Chris Moriarty - The Inquisitor's Apprentice

A squad of Inquisitors led the rescue party down the steps and cleared their way through the crowd. Flashbulbs popped and flared. Reporters shouted questions from every side. The next thing Sacha knew, he and Lily and Antonio were shaking the mayor’s hand and being ushered past a gauntlet of newspaper reporters into the terrifying presence of James Pierpont Morgaunt.

“Congratulations,” Morgaunt drawled. “You’ve saved the day.”

He reached for Sacha’s hand, and flashbulbs sparkled in his diamond cuff links like dying stars. Morgaunt’s grip was alarmingly strong. Sacha tried to pull his hand back, but he only managed to flutter his fingers in Morgaunt’s grasp like a butterfly caught in a collector’s net.

Morgaunt’s steely eyes bored into him. “You’ve played the part of a hero,” he said in a voice so level and forthright that only Sacha could possibly have caught the hidden meaning behind his words.

But to Sacha the innuendo was unmistakable. Morgaunt was enjoying himself. He was daring Sacha to accuse him, just as he’d dared Wolf before. He liked knowing that Sacha knew what he was and couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“I–I just did my job,” Sacha stammered. He tried again to get his hand back, but he might as well have tried to pull it out of a bear trap.

The faintest hint of a smile glinted behind Morgaunt’s eyes. “Inquisitor Wolf is lucky to have such a loyal apprentice.”

“Th-thank you, sir.”

Morgaunt’s smile broadened. “Pentacle Industries could use a fellow like you. Someone who has the guts to take risks and isn’t always looking over his shoulder, afraid of his own shadow.”

Looking over his shoulder? Afraid of his own shadow? Morgaunt’s choice of words couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

“I’m not interested,” Sacha snapped, starting to lose his temper.

“I bet I could make you change your mind,” Morgaunt said with a wicked gleam of laughter in his eyes. “Shall I try?”

Good God, what did that mean? Sacha thought of his family and his mouth went dry with terror.

Morgaunt let go of Sacha’s hand, releasing it so abruptly that Sacha almost fell over backward.

“Don’t look so worried, Mr. Kessler. If you insist on being a policeman, I suppose I’ll just have to resign myself to it. For now, anyway.”

HANUKKAH was Sacha’s favorite holiday, even though according to Grandpa Kessler it wasn’t a real holiday at all. Actually, that was probably why Sacha liked it. No one took it too seriously, and the grownups all played along good-humoredly while the kids got to enjoy candy and presents just like their Irish and German and Italian friends.

Even the blessing of the candles — the real part of the holiday — wasn’t entirely serious, since Uncle Mordechai always offered a tongue-in-cheek translation into Yiddish.

“ Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melech ha-olam asher kid’shanu b’mitzvohtav vitsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah ,” Rabbi Kessler intoned.

“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who loved us so much that he gave us twice as many rules to follow as the goyim. E nough with the mitzvahs ! We lit the candles! Can we eat already?”

“Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melech ha-olam sheh-asah nissim l'avoteynu ba-yamim ha-heym bazman hazeh.”

“Blessed are You, O Lord, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so You worked miracles back in Israel a few thousand years ago. But lately … not so much. Not that we’re complaining! But it is the season for miracles, and we could use a few!”

Everyone laughed at Mordechai’s antics. But as Sacha looked around at his family and savored the comfortable warmth of the little kitchen, he honestly couldn’t think of a single miracle they needed.

Life was good on Hester Street. Sacha still had his job — which was a miracle of miracles, considering all the lies he’d told. Mr. Kessler was still pigheadedly putting Sacha’s apprentice pay into the bank instead of spending it. But just knowing the money was there meant that for the first time in Sacha’s life there were no nagging worries about whether the family could pay the rent or afford to call a doctor if someone got sick.

Even Mo and Mrs. Lehrer seemed to be doing well. In fact, the most amazing change had come over Mrs. Lehrer since she’d lost the money coat. She still staggered up and down Hester Street every morning under her piles of piece-work, but the rest of the time she wore pretty flowered dresses and walked with a bounce in her step that made her look ten years younger. She’d even started wearing a stylish straw hat decked out with clusters of fake grapes and silk flowers.

“That hat’s much too young for her,” Sacha’s mother had said the first time she saw it, “but at least she’s finally spending a little money on herself. Really, losing that coat is the best thing that could have happened to her!”

Sacha wasn’t so sure about that. But he wasn’t going to argue. Especially since he’d seen no sign of his dybbuk since the fire and was starting to believe it might really be gone. Maybe the best policy was to just forget about it and get on with life. What was the point of frightening everyone after the danger was all over? And if the dybbuk was off living the high life with Mrs. Lehrer’s savings, then more power to it. Live and let live, that was Sacha’s new motto — at least as long as the dybbuk didn’t plan to live anywhere near him.

Sacha was even starting to be almost comfortable around Maximilian Wolf again. Wolf had never so much as reprimanded him over the Edison mess. Sacha had come clean about the dybbuk and his family too … well, mostly. Uncle Mordechai seemed like a bit too much even for Wolf to swallow.

Wolf had taken it all in without so much as a raised eye-brow. And when Sacha asked if he thought the dybbuk was really gone, he just shrugged and said he hoped so.

“So that’s it?” Sacha asked. “What about Morgaunt?”

“What about him?”

“Well … what do I do now? Just go back to life as usual, knowing that the most powerful man in New York wants to kill me?” He didn’t mention Morgaunt’s attempt to hire him. Somehow the thought that he could ever end up working for Morgaunt was even creepier than the thought of Morgaunt killing him.

“He’s not trying to kill you , Sacha. he’s trying to kill magic. You just happen to be in the way.” Wolf grinned. “Welcome to the club.”

And that, apparently, was all Wolf had to say about it — except that a few days later an anonymous package arrived for Sacha’s mother containing her locket with the chain carefully repaired.

As for Lily Astral … well, she really was a mensch once you got to know her a little. If she weren’t so ridiculously rich, Sacha could almost imagine being friends with her. In fact, as he looked around the room at his boisterous, laughing family, he caught himself wishing Lily was here right now. But that was crazy! The Kesslers didn’t even own a chair that Maleficia Astral’s daughter would consider safe to sit in.

And anyway, Lily’s parents had spirited her off to their beach house in Newport, Rhode Island, for the Christmas vacation. Sacha had been mystified by this when she first mentioned it, since he couldn’t fathom why any sane person would go to the beach in December. But then Lily had let slip that the Astral “beach house” was made of marble and had thirty-two bedrooms. Which sort of said all you needed to know about whether a Sacha Kessler and a Lily Astral could really be friends.