The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER THIRTY. Beginnings

HANUKKAH was Sacha’s favorite holiday, even though according to Grandpa Kessler it wasn’t a real holiday at all. Actually, that was probably why Sacha liked it. No one took it too seriously, and the grownups all played along good-humoredly while the kids got to enjoy candy and presents just like their Irish and German and Italian friends.

Even the blessing of the candles — the real part of the holiday — wasn’t entirely serious, since Uncle Mordechai always offered a tongue-in-cheek translation into Yiddish.

“Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melech ha-olam asher kid’shanu b’mitzvohtav vitsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah,” Rabbi Kessler intoned.

“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who loved us so much that he gave us twice as many rules to follow as the goyim. Enough with the mitzvahs! We lit the candles! Can we eat already?”

“Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melech ha-olam sheh-asah nissim l'avoteynu ba-yamim ha-heym bazman hazeh.”

“Blessed are You, O Lord, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so You worked miracles back in Israel a few thousand years ago. But lately … not so much. Not that we’re complaining! But it is the season for miracles, and we could use a few!”

Everyone laughed at Mordechai’s antics. But as Sacha looked around at his family and savored the comfortable warmth of the little kitchen, he honestly couldn’t think of a single miracle they needed.

Life was good on Hester Street. Sacha still had his job — which was a miracle of miracles, considering all the lies he’d told. Mr. Kessler was still pigheadedly putting Sacha’s apprentice pay into the bank instead of spending it. But just knowing the money was there meant that for the first time in Sacha’s life there were no nagging worries about whether the family could pay the rent or afford to call a doctor if someone got sick.

Even Mo and Mrs. Lehrer seemed to be doing well. In fact, the most amazing change had come over Mrs. Lehrer since she’d lost the money coat. She still staggered up and down Hester Street every morning under her piles of piece-work, but the rest of the time she wore pretty flowered dresses and walked with a bounce in her step that made her look ten years younger. She’d even started wearing a stylish straw hat decked out with clusters of fake grapes and silk flowers.

“That hat’s much too young for her,” Sacha’s mother had said the first time she saw it, “but at least she’s finally spending a little money on herself. Really, losing that coat is the best thing that could have happened to her!”

Sacha wasn’t so sure about that. But he wasn’t going to argue. Especially since he’d seen no sign of his dybbuk since the fire and was starting to believe it might really be gone. Maybe the best policy was to just forget about it and get on with life. What was the point of frightening everyone after the danger was all over? And if the dybbuk was off living the high life with Mrs. Lehrer’s savings, then more power to it. Live and let live, that was Sacha’s new motto — at least as long as the dybbuk didn’t plan to live anywhere near him.

Sacha was even starting to be almost comfortable around Maximilian Wolf again. Wolf had never so much as reprimanded him over the Edison mess. Sacha had come clean about the dybbuk and his family too … well, mostly. Uncle Mordechai seemed like a bit too much even for Wolf to swallow.

Wolf had taken it all in without so much as a raised eye-brow. And when Sacha asked if he thought the dybbuk was really gone, he just shrugged and said he hoped so.

“So that’s it?” Sacha asked. “What about Morgaunt?”

“What about him?”

“Well … what do I do now? Just go back to life as usual, knowing that the most powerful man in New York wants to kill me?” He didn’t mention Morgaunt’s attempt to hire him. Somehow the thought that he could ever end up working for Morgaunt was even creepier than the thought of Morgaunt killing him.

“He’s not trying to kill you, Sacha. he’s trying to kill magic. You just happen to be in the way.” Wolf grinned. “Welcome to the club.”

And that, apparently, was all Wolf had to say about it — except that a few days later an anonymous package arrived for Sacha’s mother containing her locket with the chain carefully repaired.

As for Lily Astral … well, she really was a mensch once you got to know her a little. If she weren’t so ridiculously rich, Sacha could almost imagine being friends with her. In fact, as he looked around the room at his boisterous, laughing family, he caught himself wishing Lily was here right now. But that was crazy! The Kesslers didn’t even own a chair that Maleficia Astral’s daughter would consider safe to sit in.

And anyway, Lily’s parents had spirited her off to their beach house in Newport, Rhode Island, for the Christmas vacation. Sacha had been mystified by this when she first mentioned it, since he couldn’t fathom why any sane person would go to the beach in December. But then Lily had let slip that the Astral “beach house” was made of marble and had thirty-two bedrooms. Which sort of said all you needed to know about whether a Sacha Kessler and a Lily Astral could really be friends.

This thought bothered Sacha more than he wanted to admit, and he was just asking himself why he’d want to be friends with a girl anyway when Mrs. Lehrer shouted his name from the back room. “Sachele! Someone to see you!”

Sacha started violently. Could Lily somehow have tracked him down at his own home? If she had, he would never forgive her for the humiliation she was about to inflict on him. But then he reminded himself that he was perfectly safe from Lily Astral because she was in Rhode Island.

The next instant, he was at the door and face-to-face with his visitor.

It was Antonio.

Sacha stared at him for a long moment. He wasn’t sure what was more shocking, the fact that Antonio had dared to walk alone on streets where no self-respecting local kid would let him pass unscathed, or the fact that he’d come to see Sacha at all.

“Can we talk?” Antonio jerked his head toward the dark hallway behind him to indicate that whatever he had to tell Sacha required privacy.

“Uh … sure,” Sacha said.

He followed Antonio into the hall and down the two flights to street level. They went outside together and stood awkwardly on the stoop. Sacha sat down on the top step. Antonio stayed on his feet, as if he just wanted to get the whole thing over with.

“I, uh, came to make sure you were okay,” he said.

“I am. No dybbuk. And … um … thanks for saving me.”

“You saved me first,” Antonio said grudgingly. “Did you really mean it when you told it to take you instead of me?”

“Well … yeah. I mean, it’s my dybbuk. Was, hopefully. I felt responsible.”

This seemed to surprise and disturb Antonio. He turned away abruptly and didn’t speak for a moment.

“Are you going to be okay?” Sacha asked.

Antonio turned on him, all the friendliness gone in an instant. “What do you think?” he asked savagely. “My father’s still dead, and I didn’t even manage to—” He walked down the steps to the sidewalk.

“I’m so sorry,” Sacha said helplessly.

Antonio stared up at him, his dark eyes burning. “I know you are. I know it’s not your fault that Morgaunt summoned that thing. And I know it was the dybbuk that killed my father, not you. But that doesn’t mean I want to have to look at your face and be reminded of it all over again.”

Sacha didn’t know what to say to that. “I guess we could have been friends if things had been different,” Antonio offered.

“I guess so,” Sacha said. It was true. he was sure they could have been friends. He knew it the way you sometimes do, for no logical reason, the minute you lay eyes on someone.

That wasn’t going to happen, though. The memory of Antonio’s father would always stand between them, along with the knowledge that if Sacha had done something, anything, differently, he might still be alive.

“I’m sorry,” Sacha said helplessly. “I’m so, so sorry.”

But Antonio was already walking away, and Sacha couldn’t tell if he’d even heard the words.

He sighed and trudged back upstairs. The apartment was just as warm and comfortable as it had been when he left, but suddenly he felt like a stranger in his own home. He went to the window and lifted the curtain to look for Antonio’s slim figure in the street. There was nothing to see except lamplight and cobblestones. Sacha peered into the darkness for a moment. Then he dropped the curtain and turned away.

Two stories below, a ragged figure lurked in the shadows. It gazed hungrily at the warm light spilling from the windows. It listened to the many sounds of the close-packed tenements, straining to hear the tones of a few familiar voices among all the others.

It knew those voices. It knew their names, their faces, their fears and desires and secrets. It knew everything there was to know about them. And it loved them.

But they only loved the thief.

A dead horse lay in the street a few yards away. It had died in the traces that afternoon, and the driver had cut the harness off it and left it for the city cleanup crews. Already, despite the cold of the winter season, the flies were thick upon it.

The dybbuk listened to their buzzing, momentarily distracted from the human voices. It stretched out a pale hand and beckoned them. The flies rose, milling around in a confused swarm. Then they drifted over to the dybbuk and settled on him like a shroud.

If there had been anyone at all there to see him, they would have thought he was a boy made out of coal dust. But the view from inside was different. The wings were all shot through with the light of the street lamps. They flickered and flashed and sparked like stars burning in the blackest sky.

They were beautiful. And they would speak for him.

Once he had lacked the power to summon the flies. Now he had it. Soon he would have the power to summon words and send them forth to work in the world. The thief had his voice now, but he would have it back — along with everything else the thief had stolen from him.

There were no words yet in the flies’ buzzing. It wasn’t a voice yet. It wasn’t even the ghost of a whisper.

But it was a beginning.