Chris Moriarty - The Inquisitor's Apprentice

That had been a lucky break for Sacha tonight. Or maybe not so lucky. Summoning a dybbuk had seemed like a good idea (sort of) in broad daylight. But as the street lamps flickered on and night settled over the city, it was starting to seem like a very, very bad one.

He huddled into his coat and tried not to think about what else might be hiding in the shadows with him. It felt odd to be watching Grandpa Kessler’s shul from across the street instead of sitting inside with the rest of the students. He was seeing it from the outside now, like a stranger would. It looked shabbier than he remembered, and yet somehow more exotic and otherworldly too.

Mostly, though, it looked small. It was just one shop in one street in one neighborhood of a city with a million streets and a thousand neighborhoods. You could walk away from it and turn a corner or two and never find your way back again. And in New York you could do the same thing with everything else in your life, even being a Jew. People did it every day. Now, looking at his grandfather’s little shul while he waited for Rosie and Lily to join him, Sacha realized for the first time in his life that he could be one of those people. He didn’t know whether to be excited by the idea or frightened of it.

Lily arrived first, sneaking up so quietly that he practically jumped out of his skin when she touched his elbow.

“Whose school is this again?” she asked.

“Look — just never mind, okay?”

“Oh, a little nervous, are we?”

“Yes. and you’re not helping.”

“Are you sure you want to go through with this, Sacha? I mean, don’t feel like you have to impress me or anything. Just say the word, and we can go tell Inquisitor Wolf everything.”

“I’m fine!” Sacha snapped.

“Okey-dokey. Now where is that Rosie! If she’s finked out on us—”

But there she was, bustling along the pavement toward them.

“Sorry!” Rosie cried.

“Shhhh!”

“ Sorry! My mother just would not go to sleep. I was at my wits’ end trying to figure out how to get out of the house without her hearing me. How’d you two manage it, anyway?”

“My sister’s covering for me,” Sacha said guiltily. “My parents think I’m at shul .” Which he was … sort of. “I’ve got a couple of hours until they’ll figure out I’m not.”

“Two hours?” Lily asked incredulously. “Is that the best you could do?”

“Oh, and pray tell how you managed!”

“Easy. My mother’s throwing a fancy dress ball tonight. She always sends me to bed early when she’s entertaining.”

“But won’t she come in to check on you before she goes to sleep?”

Lily made a face. “She’s not exactly that kind of mother, Sacha.”

Grandpa Kessler’s students were filtering out of the shul by this time, straggling onto the sidewalk in twos and threes and shuffling down Canal Street with the flatfooted walk of exhausted men who’d been on their feet since before dawn.

When the last student came out and the lights dimmed, Rosie started forward — but Sacha grabbed her by the elbow.

“Wait!” he whispered.

A moment later, Grandpa Kessler joined the last of his students on the way home.

And that left Mo.

It seemed like he’d never be done cleaning up, but at last the shammes came out, shut the door behind him, and began to bolt the heavy locks. It took forever. Actually, it took three times forever, because he had to check everything twice after he’d locked it. But at last the wait was over.

“Come on,” Sacha whispered, pulling the stolen — no, he corrected himself, just borrowed —keys out of his pocket.

Grandpa Kessler probably hadn’t unlocked his shul himself since the day Mo arrived from Poland, and it showed. The old iron keys stuck in the locks so badly that at first Sacha was convinced he’d taken the wrong ones by mistake. But finally he coaxed open the last lock, and the three of them slipped inside.

He stumbled through the dark room to the cupboard where Mo always kept the candles. He took as many as he could carry, lit them, and set them all around the rickety deal table where his grandfather’s students studied. The candle-light flared up and chased the shadows back into the corners. But it didn’t help. It just made them look thicker and more sinister and dybbuk-filled than ever.

“So what do we do now?” Lily asked.

Sacha read through the summoning spell one last time. There were a lot of words in it that he didn’t understand. In fact, struggling through the archaic Hebrew had reminded him uncomfortably of preparing for his bar Mitzvah. He was starting to think that he might turn out to be just as bad at summoning dybbuks as he’d been at memorizing Torah lines.

To be honest, he was hoping he would be.

“First we need to draw a circle on the floor,” he told the two girls. “Then we need a bedsheet.”

“Cripes,” Lily complained. “You could have told me you needed a bedsheet.”

“And chalk,” he added. “Did anyone bring chalk?”

“No. Did you?”

“If I’d brought it, would I be asking you?”

“Just because you’re scared,” Lily observed in her prissiest voice, “is no reason to be rude.”

“Shhh!” Rosie hissed. “Someone’s coming!”

They all dove to the floor and lay there while footfalls sounded on the street outside and dim lights swept across the room. As the footsteps faded off down the street, Rosie crept to the shopfront window and gave the all clear.

Sacha sat up to find Lily staring at him. The false alarm seemed to have shaken her. She was obviously having second thoughts.

“Sacha?” she asked hesitantly. “Don’t you think maybe we really should ask Inquisitor Wolf for help instead of trying to do this ourselves?”

Of course I do, he wanted to tell her, but that would mean admitting why he couldn’t ask Wolf for help. So instead he just shrugged.

“He could help you,” Lily said stubbornly. “I think — I think he might even be a Mage.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sacha snapped.

Lily gave him a decidedly odd look. “Are you sure? My mother said—”

“And what does your mother know about magic anyway?” he asked bitterly, wishing his family was as all-American as the Astrals instead of littered with Kabbalists and miracle workers. “But you people are always full of advice, aren’t you? It’s easy to tell other people what to do when you don’t have to live in the real world and you’ve never wanted a thing in your life that someone didn’t hand you on a platter. Just like they handed you this job, when we all know that the only thing you’re really going to do with your life is turn into your mother! ”

“I’m nothing like my mother!” Lily shouted. then she stopped and bit her lip as if to keep it from trembling. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. It was a stupid idea anyway.”

“Ugh!” Rosie said into the angry silence. “This place is filthy!”

She was right, Sacha realized. Mo Lehrer was a perfectly good shammes , of course. But he was, after all, a man. And as Sacha’s mother was fond of saying, your average man’s idea of housecleaning stopped about where your average woman’s notion of slatternly filth started. Mrs. Kessler mopped her floors daily in order to battle the black soot that rose from a million coal fires to blanket every surface in the city. Mo, on the other hand, just swept up occasionally. And it showed.

“Well, at least we won’t be needing chalk,” Sacha pointed out. “We can draw in the dust. We ought to post a lookout, though. Lily, why don’t you stay by the window and watch the street.”