The Inquisitor's Apprentice

The housemaid sniffed. “The idea of a respectable house letting the butler receive personal callers at the front door! I’ve half a mind to tell the missus what sort of persons are tromping through her good rooms!”

The maid marched them through an airy hall and down a long corridor toward the back of the house. Here the paintings and wallpaper gave way to glass-fronted cupboards containing towering stacks of dinner plates and sherbet cups and soup tureens and an endless array of china whose names and uses Sacha couldn’t begin to imagine. Just as they passed the last of the china cupboards and started to hear the clatter and bustle of a working kitchen, the housemaid stopped short and rapped smartly on a neat little oak-paneled door in the wall.

“Mr. James!” she cried. “Persons to see you!”

Behind the door was a neat, comfortable, serviceably furnished sitting room. And in an armchair, reading a book in front of a roaring fire, sat a well-dressed Chinese man.

He put down his book and greeted Shen with obvious affection. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Shen cleared her throat and glanced toward the housemaid.

“Thank you, Bessie,” Mr. James said. “That will be all.”

Bessie beat a reluctant retreat — though Sacha suspected she wasn’t going to go farther than the other side of the key-hole. She couldn’t have gotten much satisfaction from her eavesdropping, however, since Shen and James immediately broke into rapid-fire Chinese.

At the end of their exchange, James turned to Sacha and gave a dignified little bow. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Kessler. Shall I expect you on weekday evenings, then?”

Sacha nodded.

“Very good, sir. I shall look forward to seeing you.”

As they walked back out to the street, Shen explained that James had agreed to have Sacha visit him every evening on the pretext that he was looking out for a friend’s son who’d come to the city to find work. “Just spend a few minutes talking to him, and then you can be on your way and no one the wiser.”

“But won’t he get in trouble?” Sacha asked, thinking of the haughty housemaid.

“Not likely. If I know James, he’ll probably have the master and mistress of the house inviting you to dinner before the month’s up.”

“How do you know him?” Sacha asked.

“He used to be one of my orphans.”

“But he’s … so, well, old!” Suddenly Sacha felt quite uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” Shen asked after a moment. “You look like you’ve got a rock stuck in your shoe.”

“How old are you?” Sacha finally blurted out.

Shen grinned broadly. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a woman her age?”

“I didn’t — I just — I mean, are you an Immortal?”

“Being an Immortal isn’t like getting a liquor license, Sacha. You don’t just pay the fee and take your piece of paper. It’s something you do, not something you are.”

“But are you … you know … going to live forever?”

“I really couldn’t tell you.” Shen flashed her most mischievous grin, the one that made her look both childish and ancient at the same time. “I haven’t lived long enough yet to know.”

Suddenly Sacha thought of the dybbuk. Shen would know what to do about it. But on the other hand, she might tell Wolf. And then all Sacha’s lies would unravel — right back to the incriminating moment when he had hidden the truth about his mother’s locket.

“You have a worse problem than just being embarrassed in front of Lily astral, don’t you?”

Sacha nodded, a lump rising in his throat.

“Have you told Inquisitor Wolf about it?”

“No! I can’t!”

“And you’re not going to tell me either, are you? If I tried to make you tell me, you’d just come up with some lie that would only make things worse.”

Sacha felt a flush of shame wash across his face.

They were turning onto lower Broadway now. As they mingled with the Sunday-afternoon crowd Shen bowed her head, hiding her face beneath her broad-brimmed hat. And she put just enough distance between her and Sacha that passersby wouldn’t notice they were together. They walked along like strangers for a block or two, something in her bearing telling him that it would be a bad idea to speak to her.

“Well,” she said finally, “I guess I’ll have to let you keep your secret. But do take care of yourself, Sacha. You’re a boy of unusual talents. And unusual talents attract unusual trouble.”

Then she angled off through the crowd without even giving him a chance to say goodbye. Only when he was climbing the stairs to his apartment did it finally occur to Sacha to wonder why Shen had been following him in the first place.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. Gone, All Gone

THE MINUTE SACHA stepped into his apartment, he knew something was terribly wrong.

Mrs. Lehrer was sitting in a chair with her head bowed to her knees. Mrs. Kessler was gently stroking her hair and whispering “shush, shush,” as if she were soothing a baby. Everyone else was hovering over the two of them as if Mrs. Lehrer were an unexploded bomb that no one could figure out how to defuse safely.

“Someone stole her coat,” Bekah whispered to Sacha.

“The coat? What about the money?”

“Gone, all gone.”

Sacha stared, horrified. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself wearing the money coat, dancing with Mrs. Lehrer in front of the lighted window. Anyone standing in the street looking up at them would have thought it was his coat. And someone had been standing in the street watching them. Or something.

Sacha felt sick. What had he done? How could he ever forgive himself for bringing this trouble on his family? He knew he had to do something … but every time he tried to think about it a dull fog of despair and confusion settled over his brain.

“Shush,” Mrs. Kessler murmured, still stroking Mrs. Lehrer’s hair. “Shush!”

But Mrs. Lehrer pushed her hand away and stood up. “It’s all right,” she said in a dull, hollow voice that sounded like it was coming from somewhere deep underground. “I never would have been able to spend that money anyway. I’ve known for years there was no one left to send it to.”

Then she walked across the room and sat down at her sewing machine and picked up the next shirtwaist from the towering pile of piecework that was always there waiting for her.

The rest of them stared at one another with stunned, frightened expressions on their faces. Sacha could almost see the unasked questions hanging in the air. What was the woman going to do now that someone had stolen the very purpose of her life? And should they try to make her talk about it? Or was this one of those things in life that just got worse from talking?

Mrs. Lehrer was still at the sewing machine when they all crept miserably off to bed.

Sacha didn’t know how long he slept, but he woke up with a terrible fear twisting the pit of his stomach. It was dark. Outside the windows, Hester Street lay so still and silent that he knew it must be three or four in the morning.

What a nightmare he’d had! He’d been lost in a bleak and terrible darkness that stretched out hopelessly for all eternity. What horror to be trapped in such a place, never to laugh or love or to feel the warmth of friends and family! The worst thing of all had been the knowledge — though he couldn’t say how he knew it — that he hadn’t lost his life. It had been stolen from him. And the thief was walking free in the sunlight, wearing Sacha’s clothes and body, tricking Sacha’s family into loving him.

But it was only a dream after all! Bekah lay sleeping beside him; he could hear her breathing and make out the shape of her cheek in the faint light from the street lamp. His mother and father lay just beyond her. On his