"I'm not afraid."

The seer didn't seem to be listening to her anymore. She was sitting there as if she were listening alertly to something else. Then she shrugged: "All right… let's get the job done. Give me your hand!"

Natasha held out her right hand uncertainly, keeping a worried eye on her diamond ring. It didn't come off her finger very easily, but…

"Oh!"

The seer had pricked her little finger so quickly and deftly that Natasha hadn't felt a thing. She froze, dumbfounded, watching the red drop welling up. As if this were all perfectly normal, Darya tossed the medical needle into a dirty plate with the solidified remains of borscht in it. The needle was flat, with a sharp little point-the kind they use to take blood in laboratories.

"Don't be afraid, everything's sterile, the needles are disposable."

"What do you think you're doing?" Natasha tried to pull her hand away, but Darya shifted her grip with a surprisingly powerful and precise movement.

"Stop, you fool! Or I'll have to prick you again!"

She took a small pharmacy bottle of dark-brown glass out of her pocket. The label had been washed off, but poorly. The first letters were still visible: "Tinc…" She deftly twisted out the cork, set the bottle down and shook Natasha's little finger over it. The drop of blood fell into the bottle.

"Some people believe," the seer said in a contented voice, "that the more blood there is in a potion, the stronger it will be. It's not true. The blood in it has to be good quality, but the amount makes no difference at all…"

The medicine woman opened the refrigerator and took out a fifty-gram bottle of Privet vodka. Natasha remembered her driver calling that kind of vodka "the reanimator."

A few drops of the vodka went onto a wisp of cotton wool that wound round Natasha's little finger. The medicine woman held out the bottle to Natasha.