And I had no intention of playing the fool and asking who had come visiting.

“Come on in, gentlemen.”

There were two gentlemen—a young one and an elderly one. And there was also a middle-aged lady.

All three of them were Others, and all Light Ones. They had politely not masked their auras. The elderly man was a Fourth-Level Magician. The young man was a Second-Level Magician. The woman was a First-Level Clairvoyant. Oho. I didn’t think the Taiwan Watch could exactly be packed full of First- and Second-Level Power. So my unofficial visit had been taken with all due seriousness and appropriate respect.

“Will you allow us to enter, Anton Sergeevich?” the young man enquired politely. And then, without waiting for my permission, he continued: “You may call my male companion Esteemed Mr. Pasha, my female companion Esteemed Miss Lena, and me—simply Petya.”

“Come in, Pasha, come in, Lena, and you come in too, Petya,” I replied, and stepped aside. Naturally the Russian names were a gesture of traditional Chinese courtesy—they would have introduced themselves to an American as John, Jim, and Jill, for example. “Please forgive my bathrobe. I took a shower after the journey.”

“That is very good,” Petya said approvingly while his companions came in and seated themselves in the armchairs. It was only then that I realized there were obviously too many chairs in the room—four of them. I could even see that two of them were a slightly different color from the others and were standing in rather inconvenient spots in the passage. “A healthy mind in a healthy body,” Petya concluded.

“As they say in Russian: ‘You have to choose one or the other,’ ” I joked sourly.

“They are mistaken,” said Petya, waiting for me to sit down. I sat down and swore under my breath—I felt like striking an affectedly casual pose by crossing my legs, but in the bathrobe that was impossible.

Which was what they had been counting on.

Okay, I’d have to put up with it. No point in getting fancy and changing the bathrobe into a suit, or teleporting my own clothes onto myself. That would just be too affected altogether.

Once he was sure we were all seated, Petya himself perched on the edge of an armchair, looked at Pasha, and asked me: “Did you have a good flight? Did you have any problems on the way? Did you like our airport? Have you had a chance to enjoy the architecture and atmosphere of Taipei?”

“Yes, no, yes, no,” I replied. “Are my respected visitors in good health? Have the consequences of the latest typhoon been liquidated?” (To be honest, I didn’t know when there had last been a typhoon here and how strong it was, but they happen all the time in Taiwan.) “Are the Dark Ones up to their mischief?”

The elderly man suddenly smiled.