were there...
'If I can catch a taxi straight away, I'll be there in five minutes.'
'Make it quick,' Lermont told me.
I found a free taxi immediately ?I didn't need to resort to magic in order to get someone out of a cab that was already occupied. Edinburgh was remarkably good for taxis in general. I got in, took out a cigarette and lit it. The driver looked at me rather disapprov ingly, but didn't say anything. I wound the window all the way down. Of course, his next passengers would be non-smokers...
But I felt like smoking.
Idiot. What an idiot I was! I'd felt alarmed for Egor, concerned lor Valeria... But I hadn't bothered to use my head for what it was really meant for. My visit to the Dungeons had been observed. And now poor Jean, the nervous French student, would never go back home to Nantes...
It was my fault.
But what about Lermont ?closing the place down and only leaving one man on duty to watch it? Not an Other, not a Battle Magician who could fight vampires on equal terms, but a fright ened kid in make-up and fancy dress.
I imagined the young red-headed guy with his face pale from loss of blood instead of make-up, lying there surrounded by those appalling instruments of torture. 'It's a bit creepy here on your own.' And I started swearing wildly under my breath.
I'm a fool, a fool... '
Lermont was waiting for me at the entrance to the Dungeons. He looked dark-faced and angry, the way only a Light One can be angry.
'Let's go,' he said and tramped off without even looking round. We walked quickly through a string of empty rooms and came out at the River of Blood. This place again?
But Foma got into the boat without saying a word. I followed him in. He waved his hand, the mechanism creaked, and the boat moved forward.
'Haven't you called the police yet?' I asked.
'Not yet. Only our own people ?and observers from the Dark Ones.'
'Where are they?
'I asked them to wait a few rooms away. I said I wanted to bring in an independent expert to examine the body. An ordin ary human being. No point in anyone knowing about you at this stage...'
The boat crept across the small dark space and docked at the other mooring.
'There,' Foma said morosely.
I clambered out of the boat and followed Foma into the next room, which contained an exhibition of methods of execution. There was a dummy hanging in a noose from the ceiling, and over there on the guillotine ?it wasn't a dummy on the guillo tine. The killer had demonstrated his sense of humour once again.
To cut a man's head off with the sham blade of the fake guil lotine must have taken superhuman strength ?the kind of strength that a vampire has, for instance.
The white plastic bucket under the guillotine was half full with blood. The severed head was lying beside it. I squatted and picked the head up cautiously. I felt like screaming at the helpless aware ness of my own stupidity.
'I wish I knew what bastard did this,' said Foma. 'That man worked for me for seventeen years.'
'The bastard was a young red-headed guy,' I said. 'He pretended to be French and spoke with a slight accent. He looked twenty years old. And he had a liking for theatrical effects. Very quick witted, a remarkable actor.'
Carefully laying the severed head back down on the floor, I looked at Lermont's dumbfounded face and explained.
'He made a total fool of me. I was talking to the killer only two steps away from the body. And I didn't suspect a thing. Not a thing!'
The head of the murdered guard ?black-haired, but with a sprinkling of grey quite appropriate for a man over fifty ?stared up blindly at me from the floor.
'You can only mask your true nature from someone who's very weak,' said Lermont, drilling into me with his mistrustful eyes. 'That's axiomatic. Try to define my aura.'
A strange conversation over a dead man whose head has been severed. A strange place, a strange crime, strange conversations...
Lermont's aura ?a blaze of bright yellow-green discharges, a prickly hedgehog of Power ?dimmed. The pointed discharges were drawn in and faded. A few seconds later Lermont was surrounded by the smooth multilayered aura typical of a human being.
A ragged open aura is a sure sign of an Other. It can have sharp needles and prickles, swirling vortices, gaping holes. All these are indications of an open-energy