listened with interest. But now she had come right out with it.

Could she really have sensed something bad?

Anyway, I got ready to go slowly and reluctantly. I put on a suit, then changed into jeans and a checked shirt, then thought 'to hell with it!' and got into my shorts and a black T-shirt with an inscription that said: 'My friend was clinically dead, but all he brought me from the next world was this T-shirt!' I might look like a German tourist, but at least I would retain the semblance of a holiday mood in front of Gesar.

Eventually I left the building with just twenty minutes to spare. I had to flag down a car and feel out the probability lines – and then tell the driver which streets to take so we wouldn't hit any traffic jams.

The driver accepted my instructions hesitantly, he obviously had serious doubts.

But we got there on time.

The lifts weren't working – there were guys in blue overalls loading them with paper sacks of cement. I set off up the stairs on foot, and discovered that the second floor of our office was being refurbished. There were workmen lining the walls with sheets of plasterboard, and plasterers bustling about beside them, filling in the seams. At the same time they were installing a false ceiling, which already covered the air-conditioning pipes.

So our office manager Vitaly Markovich had got his own way after all. He'd managed to get the boss to shell out for a full-scale refurbishment, and even worked out where to get the money from.

I stopped for a moment to look at the workmen through the Twilight. Ordinary people, not Others. Just as I ought to have expected. There was just one plasterer, not much to look at, whose aura seemed suspicious. But after a second I realised he was simply in love. With his own wife! Well, would you believe it, there were still a few good people left in the world.

The third and fourth floors had already been refurbished and that really put me in a good mood. At long last it would be cool in the IT department too. Not that I was in there every day now, but even so . . . As I dashed past I greeted the security guards who had clearly been posted here for the duration of the refurbishment. Just as I got to Gesar's office, I ran into Semyon. He was impressing something on Yulia in a serious, didactic voice.

How time flew . . . Three years earlier Yulia had been just a little girl. Now she was a beautiful young woman. And a very promising enchantress – she had already been invited to join the European Office of the Night Watch. They like to skim off the young talent – to a multilingual chorus of protests about the great common cause.

But this time they hadn't got away with it. Gesar had held on to Yulia, and into the bargain let them know that he could recruit young European talent if he felt like it.

I wondered what Yulia herself had wanted to happen.

'Been called back in?' Semyon enquired sympathetically, breaking off his conversation the moment he spotted me. 'Or is your time up already?'

'My time's up, and I've been called in,' I said. 'Has something happened? Hi, Yulia.'

For some reason Semyon and I never bothered to say hello. As if we'd only just seen each other. And anyway, he always looked exactly the same – simply dressed, carelessly shaved, with the crumpled face of a peasant who's moved to the big city.

That day, in fact, Semyon was looking more homely than ever.

'Hi, Anton,' Yulia replied. Her expression was glum. It looked as though Semyon had been lecturing her again – he was always doing that sort of thing.

'Nothing's happened,' Semyon said, shaking his head. 'Everything's perfectly calm. Last week we only picked up two witches, and that was for petty offences.'

'Well, that's great,' I said, trying not to notice Yulia's imploring glance. 'I'll go and see the boss.'

Semyon nodded and turned back towards the girl. As I walked into the boss's reception room, I heard him saying:

'So listen, Yulia, I've been doing the same job for sixty years now, but this kind of irresponsible behaviour . . .'

He's strict all right. But he never gives anyone a hard time without good reason, so I wasn't about to rescue Yulia from the conversation.

In the reception area the new air conditioner was humming away quietly