The former witch and present Light Other had another mug of beer in her hands. The old woman preferred Guinness.

But then, the old woman also preferred to look like a woman “under thirty”: full-figured, beautiful, and dressed in haute couture. Elegant gray skirt and jacket, high-heeled shoes, a pink blouse so simple in style that it had clearly cost a monstrous amount of money, a little Louis Vuitton handbag, and a silk scarf round her neck. And in all this she didn’t look like a spoiled rich bitch whose purchases are funded by her husband, but more like a serious businesswoman, a top manager in some major corporation or bank.

“Glad to see you,” Arina said with a smile. “You’ve . . . matured, Anton.”

One thing I had always liked about her was her precise way of expressing herself. Not “you’ve aged”—what question could there be of age? Not “you’ve grown up”—from the extreme vantage point of her long years I was a veritable infant, but for Arina to say that would have been to admit her own age. Not “you’ve changed”—experienced Others know that very few individuals are capable of genuinely changing.

Although Arina had done it.

“Are you aware of the fact that the Inquisition is looking for you?” I asked. “And that all members of the Night Watch and the Day Watch in every country of the world, regardless of their level of Power and specialization, are obliged to summon the Inquisition when you show up and take measures to detain you?”

“Yes, I am,” Arina confirmed. She thought for a second and decided not to provoke me. “I hope we can manage without that?”

“We can,” I agreed.

For a minute or so we drank our beer and looked at each other. She was a strange Other. Once she was a Dark One who often committed good deeds. Then she contrived to change her color and become a Light One—but in the process she caused worse grief and disaster than some werewolves or vampires. I even had a sneaking suspicion that fundamentally it was all the same to Arina what she was called and how she was regarded—at any moment she was capable of abominable meanness or noble generosity. And it was entirely possible that in working evil she would appear to be a hundred-percent Light One, and in doing good would look every inch a Dark One, from her head to her feet.

I even suspected that, contrary to the general opinion, Arina was capable of changing her color over and over again.

It wasn’t exactly that for her there was no difference—she could see the difference all right. It was just that she regarded the path from the Darkness to the Light as a well-beaten track, not a narrow little path that crumbled away behind you.