‘And we’ll stick plasters round the edges,’ the second one added. ‘And they’ll be just fine!’
I smiled, nodded to them and went on. I liked the kids’ attitude. Proud and independent. The right attitude.
I was already getting close to the summer house and I could hear the sounds of a guitar, when I saw Makar.
The kid was standing by a tree, as if he wasn’t really hiding, but so that he couldn’t be seen from the direction of the house. Just standing there looking at Igor, who was sitting in the middle of his boys. When Makar heard my steps, he turned round sharply, started … and lowered his eyes.
‘It’s not good to spy on people, Makar.’
He stood there, chewing on his lip. I wondered what he’d been planning to do. Play some nasty trick on Igor? Challenge him to a duel? Or had he just clenched his fists in helpless fury as he looked at the grown man who’d been making love to the woman he liked the evening before? You stupid, stupid boy you ought to be looking at girls your own age, not at enchanting grown-up witches with long legs.
‘You’ll have it all, Makar,’ I said softly. ‘Girls, and a night beside the sea, and …’
He raised his head and looked at me derisively, even rather condescendingly. ‘No I won’t,’ his eyes seemed to say ‘There won’t be any sea, there won’t be any beautiful naked woman by the edge of the foaming waves. It will all be quite different – cheap wine in a tiny room in some dirty hostel; a girl who could be anybody’s after her second glass; a sweaty body turned flabby before its time and a whisper hoarse from smoking: “Where do you think you’re sticking that thing, you greenhorn!”’
I knew that, as an experienced and cynical witch. And he knew it, this chance visitor to Artek, this short-term guest in ‘the realm of friendship and love’. And there was no point in us pretending with each other.
‘I’m sorry, Makar,’ I said and patted him affectionately on the cheek. ‘But I really like him very much. You grow up strong and clever, and you’ll have every …’
He turned and ran away, an almost grown-up boy who didn’t want to waste even a minute of his brief happy summer, who didn’t sleep at nights and invented a different, happy life for himself.
But what could I do? The Day Watch has no need for human servants. There are enough werewolves, vampires and other small-fry I would check Makar, of course. He would make a magnificent Dark One. But the chances were very, very slim that the boy had the natural gifts of an Other.
My girls were probably just perfectly ordinary people too.
And the chances were just as slim that Igor had the gifts of an Other.
Maybe that was for the best? If he was human, then we could be together. Zabulon couldn’t give a damn about a trivial detail like his girl having a human husband. But he would never tolerate a husband who was an Other.
I looked down thoughtfully at my feet as I walked out of the trees towards the little house. Igor was sitting on the terrace, tuning his guitar. There were only two of his boys there with him – the ‘campfire monitor’ Alyoshka and a plump, sickly-looking child I didn’t think had been at the campfire.
Igor looked at me and smiled. The boys spoke, greeting me, but we didn’t say anything to each other – we read everything in each other’s eyes. The memory of that night, and the promise of the next one … and the ones after that.
But there was a hint of confusion and anguish in Igor’s eyes too. As if there was something making him feel very sad. My darling … if only you knew how great my sadness is … and how difficult it is for me to smile.
I don’t care if you don’t have the gifts of an Other, Igor. I don’t care if my colleagues laugh at me. I’ll put up with it. And you’ll never know anything about Zabulon. Or about the Watch either. And you’ll be amazed at your own success, at the way your career develops, your magnificent health – I’ll give you all that!
Igor strummed his guitar-strings, gave his boys an affectionate look and started to sing:
Something cold and sticky stirred inside me. A terrible, dreary, hopeless feeling. That was our song. This was like our song … far too much like a song for the Others.
I could feel the emotions of the boys sitting beside him, I was almost a normal Other now, I felt as if I’d be able to summon the Twilight at any moment. It was like when we were having sex the night before – that gathering momentum on a swing, that balancing on a razor’s edge, that waiting for the explosion, the chasm beneath my feet. There were streams of power flowing all around – still too coarse for me, not the light broth of children’s nightmares, just the fat-cheeked boy’s depression because he was missing his parents: he had some problem with his heart, he didn’t play much with the other boys, he followed Igor around more or less the same way as Olechka stuck to me.
It wasn’t light broth.
But it was still almost exactly what I needed.
I can’t wait any longer!
I swayed forward, reached out and took hold of the boy’s shoulder, drawing in his blank sadness, and the sudden surge of energy almost made me throw up, but then the world turned cool and grey my shadow fell across the worn floorboards of the veranda like a black chasm, and I fell into it, into the Twilight, just in time to see …
… to see Igor drawing in power from the boy Alyosha, who was pressing against him – a thin lilac stream of power: the expectation of pranks and adventures, delights and discoveries, joys and frights – the entire bouquet of feelings and emotions of a healthy, happy child, content with the world and with himself …
A Light bouquet.
Light power.
The dark unto the Dark Ones.
The light unto the Light Ones.
I stood up, still half in the real world, half in the Twilight, to face Igor, who was also standing up, to face the lover that I loved, a Light Magician of the Moscow Night Watch.
To face my enemy.