Chris Moriarty - The Inquisitor's Apprentice

“Where has Inquisitor Wolf taken you so far, Sacha? I hope he’s not keeping you too much under wraps. I hope he’s introducing you to the kind of people who can help your career. Has he taken you to see Teddy Roosevelt yet? They’re great friends. Or at least they used to be, back when poor Teddy was still the commissioner of police.” Mrs. Astral’s lovely face clouded over as if it made her unutterably sad to even think about “poor Teddy” not being police commissioner anymore. “It was so hard on him, being run out of town by that distasteful scandal! Why, he was so mortified that he ran off to Africa on safari and still hasn’t come back.”

“Yes,” Lily said with relish. “and when J. P. Morgaunt heard Teddy was gone, he went straight down to the Union Club, opened a case of champagne, and made a toast: ‘May the first lion Teddy meets do its duty!’”

“Lily!” Mrs. astral chided. “I’m sure dear Mr. Morgaunt would never say anything so bloodthirsty!”

Actually, Sacha thought this sounded like exactly the kind of thing dear Mr. Morgaunt would say. But it did seem rather coarse of Lily to mention it in polite company. And Mrs. Astral’s shock seemed like just another proof of her refined nature and womanly delicacy.

She leaned forward to pour Sacha another cup of tea. “You must be a tremendous help to Inquisitor Wolf. I’m sure he’s made use of your extraordinary talents already. Is it really true that you can see witches?”

“Well,” Sacha said modestly, “I don’t like to brag about it.”

“Oh, but you can tell me . I wouldn’t think it was bragging. I know all sorts of extraordinary people. I cultivate extraordinary people.”

“Like mushrooms,” Lily muttered. “By keeping them in the dark and burying them in mounds of bull—”

“What’s that, darling?” Mrs. Astral interrupted. “You really should learn to stop mumbling. And try not to frown like that. It makes you look even more ill-tempered than you are. I’m sorry, Sacha, you were telling me about how you help Inquisitor Wolf catch witches. How do you spot a witch? What is it that gives her away to you?”

On the other end of the sofa, Lily slammed her teacup into its saucer with an outraged rattle, but Sacha ignored her. “Well, uh… I don’t see the same thing every time. Sometimes it’s a kind of aura or halo. and other times it’s more like feeling than seeing.”

Mrs. Astral rested her chin on one hand and leaned forward as if she couldn’t wait to hear more. “And does a witch have to do magic for you to see these emanations, or can you see them all the time?”

“They have to do magic in front of me,” Sacha said. But this sounded rather unimpressive to him. And he definitely wanted to impress Mrs. Astral. So he added, in what he hoped was a grown-up and mysterious voice, “Most of the time.”

Mrs. Astral sat up and seemed almost to catch her breath at this. “ Most of the time? What about the other times?”

“Well, you know … there are different clues.”

“Such as?”

“The usual,” Sacha said haltingly, trying to stumble out of the lie he’d tangled himself in. “Pointy noses, and warts, and wrinkles—”

“Oh!” She laughed in a way that struck Sacha, just for an instant, as not very nice. But then she smiled at him, and he forgot about it. Her green eyes glittered as she leaned forward to pat his hand. “How very clever of you!”

Mrs. Astral yawned and glanced over Sacha’s head at the monumental grandfather clock. “My, how late it’s gotten!” she cried. “How time passes when one’s in such charming company! Tell me, Sacha, how were you planning to get home? Is your family’s car coming to fetch you, or can I offer you a ride in ours?”

“No, thank you!” Sacha practically yelped. He could just imagine the look on the chauffeur’s face when he got his first glimpse of Hester Street.

“Really, I insist. In fact, I can’t think why I never thought of it before.” Lily’s mother rang the bell and a uniformed maidservant appeared so fast that Sacha wondered if she’d been listening at the keyhole.

“Biddy,” Mrs. Astral ordered, “instruct the chauffeur to drive Mr. Kessler home. And tell him that from today forward I desire him to drive Mr. Kessler home every night when he picks Lily up. That will give you two a little time to relax and chat after work every day. Won’t that be fun?” She smiled graciously at the two children and swept out of the room in a fragrant cloud of frangipani and orange blossoms.

As soon as her mother was gone, Lily kicked the coffee table hard enough to send tea sloshing into the saucers. “I don’t know why she’s being so nice to you!” she snarled. “She must want something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is!”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You think I have nothing to offer because I’m poor? You think that makes me not worth talking to?”

“Frankly, yes. at least as far as my mother’s concerned. She’s a dreadful snob.”

“It seems to me like you’re the snob, not her. She’s not the one who could barely bring herself to invite me here!”

She rolled her eyes. “I knew you were rude. But I didn’t know you were stupid, too!”

“ I’m stupid? How stupid is it to take a job where you’re too embarrassed to even introduce the people you work with to your mother?”

He expected Lily to fire back a blistering retort, but instead she just stared at him with her mouth hanging open. “Wait a minute. You think I was embarrassed to introduce you to her? ”

Before he could make sense of that question, she half dragged him across the room and pointed to a framed engraving on the wall. “You want to know about my mother? Take a look at that! ”

The engraving showed two women shaking hands with each other in the middle of a ballroom. Both women were dazzlingly beautiful, and one of them bore a striking resemblance to Maleficia Astral. They smiled at each other as sweetly as if they were the best of friends — but each one held a vicious long-handled ax hidden in the silk folds of her ball gown.

The caption below the picture read “The Reigning Beauty Greets Her Newest Rival.”

“ That’s my mother,” Lily announced. “And what’s more, she’s proud of it. Proud enough to hang that picture on the wall and laugh about it. The purpose of her life is running New York society. The only thing she cares about is being rich and beautiful and in control. She doesn’t even have time for her own daughter unless it makes her look good in front of her rich friends. So you tell me, Sacha Kessler, why would she waste her time on you? ”

Sacha opened his mouth to return her insult in kind — but then he saw something in her face that made him swallow his anger. It wasn’t snobbishness that had made Lily sneak him into her house, he realized. It was shame. Lily Astral was ashamed of her own mother. So ashamed that she had been just as desperate to keep Sacha from meeting Mrs. Astral as Sacha was to keep Lily from knowing he lived in the Hester Street tenements.

A tickling little mouse of a thought scampered through his mind. He wasn’t ashamed of his parents, it whispered to him. Now that the beautiful Maleficia wasn’t in front of him, he could see that her charming small talk had mostly been mean-spirited gossip. Sacha’s hardworking father had a dignity that Mrs. Astral would never match, for all her jewels and money. And as for Sacha’s mother, the most embarrassing thing she’d do if she ever met Lily was stuff fattening food down her throat and shrei about how skinny she was. So if Lily was brave enough to let Sacha meet the mother she was so ashamed of, then surely he could be brave enough to tell her that he lived in the tenements?