The Inquisitor's Apprentice

scrabbling feet. When the dust cleared, the Hexers were on the run and Payton was calmly brushing off his trousers and inspecting his suit for damage.

Lily sat on the ground a few feet away from Sacha, sucking at a nasty cut on the back of her hand and staring at Payton with an expression that bordered on outright hero worship. “Wow!” she said. “That was better than a Boys Weekly story! What is it, judo?”

“Kung fu.”

“Can I learn it?”

“You’d better if you plan to go around insulting the Hell’s Kitchen Hexers on a regular basis.”

Meanwhile the Hexers were busy vanishing down the nearest alley — all except for Paddy Doyle, who was glaring at Payton with open hostility.

“Hello, Philip,” he said. He made it sound like a girl’s name. Or worse.

“Hello, Paddy. You might as well come back to the station with us. You really want the Inquisitors coming ’round to talk to your mother?”

“You leave my mum out of this! She’s got enough worries!”

“Shouldn’t you have thought of that before you added to them?”

“We can’t all be model citizens like you, Philip.”

“Come on, Paddy! You’re smarter than this. How’s it going to help your mom if you end up in jail like your brothers did?”

But Paddy wasn’t having it. “Wolf knows where to find me,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders. “Tell him that he can come talk to me at the Witch’s Brew anytime he likes. But he’d better leave you behind. Sullivan don’t allow no pets on the premises!”

Payton opened his mouth, looking like he was about to let loose some blistering reply to Paddy’s insult. But then he turned away and stalked off in stormy silence.

“Is that the same Paddy Doyle whose pig got loose in the Inquisitorial Quotient exam?” Sacha asked when he finally managed to catch up with Payton.

“It wasn’t his pig,” Payton spat furiously. “He’s too piss-poor shanty Irish to afford a pig. Or anything else he hasn’t stolen from someone who actually works for a living.”

“You know him?” Lily asked.

“I used to,” Payton said through clenched teeth. “We used to be best friends.”

“I suppose this means there’s no coffee?” Wolf asked forlornly when he saw their dirty clothes and battered faces.

“What?” Lily snapped. “You send this poor child out into the streets to get beaten up by hooligans, and you have the nerve to ask about your coffee?”

“I’m not a child!” Sacha protested. “I’m the same age you are. And why are you all talking about me as if I’m not here?”

Lily brushed Sacha’s protests aside. “Look what they did to him! Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

“I’m going to do several things, as a matter of fact. First, I’m going to have Payton find the woman whose window you broke and offer to fix it. I must say, it’s a pity you didn’t get her name and apartment number. It would have saved a lot of trouble. But never mind. I’m sure we’ll get it all sorted out eventually. And meanwhile, I think it’s time you two paid a visit to the White Lotus Young Ladies’ Dancing and Deportment Academy.”

“The what?” Sacha protested.

But Wolf wasn’t listening. he was already hustling them down to the street and into yet another of the cabs that seemed to pop out of thin air whenever he wanted them. He called an address up to the driver and then turned back to Sacha and Lily with an air of suppressed excitement and a slight flush of color in his normally pale cheeks.

“We’re going to Chinatown,” he told them. “And when we get there, try to behave yourselves. You’re about to meet royalty.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN. The Immortals of Chinatown

NATURALLY, it was Lily who first worked up the nerve to ask Wolf where they were going.

He gave her a long, blank stare instead of answering. Whatever strange mood had come over him at the mention of the White Lotus Young Ladies’ Dancing and Deportment Academy, he hadn’t recovered from it.

“What do you know about the Immortals of Chinatown?” he asked finally.

“They’re the masterminds of magical crime in Chinatown,” Lily promptly answered. “They run the tongs — that’s Chinese for street gangs — and their word is law, and they brook no opposition and deal harshly with dissenters.” She might have been reading straight out of a penny detective novel. “And … let’s see, what else? Oh, yeah, they have these tunnels that connect everything under Chinatown and have entrances all over the city kind of like the subway, so they can just sort of pop out anywhere and wreak deadly havoc without warning.”

“You forgot to mention the opium smuggling and white slavery,” Wolf pointed out. Sacha was pretty sure that even Lily must be able to hear the sardonic edge in his voice. But, amazingly enough, she couldn’t. Sacha was starting to suspect that Lily Astral didn’t get much of a chance to use her sense of humor at home. It seemed weak and shaky, like a muscle that didn’t get enough exercise.

“Right,” Lily corrected herself, still oblivious to Wolf’s sarcasm. “I knew about that. It just slipped my mind for a minute. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Actually,” Wolf said, “I think you’d be better off if you knew less. The Immortals have nothing to do with the tongs. And they have no power over anyone, certainly not the power of fear.”

“But they are wizards,” Lily pestered him.

Or at least Sacha told himself she was pestering. Deep down he was a little jealous, though. He wondered where she got the gumption to talk to Wolf like that, as if she just naturally assumed they were equals. He guessed it came from being richer than God and hobnobbing with Roosevelts and Vanderbilks.

“Yes,” Wolf told Lily. “They’re just about the most powerful wizards there are.”

“So why don’t the Inquisitors arrest them?”

“It’s not illegal to be a wizard,” Wolf replied, “any more than it’s illegal to be a Kabbalist or a druid … or even a good old-fashioned New England witch.”

“So then what is illegal?” Lily asked.

Wolf laughed uncomfortably. “That’s … shall we say a gray area? A hundred years ago there were country witches and warlocks all over New England. They put out shingles and took paying customers. They even advertised in the newspapers. The Inquisitors were more like traffic cops than witch-hunters back then. We were really just around to make sure no one got cheated. But then the bankers and Robber Barons turned magic into big business with their factories and railroads and sweatshops. They started squeezing out the little independent witches and warlocks. Then … but that’s politics.” He stopped short, obviously feeling he’d said too much. “And you two are far too young to worry about politics.”

But Lily had gotten hold of a bone and she wasn’t ready to let go of it. “But that’s just … just…”

“Ridiculous?” Wolf teased.

“Yes, frankly! You talk about bankers and Robber Barons as if they were all conjure men. But surely some of them are honest businessmen.”

“I’m sure they are.” Wolf sounded like he desperately wanted to change the subject.

“My father doesn’t do magic, does he?”

“I certainly didn’t intend to suggest anything about your father, Miss Astral.”

Sacha thought the temperature inside the cab must have dropped twenty degrees in the last sixty seconds. But Lily was too busy arguing to notice.

“No respectable person uses magic these days, Inquisitor Wolf. Oh, I know it used to be different. My mother says that when she was a girl all the best New England families used to give their daughters witchcraft lessons, just like they give them drawing lessons and dancing lessons. But nowadays real Americans don’t do magic. Only,