I watched him go. Sometimes remoralization doesn’t require magic. It was just a pity that this kind of wizardry didn’t work for long—and it didn’t always work . . . not on everybody.

As I drove slowly back into the lane on the right, I heard the sergeant’s partner exclaim: “You what?”

“Well, you know—he’s a popular actor, in theatre and films . . .” Tarasov lied clumsily. “Let him go.”

I raised the window, squeezed in between a dusty Nissan and a battered old Volga, blinked my emergency lights to thank them for letting me in. And looked at my watch.

Not bad: I’d be home in an hour and a half.

From here it was about twenty minutes on foot by the direct route, through the side streets and courtyards . . .

In actual fact I drove up to the building a quarter of an hour later—some switch or other had tripped in the mysterious mechanism of Moscow traffic jams and the pace of the cars became almost lively. I stopped in front of the building, in my usual spot, and recalled that a long time ago I’d cast a spell on this convenient patch of asphalt to prevent other people from parking there. Should I stick consistently to my principles and move the car? That would be stupid—no one else would park on this spot anyway.

So I decided not to count magic employed previously as a breach of terms, climbed out of the car, and locked it. Now I would go home, and I wouldn’t need my abilities as an Other there either . . .

My mobile jingled. I looked at the screen.

“Dearest, buy some black and white bread, vegetable oil, ten eggs, sausages. And the toilet paper’s running out.”

Sveta always writes texts with capital letters and punctuation marks. It amuses some people and makes others angry, for some reason. I like it.

I shrugged and set off towards the nearest supermarket, the Crossroads. As everyone knows, since ancient times crossroads have been regarded as the meeting places of evil forces, vampires and dark sorcerers—no wonder that was where they preferred to bury them, after first hammering an aspen stake through their chests with texts from Holy Writ attached to it, just to make sure. That was probably how the first road signs had appeared . . .

The modern-day supermarkets that had incautiously taken this name were not particularly well respected in Moscow, owing to a certain lack of chic and the low-income range of their clientele. But I always felt more comfortable there than in upmarket places with sparser crowds like Alphabet of Taste, Gourmet Globe, or Seventh Continent.