Read The Inquisitor's Apprentice Online
Authors: Chris Moriarty
The Inquisitor's Apprentice
 
A Brief Note on Alternate History
 
Copyright © 2011 by Chris Moriarty
Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Mark Edward Geyer
All rights reserved. For information about permission to
reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
Harcourt Children's Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company.
www.hmhbooks.com
Text set in 13-point Mrs. Eaves
Book design by Christine Kettner
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Moriarty, Chris, 1968â
The inquistor's apprentice / Chris Moriarty ; illustrations by Mark
Edward Geyer.
p. cm.
Summary: In early twentieth-century New York, Sacha Kessler's
ability to see witches earns him an apprenticeship to the police
department's star Inquisitor, Maximillian Wolf, to help stop magical
crime, and with fellow apprentice Lily Astral, Sacha investigates who
is trying to kill Thomas Edison, whose mechanical witch detector
could unleash the worst witch-hunt in American history.
ISBN 978-0-547-58135-4
[1. MagicâFicition. 2. WitchesâFiction. 3. ApprenticesâFiction. 4.
GangsâFiction. 5. JewsâNew York (State)âNew YorkâFiction. 6.
Edison, Thomas A. (Thomas Alva), 1847â1931âFiction. 7. New
York (N.Y.)âHistoryâ20th centuryâFiction. 8. Mystery and
detective stories.] I. Geyer, Mark, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.M [Fic]âdc22
2011009596
Manufactured in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
4500306648
CHAPTER ONETo Grandma and Grandpaâ
and all the friends and family
who made sitting around their kitchen table
so special
The Boy Who Could See Witches
T
HE DAY SACHA
found out he could see witches was the worst day of his life.
It started out as a perfectly ordinary Friday afternoonâif you could ever call Friday afternoons on Hester Street ordinary.
People said there were more human beings per square mile on New York's Lower East Side than in the Black Hole of Calcutta, and Sacha thought it must be true. The roar of all those people was like the surf of a mighty ocean. You could hear them working and eating, talking and praying, running the sewing machines that clattered away from dawn to dusk in the windows of every tenement building. You could feel their dreams crackling along the cobblestones like the electricity in the big transformers down at Thomas Edison's Pearl Street power station. And you could feel the shivery static charge of their magicâboth the legal and the illegal kind.
Not that anyone was worried about illegal magic at half past four on a Friday afternoon. Fridays on Hester Street were only about one thing: shopping.
Pushcarts packed every inch of pavement from the East River Docks to the Bowery. Mobs of housewives jostled and hollered, desperate to get their
Shabbes
shopping done before sunset. Salesmen cut through the crowd like sharks, hunting for customers to cajole, bully, or physically drag into their basement storefronts. Pack peddlers and day-old-bread sellers battled for space in the gutter, each one bellowing at the top of his lungs that his wares were cheaper, better tasting, and better for you than anyone else's.
Every piece of food had to be sold now, before the whole Lower East Side shut down for
Shabbes.
After that the city closed all the stores on Sunday to make sure the
goyim
stayed sober for church. And after that ... well, if you had anything left to sell on Monday, you might as well just throw it out. Because no Jewish housewife was ever in a million years going to feed
her
family three-day-old anything.
Most Fridays, Sacha's mother got off work at the Pentacle Shirtwaist Factory just in time to race home, grab the week's savings out of the pickle jar behind the stove, and dash back outside half an hour before sunset.
That was when the real craziness began.
You'd think a woman with only half an hour to do three days' worth of grocery shopping wouldn't have time to haggle. But if you thought that, you didn't know Ruthie Kessler. Sacha's mother went shopping like a general goes to war. Her weapons were a battered shopping basket, a blistering tongue, and a fistful of pennies. And her children were her foot soldiers.
Sacha and his older sister, Bekah, would sprint up and down Hester Street, ducking around knees and elbows and dodging within a hair's breadth of oncoming traffic. They'd visit every shop, every pushcart, every pack peddler. They'd race back to their mother to report on the state of the enemy's battle lines. And then Mrs. Kessler would issue her orders and dole out her pennies:
"Three cents for an onion? That's
meshuga!
Tell Mr. Kaufmann no one else is charging more than two!"
"What do you mean you're not sure how fresh Mrs. Lie-berman's tomatoes are? Are you my son, or aren't you? Go back and
squeeze
them!"
"All right, all right! Tell Mr. Rabinowitz you'll take the herring. But if he chops the head off like he did last week, I'm sending it back. I never buy a fish until I see the whites of its eyes!"
This Friday the shopping seemed like it would never end. But at last the sun sank toward the Bowery. The shouting faded, and the crowds began to break up and drift away. Mrs. Kessler looked upon her purchases and found them goodâor at least as good as a hardworking Jewish mother was willing to admit that anything in this wicked world could be.
"We've got a few minutes," she told her children as they hefted their overflowing baskets and began to stagger home. "Let's stop off at Mrs. Lassky's bakery for some
rugelach.
"
"No thanks," Bekah said. "I'm not hungry. And anyway I have homework."
Mrs. Kessler watched her daughter go with narrowed eyes, fingering the little silver locket she always wore around her neck. "So secretive," she murmured. "You'd almost think ... well, never mind. It's a mystery what girls want these days."
It might be a mystery what Bekah wanted, but there was no mistaking what the girls lining up outside Mrs. Lassky's bakery were after. The big English sign over the door said
LASSKY & DAUGHTERS KOSHER BAKED GOODS
. But that sign was only there to fool the cops. And since there was no such thing as a Jewish Inquisitor in the New York City Police Department, the handwritten Yiddish signs taped to the shop window made no bones about what was really for sale inside:
NOSH ON THIS!
OUR
DELICIOUSLY EFFICACIOUS
KNISHES
ARE GUARANTEED TO
GET ANY GIRL MARRIED WITHIN THE YEAR
(MULTIPLE DOSES MAY BE REQUIRED
IN SPECIAL CASES)
STOP SAYING "OY VEY!"
START SAYING "OYTZER!
"
ONE BITE OF OUR
MYSTERIOUSLY MONOGAMOUS
MARZIPAN
WILL MAKE HIM YOURS FOREVER!
TIRED OF WAITING FOR HER
TO MAKE UP HER MIND?
HAVE A MOTHER-IN-LATKE
YOU PICK THE PERFECT SON-IN-LAW,
WE DO THE REST!
Sacha had never quite understood
why
magic was illegal in America. He just knew that it was. And that his mother and practically every other housewife on Hester Street cheerfully ignored the law whenever disapproving husbands and fathersânot to mention the NYPD Inquisitorsâwere safely elsewhere.
Luckily, though, Sacha didn't have to worry about that. He'd made it all the way through his
bar mitzvah
without showing an ounce of magical talentâand he couldn't have been happier about it.
Inside Mrs. Lassky's tiny shop, the air was thick with magic. Customers packed every nook and cranny like pickled herring. Half of them were shouting out orders, the other half were trying to pay, and they were all yammering away at each other like gossip was about to be outlawed tomorrow. Behind the counter, the Lassky twins scurried back and forth under drifting clouds of pastry flour. Mrs. Lassky sat at the ornate cash register accepting cash, complimentsâand, yes, even the occasional complaint.
"Do you see anything on that sign about a perfect
husband?
" she was saying as Sacha and his mother finally reached the front of the line. "A perfect son-in-law I can deliver. But a perfect husband? There is no such thing!"
The other women waiting in line at the counter began chiming in one after another.
"She's right,
bubeleh!
Show me a woman with a perfect husband, and I'll show you a widow!"
"Perfect, shmerfect! Take it from me, sweetie. If it's after ten in the morning and he's not drunk, he's perfect!"
When Mrs. Lassky caught sight of Sacha, she leaned over the counter and pinched him on both cheeks. "So handsome you're getting, just like your Uncle Mordechai! But skinny! We need to fatten you up a little. How about a nice hot Make-Her-Challah-for-You? Not that you need any luck with the ladies." She pinched his cheeks again for good measure. "Sooo adorable!"
"No thanks," Sacha said, blushing furiously and wiping flour off his face. "Just a
rugelach.
And plain's fine."
"Well, if you change your mind, remember I've got two lovely daughters."
"Speaking of daughters," Sacha's mother said ominously, "I'll have a Mother-in-Latke."
"Oh, Ruthie, you've got nothing to worry about. Your Bekah's the prettiest girl on Hester Street."
"
Kayn aynhoreh!
" Mrs. Kessler muttered, making the sign to ward off the evil eye. "And anyway she's as stubborn as a mule. You should hear the wild ideas she's picking up at night school." Mrs. Kessler made it sound as if you could catch ideas like you caught head lice. "Do you know what she told me the other day? That marriage is just a bourgeois convention. I could've
schreied!
"
