The Day Watch (2 page)

“How much?”

“Five.”

“You want five?” Natasha burst out and broke off. “I thought it was a lot cheaper than that!”

“If you just want to get your husband back, that will be cheaper. But then after a while, he’ll go away again. I’m offering you real help, a certain cure.”

“I want to do it,” Natasha said with a nod. She had the feeling that what was happening was slightly unreal. So that was all: Just a clap of the hands and the unborn child would be gone? Another clap and she would bear her beloved idiot a child of her own?

“Do you take the sin on yourself?” the seer asked insistently.

“What sin is there in that?” Natasha retorted, her irritation suddenly breaking through. “Every woman’s committed that sin at least once!- Perhaps there isn’t anything there anyway!”

The seer pondered, as if she were listening to something. She nodded her head.

“There is… And I think it’s definitely a daughter.”

“I’ll take it,” said Natasha, still in an irritated voice. “I’ll take all the sins on myself, any you like. Do we have a deal?”

The seer looked at her sternly, disapprovingly.

“That’s not right, my daughter… About all the sins. Who knows what sins I might hang on you? My own, or somebody else’s… then afterward you would have to answer to God.”

“We’ll sort it out somehow.”

Darya sighed: “Oh, these young people are so foolish. Do you think He wastes his time rummaging about in people’s sins? Every sin leaves its own trace, and the judgment matches the traces… All right, don’t be afraid. I won’t put anybody else’s sins down to you.”

“I’m not afraid.”

The seer didn’t seem to be listening to her anymore. She was sitting there as if she were listening alertly to something else. Then she shrugged: “All right… let’s get the job done. Give me your hand!”

Natasha held out her right hand uncertainly, keeping a worried eye on her diamond ring. It didn’t come off her finger very easily, but…

“Oh!”

The seer had pricked her little finger so quickly and deftly that Natasha hadn’t felt a thing. She froze, dumbfounded, watching the red drop welling up. As if this were all perfectly normal, Darya tossed the medical needle into a dirty plate with the solidified remains of borscht in it. The needle was flat, with a sharp little point-the kind they use to take blood in laboratories.

“Don’t be afraid, everything’s sterile, the needles are disposable.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Natasha tried to pull her hand away, but Darya shifted her grip with a surprisingly powerful and precise movement.

“Stop, you fool! Or I’ll have to prick you again!”

She took a small pharmacy bottle of dark-brown glass out of her pocket. The label had been washed off, but poorly. The first letters were still visible: “Tinc…” She deftly twisted out the cork, set the bottle down and shook Natasha’s little finger over it. The drop of blood fell into the bottle.

“Some people believe,” the seer said in a contented voice, “that the more blood there is in a potion, the stronger it will be. It’s not true. The blood in it has to be good quality, but the amount makes no difference at all…”

The medicine woman opened the refrigerator and took out a fifty-gram bottle of Privet vodka. Natasha remembered her driver calling that kind of vodka “the reanimator.”

A few drops of the vodka went onto a wisp of cotton wool that wound round Natasha’s little finger. The medicine woman held out the bottle to Natasha.

“Want some?”

For some reason Natasha had a clear vision of herself waking up the next morning, somewhere at the far end of the city, robbed, raped, and not remembering a single thing about what had happened. She shook her head.

“Well, I’ll have a drop.” Darya raised the “reanimator” to her lips and drained the vodka in a single gulp. “That’s a bit easier… for working. And you, you’ve no need to be afraid of me. I don’t make my living by robbing people.”

The last few remaining drops also went into the little brown bottle of love potion. And then, quite unperturbed by Natasha’s curious gaze, the seer added some salt, sugar, hot water from the kettle, and a bit of powder with a strong smell of vanilla.

“What is that?” asked Natasha.

“Have you got a cold? It’s vanilla.”

The medicine woman held the little bottle out to her.

“Take it.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s it. You get your husband to drink it. Can you manage that? You can put it in tea, or even in vodka-but that’s not the best way.”

“But where’s the… spell?”

“What spell?”

Natasha felt like a fool again. Her voice almost broke into a shout as she said, “This is a drop of my blood, a drop of vodka, sugar, salt, and vanilla!”

“And water,” Darya added. She put her hands on her hips and looked at Natasha ironically. “What did you expect? Dried eye of toad? Oriole’s testicles? Or for me to blow my nose in it? What do you want-ingredients or effect?”

Natasha didn’t answer. She was overwhelmed by this attack. And Darya continued, no longer trying to conceal her mockery: “My darling girl, if I’d wanted to impress you, then I would have done so. Have no doubt about it.

What matters is not what’s in the bottle, but who made it. Don’t you worry, go home and give it to your husband.

Will he be calling round again?”

“Yes… in the evening,” she mumbled, “he phoned to say he’d come and collect a few things…”

“Let him collect them, only you give him some tea. Tomorrow he’ll bring the things back again. That is, if you let him in, of course.” Darya laughed. “All right then… And there’s one more thing to do. Do you take this sin on yourself?”

“I do.” Natasha suddenly realized that she no longer felt completely justified in laughing at what she had said.

There was something here that wasn’t funny. The seer had made her promise far too seriously. And if her husband did come back tomorrow… “Your word, my deed…” Darya slowly parted her hands and started speaking rapidly: “Red water, others’ grief and rotten seed and evil breed… What was is no more, what was not will not be… Return to the void, you are dissolved without trace, by my will, at my word…”

Her voice fell to an incoherent whisper. She moved her lips for a minute. Then she clapped her hands hard.

It must have been a trick of the imagination-Natasha thought she felt a gust of icy cold wind blow through the kitchen. Her heart started pounding; she felt a shiver run down her spine.

Darya gave her head a shake, looked at Natasha, and nodded: “That’s all. Go now, my dear. Go home, my

daughter, and wait for your husband.”

Natasha got up. She asked, “But what… when do I…”

“When you get pregnant, you’ll remember about me yourself. I’ll wait for three months… and then if I’m still waiting-don’t blame me…”

Natasha nodded. She swallowed hard to keep down the lump that had risen in her throat. Somehow she now believed completely in everything the seer had promised… and at the same time, it was painfully clear to her that in three months’ time, if everything really did work out, she would be painfully reluctant to give the money away.

She would be tempted to put it all down to coincidence… why should she give this filthy charlatan five thousand dollars?

And yet she realized that she would. She might drag it out until the final day, but she would bring it.

Because she would remember the gentle clap of those un-manicured hands and that wave of cold that had suddenly spread through the kitchen.

“Go now,” the seer repeated with gentle insistence. “I still have to cook supper and clean up the apartment. Go on, go on…”

Natasha went out into the dark hallway, took off the slippers with a sigh of relief, and put on her shoes. Her pantyhose seemed to have survived the ordeal… that was certainly more than she’d dared to hope for…

She looked at the seer and tried to find the right words to say. Should she thank her? Ask her about some details? Maybe even joke-if only she could manage it, of course…

But Darya had forgotten her completely. The seer’s eyes were open wide and she was staring straight at the closed door, feebly waving her hands through the air in front of her as she whispered:

“Who… who… who?”

The next moment the door behind Natasha opened with a sudden crash and the hall was instantly full of people.

Two men were holding the seer firmly by the arms and another had walked quickly into the kitchen without looking around first-he obviously knew the layout of the apartment very well. A young, black-haired girl had appeared beside Natasha. All the men were dressed in a simple and somehow deliberately inconspicuous manner: the same kind of shorts and T-shirts that ninety percent of the male population of Moscow was wearing in this incredible heat. Natasha suddenly had the frightening thought that their clothes were something like the unobtrusive gray suits that special service agents wore.

“That’s terrible,” the girl said, looking at Natasha and shaking her head. “How disgusting, Natalya Alexeevna.”

Unlike the men, she was dressed in dark jeans and a denim jacket. She had a sparkling pendant on a silver chain around her neck and several massive silver rings on her fingers-fancy, complicated rings with dragons’

heads and tigers’ heads, intertwined snakes and patterns that looked like the letters of a strange, mysterious alphabet.

“What do you mean…” Natasha asked in a cheerless voice.

Instead of answering, the girl unzipped Natasha’s purse and took out the little bottle. She held it up in front of Natasha’s eyes, and then she shook her head again in reproach.

“Got it!” shouted the young man who had gone into the kitchen. “It’s all here, guys.”

One of the men holding the seer by the arms sighed and said in an oddly bored-sounding voice, “Darya Leonidovna Romashova! In the name of the Night Watch, you are under arrest.”

“What watch?” There was a note of obvious puzzlement, mingled with panic, in the seer’s voice. “Who are you?”

“You have the right to reply to our questions,” the young man went on. “Any magical action from your side will be regarded as hostile and punished without any warning. You have the right to request the settlement of your human obligations. You are accused of… Garik?”

The young man who had gone into the kitchen came back out. As if she were dreaming, Natasha noticed that he had an intellectual, thoughtful, rather sad kind of face. She had always liked men like that…

“I suppose it’s the usual set,” said Garik. “The illegal practice of black magic. Third or fourth degree intervention in the consciousness of other individuals. Murder, tax evasion-but the last one’s not for us. That’s for the Dark Ones.”

“You are accused of the illegal practice of black magic, intervention in the consciousness of others, and murder,”

the man holding Darya repeated. “You will come with us.”

The seer gave a long, piercing, terrifying scream. Natasha involuntarily glanced at the open door. Of course, it would be naive to hope that the neighbors would come running to help, but they could call the police, couldn’t they?

The strange visitors didn’t react to the scream. The girl only frowned and nodded in Natasha’s direction: “What shall we do with her?”

“Confiscate the potion and wipe her memory clean.” Garik looked at Natasha without a trace of sympathy. “Let

her believe there was no one in the apartment when she got here.”

“And that’s all?” The girl took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one without hurrying.

“Katya, what other choice is there? She’s a human being-how can we do anything with her?”

This wasn’t even frightening anymore. It was a dream, a nightmare… and Natasha reacted as such. She grabbed the precious bottle out of the girl’s hand with a sudden movement and dashed toward the door.

She was flung back as if she had run into an invisible wall. Natasha shrieked as she fell at the seer’s feet; the bottle went flying out of her hand and shattered against the wall with surprising ease. A tiny patch of sticky, colorless liquid appeared on the linoleum.

“Tiger Cub, pick up the pieces for the report,” Garik said calmly.

Natasha burst into tears.

No, she wasn’t afraid, although Garik’s tone of voice left no doubt that they really would wipe her memory clean.

They’d clap their hands or do something else to wipe it clean. And she would find herself standing out in the street, firmly convinced that the seer’s door had never opened.

She cried as she watched her love dribble across the dirty floor.

Someone stuck their head in through the open door from the landing. “We’ve got company, guys!” Natasha heard the alarmed voice, but she didn’t even look around. There was no point. She was going to forget it all anyway. It would all be shattered into sharp little fragments and soak away into the dirt.

Forever.

Chapter one

-«?»—

I NEVER HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO GET READY IN THE MORNING. I CAN GET up at seven, or even at six, but I still need another five minutes.

Why is it always like that, I wonder?

I was standing in front of the mirror, hastily putting on my lipstick, and as always happens when you’re in a hurry, the lipstick was going on unevenly, as if I were a schoolgirl who’d secretly borrowed her mother’s for the first time.

It would have been better not to bother at all and go out without any makeup on. I don’t have any complexes about that-I look good enough without it.

“Alya!”

Here we go.

That just has to happen, doesn’t it?

“What is it, Mom?” I shouted, fastening my sandals in a hurry.

“Come here, my little one.”

“Mom, I’ve already got my shoes on!” I shouted, adjusting a twisted strap. “I’m late, Mom!”

“Alya!”

It was pointless arguing.

Deliberately clattering my heels, although I wasn’t really angry at all, I walked into the kitchen. Mom was sitting in front of the television, the way she always does, and drinking yet another cup of tea with yet another cake. What is it she likes so much about those repulsive Danish cakes? They’re such terrible garbage! Not to mention how bad they are for the figure.