The Night Watch (Watch 1)

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 planning. No doubt at the same time the Day Watch were investigating whether we Light Magicians had interfered with the climate. When both sides became convinced the anomalous weather was due to natural causes, we were all left with absolutely nothing to do.

The Dark Ones had turned as quiet as flies pinned down by rain. Despite all the doctors' forecasts, the number of accidents and natural deaths across the city fell. The Light Ones didn't much feel like working either, magicians squabbled over unimportant trivia, it took half a day to get the simplest documents out of the archives, and when the analysts were asked to forecast the weather they replied acidly with eighteenth-century gibberish such as: 'The water is dark in the clouds.' Boris Ignatievich wandered round the office in a stupor: even with his oriental origins and great experience of the East, he was floored by Moscow's own version of hot weather. The previous morning, Thursday, he'd called all the staff together, appointed two volunteers from the Watch to assist him and told everyone else to clear out of the city. To go anywhere, the Maldives or Greece if we wanted, down to hell's own kitchen if we liked – even that would be more comfortable. Or just to a dacha outside town. We were told not to show up in the office again until Monday lunchtime.

The boss waited for exactly a minute, until happy smiles had spread across everyone's faces, then added that it would be only fair for us to earn this unexpected break with an intensive spell of work. That way we wouldn't end up feeling guilty of having wasted the time. The title of the old classic was to the point, he said – 'Monday starts on Saturday'. So having been granted three extra days of holiday, we had to get through all the routine work in the remaining time.

And that's what we'd been doing – getting through it. Some of us almost until the morning. We'd checked up on the Dark Ones who were still in town and under special observation: vampires, werewolves, incubi and succubi, active witches, all sorts of troublesome low-level riff-raff. Everything was in order. What the vampires wanted right now wasn't hot blood, but cold beer. Instead of trying to cast spells on their neighbours, 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 exchanged the damp heat in the car for the cool sea air. 'Sveta, can I borrow your phone?'

I was enjoying the cool 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 loathing, wrongly assuming that our ancient automobile had powerful air conditioning.

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

'I remember. I drove here once before.'

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

Svetlana sighed and took the phone from Yulia. 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. Mum'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, young lady, what's going to happen when your mother asks the real Sveta how the holiday went?'

'Sveta will say we had a great time.'

Svetlana sighed and glanced at Semyon as if 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 magic powers?' Yulia asked, genuinely surprised. 'I told my friend Sveta I was going off to a party with some guys and asked her to cover for me. She was shocked, but of course she said yes.'

In the driving seat Ilya laughed.

'Why wouldn't I want to go to a party?' Yulia asked indignantly, clearly not understanding what he found so funny. 'That's the way the human kids amuse themselves. So what are you laughing at?'

For every member of our Watch, work takes up the greater part of our lives. Not because we're workaholics – who 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 trousers in the office. It's simply that there aren't enough of us. It's much easier for the Day Watch to keep 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 he won't give up to anyone: not to the Light and not to the Dark. That's all ours... A little piece of life that we don't hide, and don't put on display either. What's left of our original, essential human nature.

Some go travelling whenever they can. Ilya, for instance, prefers ordinary package holidays, but Semyon likes hitchhiking. He once travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok without a single kopeck and in record time, but he didn't register his achievement with the League of Free Travellers, because he used his magical powers twice on the way.

For Ignat – and he's not the only one – holidays are always about sex. It's a stage almost all of us go through, because Others get far more opportunities than humans do. It's a well-known fact that humans feel a powerful attraction to Others, even though they may not realise 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 cars, spending big money on rare models that only had value to a few thousand idiots. I dumped the entire collection into two cardboard boxes ages ago. I ought to take them out into the courtyard and tip them into the sandpit for the kids to enjoy.

There are lots of hunters and fishermen. Igor and Garik are into extreme parachuting. Our useless programmer Galya, a sweet girl, is into growing bonsai trees. I guess we cover pretty much the entire range of entertainments that the human race has ever invented.

But what Tiger Cub did in her spare time, I had no idea, even though it was her place we were going to. I was almost as keen to find out as I had been to escape from the scorching heat in town. When you spend a bit of time at someone's place, it usually doesn't take too long to find out what their special interest is.

'Are we almost there now?' Yulia asked in a capricious tone. We'd already turned off the main highway and travelled about five kilometres along a dirt road, past a little dacha settlement and over a small river.

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

'Actually, we're there already,' said Ilya, swerving the car off the road, straight at the trees. Yulia gasped 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 thick bushes, over fallen branches and crashed into a solid wall of trees. But, of course, there was no impact. We leapt straight through the magical mirage and landed on a well-surfaced road. Straight ahead there was a small lake glinting like a bright mirror in the sun, with a two-storey brick house standing by the shore, surrounded by a tall fence.

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

'Tiger Cub's not a shape-shifter!' 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.

'Essentially Sveta's right. Highly specialised 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 was it with me?' asked Yulia.

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

'A mild remoralisation 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 interfered in the young sorceress's development, but he obviously didn't appreciate Ilya's unnecessary wisecracks.

Yulia was a talented 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 rate 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 a pressure on us, forcing us apart. I'd be a third-grade magician for ever. Any moment now Sveta would outgrow me and in a short time – a very short time, because the Watch's management thought it was 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 cards on birthdays and Christmas.

'Are they asleep in there, or what?' Ilya asked indignantly. His mind wasn't distracted by our problems. He stuck his head out the window, and the car immediately filled with up with hot air, though at least it was clean. He waved his hand, looking into the camera at the gate, and sounded his horn.

The gates started opening slowly.

'That's better,' the magician snorted as he drove through.

It was a large plot of land, thickly planted with trees. The striking thing was how they'd managed to build the house without damaging the huge 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 already five cars on the concrete drive in front of the house. I recognised the old Niva that Danila drove out of stubborn patriotism, and Olga's sports car – how had she managed to drive over the dirt road in that? Standing between them was the battered station wagon belonging to Tolik 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 crossly. 'They're already partying, while the best people in the Watch are still bouncing along the country roads.'

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

'Tiger Cub!'

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

Semyon swore and followed her, 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 as soon as her feet touched the ground, the light-brown shadows closed in on her from all sides.

Yulia 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 Dark Ones. They like 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 it. He grabbed hold of Yulia 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.