Sixth Watch (22 page)

“Are you hungry?” Svetlana asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Although the meal on the plane yesterday was good and I had a bite to eat in Paris as well.”

A hint of something between admiration and indignation appeared in Svetlana's expression.

“I see you're leading a busy life! My dear, why don't you fly to Paris when I'm at home and I can ask you for something?”

“There,” I said, unbuttoning my jacket and taking a little box out of my pocket. “What else can a poor man bring back from a business trip to Paris? Two bottles of authentic French perfume.”

“This one's mine, it's mine, it's the most fashionable fragrance of the season!” Nadya exclaimed, grabbing the little box.

“How come?” Svetlana said indignantly. “I wanted that fragrance too.”

“Keep calm, the other one's exactly the same!” I said triumphantly, taking out the second bottle.

My wife and daughter both turned toward me simultaneously. Then they looked at each other.

“Men!” My wife sighed.

“And this is Dad. He's one of the best!” said Nadya, backing her up.

“What is all this?” I asked indignantly. “You both wanted this perfume. And I brought a bottle for each of you! What's wrong with that?”

They exchanged glances again. Nadya shook her head.

“Come on,” said Svetlana. “I'll feed you.”

Dinner was delicious. Svetlana cooked what an Italian would have called spaghetti Bolognese, but there was too much meat in it, so it was more like Russian “sailors' macaroni.” While I was eating, Svetlana looked at me.

“Olga's right,” she said, “you need a rest. You look like . . .”

“An alcoholic?” I asked warily.

“No. One of Grebenshchikov's lyrical heroes. From the song ‘Mama, I Can't Drink Anymore.'”

“Damn,” I said. “Everyone's criticizing the way I look. I'm going to drink milk.” I caught my daughter's expression. “Do you want to ask something?” I asked.

“Dad, do you know if Harry Styles's single has been released? They were supposed to announce it today?”

“Who's he?” I asked, puzzled.

“Oh, Dad, he's one of the boys in One Direction. The coolest one.”

“Light, Darkness, and the Twilight!” I exclaimed. “How should I
know? I only found out about Picnic's new album a month after it was released!”

“You could have asked Kesha,” my daughter said sulkily. “You have seen him, haven't you?”

I snorted.

“Yes, I've seen him. Nadizhda, if you wanted to find out how your friend was getting on, all you had to do was ask, and not start inquiring about the Biebers and Timatis of this world.”

Nadya rapidly blushed bright red.

“He's all right,” I said after a pause to drive the lesson home. After all, Kesha was a very fine young lad, and I'd known him since he was a child, so to speak. By no means the worst friend for a young girl. An Other, a Light One, from a good family . . . Although what did his family have to do with this? He was a good lad, and that was it. “Let me tell you everything in the right order.”

And I started telling my story.

About meeting Kesha. About the visit from Eve/Lilith. About the appearance of the Tiger. About my conversations with Killoran. About my memories being blocked. About the trip to Paris and Egor, who had come back to Moscow.

“That poor boy,” Svetlana gasped. “Anton! Are you serious? You've got him involved in the Watches' operation? Knowing that he could become a Mirror and disappear?”

“The whole world could disappear,” I said with a shrug. “I tried to talk him out of it. And he hasn't been a boy for a long time. Why don't you advise me what else I can do? All the Watches, not to mention the Inquisition, are digging in every possible direction at this very moment. But maybe there's something we're missing?”

“Look, Dad,” said Nadya, who had gotten over her indignation. She picked up a sheet of paper. “I wrote this down here, while you were telling us everything. All the data that we have. Prophecies, the information from Killoran, the information from Lilith . . . Dad, did I get it right that the female vampire who pretended to be Kil
loran is the same one who wrote you a message with the initials of her victims?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “Almost certainly.”

“And you think she's the vampire that you once caught and who was disembodied?”

“I'm not sure about that any longer, little one. At first we thought the message in the bites that said ‘Be ready' was a warning from the vampiress. But while ‘Anton Go' really was the beginning of ‘Anton Gorodetsky,' ‘Be ready' was followed by ‘He awaits.' But the vampire was female . . . after all, Killoran . . .”

I pondered for a moment and gestured in frustration.

“I don't know, Nadyusha. If it was a disguise, how do we really know who was behind it? We can't say anything. But I sense a strong kind of personal relationship there.”

Nadya answered me very seriously.

“Even people should trust their presentiments, and we should especially. Dad, can you see that everything comes back to vampires?”

I nodded.

“How could I fail to see it? The Two-in-One is their god. He manifested himself through a Light One and Dark One—as I understand it, he incarnated himself in them, put them on like clothes. The Twilight uses the Mirror in pretty much the same way. The vampiress tried to pass on information to me, even before the Two-in-One appeared. And she was able to protect us from him—which is very strange, of course. Then she gave me a whole heap of information, while she was pretending to be Killoran. And Lilith told us a lot of things as well. And it seems like she was the oldest vampire on the planet.”

“It all circles around vampires,” Svetlana agreed. “We've got a clever daughter, Anton . . . A glass of wine?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Milk.”

Svetlana got up and went to the “kitchen.” Nadka continued sitting there with her feet pulled up onto the chair and gnawing tentatively on a fingernail. She was pondering.

Dammit, what a clever, grown-up daughter I had!

And what a silly little child she was at the same time!

“Dad, I think the most useful thing to do right now is try to understand the various extra details of the Prophecy,” said Nadya. “I think that's the most important thing.”

“Why?” I asked her.

“Because the devil is always in the details,” she replied seriously. “Dad! Does the devil really exist?”

“Why don't you ask me if God exists?” I said, trying to joke. But Nadya gave me a demanding kind of look and I replied reluctantly: “I don't know, but the old Others don't like to mention him. Or God either, come to think of it. Is that important right now?”

“I got distracted,” Nadya declared. “Dad, what I wanted to say was . . . if we have to convene some kind of Sixth Watch, then the heads of all the Watches, and of the vampires, and all the others won't be any use to us at all.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because the details haven't been observed. Have you forgotten, Dad? Say they work out now who's the most important of the vampires and the witches, they figure them all out and appoint them. So what? They all have to be tied together by blood, don't they?”

“That could be interpreted in a broad sense,” I said. “Sveta, are you going to pour me that milk?”

“You mean you're serious?” my wife asked in surprise. “Just a moment.”

“It probably can be interpreted in a broad sense,” Nadya agreed. “Only there has to be blood. Now look . . . The most important Light One is me.”

“How do you make that out?” I asked indignantly.

“Well, who else? Who has more right to represent the Light than an Absolute Light One?” Nadya asked.

“Don't get so high and mighty,” I advised her. “Even if you do represent the Light, we'll ask you to appoint a representative.”

Nadya snorted.

“The Dark One. Well, I don't know. A vampire, obviously. And a witch . . .”

“No one can understand the final point,” I complained. “What kind of Party is that? ‘The Basis, the Foundation' . . .”

“A Prophet,” said Nadya.

I looked at her and froze.

“Remember that little book you read?
The Foundation: Incredible Stories about Prophets
.”

“About psychologists,” I corrected her mechanically. “Well, or Seers, if you like.”

“In short, a Prophet,” Nadya said with a nod. “There aren't many of them anyway, and hardly any powerful ones at all. They're the basis of everything, they don't foretell the future, they shape it. And the bit about the blood is important too, right? Is Gesar somehow connected by blood with Glyba? No way. So they're no good.”

“You're not connected with Glyba at all either,” I said tensely.

“Not with him, of course. But I'm connected with Kesha now.”

I felt an icy silence descend when Nadya finished what she was saying.

“By blood.”

Something clinked behind me. I swung around and looked at Sveta. She put the glass full of milk down on the little table and looked intently at Nadya, half turning toward her.

“How . . . When?” I asked.

“A long time ago. Two months already.”

“That's . . .” I refrained from using the absurd phrase “that's not possible” and concluded: “That's too early, Nadya.”

“It just happened,” she said perfectly calmly with a shrug. “We kind of decided spontaneously.”

“Nadya, you're not old enough to do it spontaneously . . . Or unspontaneously!” I exclaimed, barely able to stop myself from shouting.

“Why aren't I?” Nadya asked, amazed. “I think even Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, although they were younger than me . . .”

I thought I was losing my mind. And it seemed like I wasn't the only one.

“Tom Sawyer? With Huck Finn?” Svetlana exclaimed. “That's a very progressive kind of reading!”

“In the first place, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are fictional characters,” I said, trying to remain calm and collected. “And in the second place, nothing of the sort happened and it never could have!”

“What are you talking about?” asked Nadya, looking from her mother to me and back again.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Blood brotherhood,” said Nadya. “Innokentii and I swore an oath in blood and we signed our names in blood.”

“Children's games,” I said, and burst into laughter. “Nadya, what a child you are!”

There was a glugging sound behind me. I looked around again and saw Sveta pouring cognac into a glass.

“Me too!” I said.

“You wanted milk,” Sveta said.

“Milk is for children!”

“Dad, Mum, did you think I was talking about sex?” Nadya asked in a cold voice. “That Innokentii and I had sex?”

“We didn't think anything,” said Svetlana, handing me a glass. “We just didn't understand what you were saying.”

“We've decided not to have sex for the time being,” Nadya said reassuringly. “Kesha thinks it will retard the development of our magical potential.”

I downed my cognac in one gulp.

“But I think he's wrong,” Nadya continued pensively. “I think he's being a bit of a coward!”

I took the glass of milk out of Svetlana's hands and chased the cognac down with it.

“Well good for you. I'm very glad that you're both such rational young people.”

I could have stopped there, but Nadya hadn't managed to hide the impish spite that was lingering in her eyes.

“But you're both still very young, after all,” I went on. “So today your mother will have a talk with you about what a young girl ought to know.”

“Definitely,” Sveta said in a sweet voice. “We'll probably start with stamens and pistils, but then we'll talk about everything seriously.”

“Mum!” Nadya exclaimed.

“And I'll have a word with Kesha,” I added. “If, as you say, the boy is a bit of a coward . . . His father ought to have spoken to him on the subject, but since he doesn't live in a family, I'll talk to him. The poor boy probably wants to get it off his chest, find out what's happening to his body, and there's no one—”

“Dad!” Nadya howled. “Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up!”

“Are you going to troll your old parents again?” I asked.

Nadya pouted sulkily.

“I'll probably even buy him an encyclopedia for boys,” I declared.

“I won't!” said Nadya. “I won't do it again! But it's your own fault, isn't it? For thinking that straightaway? And you talk about children's games!”

“And what else can the parents of a teenage girl think?” I asked. “A girl your age was on the way to spend the night with her boyfriend when a vampire attacked her.”

“Then she's a fool,” Nadya said sullenly. “And in any case, Kesha really does think it slows down magical development . . .”

“Is it true, about the blood?” I asked, trying to get away from this slippery subject.

“Yes. Kesha and I really did . . . Well, we swore this oath . . .” Nadya lowered her eyes.

“And you told me you cut yourself making a salad,” I said, recalling Nadya with a plaster on her finger. “The Little Sunshine Madhouse.”

“Maybe it is a madhouse,” Svetlana said. “But our daughter's right,
Anton. The requirement for a blood tie is important. Perhaps it can be any kind of blood tie, but it has to be there.”

“After the team gathers, they can swear an oath in blood,” I suggested. “Like Nadya and Kesha.”

“I don't think that will work,” said Svetlana. “You know yourself, Anton, that requirements like this are a kind of fixed convention. A game. But with clear rules. ‘Blood brotherhood' created so simply and crudely won't work.”