing,» Semyon replied calmly. «My collection includes rain in the taiga in nineteen thirteen, and I've got the nineteen forty typhoon, a spring morning in Jurmaala in fifty-six, and I think I've got a winter evening in Gagry.»

Ilya laughed:

«Forget the winter evening in Gagry. But rain in the taiga…«

«I won't swap,» Semyon warned him. «I know your collection; you haven't got anything nearly that good.»

«What about two, no, three for one…«

«I could give you it as a present,» Semyon suggested.

«Go take a hike,» said Ilya, jerking on the steering wheel. «What could I give you that would match that?»

«Then I'll invite you when I unseal it.»

«I suppose I should be grateful for that.»

He started sulking, naturally. I always thought of them as more or less equal in their powers, maybe Ilya was even a bit stronger. But Semyon had a flair for spotting the moment that was worth recording with magic. And he didn't waste his collection without good reason.

Of course, some people might have thought what he'd just done was a waste: brightening up the last half hour of our journey with such a precious set of sensations.

«Nectar like that should be breathed in the evening, with kebabs on the barbecue,» said Ilya. He could be incredibly thick-ski

«I remember one time in Yemen,» Semyon said unexpectedly. «Our helicopter… anyway, never mind that… we set out on foot. Our communications equipment had been destroyed, and using magic would have been calling way too much attention to ourselves. We set out on foot, across the Hadramawt desert. We had hardly any distance left to go to get to our regional agent, maybe a hundred kilometers. But we were all exhausted. And we had no water. And then Alyoshka—he's a nice young guy who works in the Maritime Region now—said: 'I can't take any more, Semyon Pavlovich; I've got a wife and two children at home, I want to get back alive.' He lay down on the sand and unsealed his special stash. He had rain in it. A cloudburst, twenty minutes of it. We drank all we needed, and filled our canteens, and recovered our strength. I felt like punching him in the face for not telling us sooner, but I took pity on him.»

After a long speech like that, nobody in the car said anything for a minute, Semyon had presented the facts of his stormy biography so eloquently.

Ilya was the first to gather his wits.

«Why didn't you use your rain in the taiga?»

«What a comparison,» Semyon snorted. «A collector's item from nineteen-thirteen and a standard spring cloudburst collected in Moscow. It smelled of gasoline, would you believe!»

«I believe it.»

«Well, there you are. There's a time and place for everything. The evening I just recalled was pleasant enough, but not really outstanding. Just about right for your old jalopy.»

Svetlana laughed quietly. The faint air of tension in the car was dispelled.

The Night Watch had been working feverishly all week long. Not that there'd been anything unusual happening in Moscow; it was just routine. The city was in the grip of a heat wave unprecedented for June, and reports of incidents had dropped to an all-time low. Neither the Light Ones nor the Dark Ones were enjoying it too much.

Our analysts spent about twenty-four hours working on the theory that the unexpectedly hot weather had been caused by some move the Dark Ones were pla

The Dark Ones had turned as quiet as flies pi

The boss waited for exactly a minute, until the happy smiles had spread across all the faces there, then added that it would be only fair to earn this unexpected bounty with a burst of intensive work. That way we wouldn't end up feeling ashamed of wasting away the days. The title of the old literary classic was true, he said—«Monday starts on Saturday.» So having been granted three extra days of vacation, we had to get through all the routine work in the time we had left.

And that's what we'd been doing—getting through it, some of us almost until the morning. We'd checked on the Dark Ones who were still in town and under special observation: vampires, werewolves, incubuses and succubuses, active witches, all sorts of troublesome riffraff from the lower levels. Everything was in order. What the vampires wanted right now wasn't hot blood but cold beer. Instead of trying to cast bad spells on their neighbors, the witches were all trying to summon up a little rain over Moscow.

But now we were on our way to relax. Not as far as the Maldives, of course—the boss had been too optimistic about the finance office's generosity. But even two or three days out of town would be great. We felt sorry for the poor volunteers who'd stayed behind in the capital to keep watch with the boss.

«I've got to call home,» said Yulia. She'd really livened up after Semyon swapped the damp heat in the car for cool sea air. «Sveta, lend me your cell.»

I was enjoying the coolness too. I glanced into the cars we were overtaking: in most of them the windows were rolled down, and the people glared at us with envy, assuming, of course, our ancient automobile had a powerful air-conditioning system.

«The turn's coming up soon,» I said to Ilya.

«I remember. I drove here once before.»

«Quiet!» Yulia hissed fiercely and started jabbering into the cell phone. «Mom, it's me! Yes, I'm here already. Of course, it's great! There's a lake here. No, it's shallow. Mom, I can't talk for long, Sveta's dad lent me his cell. No, there's no one else. Sveta? Just a moment.»

Svetlana sighed and took the phone from the young girl. She gave me a dark look and I tried to put on a serious expression.

«Hello, aunty Natasha,» Svetlana said in a squeaky child's voice. «Yes, very pleased. Yes. No, with the grown-ups. Mom's a long way off, shall I call her? Okay, I'll tell her. Definitely. Goodbye.»

She switched off the phone and spoke into empty space:

«So tell me, my girl, what's going to happen when your mom asks the real Sveta how the vacation went?»

«Sveta will tell her we had a great time.»

Svetlana sighed and glanced at Semyon as if she were looking for support.

«Using magical powers for personal goals leads to unexpected consequences,» Semyon declared in a dry, official voice. «I remember one time…«

«What magical powers?» Yulia asked, genuinely surprised. «I told my friend Sveta I was going off for a party with some guys and asked her to cover for me. She was staggered, but of course she agreed.»