The Inquisitor's Apprentice (6 page)

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 1ong-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," Payton 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 leaped 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.

T
HE FIRST THING
Sacha noticed about Maximillian Wolf was the first thing everyone noticed: nothing.

In a city like New York, charm was cheap. Any shopgirl or salesman could buy a little glamour to help win the next sale or just get that extra edge it took to get ahead, and most did. It wasn't exactly legal, but it worked. And New Yorkers were too ambitious to turn down anything that worked.

But Inquisitor Wolf didn't seem to think he needed that kind of help. In fact, he seemed to go to great lengths to be as unglamorous and unmagical as possible. His long, lanky legs were encased in baggy trousers that had never seen the inside of a tailor's shop, let alone a fitting spell. His jacket hung off his bony shoulders like a scarecrow's sack. His hair looked like it hadn't been brushed for weeks. His spectacles were covered with smudges and fingerprints. And his dishwater-gray eyes wore a sleepy, absentminded look that seemed to say he was still waiting for the day to bring him something worth waking up for.

As far as Sacha could tell, the only remotely interesting thing about Maximillian Wolf was the extraordinary collection of food stains on his tie.

"Er ... hmmm," Wolf said, looking at Sacha and Lily as if he was trying to find a polite way of asking them what they were doing there.

"Your new apprentices," Payton prompted.

"I thought they were supposed to start next week."

"This
is
next week."

"Did I miss another weekend? What was I
doing?
"

"Working. What else?"

"I don't even know why I ask anymore," Wolf sighed. He thumbed through the case files on Payton's desk, slid one out of the middle of the pile, and drifted back into his office looking like he was well on his way to forgetting about his new apprentices all over again.

"Don't just stand there!" Payton urged, shooing them across the room and through Wolf's door. "Go in!"

Wolf looked surprised to see them, but he waved vaguely toward the two straight-backed wooden chairs in front of his desk. Then he wiped his glasses on his tie, opened the case file, and settled in to read it as serenely as if the two of them weren't going through agonies waiting for him to say something.

Sacha and Lily stared at each other. Lily gave a little shrug as if to say she didn't know what was going on either.

Then they waited.

And waited.

Sacha didn't dare watch Wolf, so he examined the office instead. It wasn't much bigger than the front room where Payton sat—and it was even messier. Every flat surface was covered with papers, books, and food. The papers were piled so high that they spilled over onto the floor in shaggy white drifts. The food looked like it must have been inedible (at least by Sacha's mother's standards) even when it was still fresh. And most of the books looked like they'd been read in the bathtub.

But the strangest thing in the room was a muddy heap of black wool on the floor next to Wolf's desk. At first Sacha thought it was a dog. Then he realized it was just Wolf's overcoat. He must have shucked it off onto the floor, mud and all, when he got to work that morning.

"So," Wolf asked, his eyes still on his file, "do you two have names?"

Sacha and Lily stared at each other again, neither one wanting to speak first.

"I'm Lily Astral," Lily said finally.

Now Wolf did look up, blinking in astonishment. "Good heavens, a girl," he murmured. "And Maleficia Astral's daughter too. What on earth am I supposed to do with you?"

Lily blushed furiously and muttered something about just wanting a fair chance, no matter who her mother was.

"
Fair?
" Wolf asked, still in the same tone of mild amusement. "If you don't mind my saying so, Miss Astral, you appear to be under a serious misapprehension about the nature of the Inquisitors Division. Not to mention life in general. I fear that severe disappointment lurks in your future."

By this time Lily's face was so red that Sacha almost felt sorry for her.

But then Wolf turned his attention to Sacha, and he forgot all about Lily's problems.

"And I suppose you would be ... um..." Wolf glanced back at the file on his desk. Whatever he was looking for, he didn't seem to find it there.

"Sacha Kessler."

"Right. Kessler." Wolf's oddly colorless eyes settled on Sacha. "Why do I think I know that name? You don't have any relatives who would have come to the attention of the police before? No wonderworking rabbis or practical Kabbalists or revolutionary rabble-rousers?"

"Oh, no! Nothing like that! We're complete and utter nobodies!"

That was Sacha's first lie. He regretted it bitterly the minute the words were out of his mouth. And he would have regretted it even more if he'd known how many other lies he'd end up piling on top of it.

He had the oddest feeling that Wolf knew it was a lie, too. Not that he said so. He just went all bland and mild and absentminded. But as the seconds ticked by, Sacha's skin began to itch and he had to bite his tongue to keep from blurting out a confession just to fill the awkward silence.

Just when Sacha was sure he couldn't stand it anymore, Wolf turned back to Lily Astral. "There are two sorts of girls in this world," he told her. "Girls who like to stare at omnibus accidents, and girls who don't. Which kind are you?"

Lily blinked in surprise. "I—I suppose I'm the staring kind."

"I'm sorry to hear it," Wolf said cheerfully. "Ghoulish curiosity is a dreadful character flaw in a young lady. But quite promising from a professional standpoint. You're hired. And only mostly because your father would have me fired if I didn't hire you."

While Lily was still choking on that, Wolf turned back to Sacha. "And what about you? You don't have any rich relatives. Why should I hire you?"

"Well," Sacha stammered, "I can ... you know ... see witches?"

Wolf leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. His face still looked bland and expressionless, but Sacha got the distinct impression that he was laughing at them.

"It seems to me that between the two of you, you have the makings of exactly one decent apprentice," he said. "Miss Astral here has a burning ambition to be an Inquisitor, but"—he leaned forward again to check her file—"no magical abilities whatsoever. Or none that she'll admit to, anyway. You, on the other hand, are overflowing with talent but don't seem to have a clue why you want the job. Or am I missing something?"

Wolf took off his spectacles and held them up to the light as if he were trying to formulate a plan of attack against the smudges and fingerprints. He took his already untucked shirttail and began using that to clean the glasses—or more likely just rearrange the smudges, considering that the shirt looked like Wolf had been sleeping in it for a week.

The silence thickened. Sacha could feel Lily staring at him out of the corners of her eyes like a spooked horse. "I, um," he stammered, "I want to fight magical crime? And, uh, protect and defend the innocent?"

Wolf looked up—and Sacha felt a quiver of shock run down his spine.