Chris Moriarty - The Inquisitor's Apprentice

“I — yes.”

“Of what? I mean, what would be so bad about having him drop you at your actual home?”

From any other adult, the question would have been infuriating, but somehow Shen managed to ask it as if she really wanted to know the answer.

“What would be so bad about it?” He imagined Lily’s incredulous face, the chauffeur’s haughty stare, the hoots and hollers of the kids on Hester Street, who treated the arrival of any motorcar — let alone a motorcar with someone they knew in it — as if it were Passover, Hanukkah, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. And then the awful, pitying look on Lily’s face when she saw the way the Kesslers lived. “Everything!” he wailed. “I’d rather die!”

For a moment Shen seemed about to ask him something else, but then she shrugged. “Well, we can’t have you dying,” she said. “Follow me. I’ve got an idea.”

Ten minutes later they were standing on the front stoop of the perfect house. Nice but not too nice. Comfortably middle class, yet still modest enough to be believable. Best of all, it stood in the middle of a long row of identical brick-fronted town houses, so that it would be difficult for even a girl as sharp-eyed as Lily to be quite sure of remembering the right house if she tried to find it again.

When Shen strolled up to the neat red door and rang the bell, Sacha almost jumped out of his skin. “Are we, um — I mean, are we going to get in trouble with the, uh — you know.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Most of the people who’d call the police on us aren’t likely to be home this time of day.”

That wasn’t very reassuring. And the haughty stare of the tall housemaid who answered the door was even less reassuring. “What on earth do you want?” she huffed, staring down her nose at them.

“I’m here to see James,” Shen announced calmly.

The housemaid sniffed. “The idea of a respectable house letting the butler receive personal callers at the front door! I’ve half a mind to tell the missus what sort of persons are tromping through her good rooms!”

The maid marched them through an airy hall and down a long corridor toward the back of the house. Here the paintings and wallpaper gave way to glass-fronted cupboards containing towering stacks of dinner plates and sherbet cups and soup tureens and an endless array of china whose names and uses Sacha couldn’t begin to imagine. Just as they passed the last of the china cupboards and started to hear the clatter and bustle of a working kitchen, the housemaid stopped short and rapped smartly on a neat little oak-paneled door in the wall.

“Mr. James!” she cried. “ Persons to see you!”

Behind the door was a neat, comfortable, serviceably furnished sitting room. And in an armchair, reading a book in front of a roaring fire, sat a well-dressed Chinese man.

He put down his book and greeted Shen with obvious affection. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Shen cleared her throat and glanced toward the housemaid.

“Thank you, Bessie,” Mr. James said. “That will be all.”

Bessie beat a reluctant retreat — though Sacha suspected she wasn’t going to go farther than the other side of the key-hole. She couldn’t have gotten much satisfaction from her eavesdropping, however, since Shen and James immediately broke into rapid-fire Chinese.

At the end of their exchange, James turned to Sacha and gave a dignified little bow. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Kessler. Shall I expect you on weekday evenings, then?”

Sacha nodded.

“Very good, sir. I shall look forward to seeing you.”

As they walked back out to the street, Shen explained that James had agreed to have Sacha visit him every evening on the pretext that he was looking out for a friend’s son who’d come to the city to find work. “Just spend a few minutes talking to him, and then you can be on your way and no one the wiser.”

“But won’t he get in trouble?” Sacha asked, thinking of the haughty housemaid.

“Not likely. If I know James, he’ll probably have the master and mistress of the house inviting you to dinner before the month’s up.”

“How do you know him?” Sacha asked.

“He used to be one of my orphans.”

“But he’s … so, well, old! ” Suddenly Sacha felt quite uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” Shen asked after a moment. “You look like you’ve got a rock stuck in your shoe.”

“How old are you?” Sacha finally blurted out.

Shen grinned broadly. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a woman her age?”

“I didn’t — I just — I mean, are you an Immortal?”

“Being an Immortal isn’t like getting a liquor license, Sacha. You don’t just pay the fee and take your piece of paper. It’s something you do, not something you are.”

“But are you … you know … going to live forever?”

“I really couldn’t tell you.” Shen flashed her most mischievous grin, the one that made her look both childish and ancient at the same time. “I haven’t lived long enough yet to know.”

Suddenly Sacha thought of the dybbuk. Shen would know what to do about it. But on the other hand, she might tell Wolf. And then all Sacha’s lies would unravel — right back to the incriminating moment when he had hidden the truth about his mother’s locket.

“You have a worse problem than just being embarrassed in front of Lily astral, don’t you?”

Sacha nodded, a lump rising in his throat.

“Have you told Inquisitor Wolf about it?”

“No! I can’t!”

“And you’re not going to tell me either, are you? If I tried to make you tell me, you’d just come up with some lie that would only make things worse.”

Sacha felt a flush of shame wash across his face.

They were turning onto lower Broadway now. As they mingled with the Sunday-afternoon crowd Shen bowed her head, hiding her face beneath her broad-brimmed hat. And she put just enough distance between her and Sacha that passersby wouldn’t notice they were together. They walked along like strangers for a block or two, something in her bearing telling him that it would be a bad idea to speak to her.

“Well,” she said finally, “I guess I’ll have to let you keep your secret. But do take care of yourself, Sacha. You’re a boy of unusual talents. And unusual talents attract unusual trouble.”

Then she angled off through the crowd without even giving him a chance to say goodbye. Only when he was climbing the stairs to his apartment did it finally occur to Sacha to wonder why Shen had been following him in the first place.

THE MINUTE SACHA stepped into his apartment, he knew something was terribly wrong.

Mrs. Lehrer was sitting in a chair with her head bowed to her knees. Mrs. Kessler was gently stroking her hair and whispering “shush, shush,” as if she were soothing a baby. Everyone else was hovering over the two of them as if Mrs. Lehrer were an unexploded bomb that no one could figure out how to defuse safely.

“Someone stole her coat,” Bekah whispered to Sacha.

“ The coat? What about the money?”

“Gone, all gone.”

Sacha stared, horrified. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself wearing the money coat, dancing with Mrs. Lehrer in front of the lighted window. Anyone standing in the street looking up at them would have thought it was his coat. And someone had been standing in the street watching them. Or some thing .

Sacha felt sick. What had he done? How could he ever forgive himself for bringing this trouble on his family? He knew he had to do something … but every time he tried to think about it a dull fog of despair and confusion settled over his brain.