The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, Sergei Luk'ianenko

guy.
    They didn't look like vampires. That was one good thing. At least I could hope for a certain degree of objectivity. I sighed and shifted from one reality into another.
    The first surprise was that the couple turned out to be genuinely young. A witch about twenty-five years old and a warlock about thirty, roughly my age. I thought that if I needed to, I could probably even recall their names; there weren't that many witches and warlocks born in the late seventies. The second surprise was that the owl wasn't there on my shoulder. Or rather, she was: I could feel her claws and I could see her, but only with a bit of an effort. It was as if the bird had shifted realities at the Page 34
    same time as I had and moved into a deeper level of the Twilight.
    This was getting really interesting!
    "Day Watch," the girl repeated. "Alisa Donnikova, Other."
    "Pyotr Nesterov, Other," the young guy muttered.
    "You have some kind of problem?"
    The girl drilled me with one of those specialty "witch's glances." She started looking even more delightful and beguiling with every moment. Of course, I'm protected against direct influence; it's not possible to bewitch me, but it certainly was impressive.
    "We're not the ones with the problem. Anton Gorodetsky, you have entered into unsanctioned contact with a human being."
    "Yes? And what was that?"
    "Only a seventh-degree intervention," the witch admitted reluctantly. "But a fact is a fact. And you also urged him toward the Light."
    "Are we going to draw up a charge report?" I suddenly found the entire situation amusing. Seventh degree was next to nothing—a level of influence on the borderline between magic and ordinary conversation.
    "We are."
    "And what are we going to write? A Night Watch agent slightly increased one human being's aversion to deception?"
    "Thereby disrupting the established balance," the warlock rapped out.
    "Really? And what harm does it do to the Darkness? If the guy stops working as a petty crook, his life is bound to get worse. He'll be more moral, but more unhappy too. Under the terms of the commentaries to the treaty on the balance of power, that's not regarded as a violation of the balance."
    "Sophistry," the young woman said curtly. "You're a Night Watch agent. What might be pardonable for an ordinary Other is not acceptable from you."
    She was right. It was still a violation, even if it was petty.
    "He was obstructing me. I have the right to use magical intervention in the course of conducting an investigation."
    "Are you on duty, Anton?"
    "Yes."
    "Why during the day?"
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    "I have a special assignment. You can direct your inquiry to my superiors. Or rather, you have the right to address your inquiry to your superiors."
    The witch and the warlock exchanged glances. No matter how opposed our goals and our moralities might be, the two hierarchies had to collaborate.
    Only, to be quite frank about it, nobody really likes to get the bosses involved.
    "Very well," the witch agreed reluctantly. "Anton, we can limit ourselves to a verbal warning." I looked around. All around me there were people moving slowly through the gray gloom. Ordinary people, incapable of moving out of their own little world. We were Others, and though I stood on the side of Light and the other two were on the side of Darkness, we had far more in common with each other than with any of those ordinary human beings.
    "On what terms?"
    You must never try to second-guess the Darkness. You must never make any concessions. And it's even more dangerous to accept any gifts from it. But rules are made only in order to be broken.
    "No terms."
    Well, that was a surprise!
    I looked at Alisa, trying to figure out the catch in what she'd said. Pyotr was obviously indignant at his partner's behavior; he was angry, he wanted to expose an adept of the Light as a criminal. That meant I didn't have to worry about him.
    Where was the trap?
    "That's not acceptable to me," I said, with a sigh of relief—I'd