“To give you a nudge. Erasmus had foretold that you would hear his final prophecy. So he had to get in touch with you. And you had to panic. And make up your mind to destroy the chalice.”

“All you needed to do after that was make sure Nadya got home in time,” I said, nodding. “And not alone—so that I would feel responsibility for someone else’s child as well. I won’t even ask if Anna Tikhonovna’s illness was a coincidence.”

“At our age, Anton, your health gets so frail!” Arina exclaimed. “Well, I’m sorry! Forgive an old witch! You understand it’s not for myself! It’s for a higher goal!”

“What goal?”

“To put an end to all this! No more feeding the Twilight! No more paying for our Power with human suffering!”

“Arina, you don’t even know if that prophecy is active—and what it really said! Maybe all those disasters have already overtaken our country and they’re over now!”

Arina shrugged and said in a firm voice: “Even so. What we do is repugnant in the sight of God. And if we can put an end to it, then we must.”

I suddenly felt a pricking in the tips of my fingers. A sharp sensation, just for a second.

The sentry spells around our building had been triggered, the spells that had been cast a long, long time ago by Gesar and—as I now realized—by Zabulon. The spells guarding the Absolute Enchantress. The Enchantress that the Great Ones were holding in reserve as a Doomsday weapon.

I looked out of the window. And saw the Tiger walking towards our building from a side street.

It was very easy to see him—he wasn’t trying to hide, he wasn’t trying to walk round the defenses or remove them. He was simply breaking through them—probably in exactly the same way as he had broken through the defenses of our office when he came for Kesha. The Tiger looked like a man cast out of white-hot metal. As he walked along, a firestorm raged around him. Branches of trees burst into flames. Parked cars overturned with their alarms screeching. A stray tomcat driven crazy by what was happening started dashing about in front of the advancing Tiger, as if it couldn’t decide which way to run.

Cats see on all levels of the Twilight. Maybe right then it was seeing something inconceivable even for a cat that could follow the stealthy movements of werewolves in the night and observe the flights of witches in the twilight sky.

The Tiger stopped, facing the cat. Leaned down and stroked it. Then walked on.

The cat instantly forgot about its panic, sat down in the middle of the courtyard, and started licking itself.

And the Tiger moved on towards our entrance.

“Daddy, I’m afraid,” Nadya told me. She and Kesha were standing at the window, watching the Tiger.