Chris Moriarty - The Inquisitor's Apprentice

“But—”

“Forgive me, Miss Astral,” Wolf murmured in a tone that made the hair on the back of Sacha’s neck stand up. “I must have failed to make myself clear—”

“But—”

Wolf leveled a stare at Lily that froze the words on her lips and had her backing toward the door before he even spoke again. “Just go!”

“So,” Lily asked as soon as they had passed through Morgaunt’s monumental front gate and were out on the sidewalk. “How are we going to find Antonio?”

“We’re not. Didn’t you hear Wolf? We’re going back to file papers for Payton.”

“But he didn’t give us a chance to tell him about Antonio. He doesn’t know there’s an eyewitness.”

“Lily,” Sacha said warningly.

“Look at it this way,” she told him in her most reasonable voice. “We’re only doing what Wolf would want us to do if he knew what we know.”

“Lily!”

“Besides.” She was warming to her argument. “Wolf’s hands are tied. You heard Morgaunt threatening Shen, didn’t you?”

“Lily!”

“Listen, Sacha, you ever read Boys Weekly ?”

“Sometimes,” Sacha said grudgingly. He knew that this wasn’t a real change of subject and that she was probably going to use the admission to trap him into something.

“So, you know the Westerns?” Her blue eyes flashed with enthusiasm. “They always start out with some poor bunch of bean farmers. You know the type I’m talking about. They’re good men. Principled men. But they’re tied down . They’ve got wives and children and mortgages. So when the cattle barons try to run them off their land, what can they do? Nothing. But then”—her voice sank to an excited whisper—“then there’s always the lone gunman who rides in over the horizon. no name, no woman, no strings attached. Just a hero and his horse and his gun. A hero who can take on the bad guys with no holds barred and no punches pulled.” She nodded decisively and tapped Sacha on the chest. “That’s us, Sach. The lone gunman on the horizon riding in to save the day.”

“But there’s two of us,” Sacha protested. “Unless you’re saying I’m the horse . And what does that make Wolf, anyway? A bean farmer?”

Still, even as he said it, his feet were following Lily of their own accord.

“So how are you going to find Antonio?” he asked after half a block. “We don’t even know anyone in Little Italy.”

“Oh, yes we do! Think carrots!”

“If you’re talking about Rosie DiMaggio, then I think you’re just being jealous. Most people would call her hair auburn. I understand the color is quite fashionable.”

He glanced sideways at Lily to gauge her reaction — and almost laughed out loud when he saw how annoyed she looked.

“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” she snapped. “In the English language I speak, the name of that color is plain old orange. And you know what else? I bet I’ve got just the right stick to make Little Miss Carrot-top help us!”

Rosie DiMaggio’s home turned out to be a shabby but surprisingly large wood-frame house. It was in a working-class neighborhood — but still a lot better than anywhere Sacha’s family could ever have afforded to live. Obviously the DiMaggios weren’t doing too badly for themselves.

“I can’t understand why they let the outdoor paint go like that,” Lily said with a judgmental shake of her head. “Somebody ought to tell them that keeping up with maintenance is always cheaper in the long run.”

“If you say so,” Sacha said. “Let’s just hope Rosie hasn’t left for Coney Island already.”

But they were in luck. She was — as Mrs. DiMaggio explained—“between engagements.”

“I guess that means they fired her after the newspapers got hold of the Morgaunt story,” Lily whispered. If Sacha suspected that there was a hint of satisfaction in her voice, he knew enough not to say anything about it.

“And what do you children want to speak to Rosalind about?” Mrs. DiMaggio asked. She looked back and forth between them as if she couldn’t decide whether to chase Sacha away or invite Lily Astral in.

“Oh,” Lily answered with an appalling giggle, “I just came over to ask her to my birthday party. Do you think that would be all right?”

Mrs. DiMaggio blinked at Lily. “And what did you say your name was, dear?”

“Lily As—” Sacha jabbed her in the side with his elbow. “Ow! Ah, I mean, Lily Asbury.”

Mrs. DiMaggio hesitated. She had taken Sacha’s measure in the first glance, but Lily’s uptown accent and expensive clothes were clearly puzzling her.

“Oh, do let her come,” Lily simpered, actually managing to bat her eyelashes at the woman. “It’ll be such fun! We’re going to have pony rides! And — and tea!”

Sacha thought he was going to throw up. Mrs. DiMaggio, on the other hand, was entranced.

“Oh, you dear, dear child!” the immense woman cooed. Then she waved them up the stairs. “Why don’t you just run up and give her the invitation in person?”

“Thank you, Mrs. DiMaggio!” Lily cried, with a sticky-sweet smile pasted on her lips. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou! You’re such a darling!”

“You’re frighteningly good at that,” Sacha teased, as soon as they were safely out of Mrs. DiMaggio’s earshot. “I’m starting to think you could pass for a normal girl if you put a little effort into it.”

“Perish the thought! Now, how the heck do we find her room without stumbling around until darling Mrs. D. comes up to see if we’re stealing her bath towels?”

Now that they were inside the DiMaggios’ house, Sacha understood why it was so big: It was a rooming house. One of the doors in the long hallway would lead to Rosie’s room, but the rest belonged to lodgers. Not that Lily would balk at barging in on perfect strangers unannounced and uninvited. And if she surprised some poor fellow in his undershirt, she’d probably just give him advice about how to launder his linen better.

Rosie herself rescued them, sticking her head out of a doorway at the end of the hall and greeting them as though they were all the best of friends. She still seemed pretty friendly even when they got inside her room and out of her mother’s earshot.

“So how’s the Inquisiting going?” she asked around her usual gob of chewing gum. This gob was at least as big as the one she’d been chewing back on Coney Island, but instead of being lime green, it was electric blue.

“Inquisiting is very interesting,” Lily answered primly. “But we’re here to ask for your assistance in locating some lost persons.”

“Some what?”

“Lost persons. People who are—”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Rosie interrupted. “I just don’t know why you need my help.”

“Well, you see,” Lily began — and launched into the most convoluted and unconvincing lie Sacha had ever heard anyone try to tell. It featured truancy officers and lost orphans and princely rewards, and it sounded like she’d lifted it straight out of a bad Boys Weekly story — which, for all Sacha knew, she had. Uncle Mordechai at his wiliest couldn’t have pulled off such a ridiculous story. And Lily was no Uncle Mordechai.

Finally Sacha stepped in to rescue her.

“Okay, so here’s the truth,” he told Rosie. “The dybbuk killed an Italian stonemason at Morgaunt’s mansion this morning, and we met his son—”

“Sacha!”

“Just be quiet, Lily. You should never, ever lie. You’re really bad at it. Anyway, like I was saying, we met the dead stonemason’s son and a bunch of other kids who were living up on the roof. But they ran away before we could get any information out of them. So we need to find them.”