I once saw a photograph of our building taken through the Twilight by a skillful magician. It's an incredible sight! A crowded street with people walking all dressed up in their finest, cars driving along, shop windows and apartment windows… a pleasant old woman looking out of one window, and a cat sitting in another one, looking disgruntled and gloomy-animals can sense our presence very easily. And running parallel to all this: two entrances to the building from Tverskaya Street, with the doors swung open, and in one doorway there's a young vampire from security, polishing his nails with a file. Directly above the shops there's a strip of black stone with the crimson spots of windows in it… And the two top floors seem to weigh down on the building like a heavy stone cap.

If only I could show that photograph to the people who live there! But then, they'd all think the same thing-a clumsy piece of photomontage! Clumsy, because the building really does look awkward… When everything was still all right between Zabulon and me, I asked him why our offices were located so strangely, mixed in with the humans' apartments. The boss laughed and explained that it made it more difficult for the Light Ones to try any kind of attack-innocent people might get killed in the fighting. Everybody knows that the Light Ones don't worry about people at all either, but they have to hedge around what they do with all sorts of hypocritical tricks-so the seven floors of apartments make a very reliable shield.

The tiny duty office on the first floor, with the two elevators (the people living in the building don't know about them either) and the fire stairs, seemed to be empty. There was no one behind the desk or in the armchair in front of the television. It took me a moment to spot the two security guards who should have been there according to the staff list: a vampire-I think his name is Kostya-who had only joined the Watch very recently, and the werewolf Vitaly from Kostroma, also a civilian employee, who'd been working for us as long as I could remember. Both guards were standing quite still, huddled over in the corner. Vitaly was giggling quietly. Just for an instant I had a quite crazy idea about the reason for such strange behavior.