The Inquisitor's Apprentice (5 page)

"Grandpa?" Sacha asked incredulously.

"Sure. What do you think he and Mo are doing at
shul
every night, playing poker? I might not have gone into the family business, but you still come from seven generations of Kabbalists. It'd take more than some cheap conjure man to lay a hex on you or Bekah."

"Oh." Sacha felt bewildered. He'd always known his grandfather was a Kabbalist. But it had never occurred to him that Kabbalah had anything to do with practical magic—or that his grandfather could possibly have anything in common with the hexers and con men the Inquisitors arrested. "Um ... do you think I should tell Inquisitor Wolf about Grandpa?"

Sacha's father made a wry face. "I wouldn't bring up the topic if you can manage to avoid it."

They drank for a while in silence.

"So," Mr. Kessler said, as cheerfully as if no one had ever mentioned dybbuks and conjure men. "The big day's finally here. Excited?"

"Well—I—"

"You're not worried about Inquisitor Wolf, are you? Don't be. Sure, he's got this big reputation. But I know you. You're smart and honest, a hard worker. What could he possibly find to complain about?"

Sacha met his father's gaze—and was shocked to realize that they were looking at each other eye to eye. When had he gotten as tall as his father? And when had his father started stooping like that? Had he always looked so old and tired?

"I just hope I can help out around the house some ... you know ... like Bekah does."

He knew he'd made a mistake as soon as he said the words. He'd known his father was ashamed when Bekah had to quit school to work at Pentacle. Now that shame hung in the air between them.

"You mean help out with
money?
" Mr. Kessler asked stiffly. "You think we took you out of school just so you could make
money
for us?

"No, but—"

"We did it for you. We did it for your future."

"I know, but—"

"No buts! You've been handed a chance in life, and I want you to grab it with both hands and not look back. You understand me?"

Sacha nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"Promise me you'll look out for number one and forget about the rest," said the man who'd been looking out for Sacha all his life.

Sacha hesitated.

"
Promise!
"

"Okay, okay! I promise."

But in his mind he was promising something very different.

I'll do whatever it takes to keep this job,
he swore.
I'll be the best apprentice anyone's ever seen and the fastest to make Inquisitor. I won't rest until you've quit the docks and Bekah's gone to college and Mama's sewn her last shirtwaist.

S
ACHA 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 plain-clothes. 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 onto 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.