The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER FIVE. Lily Astral

SACHA DASHED through the turnstile of the Astral Place subway station just as the uptown express arrived in a shriek of steel wheels and a cloud of old newspapers.

Astral place was named after the oldest of the Old New York families. The Astrals didn’t live on Astral Place anymore, of course. They’d moved uptown to Millionaire’s Mile, along with all the other high-society families. But the subway stop still bore their name, and terra cotta beavers adorned its walls in memory of the fur trade that had made the Astrals rich when shamans and medicine men still roamed Manhattan Island.

Someday Sacha would be able to catch the subway right near his house on Canal Street. But for now everything south of Astral Place was a mud-choked construction site. Sacha wondered idly which rich family their station would be named after when it was finally finished. Well, as long as it wasn’t J. P. Morgaunt. Normally Sacha didn’t mind politics, but he really was going to scream if he had to hear one more stupid joke about Pentacle’s Tentacles.

Sacha elbowed his way through the rush-hour crowd and just managed to claim the last open seat. It was a good seat, too: a smartly dressed banker was reading the morning paper right next to him, which meant that Sacha got to catch up on the latest headlines for free.

Mostly it was the usual bad news. Congress was considering banning all immigration from Russia because of “undesirable magical elements.” Another bribery scandal was rocking City Hall. The contractor on the new Harlem subway line had been caught using illegal magical workers to cut costs. Harry Houdini had been called before ACCUSE (the Advisory Committee to Congress on Un-American Sorcery) to prove that he pulled off his miraculous escapes without aid of magic. And Thomas Edison had invented a mechanical witch detector.

Great, Sacha told himself. His first day of work, and Thomas Edison had already invented a machine that made him obsolete. If that wasn’t Yiddish luck, he didn’t know what was!

He was craning his neck to read about the witch detector when the banker noticed him reading over his shoulder. The man gave an outraged gasp and glared at Sacha as if he’d just caught him trying to pick his pocket. Sacha straightened his neck and stared innocently out the window — straight at an ad for Edison’s Portable Home Phonographs.

He’d seen the ad before. Who hadn’t? It was plastered on buildings and billboards all over the city. It showed two little girls gathered around a shiny new Edison Portable Home Phonograph. They were listening to music — some kind of uplifting patriotic hymn judging by the expressions on their faces. They both had blue eyes and blond curls and pert little button noses. And the advertising slogan painted in flowing script under the picture read “Edison Portable Home Phonographs — Real American Entertainment.”

It was a popular ad. Even Sacha had been impressed when he first saw it. But somehow he’d never noticed before now how very blond those two little girls were. Or how the word American was painted in ever-so-slightly bolder and brighter letters than all the other words — as if to hint that other kinds of entertainment and the people who enjoyed them weren’t quite as American as the people who bought Edison Portable Home Phonographs.

It gave Sacha the creeps. Worse, it reminded him of Bekah’s mocking question: Who ever heard of a Jewish Inquisitor?

Sacha was still asking himself that question when he stepped into the booking hall of the Inquisitors Division of the New York City Police Department.

At first glance, the Inquisitors Division looked just like any other police station. High ceilings. Dirty walls painted in an institutional shade of green. Marble floors littered with spittoons, cigarette butts, and tobacco stains. An ornately carved booking counter. On one side of the counter was the waiting area, where victims and criminals were packed elbow to elbow on hard wooden benches. On the other side was the typing pool: two dozen efficient-looking girls in prim and proper shirtwaists pounding away at clattering typewriters.

The Inquisitors stood around the booking counter, gossiping and joking and flirting with the typing pool girls. Some of them were in uniform and some were in plainclothes. Most of them looked Irish. and all of them looked far too intimidating for Sacha to risk more than a quick sidelong glance at them.

It wasn’t until Sacha saw the criminals that he truly realized this was no ordinary police station. Scanning the faces of the suspects chained to the long wooden bench was like reading an illustrated catalog of magical crime. There were horse whisperers decked out in soft tweed caps and rumpled corduroys. There were ink-stained hex writers from every corner of Europe. There was even a fresh-faced traveling salesman toting a leather-bound edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He had a look of long-suffering innocence on his face that seemed to say getting arrested was just a terrible mistake. But the cops all knew him, and this obviously wasn’t his first trip to the lockup. He must be a conjure man, Sacha decided. The encyclopedia probably turned into rats (or worse) as soon as he’d pocketed your final payment.

In fact, a lot of the suspects seemed to have been here before. There was something practiced and coordinated about the way they all slid down the bench, with a little clink of their chains, when the desk sergeant finished booking a suspect and called out “next!”

At the moment the sergeant was struggling to keep the peace between a scrawny little fellow and a shrieking woman who seemed determined to take the law into her own hands. The arresting officer was doing his best to keep the pair apart, but he was no match for the victim’s stiletto-sharp umbrella.

“You again, Bob?” the sergeant sighed as the outraged woman swiped at the little man but hit the arresting officer’s ear instead. “We oughta start charging you rent.”

“I’m innocent this time!” Bob cried. “I swear I was just picking her pocket!”

“Come on, Bob. You think I was born yesterday?”

“It’s the truth, Sergeant! I just needed a couple bucks to take a flutter on the ponies.”

“I’ll give you a flutter!” the fat woman bellowed. “He stole a lock of my hair, officer. Yanked it right out while he was pretending to bump into me. But I’m on to him. I grew up in Chicago, an’ I know a conjure man when I see one. One minute it’s ‘pardon me, missus,’ and the next minute you’ve been hexed into signing away your life’s savings!”

“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll get to the bottom of this. Bob, are you willing to submit to a lie detector test?”

Bob puffed out his scrawny chest and tried to look virtuous and indignant — not so easy when you’re being poked in the ribs by an umbrella. “I got nothing to hide.”

The sergeant sighed and turned around to scan the desks behind him. “Margie! Lie detector!”

One of the typing pool girls looked up from her machine, squinted at the accused with her hands still poised over the keys, and drawled, “he’s lying.”

“Aw, come on, Margie!” Bob cried, the picture of outraged innocence. “How can you tell from all the way over there? The least you could do is look a guy in the eye before you call him a liar!”

Margie came over to the booking desk and looked Bob in the eye. Sacha recognized her now as the bored girl who had administered his Inquisitorial Quotient test. He could see magic drifting lazily around her head like smoke rings. He would never have thought that magic could look bored, but there was no mistaking it: This was bored magic.

“Yep,” Margie said. “You’re lying.”

“Margie! I thought we were friends! How can you do me this way?”

But Margie just yawned and walked back to her typewriter.

Sacha was still shaking his head over this when a mountainous Inquisitor in full uniform appeared in front of him. The name on the giant’s gleaming Inquisitor’s badge was Mahoney.

“And why aren’t you in school on this fine Monday morning?” Mahoney asked him.

“I’m not supposed to be in school,” Sacha protested. “I work here.”

“Are we hiring children now?”

“I’m not a child, I’m thirteen!”

“Well, excuse me,” Mahoney said with a good-natured grin. “And who might you be coming here to apprentice for?”

“Inquisitor Wolf.”

Mahoney’s friendly grin vanished. “You’re the boy who can see witches.”

“I–I guess so,” Sacha stuttered.

“And what might your name be, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“K-Kessler?”

“K-Kessler.” a smile spread across Mahoney’s face. But this time there was nothing good natured about it. “What kind of name is that?”

“Uh … Russian?”

“It don’t sound Russian to me.”

Sacha was almost whispering now. “Jewish?”

“Well, well.” Mahoney called out to the Inquisitors gathered around the booking desk. “Lookee here, fellows! It’s Wolf’s new apprentice. The freak. and that’s not the half of it. Turns out he’s one of the Chosen people!”

Someone snickered. Cold, unfriendly eyes turned toward Sacha from every corner of the room. even the criminals seemed to be looking down their noses at him.

Later, Sacha thought of all sorts of things he could have said to Mahoney. Like that he was as good an American as anyone else. Or that Mahoney could go back to Ireland and eat potatoes if he was smart enough to find any. Or … well, none of it was exactly brilliant. But it was all better than what he actually said. Which was nothing at all.

“Run along, then,” Mahoney said when he saw that Sacha wasn’t going to stand up for himself. “And don’t worry. You and Wolf ought to suit each other fine. He’s the most un-Christian soul that ever walked the halls of the Inquisitors Division.”

Inquisitor Wolf’s office was the last door at the end of the hall. It was a small, dusty room shaped like a shoe box, and its only window looked out on a blank brick wall covered with a painted advertisement for Mazik’s Corsets and Ladies’ Foundation Garments: “It’s not Magic — it’s Mazik!”

Every inch of wall in the office was stacked to the ceiling with case files. Someone had tried to impose order on the mess by stuffing the files into cardboard boxes, but most of the boxes were so full they were practically exploding. Dog-eared mug shots jockeyed for space with grimy newspaper clippings, unidentifiable objects taped to index cards, and handwritten notes scribbled on everything from train tickets to Chinese laundry receipts.

Amidst the avalanche of paper stood a desk so clean that it was hard to believe its owner worked in this disaster zone of an office. Behind the desk sat a young black man wearing a blue and white striped seersucker suit, a silk tie in a fashionable shade of mauve, and a haughty expression.

At first Sacha mistook him for a grownup, but in fact he was only sixteen or seventeen. Yet he was so self-assured — and so impeccably dressed — that he made Sacha feel like a grubby little boy. What on earth was he doing here? Surely he couldn’t be an Inquisitor? He must be some kind of clerk, Sacha decided.

“Sit,” the clerk told him, without even looking up from the file he was scribbling in.

Sacha looked around for a chair, but the only one he could see was buried under case files, just like everything else in the office. Sacha took the files from the chair and tried to decide where to put them. The top one on the stack was labeled CHINATOWN (IMMORTALS OF). Sacha hesitated, wanting to peek inside. But he couldn’t be quite sure the clerk wasn’t watching him, so he set the files carefully on the floor and sat down to wait.

It was a long wait. as the minutes ticked by, Sacha began to fidget. Did Inquisitor Wolf know he was here? Was he going to be blamed for being late? Was he even in the right office?

He cleared his throat.

“Yes?”

“Um … nothing.”

“Suit yourself.”

Since there didn’t seem to be anything else to do, Sacha began looking at the bewildering mass of case files lining the walls.

It was easy to see the magical significance of labels like SHAMANS, BANSHEES and MAGICAL SUPPLIES (ILLEGAL TRAFFICKING IN). But what did COAT CHECKS and WALKING STICKS have to do with magical crime? Who were TATTERED TOM and THE WOMAN IN WHITE? And what on earth would anyone file under CROSSROADS, ITEMS SOLD AT?

Sacha ran a finger along the spines of the stacked files until he came to a name he knew, a name everyone knew: HOUDINI.

“Why do you have a file on Harry Houdini?” he asked, affecting what he hoped was a casual tone of being in on the big secret. “He’s not even a real magician. I went to a performance once. It was all flimflam. No real magic at all.”

“And that’s your expert opinion, is it?” the clerk sounded amused.

“Sure.”

“I suppose all the other stage magicians you’ve seen used real magic?”

“Well … um…”

“Real illusionists never use real magic in their shows. It’s a point of honor. after all, any two-bit backstreet conjure man can actually make a rabbit disappear into a hat. It’s faking it that takes talent.” The boy’s mouth twitched. “But naturally you must know that already, since you know so much about magic.”

“Uh … yeah … naturally,” Sacha said, retreating back to his corner.

Eventually he got up enough courage to try again. “Excuse me,” he said. “I just realized that … well … we haven’t been introduced.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“I’m Sacha Kessler.”

“I’m Philip Payton.” Payton smiled — a rather nice smile, actually — and Sacha told himself he’d been silly to feel so intimidated.

“And … uh … what are you doing here?”

The smile went out like a blown fuse. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing! I just … um … well … I mean, do you work for Inquisitor Wolf?”

“Brilliant deduction. I can tell you’ll make a star Inquisitor. And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish this report before lunch.”

“But does Inquisitor Wolf know I’m here?”

Payton heaved a long-suffering sigh, walked over to the closed door behind his desk, and opened it just wide enough to stick his head into the next room. “Excuse me for interrupting, but Sacha Kessler wants me to tell you that he’s arrived. He seems to think apprentices get extra credit for being on time.”

Sacha heard an indistinct murmur from inside the office.

“Not yet,” Payton replied.

Another murmur.

“I know. But he kept pestering me.”

Sacha cringed.

Finally Payton closed the door and turned back to Sacha. “Inquisitor Wolf told me to tell you that if it’s quite all right with you, he would prefer to see you when the other apprentice arrives.”

The other apprentice? It had never occurred to Sacha that there would be another apprentice. He wasn’t at all sure he liked the idea. He was still getting used to it when the door opened and a girl walked in.

And not just any girl. A rich girl. Everything about her said Old Money, from the hand-embroidered lace on her dress to the haughty look on her aristocratic face.

Her cool blue eyes surveyed the room, dismissed Sacha as beneath notice, and settled on Payton. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “the traffic was so ridiculous that Mother’s motorcar overheated and we had to sit in the middle of Fifty-ninth Street until it cooled down enough to start again.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Peyton told her — and Sacha noted bitterly that she rated his nicest smile. Inquisitor Wolf’s been busy with cases all morning and wasn’t ready to talk to you anyway. Have a seat.”

The girl cleared her throat delicately and looked at the only chair in the room — the one Sacha was sitting in. Sacha leapt to his feet as if someone had lit a fire under him.

“Thank you,” the girl said. But she didn’t sound thankful. She sounded like she thought giving up his chair for a lady was the rock-bottom least a civilized male could do — but still probably more than you could expect from someone like Sacha.

To his surprise she shook his hand before sitting down. “I’m Lily Astral.”

Lily Astral? Sacha’s chin almost hit the floor.

Her pale eyebrows rose in amusement. “According to the rules of polite society, I think you’re supposed to tell me your name now.”

“Uh … Sacha Kessler?”

She peered at him curiously. “The walking witch detector?”

“I guess.” Why did everyone here seem to know all about him? And why did they all give him the same look he was seeing in Lily Astral’s big blue eyes? The one that made him feel like he belonged in a Coney Island freak show.

“You guess?” Lily astral asked. “Don’t you know? And how do you see witches, anyway?”

“I just do. I can’t describe it. People look different when they’re doing magic.”

The blue eyes narrowed. “But only when they’re doing magic?”

“Well … yeah.”

“And the rest of the time they just look normal?”

he nodded reluctantly.

“Then you can’t really see witches at all, can you? You can only see magic.” She sat down, crossing her prim little white-stockinged ankles. “That doesn’t sound nearly as impressive.”

Right then and there, Sacha decided that he hated Lily Astral.

But just as he was beginning to list to himself all the reasons why, the door to the inner office burst open and Inquisitor Wolf appeared.