“Can you tell me what happened this morning?” I asked him as I returned to the everyday world. Pastukhov blinked—he’d probably caught a whiff of the Twilight. He couldn’t have noticed my disappearing for such a short time.

“Bisat and me were standing here,” he said. “Just shooting the breeze. Today was a good day . . .” From the way he said it, he clearly didn’t think it was anymore. “Then you walked past . . .”

“Did you recognize me, Dmitry?” I asked. There was no point in putting a truth spell on him—he was being quite honest with me.

“Well, at first I just realized that you were one of those . . .” The policeman waved his hand vaguely through the air. “And then I recognized you, yes . . .”

“How did you realize?”

Pastukhov looked at me in amazement. “Why . . . I recognize your kind at a glance.”

“How?”

It suddenly dawned on him. “What, is that so unusual?” he asked, obviously pondering something.

“More than unusual,” I said, deciding not to hide anything from him. “Usually it’s only Others like ourselves who can see us. They recognize us from the aura.”

“An aura—that’s like a kind of glow round the head, right?” asked Pastukhov, wrinkling up his forehead. “I thought all kinds of psychos saw it. And villains.”

“Not just round the head, and not just psychos and villains. But what do you see?”

“Why, I recognize you from your eyes! Ever since the first time we met,” Pastukhov said abruptly. “You’ve got eyes like a guard dog’s.”

If I hadn’t just scanned his aura, I would have felt certain that I was dealing with some strange kind of weak Other who perceived auras in a highly original way. After all, the aura is strongest round the head and the eyes radiate the brightest glow on the face, so maybe that was how he spotted Others?

But no, he wasn’t an Other, he was a human being . . .

“That’s curious,” I admitted. “Like a dog’s eyes, you say?”

“No offense intended,” Pastukhov said, shrugging. He was gradually recovering his wits.

“None taken. I’m very fond of dogs.”

“And then there are the Others, with eyes like a wolf’s,” said Pastukhov.

I nodded. It was clear enough. That was how he saw Dark Ones.

“Please, go on.”

“This morning you walked past,” said Pastukhov. “Well . . . I got the shakes, of course. Like a fool, I thought you’d remember me too, like I did you. But then, why would you? You probably play tricks like that with people every day.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not allowed. That was a critical situation. And I . . . I was young and inexperienced. I just did the first thing that came into my head. Go on.”