The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. Seeing the Elephant

THE WINGS OF the theater smelled like wet paint and sawdust. Lights swayed overhead, suspended on creaking hemp ropes as thick as Sacha’s arm. Canvas backdrops bellied from their riggings like the sails of clipper ships.

Someone whistled overhead. Sacha started in surprise — and then realized it was just a set rigger or spotlight operator whistling out instructions in the sailors’ code that stagehands used. When he squinted up into the rafters, he could just see the catwalk where two riggers manned the powerful spotlights that would follow every move Edison and Houdini made onstage.

The dybbuk slipped swiftly through the shadows, as if it knew exactly where it was going. Sacha was hard-pressed to follow without giving himself away. They crossed behind the stage, with only the flimsy backdrop between them and the audience. The band stopped playing. Edison and Rosie stepped onstage, outlined against the backlit canvas like cut paper silhouettes. As he crept along behind the dybbuk, Sacha heard Edison play a sample cylinder on the etherograph and go into his salesman’s patter. Sacha barely listened; he was too busy wondering where Wolf was and why he wasn’t putting a stop to this madness.

Finally he reached a vantage point where he could look out over the footlights and into the audience. he saw Lily moving down the aisle, looking nervous but determined. She hadn’t found Wolf yet, and she couldn’t search much more of the crowd without Morgaunt or Keegan catching sight of her. Sacha could have cursed in frustration.

The dybbuk was so close to the stage now that a few steps would reveal it to the audience. As Sacha peered cautiously from behind a pile of stage props, the creature raised its head and the light played along the side of its face. Sacha gasped. This wasn’t the vague, smoky shadow he’d grappled with only a few hours ago. Now the dybbuk looked like a real boy — a boy that any witness would swear on his life was Sacha Kessler.

The dybbuk strode over to a spindly wrought-iron ladder and began climbing up into the rigging. Sacha hesitated, but he couldn’t risk losing sight of the creature. Whenever it struck, he had to be there to stop it. He steeled his nerve and began climbing.

Balconies branched off the ladder at regular intervals, but the dybbuk never so much as looked at them. It was headed for the catwalk, where it could lurk unseen over Edison’s head — in the perfect position to kill him whenever Morgaunt gave the final signal.

When Sacha reached the catwalk, it was all he could do to step out onto it. There were no railings to speak of, and the narrow walkway was littered with coiled ropes, unused winches, and disemboweled floodlights that looked like they’d been abandoned halfway through some complicated repair.

Far below, Sacha could see the top of Edison’s head moving around the stage as he demonstrated the workings of the etherograph. Rosie was down there too; the spangles on her costume twinkled like the lights on the Luna Park roller coaster. Down in the orchestra pit Sacha could see the shiny bald spot of the flutist winking up at him as the man nodded and swayed to the beat of the latest show tunes. And on the far side of the stage Houdini now waited, dwarfed by the ominous bulk of the Water Torture Cell.

At last it was Houdini’s turn. He stepped forward, his spotlight following him as smoothly as if it were tied to him by an invisible wire.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Houdini cried in a voice that carried clear to the rafters, “there is nothing supernatural about the Chinese Water Torture Cell — or in the methods I shall use to escape from it. The bottom and three of the walls are hewn from solid mahogany. In front, as you can see, is a single sheet of specially tempered plate glass. May I invite a few distinguished members of the audience to step onstage and inspect it? Commissioner Keegan? Mayor Mobbs? And might I be so bold as to ask Mr. James Pierpont Morgaunt to step onstage as well?”

Down in the audience, Sacha saw the mayor, the police commissioner, and Morgaunt rise to their feet, looking like they’d rather be anywhere but onstage with Edison and Houdini.

“Will you gentlemen kindly examine the apparatus and inform the audience of the results of your inspection?”

Sacha could only hear vague embarrassed mutterings from the mayor and the police commissioner. But Morgaunt’s voice rang out firm and clear into the hushed theater.

“Solid as a bank vault,” the Wall Street Wizard announced. “No trick … or no trick that I can see, anyway.”

Houdini stood before the Water Torture Cell while a crew of mackintosh-clad firemen dragged heavy fire hoses onstage from both sides of the wings and began filling the tank with water.

“As you can see,” Houdini announced, “I have dispensed with the silk curtain that usually hides the Water Torture Cell from view during my escape. Every move I make and every breath I take — or rather don’t take — once I am lowered into the water, will be in full view of the audience. Mr. Edison has insisted upon this point in order to rule out even the slightest suspicion of a hoax. Of course, it will be absolutely impossible to obtain air once inside the Water Torture Cell. Should anything go wrong, my assistant will be standing by with a fire ax to break the glass and release the water.” Houdini smiled. “In which event, I regret to inform you that some of the ladies in the front row may get a little wet.”

Another scattering of laughter moved across the audience and faded into nervous silence. They were hooked. They stared at the Water Torture Cell with queasy awe as the water rose behind the plate glass. It was one thing to hear about the trick and wonder how Houdini pulled it off. But it was quite another thing to watch another human being willingly brave what looked like almost certain death.

The dybbuk was all the way out in the center of the catwalk by now, directly over Edison’s head. Sacha watched, horror-struck, as the creature laid one hand on a massive spotlight casing. the thing must weigh a hundred pounds. Dropped from this height, it would be as deadly as a bullet.

So what was the dybbuk waiting for?

Then Sacha understood. the dybbuk was waiting for Houdini to perform his escape so Edison could announce the results of the etherograph. Morgaunt wanted every single pair of eyes riveted on Edison when the dybbuk killed him. All the other assassination attempts had just been setting the stage for this one. Tonight every leading citizen and newspaper reporter in New York would see Sacha Kessler, Maximillian Wolf’s apprentice and the son and grandson of Kabbalists, kill Thomas Edison right in front of their eyes.

Morgaunt’s strategy unfolded in Sacha’s mind with all the stark elegance of moves played out on a chessboard. Edison’s death would unleash a witch-hunt that would make millions for Pentacle Industries. Sacha would be branded a murderer. It would be pathetically easy to link Harry Houdini to a conspiracy to kill Edison. If Morgaunt played it right, Wolf might even end up in prison alongside Sacha.

It was all going to happen now. And the only person who could stop it was Sacha.

He measured the distance between himself and the dybbuk. He wished he were closer. Yet he knew he couldn’t risk creeping forward. If he moved now, he would only put the creature on its guard.

Then the dybbuk turned, as if drawn by some invisible thread, and looked straight into Sacha’s eyes. Magic pulsed around them. Sacha knew that it was Morgaunt trying to control the dybbuk from the audience. But he knew something else too, something that he just might be able to use.

Morgaunt couldn’t really control the dybbuk. It wasn’t a tool. It was a half-tamed animal. No punishment Morgaunt could inflict on the dybbuk was worse than watching the thief walk free under the sun. And no reward Morgaunt could offer was greater than the chance to devour Sacha.

On stage, Houdini’s assistants had bound his ankles with chains and padlocks and were lowering him into the Water Torture Cell. The band struck up the chorus of “Asleep in the Deep” for what seemed like the fortieth time that night, and Sacha wondered why he’d ever liked the song in the first place.

“Come on!” Sacha taunted. “What are you waiting for?”

The dybbuk hesitated. Then it took a single step toward Sacha. It wasn’t much. But it was enough to bring him just within reach. Sacha leapt toward the dybbuk, spreading his arms wide to tackle it.

He never got there.

Just as Sacha flung himself toward the dybbuk, a second shadow burst onto the catwalk, caught Sacha in a flying tackle, and brought him crashing down onto the metal grating.

As they grappled with each other, Sacha caught horrifying flashes of the drop below them. It took longer to get a good look at the face of his opponent. When he finally did, he could have screamed in frustration.

“Antonio! What are you doing? Can’t you see they’re about to kill Thomas Edison?”

“I don’t care about Edison! You killed my father! You think I’m going to let you live?”

“I didn’t kill him!” Sacha gasped. But Antonio wasn’t listening.

The fight was over almost before it started. There was no room on the narrow catwalk to use any of the moves Shen had taught Sacha, and Antonio was an experienced street fighter. In one breath, Sacha realized he was completely outclassed. In the next breath, he was lying on his back and Antonio was kneeling on his elbows and throttling him.

Then the dybbuk came up behind Antonio and laid a hand on his head.

It was a gentle, familiar, almost friendly touch. It looked as if the dybbuk were ruffling Antonio’s hair. It reminded Sacha eerily of the way his own mother used to wake him when she came home from Pentacle to find that he’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table over his homework.

Then something very odd happened. When the dybbuk had touched Lily after the summoning, it had looked like it was pulling something out of her. Now, however, the dybbuk was putting something into Antonio. Sacha could see it more clearly than he’d ever seen any other magic in his life. Antonio’s grief and anger had created an empty place inside him, and the dybbuk was filling it up like a dentist filling a cavity. Except that what the dybbuk was pouring into Antonio was so black and dead and rotten that Sacha knew it would eat away at him from the inside until there was nothing left of him.

“No!” Sacha shouted over the din of the music below. “Leave him alone!”

The dybbuk raised its pale face to stare at Sacha.

“If you’re going to take anyone,” he said in a shaking voice that sounded like someone else’s, “take me.”

As if Sacha’s words had been an invitation, a thick darkness began to swirl around the dybbuk. It welled up like fetid water flooding from a broken sewer and poured into Sacha, scouring away every memory of joy and warmth and happiness.

He felt the shadow ripple and rise within him. He felt the dybbuk rummage through his thoughts and take possession of the secret places of his heart. He watched with a curious sort of detachment as the final moment approached — the moment when everything human in him would flare and gutter and snuff out like a spent candle.

Then he felt a stabbing pain like nothing he’d ever known in his life.