And yet she realized that she would. She might drag it out until the final day, but she would bring it.

Because she would remember the gentle clap of those un-manicured hands and that wave of cold that had suddenly spread through the kitchen.

"Go now," the seer repeated with gentle insistence. "I still have to cook supper and clean up the apartment. Go on, go on…"

Natasha went out into the dark hallway, took off the slippers with a sigh of relief, and put on her shoes. Her pantyhose seemed to have survived the ordeal… that was certainly more than she'd dared to hope for…

She looked at the seer and tried to find the right words to say. Should she thank her? Ask her about some details? Maybe even joke-if only she could manage it, of course…

But Darya had forgotten her completely. The seer's eyes were open wide and she was staring straight at the closed door, feebly waving her hands through the air in front of her as she whispered:

"Who… who… who?"

The next moment the door behind Natasha opened with a sudden crash and the hall was instantly full of people. Two men were holding the seer firmly by the arms and another had walked quickly into the kitchen without looking around first-he obviously knew the layout of the apartment very well. A young, black-haired girl had appeared beside Natasha. All the men were dressed in a simple and somehow deliberately inconspicuous manner: the same kind of shorts and T-shirts that ninety percent of the male population of Moscow was wearing in this incredible heat. Natasha suddenly had the frightening thought that their clothes were something like the unobtrusive gray suits that special service agents wore.

"That's terrible," the girl said, looking at Natasha and shaking her head. "How disgusting, Natalya Alexeevna."

Unlike the men, she was dressed in dark jeans and a denim jacket. She had a sparkling pendant on a silver chain around her neck and several massive silver rings on her fingers-fancy, complicated rings with dragons' heads and tigers' heads, intertwined snakes and patterns that looked like the letters of a strange, mysterious alphabet.