A Walk on the Razor's Edge

"I took out a badly burned pie, and in despair I threw the oven mitts into the sink—those that protected my fingers from burns—and hurried to open the window, because the kitchen was full of smoke. The pie probably wouldn’t have burned if it weren’t for the newspaper I found this morning in my drawer.

“Tarasovskie Vesti,” dated August twentieth of this year, had been slipped to me by an unknown hand. Everything would have been simple if it had been summer. But it’s already December. And that newspaper is nothing other than an invitation to a meeting. I needed Grom again—and what he will demand from me this time, I could only guess..."