Free The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, Sergei Luk'ianenko

has any right to interfere with us there: She violated the terms of the Treaty. And there's still the boy who showed such exceptional resistance to magic. He has to be found and turned to the side of the Light. Plenty to be getting on with."
    "And this young woman?"
    "Already detected. Our specialists will now try to neutralize the vortex. If that doesn't work, which it won't, we'll have to figure out who cast the curse. Ignat, that's your job!" I turned around. Yes, there was Ignat standing not far away. Tall, well-built, and handsome, with blond hair, the figure of Apollo and the face of a movie star. He moved without making a sound, but even so in ordinary reality he couldn't escape excessive attention from women.
    Really excessive attention.
    "That's not my way of working," Ignat said gloomily. "Not an M.O . I'm particularly fond of."
    "You can choose who you sleep with on your own time," the boss barked. "But when you're working, I make all your decisions for you. Even when you go to the John."
    Ignat shrugged. He glanced at me and growled to himself:
    "It's discrimination…"
    "You're not in the States," the boss said, and his voice turned dangerously polite. "Yes, it's discrimination. Making use of the most appropriate available member of staff without taking his personal inclinations into account."
    "Couldn't I take that assignment?" Garik asked in a quiet little voice. That released the tension immediately. Garik's incredibly bad luck in affairs of the heart was no secret to anyone. Someone laughed.
    "Igor and Garik, you carry on with the search for the girl-vampire." The boss almost seemed to have taken the suggestion seriously. "She needs blood. She was stopped at the final moment; now she's going insane from hunger and frustration. Expect new victims at any moment! Anton, you and Olga look for the boy."
    Clear enough.
    The most pointless and least important assignment again.
    Somewhere in the city there was an Inferno just waiting to erupt; somewhere in the city there was a wild, hungry female vampire, and I had to go looking for a kid who might, potentially, possess great magical powers.
    "Permission to proceed?" I asked.
    "Yes, of course," said the boss, ignoring my quiet hint of revolt. "Proceed." Page 45
    I swung around and left the Twilight as a sign of protest. The world flickered as it filled up with colors and sounds. I was left standing there on my own in the middle of the small square. To any outsider watching it would have looked really crazy. And then there were no footprints… I was standing in a snowdrift, surrounded by a shroud of virgin snow.
    That's how myths are born. Out of our carelessness, out of our tattered nerves, out of jokes that go wrong and flashy gestures.
    "It's okay," I said and set off in a straight line for the street.
    "Thank you…" a quiet voice whispered affectionately in my ear.
    "For what, Olga?"
    "For not forgetting about me."
    "It really is that important to you to succeed in this mission, isn't it?"
    "Yes, it is," the bird answered after a pause.
    "Then we'll try really hard."
    I skipped over the snowdrifts and some stones or other—a glacier must have passed that way, or maybe someone had been playing Zen gardens—and came out onto the avenue.
    "Have you got any cognac?" asked Olga.
    "Cognac… why? Yes."
    "Good cognac?"
    "It's never bad. If it's really cognac, that is."
    Olga sniffed scornfully.
    "Then why don't you offer a lady coffee with cognac?"
    I pictured to myself an owl drinking cognac out of a saucer and almost laughed out loud.
    "Certainly. Shall we take a taxi?"
    "It was an old line straight out of Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov."
    "Don't push it, kid!"
    Hmm. Just when had she been locked into that bird's body? Or maybe it didn't stop her reading books?
    "There's such a thing as the television," the bird whispered.
    Darkness and Light! I'd been certain my thoughts were safely concealed.
    Page 46
    "Experience of life is an excellent substitute for vulgar