“No,” I admitted honestly. “I had a bet . . . with a colleague.”

“About whether you could live without magic? Well, how is it?” There was a note of unfeigned interest in Arina’s voice.

“A mass of unpleasant little details, but I can get by.”

“But I can’t,” Arina sighed. “I’d turn into a decrepit old ruin . . . And by the way, you’re not being entirely honest. You blocked your magic, but you still have the health of an Other, your magical aura’s visible—and no vampire or werewolf would dare to attack you.”

“I blocked what I could,” I said morosely. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re going to do?”

“Me?” Arina asked in genuine surprise. “I’ll see you home, to make sure no one hurts you. We’ll have a talk on the way—I swear not to work any evil! You won’t attack me, will you?”

Naturally, I could have removed the magical block that I had set up myself. But that would have taken a few minutes and Arina would have sensed it.

“Until I get home—no, I won’t.”

“Great,” the witch said delightedly. “Let’s get a move on. It’s getting dark already and the forces of evil are coming out to hunt!”

It occurred to me that the sight of Arina would be enough to make any force of evil who had the slightest inkling about magic fill his pants, but I didn’t verbalize this banal thought. Smiling at each other, we walked out of the supermarket and headed for my apartment block.

I wasn’t at all surprised that Arina knew exactly where I lived.

“What do you make of the prophecy?” Arina asked casually as soon as we were a few steps away from the shop.

“Nothing. You stole the flash stick.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to apologize for that bit of petty larceny,” Arina replied, not embarrassed in the least. “But I can’t believe that a computer specialist didn’t keep a copy.”

“Gesar didn’t believe that, either,” I sighed. “They turned the whole place upside down, checked my PC and my laptop . . . took away the toy . . .”

“Oh, don’t play the hypocrite,” Arina snorted. “As if you didn’t keep a copy, and somewhere where they wouldn’t find it! You could have sent it to an e-mail address, for instance.”

“I did think about that,” I said. “But that’s dead easy to trace too.”

“All the same, you have that file,” Arina said confidently. “By the way . . . would you like me just to give you back the flash stick? I don’t need it anymore.”

“I’ll destroy it, Arina. You can take it to Gesar, he was interested.”

“Oh, woe is me, I don’t want to go to Gesar,” said Arina, fluttering her hands. “It’s you I’m interested in. What are we going to do?”