Day Watch

The Dark One was still talking on his cell phone. Or rather, listening.

"They want to make sure we leave!" said the shrewd Raivo. "As if we weren't delighted to go-what have we got to do here?"

But Raivo was wrong.

The Light magician wandered around the airport for a while and then settled at the counter again, reading some book and sipping coffee. The Dark magician finished his conversation and walked across to the ticket desk, and the Brothers sensed a trace of magic. Quite strong magic, too-about fourth level.

"What's he doing there?" Raivo asked, getting worried. "Is he getting a ticket too? Eh? Yukha, he's not going to bother us, is he?"

"Why would he?" Yukha asked. "Look!"

The Dark magician walked away from the window in the counter with a ticket in his hand.

"They've canceled a ticket someone had already paid for," Raivo guessed. "Would you believe it? There'll be an uproar…"

And there was an uproar, when the passengers were registering for the flight four hours later, when they all found themselves in the same line, including the Light magician. One of the passengers was politely informed that his ticket had been sold to him by mistake, that the airline apologized to him and offered him a seat in business class on the next flight…

The Dark magician watched the outraged passenger's complaints as if nothing unusual was happening. He actually seemed to be smiling. But the Regin Brothers had no reason to smile- the Dark magician and the Light magician were flying on the same plane as them.

"They've decided to see us all the way to Prague," Raivo eventually a

Yukha shook his head. "No, brother. No. Something's not right here. You'll see-they'll come up and want to talk to us…"

Chapter one

–«¦»-

Gesar had summoned Anton in the evening, when the analysts and the technical staff had already gone home, and the field operatives who happened to be on duty that night had only just begun arriving at headquarters. The corridors on the second floor smelled of freshly brewed coffee, hot ci

It was about a year already since Anton had worked in the IT department; Tolik had replaced him as boss of the computers and the girls who operated them. A second-level magician-Anton had been classed as second level at the begi

"Like some coffee?" Semyon asked. Anton nodded, and just at that moment the phone rang. Silence fell instantly in the little room where the four field operatives-Anton, Semyon, Garik, and Bear-were sitting. They could all sense a call from the boss.

And who it was for.

Anton's colleagues watched closely as he picked up the receiver.

"Come in to see me as soon as you're free," Gesar ordered him without saying hello. "Finish your coffee and then come in."

"Very well," Anton replied in a steady voice. "As you wish, Boris Ignatievich."

He thought for a moment and then lit his pipe. If Gesar hadn't warned him time was short, it meant there was no great hurry.

"You in line for a dressing-down?" Garik inquired. Anton just shrugged. He could be in line for anything, from a charge of betraying the cause of the Night Watch to a promotion, from being told to stay in the office and not stick his nose outside to being ordered to storm the Dark Ones' headquarters. When a magician of the highest level got some idea into his head, it was pointless trying to guess his plans. Especially if that magician was in the kind of bad mood that Gesar had been in for the last few months.

Basically they were all feeling pretty lousy. This year had been just one failure after another. It had all started in the summer, when the workaday, humdrum arrest of a witch practicing magic illegally had spilled over into conflict with the Dark Ones. Then the fine young magician Igor Teplov, who had drained his powers in that conflict, had been sent to the Artek children's camp to recover and run foul of a deliberate provocation by the Dark Ones. A witch called Alisa Do

About a month later Vitaly Rogoza had turned up, and that had proved to be a real disaster. At first they'd taken him for an ordinary Dark One, then they'd begun to suspect the visiting Ukrainian was an emissary, sent to assist the Day Watch. But Rogoza had turned out to be a Mirror-that very rarest of phenomena, which has been recorded less than ten times in the entire history of the Watches. He was a direct creation of the Twilight, a monstrous fighting machine molded out of a quite unexceptional individual, who might not even have been an Other. If only they'd realized that straightaway… but they hadn't. And in the struggle with the Mirror, Tiger Cub had been killed, Svetlana had lost her powers, and several other magicians had suffered to a greater or lesser degree.

Things were very, very bad…

Anton had cursed himself over and over again for not realizing the need to conduct a detailed analysis of the circumstances in which the Mirror had appeared. After all, there were similar cases in the secret archives-the appearance of a magician who evaded classification, a rapid increase in his powers, a decisive skirmish-and then he disappeared. Everything fit. Right down to the final moment, when Vitaly Rogoza had melted into thin air, dematerialized, and vanished into the depths of the Twilight that had given birth to him.

But never mind Anton, never mind even Garik or Semyon. For them a Mirror was one of those numerous exotic occurrences they'd only heard about in lectures or read about in the archives. Why hadn't Gesar or Olga, with all their experience, realized the truth immediately? They'd run into Mirrors before, after all…

Things were bad. Nothing was going right. As if the Darkness had been infuriated by the Night Watch's recent successes and was striking blow after blow. And very successfully too, it had to be admitted.

Anton shook his head to refuse the second cup of coffee that Semyon offered him. He carefully cleaned out his pipe, casting an involuntary sideways glance at Bear.

He was cleaning out his pipe too. The little pipe with a long, thin stem that had belonged to Tiger Cub. The girl had only smoked it occasionally, mostly to keep her friends company. But now that Tiger Cub was gone, Bear smoked his own pipe and hers by turns. It was probably the only way he had expressed his feelings since Tiger Cub's death-the gentle way he handled that pipe… and perhaps that fixed stare when Vitaly Rogoza had begun to dematerialize. A gaze full of regret: Bear hadn't had a chance to get his hands on Rogoza, he hadn't been able to satisfy his thirst for vengeance…

Like Alisher, the Light One from Uzbekistan whose father had been killed a year earlier by Alisa.

Anton had his own accounts to settle with the Day Watch and its chief, too. But of course the accounts would never be paid. The Treaty shackled both Watches, the Inquisition made sure it was observed, and the only way around it was to cut right to the chase and challenge an enemy to a duel… which was what Igor had done, for instance. And what was the result? The witch was dead, but now the magician was facing dematerialization, waiting for the decision of the European office of the Tribunal. And it wasn't hard to guess what it would be…