The Inquisitor's Apprentice (16 page)

A scrawny boy stepped out from the little cluster of Hexers, grinning nervously. "What d'you want, Joe? Hives or Boils?"

Joe hesitated. But before he could answer, a third boy chimed in. "Aw, can't you do any better'n that, Ratter? It's been nothin' but hives an' boils all month long. We're gonna be the laughingstock of the neighborhood if you don't come up with some new hexes soon!"

"Did I ask for your opinion?" Joe said scathingly. He turned back to the scrawny hex caster. "Give 'er the hives, Ratter!"

"Now, look," Sacha interrupted, putting his hands up. "I'm sure we can work this ou—"

But it was too late. Even as Sacha spoke, angry red welts were spreading across Lily's perfect peaches and cream complexion.

"Oh!" she cried, putting her hands to her face as if she was desperately trying not to scratch at them.

"Now, now, boys," said a voice from over Sacha's shoulder. "Is that any way to treat a lady?"

Their rescuer turned out to be a handsome boy a few years older than Lily and Sacha, with an open, friendly face and impossibly blue eyes that sparkled with barely contained laughter. He looked like the kind of nice Irish boy even Sacha's mother would approve of.

When Sacha looked back over at Lily, her hives had vanished and she was practically swooning in gratitude. He would never have imagined she could act so silly.

"Thank you!" she fluttered. "Thank you so much, Mr.... well, I don't even know your name, do I?"

The young man sketched a humorous bow. "Paddy Doyle at your service, miss."

Sacha frowned. He was sure he'd heard that name before. But he didn't have time to remember where, because the Hexers were exploding into wails of outrage and frustration.

"Paddy!" Joe yelped. "You ain't gonna let 'er off buyin' a ticket just 'cause she's a girl, are you?"

"For sure I'm not." Paddy turned his bright blue gaze on Sacha, and though he was still smiling, he didn't look nearly as friendly as he had just a moment ago. "I believe the tickets are a nickel apiece. Or ten cents, if you'd prefer to pay for the young lady."

"What?" Lily spluttered. "You're not going to stop these—these—
hooligans?
"

"Actually," Paddy explained in his charming Irish brogue, "I'm with the hooligans."

He flashed Sacha and Lily a conspiratorial wink, as if to say they were all good friends and there was nothing to worry about. Sacha didn't have any illusions, though. He shrugged in resignation and reached into his pocket for his subway money. But before he could fish out the coins, Lily opened her mouth again.

"How can you be such a cad?" she demanded, squaring off against Paddy with her hands on her hips.

"That's the way of the wicked world, darlin'."

Lily's eyes narrowed, and for a moment she looked almost as formidable as Paddy Doyle. "Maybe so," she snapped. "But I'm still not buying any stupid lottery ticket."

Paddy's smile broadened into an outright grin. "You got a better idea?"

"Actually, I do."

Lily was still holding the Hexers' baseball, and now she slapped it into the grimy hand of the closest Hexer and grabbed the bat from his slack-jawed neighbor. "One pitch. If I miss, we each owe you a nickel. If I hit a homer, you owe us a nickel. Every one of you." She counted heads. "That makes sixty cents total."

"But—you
can't!
" Sacha said.

"Why not?" Lily asked curiously.

Sacha stared at the shiny blond hair, the immaculate white stockings, the frothy lace petticoats peeping out from under her dress. "Because you're a
girl!
"

"I'll have you know that Smith and Vassar have both fielded baseball teams for at least the last twenty years," she declared as if that settled the matter beyond all question.

"And which professional league do Smith and Vassar play in?" Sacha asked sarcastically.

Lily rolled her eyes. "Oh, for heaven's sake, what hole did you crawl out of? Haven't you ever heard of Lizzie Arlington? Or the Bloomer Girls? Or—oh, never mind!" She broke off in disgust at the depths of his ignorance and stalked off across the vacant lot toward the upturned tin can that served the Hexers for home base.

Meanwhile, the Hexers had clearly accepted Lily's bet. They were running out to take up their fielding positions—or maybe, Sacha thought cynically, just to cut off the escape routes.

Lily limbered up at the plate, spitting on her palms and kicking at the packed dirt of the empty lot like some tobacco-chewing slugger from the heart of the Yankees lineup. Sacha groaned inwardly at the thought of what the Hexers would do to them if Lily actually won. But then he told himself not to worry. She'd just swing and miss. And even if she didn't miss, how hard could a girl really hit the ball?

Pretty hard, it turned out.

In fact, hard enough to send a blistering line drive shrieking across the abandoned lot to shatter a window in the neighboring tenement building.

After the glass shattered, there was a moment of stunned silence that seemed to stretch into eternity. Then three things happened all at once. A woman in curling papers leaned out the window and started screaming at them in language that would have shocked a dockworker. The Hexers scattered across the abandoned lot to hunt for their ball. And Lily rested the bat triumphantly on one toe and crowed, "That'll be sixty cents please!"

Sacha couldn't decide who was being more wildly optimistic: Lily or the Hexers. Sure, most of the time a ball bounced back off a window after cracking it. But Lily had hit that one harder than he'd ever seen a kid hit a ball. And if she thought the Hexers were going to pay up on their bet
after
she'd lost their baseball for them, she was crazy.

"Uh ... maybe we should go now," he said, tugging on her elbow.

Throughout all this, Paddy Doyle hadn't moved a muscle. But now he laughed and said, "I wouldn't wait around to collect if I were you. In fact, I'd get lost before they realize you put their ball straight through that nice lady's window and they're never gonna get it back again. Nice hit, by the way." He grinned wickedly. "If you field as well as you bat, I might just have to fall in love with you."

Sacha opened his mouth to demand that Doyle apologize for insulting Lily, but then he looked over at Lily and noticed to his annoyance that she didn't look insulted at all. "Let's get out of here," he grumbled. "You're never going to get your sixty cents. They probably don't even
have
sixty cents. And if you stick around to ask for it, they'll just wallop us."

"Are you saying they made a bet they couldn't deliver on?" Lily demanded, her eyes flashing with indignation. "That's ... why ... why ... that's
unsportsmanlike!
"

"I happen to agree with you," Paddy said, flashing his wicked smile again. "But I've a reputation to maintain, and I can't afford to ruin it. Not even for pretty girls who play baseball."

And then it really was too late. The Hexers descended on Sacha, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and dragged him behind a broken-down beer wagon. They didn't bother with fancy footwork or pugilist's rules; they just knocked him down and jumped on him. Lily hovered over the writhing pile, brandishing the bat, torn between the desire to help and the fear of seriously hurting someone. Finally she threw the bat away and waded in, armed only with her fists. Not that it did any good. Valiant though Lily might be, she was no taller than Sacha and even skinnier.

Which was why he was so surprised when one of the Hexers was suddenly jerked backward by a strong hand, just as he was about to land a crushing blow on Sacha's nose.

He was even more surprised when he realized that the hand was attached to a crisply ironed shirt cuff and a seersucker suit sleeve.

"Payton!" he gasped. "What—"

"If you don't mind," Payton replied coolly, "I'd rather leave the explanations for later. I'm rather busy at the moment."

The next few seconds went by so fast that Sacha only got a confused impression of flying limbs and 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."

N
ATURALLY
, 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 a gray area. A hundred years ago there were country witches and warlocks all over New England. They put out shingles and even advertised in the newspapers. But then the bankers turned magic into big business. 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."