refused to say anything more. Then the two grownups just sat staring at each other, Wolf with a hangdog look on his face and Shen with an amused smile that seemed to suggest that it would take a lot more than one angry Inquisitor to rattle her.
To Sacha’s amazement, however, it was Shen who gave in first.
“All right. I’ll teach them. You knew I would.”
“Wait a minute!” Lily broke in. “I’m not learning any magic! I won’t have anything to do with
“Who said I was going to teach you magic?” Shen asked calmly. “Why should I, when I can teach you how to beat a grown man in a fight without using any magic at all?” She shrugged philosophically. “Though if you don’t want to learn magic, then you probably don’t want to learn kung fu either.”
“Oh, don’t I?” Lily exclaimed with a dangerous glint in her eye. “Just try me!” But then her face fell. “Except, well… I don’t have the proper clothes for it.”
“I have a number of young lady students. I can lend you a set of clothes that you can leave here and change into when you arrive for your lessons.”
“Oh.” Lily grinned. “Good idea!”
Throughout this exchange, Sacha had been trying not to stare at Shen too obviously. But he must have been doing a pretty bad job of it because suddenly she looked him square in the eye and smiled. He’d never seen such a smile before. It cut straight through him, sweet and sharp and bracing as the wind off the ocean.
“So tell me,” Shen asked, still smiling that astounding smile, “how did you get that beautiful shiner?”
“Uh … baseball?”
“Really? The rules must have changed quite a bit since I last played. And it must hurt like the devil. Come along and let’s get something on it to take the swelling down. You too, Lily. Let’s see what we can do for your scraped knuckles … which I suppose you’re also going to claim you got playing baseball?”
She led the two of them around the edge of the stone-floored room to a curtained alcove whose walls were lined from floor to ceiling with the same exotic ingredients Sacha had seen in the cluttered herbalists’ windows on their ride through Chinatown. Before they quite knew what was happening, Shen had massaged Sacha’s bruises with some sort of pungent concoction, dressed Lily’s hand, and talked enough baseball to establish that all three of them were die-hard Yankees fans.
“They should be ready for their first lesson in a week,” she told Wolf when she brought them back. She appeared to hesitate, although the hesitation was so brief that Sacha wondered if he’d imagined it. “You needn’t bring them. They can come by themselves.”
“But how will we find you?” Lily asked.
“Don’t worry,” Shen told her with a little smile. “People can always find me when they need me. And when they can’t, it usually turns out that they didn’t really need me in the first place.”
Lily didn’t look at all satisfied by this explanation, but before she could ask another question, Wolf was herding them back down the long corridor — while he lingered behind to say a frustratingly private goodbye to Shen.
“Wow!” Sacha whispered to Lily while they waited. “She’s something, isn’t she?”
“I’ll say!” Lily’s eyes were shining. “I’ll bet she’s a kung fu master. She’s probably even a Shaolin Monk, just like the ones in
Sacha was about to ask Lily if she did anything at all in her spare time but read pulp magazines when Wolf caught up with them.
“That went well,” he said. “I think you two made a good impression.”
Lily started to ask a question, but Wolf waved it away. “Come on. You two have had a rough day; I’m going to send you home early.”
He marched them across the courtyard to the little blue door through which they’d first entered Shen’s domain.
But when he opened the door, Sacha and Lily both gasped. Instead of the courtyard with the mulberry tree and the white mice, they were looking at an uptown street — Seventy-second Street, to be precise, just at the corner of Fifth Avenue, next to the Astral mansion.
“But — but — that’s
“Inquisitors are law enforcement officers, Lily. Our job is to prevent people with magical abilities from misusing them. Don’t you think that would be rather difficult to do if we couldn’t use magic ourselves?”
Lily looked horrified. Clearly she had never thought of this before.
“Do you have a problem with magic, Lily? Some kind of phobia? If so, you won’t make a very good Inquisitor.”
“I — no — I mean—” Lily’s face was practically scarlet, though Sacha couldn’t tell if it was with embarrassment or anger. “But if Inquisitors are allowed to use magic, then who prevents
“That is an excellent question,” Wolf replied, “and I wish I knew the answer to it. Now, go home. And apologize to your charming mother for the scraped knuckles or she’ll be calling up Commissioner Keegan to complain about me.”
Lily opened her mouth to ask another question. Then she gave a little shrug and turned to go. But just as she was about to step through the door, she turned back and walked over to Sacha and held out a hand for him to shake.
He took her hand, feeling silly and awkward. She didn’t seem to notice his awkwardness, though; her grip was as firm and no-nonsense as her clear-eyed gaze.
“Good job back there with the Hexers,” she told him. “You ought to stand up for yourself more often. You’re too quiet. It makes people think they can walk all over you.”
“So you think I should go around insulting street gangs instead?”
She grinned. “Life’s too short to walk away from a good fight.”
Sacha started to grin back, but he stopped when he noticed Wolf watching them. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Anyway,” he said, “sorry about your hand.”
“Hah! You should see the other guy!”
Lily strode through the door, and a moment later he saw her dashing up the marble steps of the Astral mansion.
“Your turn, Mr. Kessler,” Wolf said cheerfully. “Where to?”
Sacha panicked. “I — uh — that is—”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little magic.”
“Actually, yes.” Much as he hated letting Wolf think he was afraid, Sacha knew this was the perfect excuse. “Can’t you just drop me at the nearest subway station? If it wouldn’t be too much of a bother.”
Wolf gave Sacha a smile that tied his insides in knots. It made Sacha feel as if Wolf actually liked him — and suddenly he felt horribly guilty for lying to him.
“No, Sacha,” Wolf said gently. “It’s not too much bother. And anyway, grownups like to be bothered. It makes us feel useful. But you’re not the sort who bothers grownups with your problems, are you? Pity. You should try it sometime.”
Silence stretched between them until Sacha thought he was going to burst into hysterics if someone didn’t say something.
“A man solves his own problems!” he blurted out. It sounded like the sort of thing his father would say.
“I see. and are a man’s friends allowed to help?”
“I—”
“Never mind. We don’t know each other very well. I don’t suppose you have much reason to trust me. What subway stop did you have in mind?”
“I — uh — Astral Place?”
“Astral Place it is.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. A Shande far di Goyim
