The Inquisitor's Apprentice

row may get a little wet.”

Another scattering of laughter moved across the audience and faded into nervous silence. They were hooked. They stared at the Water Torture Cell with queasy awe as the water rose behind the plate glass. It was one thing to hear about the trick and wonder how Houdini pulled it off. But it was quite another thing to watch another human being willingly brave what looked like almost certain death.

The dybbuk was all the way out in the center of the catwalk by now, directly over Edison’s head. Sacha watched, horror-struck, as the creature laid one hand on a massive spotlight casing. the thing must weigh a hundred pounds. Dropped from this height, it would be as deadly as a bullet.

So what was the dybbuk waiting for?

Then Sacha understood. the dybbuk was waiting for Houdini to perform his escape so Edison could announce the results of the etherograph. Morgaunt wanted every single pair of eyes riveted on Edison when the dybbuk killed him. All the other assassination attempts had just been setting the stage for this one. Tonight every leading citizen and newspaper reporter in New York would see Sacha Kessler, Maximillian Wolf’s apprentice and the son and grandson of Kabbalists, kill Thomas Edison right in front of their eyes.

Morgaunt’s strategy unfolded in Sacha’s mind with all the stark elegance of moves played out on a chessboard. Edison’s death would unleash a witch-hunt that would make millions for Pentacle Industries. Sacha would be branded a murderer. It would be pathetically easy to link Harry Houdini to a conspiracy to kill Edison. If Morgaunt played it right, Wolf might even end up in prison alongside Sacha.

It was all going to happen now. And the only person who could stop it was Sacha.

He measured the distance between himself and the dybbuk. He wished he were closer. Yet he knew he couldn’t risk creeping forward. If he moved now, he would only put the creature on its guard.

Then the dybbuk turned, as if drawn by some invisible thread, and looked straight into Sacha’s eyes. Magic pulsed around them. Sacha knew that it was Morgaunt trying to control the dybbuk from the audience. But he knew something else too, something that he just might be able to use.

Morgaunt couldn’t really control the dybbuk. It wasn’t a tool. It was a half-tamed animal. No punishment Morgaunt could inflict on the dybbuk was worse than watching the thief walk free under the sun. And no reward Morgaunt could offer was greater than the chance to devour Sacha.

On stage, Houdini’s assistants had bound his ankles with chains and padlocks and were lowering him into the Water Torture Cell. The band struck up the chorus of “Asleep in the Deep” for what seemed like the fortieth time that night, and Sacha wondered why he’d ever liked the song in the first place.

“Come on!” Sacha taunted. “What are you waiting for?”

The dybbuk hesitated. Then it took a single step toward Sacha. It wasn’t much. But it was enough to bring him just within reach. Sacha leapt toward the dybbuk, spreading his arms wide to tackle it.

He never got there.

Just as Sacha flung himself toward the dybbuk, a second shadow burst onto the catwalk, caught Sacha in a flying tackle, and brought him crashing down onto the metal grating.

As they grappled with each other, Sacha caught horrifying flashes of the drop below them. It took longer to get a good look at the face of his opponent. When he finally did, he could have screamed in frustration.

“Antonio! What are you doing? Can’t you see they’re about to kill Thomas Edison?”

“I don’t care about Edison! You killed my father! You think I’m going to let you live?”

“I didn’t kill him!” Sacha gasped. But Antonio wasn’t listening.

The fight was over almost before it started. There was no room on the narrow catwalk to use any of the moves Shen had taught Sacha, and Antonio was an experienced street fighter. In one breath, Sacha realized he was completely outclassed. In the next breath, he was lying on his back and Antonio was kneeling on his elbows and throttling him.

Then the dybbuk came up behind Antonio and laid a hand on his head.

It was a gentle, familiar, almost friendly touch. It looked as if the dybbuk were ruffling Antonio’s hair. It reminded Sacha eerily of the way his own mother used to wake him when she came home from Pentacle to find that he’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table over his homework.

Then something very odd happened. When the dybbuk had touched Lily after the summoning, it had looked like it was pulling something out of her. Now, however, the dybbuk was putting something into Antonio. Sacha could see it more clearly than he’d ever seen any other magic in his life. Antonio’s grief and anger had created an empty place inside him, and the dybbuk was filling it up like a dentist filling a cavity. Except that what the dybbuk was pouring into Antonio was so black and dead and rotten that Sacha knew it would eat away at him from the inside until there was nothing left of him.

“No!” Sacha shouted over the din of the music below. “Leave him alone!”

The dybbuk raised its pale face to stare at Sacha.

“If you’re going to take anyone,” he said in a shaking voice that sounded like someone else’s, “take me.”

As if Sacha’s words had been an invitation, a thick darkness began to swirl around the dybbuk. It welled up like fetid water flooding from a broken sewer and poured into Sacha, scouring away every memory of joy and warmth and happiness.

He felt the shadow ripple and rise within him. He felt the dybbuk rummage through his thoughts and take possession of the secret places of his heart. He watched with a curious sort of detachment as the final moment approached — the moment when everything human in him would flare and gutter and snuff out like a spent candle.

Then he felt a stabbing pain like nothing he’d ever known in his life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. Admission to the Burning Ruins 1 °Cents

WHEN SACHA opened his eyes, the dybbuk was gone. he looked down at his chest and saw blood. then he looked up and saw Antonio standing over him, clutching a kitchen knife.

“I didn’t mean to cut you that bad,” Antonio said. “I only meant to chase out that … thing.”

“By stabbing me? And if you had that knife, why didn’t you use it when you were actually trying to kill me?”

“I remembered something my mother said about pain driving out evil spirits. And I was going to stab you, but it seemed kind of … well … unfair.”

Sacha stared at the other boy, dumbfounded. Then he burst out laughing. “You followed me all the way here in order to kill me, and then you didn’t want to use a knife because you thought it wouldn’t be fair? That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“I’m silly?” Antonio asked incredulously. “I’m not the one who just offered to let that thing eat me for dinner in!” He shuddered. “Do you think it’s really gone?”

“I don’t know,” Sacha admitted. “I hope so.”

He lifted his shirt gingerly and tried to see where all the blood was coming from. It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. The knife had skipped along his ribs, and though the cut was long and ugly, it wasn’t deep. He obviously wasn’t going to die of it. It just felt like he was.

“I don’t want to scare you or anything,” Antonio said, glancing over Sacha’s shoulder. “But I think we should leave.”

“We can’t!” Sacha struggled to his feet. “Morgaunt won’t just give up because you chased the dybbuk off. He’ll have a backup plan.”

“Uh… I think I already know what it is.”

Sacha followed Antonio's gaze and saw that the spotlight operators had now left their posts and were moving around behind the painted canvas backdrop.

“What are they doing?”

Antonio gave him a pitying look. “What do people usually do with matches and kerosene?”