help clean up the forest . . . only that's not true, of course, a wolf doesn't just kill sick animals, it kills any animals it can get . . . But it's still a living creature. A wolf 's not to blame for being a wolf. But here – right next to the village! Chasing children! It drove them towards the cubs, do you realise what that means?'

I nodded.

'It was teaching the cubs to hunt.' Anna Viktorovna's eyes lit up, either with fear or that mother's fury that sends wolves and bears running for the bushes. 'What was it – a man-eater?'

'It couldn't have been,' I said. 'There haven't been any cases of wolves attacking people round here. There haven't even been any reports of wolves living in these parts for a long time . . . most likely it was a feral dog. But I want to check.'

'Yes, check,' Anna Viktorovna said firmly. 'And if . . . even if it's a dog. If the children didn't imagine the whole thing . . .'

I nodded again.

'Shoot it,' Anna Viktorovna requested. Then she added in a whisper: 'I can't sleep at night . . . for imagining . . . what could have happened.'

'It was a doggy!' Romka piped up from the bed.

'Hush!' Anna Viktorovna shouted at him. 'All right then, come here. Tell the nice man what happened.'

Romka didn't need to be asked twice. He got down off the bed, came over to us, clambered up onto my knees with a very serious air and looked into my eyes searchingly.

I ruffled up his coarse, sun-bleached hair.

'So this is what happened . . .' Romka began contentedly.

Anna Viktorovna looked at him in a very sad sort of way. I could understand her. It was these little children's father that I couldn't understand. All sorts of things can happen. So they were separated. But how could anyone just cancel his children out of his life and be happy just to pay maintenance?

'We walked and walked, you know, we were out for a walk,' Romka told us with agonising slowness. 'And after we walked for a while we reached the forest. And then Ksyusha started telling me scary stories . . .'

I listened to his story very carefully. Well, the 'scary stories' might be one more reason to believe the whole business was imagined. But the child was speaking perfectly clearly, except for repeating a few words, which was usual for a child his age; there was nothing to find fault with.

Just to be on the safe side, I scanned the boy's aura. A little human being. A good little human being, and I wanted to believe he would grow up into a good adult. Not the slightest sign of any Other potential. And no traces of magical influence.

But then, if Svetlana hadn't spotted anything, what could I expect, with my second-grade abilities? 'And then the wolf laughed out loud!' Romka exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air in glee.

'Weren't you frightened?' I asked.

To my surprise, Romka thought about that for a long time. Then he said:

'Yes, I was. I'm small, and the wolf was big. And I didn't have a stick. And then I stopped being afraid.'

'So you're not afraid of the wolf now?' I asked. After an adventure like that, any normal child would have developed a stammer, but Romka had lost his.

'Not a bit,' said the boy. 'Oh, now you've put me off. What part did I get to?'

'The part where the wolf laughed,' I said with a smile.

'Just exactly like a man,' said Romka.

So that was it. It was a long time since I'd had any dealings with werewolves. Especially werewolves as brazen as this . . .hunting children, only a hundred kilometres from Moscow. Had they been counting on the fact that there was no Night Watch in the village? Even then, the district office checked every missing person case. They had a very skilful, specialised magician for that. From the normal human viewpoint what he did was pure charlatanism – he looked at photographs, and then either put them aside or phoned the operations office and said in an embarrassed voice: 'I think I've got something here . . . I'm not quite sure what . . .'

And then we would swing into action, drive out to the country, find the signs . . . and the signs would be terrible, but we're used to that. Then the werewolves would probably resist arrest, and