Nightwatch

Ilya giggled in the driving seat.

«What would I want with a party like that?» Yulia asked indignantly, clearly not understanding what was so fu

For every member of our Watch, work takes up the greater part of our lives. Not because we're wild workaholics—who in his right mind wouldn't rather relax than work? And not because the work is so very interesting—we spend most of our time on boring patrol duty or polishing the seats of our pants in our offices. It's simply that there aren't enough of us. It's much easier to keep the Day Watch up to strength; any Dark One is only too keen for a chance to wield power. But our situation's quite different.

Outside work, though, every one of us has his own little piece of life that we won't give up to anyone: not to the Light and not to the Darkness. It's all ours… A little piece of life that we don't hide, but we don't put it out on display either. What's left of our original, basic human nature.

Some travel every time they get a chance. Ilya, for instance, prefers standard tour packages, but Semyon likes basic hitchhiking. He once traveled from Moscow to Vladivostok without a single kopeck in record time, but he didn't register his achievement with the League of Free Travelers, because he used his magical powers twice on the way.

For Ignat—and he's not the only one—vacation always means sexual adventures. It's a stage almost everyone goes through, because life offers Others far more opportunities than it does to human beings. It's a well-known fact that people feel a powerful attraction to Others, even though they may not realize it.

There are plenty of collectors among us too. From modest collectors of penknives, key rings, stamps, and cigarette lighters to collectors of weather, smells, auras, and spells. I used to collect model automobiles, paying really big money on rare models that only had any value for a few thousand idiots. I dumped the entire collection into two cardboard boxes ages ago. I ought to take them out in the yard and tip them into the sandbox for the little kids to enjoy.

The number of hunters and fishermen is pretty high. Igor and Garik enjoy extreme parachute jumping. Our useless programmer Galya, a sweet girl, grows bonsai trees. I guess we cover pretty much the entire range of amusements that the human race has invented.

But what Tiger Cub did for amusement, I had no idea, although we were on our way to her place. I was almost as eager to find out as I had been to escape the scorching heat in town. When you spend a bit of time at someone's place, it doesn't take too long to find out what their special little quirk is.

«Are we almost there yet?» Yulia asked in a whining voice. We'd already turned off the main highway and traveled about five kilometers along a dirt road, past a little summerhouse settlement and over a little river.

«Yes, we're almost there,» I answered, checking the image of the route that Tiger Club had left us.

«In fact, we are there already,» said Ilya, swerving the car off the road, straight at the trees. Yulia gasped out loud and covered her face with her hands. Svetlana reacted more calmly, but even she put her hands out, expecting a crash.

The car hurtled through the thick bushes and over the fallen branches, and crashed into the solid wall of trees. But, of course, there was no impact. We leapt straight through the magical mirage and landed upon a well-surfaced road. Straight ahead there was a little lake glinting like a bright mirror in the sun, with a two-story brick house standing by the shore, surrounded by a tall fence.

«What always amazes me about shape-shifters,» said Svetlana, «is how devoted they are to secrecy. Not only does she hide behind a mirage, she has a fence too.»

«Tiger Cub's not a shape-shifter!» young Yulia objected. «She's a transformer magician.»

«That's the same thing,» Sveta said gently.

Yulia looked at Semyon, clearly expecting him to back her up.

«In essential terms, Sveta's right. Highly specialized combat magicians are like any other shape-shifters. But with a plus sign instead of a minus. If Tiger Cub had been in a slightly different mood when she first entered the Twilight, she'd have turned into a Dark shape-shifter. There are very few people whose path is completely determined in advance. There's usually a struggle during the preparation for initiation.»

«And how did it go with me?» asked Yulia.

«I've told you before,» Semyon growled. «It was pretty easy.»

«A mild remoralization of your teachers and parents,» Ilya said with a laugh as he stopped the car in front of the gates. «And the little girl was immediately filled with love and kindness for the whole world.»

«Ilya!» Semyon said sharply. He was Yulia's mentor, a rather lazy mentor who almost never got involved in the young sorceress's development, but he obviously didn't like Ilya's wisecracks.

Yulia was a talented young girl, and the Watch had high hopes for her. But not so high that she had to be driven through the tortuous labyrinth of moral logic at the same speed as Svetlana, a future Great Sorceress.

Sveta and I must have had the same thought at the same time—we looked at each other. And after we looked, we turned our eyes away.

We could feel an invisible pressure bearing down on us, forcing us apart. I'd be a grade-three magician forever. Any moment now Sveta would outgrow me, and in a short while—a very short while, because the Watch's management thought it necessary—she would become a sorceress beyond classification.

And then all we'd have left would be friendly handshakes when we met and an exchange of greeting cards for birthdays and Christmas.

«Are they asleep in there, or what?» Ilya asked indignantly. His mind wasn't distracted by the kind of problems we had. He stuck his head out the window, and the car immediately filled up with hot air, but at least it was clean. He waved his hand, staring into the TV camera attached to the gates. He sounded his horn.

The gates started opening slowly.

«That's a bit better,» the magician snorted as he drove the car into the yard.

It was a large plot of land, thickly planted with trees. The amazing thing was that they'd managed to build the house without damaging the giant pines and firs. Apart from a small flowerbed beside a little fountain that wasn't working, there were no other signs of cultivation. There were five cars already standing on the concrete apron in front of the house. I recognized the old Niva that Danila used out of a stubborn sense of patriotism, and Olga's sports model—how had she managed to drive over the dirt road in that? Standing between them was the battered station wagon that Tolik drove about in and two other cars I'd seen at the office, but I didn't know whose they were.

«They didn't bother to wait for us,» Ilya said indignantly. «They're already partying, getting it on while the best people in the Watch are still bouncing over the country roads.»

He switched off the motor and Yulia immediately screeched in delight:

«Tiger Cub!»

She scrambled straight over me, opened the door, and jumped out of the car.

Semyon swore and followed her out, moving incredibly fast. Just in time.

I don't know where those dogs had been hiding. In any case, they were still camouflaged until the moment Yulia got out of the car. But the moment her feet touched the ground, the light-brown shadows closed in on her from all sides.

The young girl shrieked. She was more than powerful enough to deal with a pack of wolves, never mind five or six dogs, but she'd never actually been in a genuine fight, and she lost her head. To be quite honest, even I hadn't been expecting an attack—not here. And especially not this kind. Dogs never attack Others. They're afraid of the Dark Ones. They like the Light Ones. You have to train an animal really long and hard in order to suppress its natural fear of a walking source of magic.

Svetlana, Ilya, and I scrambled out of the car. But Semyon beat us all to the punch. He grabbed hold of the girl with one hand and made a pass in the air with the other. I thought he would use fright magic, or withdraw into the twilight, or reduce the dogs to dust on the spot. A reflex response usually relies on the simplest spells.

But Semyon used the temporal freeze. He caught two of the dogs in the air: Their bodies were left hanging there, enveloped in a blue glow, with their narrow, snarling muzzles reaching forward, the drops of saliva falling from their fangs like gleaming blue hail.

The three dogs who'd been frozen on the ground weren't quite so impressive.

Tiger Cub came ru

«Everyone okay?» she asked eventually.

«Fortunately,» mumbled Ilya, lowering his wand. «What kind of animals are you keeping here?»

«They wouldn't have done anything,» Tiger Cub said guiltily.

«Oh yeah?» Semyon took Yulia out from under his arm and set her down on the ground. He ran one finger thoughtfully over the bared fang of a dog hanging in mid-air. The film of the time freeze was springy and elastic under his hand.

«I swear!» said Tiger Cub, pressing her hand to her heart. «Guys, Sveta, Yulia, I'm sorry. I didn't have a chance to stop them. The dogs are trained to knock strangers down and restrain them.»

«Even Others?»

«Yes.»

«Even Light Ones?» There was a note of dubious admiration in Semyon's voice.

Tiger Cub dropped her eyes and nodded.

Yulia went over, snuggled up to her, and said in a more or less calm voice:

«I wasn't frightened. Just taken by surprise, that's all.»

«It's a good thing I was slow to react too,» Ilya commented gloomily, putting his weapon away. «Roast dog's too exotic a dish for me. But your dogs know me, Tiger Cub!»

«They wouldn't have touched you.»

The tension slowly eased. Of course, nothing too serious would have happened; we know how to heal each other, but it would have put a damper on the picnic.

«I'm sorry,» Tiger Cub repeated. She looked at us all imploringly.

«But listen, why do you need all this?» asked Sveta, with a glance at the dogs. «Can you explain that to me? Your powers are strong enough to beat off a platoon of Green Berets. What do you need rotweilers for?»

«They're not rotweilers; they're Staffordshire bull terriers.»

«What difference does that make?»

«They caught a burglar once. I'm only here two days a week, I can't go back and forth to town all the time.»