someone – it could easily be me – would wave his hand. And a jangling grey haze would go creeping through the Twilight . . .

We rarely took their kind alive. But this time I really wanted to.

'And what I think as well,' Romka said thoughtfully, 'is that the wolf said something. I think so, I think so . . . Only he didn't talk, I know wolves don't talk, do they? But I dream that he did talk.'

'And what did he say?' I asked cautiously.

'Go a-way, witch!' Romka said, trying in vain to imitate a hoarse bass voice.

Right. Now I could issue the warrant for a search. Or at least request help from Moscow.

It was a werewolf, no doubt about it. But fortunately for the children, there was a witch there too.

A powerful witch.

Very powerful.

She hadn't just driven away the werewolf – she'd tidied up the children's memories without leaving any trace. Only she hadn't gone in deep. She hadn't expected there would be a vigilant watchman in the village. The boy didn't remember anything when he was awake, but in his dream – there it was. 'Go away, witch!'

How very interesting!

'Thank you, Romka.' I held out my hand to him. 'I'll go to the forest and take a look.'

'But aren't you afraid? Have you got a gun?' he asked eagerly.

'Yes.'

'Show it to me!'

'It's at home,' Anna Viktorovna said strictly. 'And guns aren't toys for children!'

Romka sighed and asked plaintively:

'Only don't shoot the cubs, all right? Better bring me one and I'll train it as a dog! Or two, one for me, one for Ksyusha!'

'Roman!' Anna Viktorovna snapped in a voice of iron.

I found Ksyusha at the pond, as her mother said I would. A covey of girls was sunbathing beside a pack of boys, and the gibes were flying in both directions. The boy sunbathers were old enough not to pull the girls' plaits any more, but they still didn't understand what girls were any good for.

When I arrived everyone stopped talking and stared at me warily. I hadn't put in an appearance at the village before.

'Ksyusha?' I asked the little girl I thought I'd seen in the street with Romka.

The serious girl in a dark blue swimsuit looked at me, nodded and said politely:

'Hi . . . hello.'

'Hello. I'm Anton, Svetlana Nazarova's husband. Do you know her?' I asked.

'What's your daughter's name?' Ksyusha asked suspiciously.

'Nadya.'

'Yes, I know,' she said with a nod, getting up off the sand. 'You want to talk about the wolves, right?'

I smiled.

'That's right.'

She glanced at the boys. The boys, not the girls.

'Uhuh, that's Nadya's dad,' said a freckle-faced kid who was obviously from the village. 'My dad's fixing your car right now.'

He looked round proudly at his friends.

'We can talk here,' I said to reassure the children. It was terrible, of course, to see normal kids living in normal families being so cautious.

But it was better that they were.

'We went for a walk in the forest,' Ksyusha began, standing to attention in front of me. I thought for a moment and sat down on the sand – then the girl sat down too. Anna Viktorovna certainly knew how to bring up her children. 'It was my fault we got lost . . .'

One of the village kids giggled. But quietly. After the business with the wolves Ksyusha was probably the most popular girl with the boys in first class.

In principle she didn't tell me anything new. And there were no traces of magic on her either. Only the mention of a bookcase 'with old books' made me prick up my ears.

'Do you remember any of the book titles?' I asked.

Ksyusha shook her head.

'Try to remember,' I asked her. I looked down at my feet, at my long, irregular shadow.

The shadow rose up obediently to meet me.

And the cool, grey Twilight accepted me.

It's always a pleasure to look at children from the Twilight.

Even the most intimidated and unhappy of them still have auras without any of the malice and bitterness that adults are shrouded in.

I apologised mentally to the kids – after all, they hadn't asked me to do what I was going to do. And I ran the lightest possible, imperceptible touch across them. Just to remove the slight traces of Evil that had already stuck to them.

And then I stroked Ksyusha's hair and whispered:

'Remember, little girl . . .'

I wouldn't be able to remove the block put in place by the witch, if she was more powerful than me, or at least