I had dragged Sasha and the girl through the water against the current and out onto the bank at a spot where there weren’t many people—thankfully, the abilities of an Other allowed me to perform tricks like that. We were sitting on the dirty embankment, beside the car park in front of the monstrously ugly statue of Columbus, to which Peter the Great’s head had been attached. Peter-Christopher gazed contemptuously over our heads into his own bronze-yellow distance.

“The girl . . .” Sasha groaned.

“Lying over there,” I said, nodding in her direction. “I dragged you both out. Thanks, you were a great help . . .”

“Is she alive?” Sasha asked hopefully.

“She’s not dead,” I said, after glancing at her aura.

“What?” exclaimed Sasha, finally sitting up properly and looking round. “That bastard—”

“Could have finished her off completely. But I managed to nettle him, with your help. So she isn’t dead—she’ll be a vampire.”

A somber-faced pair walked by—a solid-looking man in a suit and tie and an even more sturdily built man with a bull-neck, wearing a suit slightly too large for him. I automatically extended the Sphere of Inattention to cover the poor girl, but even so the owner of the powerful neck turned his head and slipped his hand in under the flap of his jacket. Good bodyguards are like that—they can sense us Others . . .

“What shall we do?” asked Sasha.

“First, get dry,” I said. “Do you remember the spells? Well done! Second, get up, it’s dirty and cold here, we’re still young men, we don’t want prostate problems. Third, I’ll go home, get washed, and sleep.”

“What about me?” Sasha asked in a quiet voice.

“You’ll stay here and wait for the girl to come round. Call the Day Watch . . . say ‘Situation six, no complications.’ If you don’t remember the number or you’re too squeamish to talk with Dark Ones, ask our operations officer. Is your mobile okay?”

“It’s protected . . .”

“Smart boy. Before the Dark Ones arrive—and they won’t hurry—have a talk with the girl. Explain that she has been bitten by a vampire, that now she will also become—essentially she already has become—a vampire. Well, all the rights and obligations . . . You hand her over to the Dark Ones, and they’ll find a teacher for her. That Denis, for instance. That’s all, after that your work’s over.”

I got up and shook myself down. My clothing gave off clouds of steam that smelled of rotting wood and oil. It was a good job I was wearing my windbreaker: you couldn’t clean a good suit after the river Moscow’s water, not even with magic . . .