The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Tea with Mrs. Astral

WOLF STOOD OUTSIDE Rabbi Mendelsohn’s temple looking up and down the block and blinking in astonishment. “Well, bless my soul!” he murmured. “how extraordinary!”

It took Sacha a moment to see what Wolf was so surprised about. Then he realized this was the first time he could remember that there hadn’t been a cab waiting at the curb for them.

Wolf scanned the block again, as if he suspected there might be one hiding behind a tree or under a manhole. “Perhaps on Fifth Avenue?” he hazarded.

But there were no cabs there either, even though they waited anxiously for several minutes.

Wolf produced a battered pocket watch and checked the time. “I really need to get back to Hell’s Kitchen and call the Patent Office before closing time. I’d better just leave you two here and walk across the park. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

And then he hurried away, leaving Lily and Sacha staring after him.

“Can you get home all right from here?” Sacha asked Lily.

“Of course I can. I live just around the corner.”

“Oh,” Sacha said, feeling a little silly. “Right.”

Lily turned to leave, hesitated, and then turned back to Sacha with a look on her face that suggested she was about to perform an unpleasant but necessary chore. “I guess I should invite you over to my house for tea,” she mumbled, as if the words were being squeezed out of her against her will. “If you want. But I’m sure you have better things to do.”

Sacha felt a flash of anger. What was the point of giving an invitation she so plainly didn’t want him to accept? And how dare she make it so insultingly obvious that she didn’t think he was good enough to enter her house? He started to make some polite excuse, then decided to make her squirm a little. “Actually,” he said, “tea sounds delightful.”

The Astral home was even more spectacularly luxurious than J. P. Morgaunt’s mansion. Not that Sacha had much time to look around. Lily hurried him through a side door to a narrow creaking stairway that was obviously only meant to be used by servants. She was plainly terrified that her parents would see him. Sacha felt humiliated. He wished he hadn’t come at all. In fact, he decided, there was no reason he shouldn’t just turn around and leave right now if this was how Lily was going to act.

Except that when he turned around to stomp back down the stairs, he found himself face-to-face with Mrs. Astral herself.

“You must be Sacha Kessler!” she said with a brilliant smile that made Sacha feel as if he were the only person in the whole world Mrs. Astral cared about. “I can’t think why Lily didn’t tell me she was bringing you! She knows I’ve been dying to meet you. I do hope you have time to stay for tea?”

Sacha glanced at Lily. She gave a tiny, stiff shake of her blond head and mouthed a single word at him: “No!”

“Thank you,” he told Mrs. Astral. “I’d love to.”

Sacha took the arm that Mrs. Astral graciously offered him and accompanied her into a vast drawing room filled with palm trees, marble statuary, and overstuffed furniture. Lily trudged behind them like a soldier being ordered into a hopeless battle.

Sacha had read almost as many newspaper stories about Maleficia Astral as he’d read about J. P. Morgaunt. She’d been a famous beauty, the daughter of an old New England family from Salem, Massachusetts. Then she’d married the heir to the Astral family fortune — rumored to be a formidable Wall Street Wizard in his own right. Now she ruled New York high society with absolute authority. No one could be invited into the best houses without her seal of approval. No ball or soiree was a success unless she attended. And any proper New York socialite would rather die a thousand deaths than wear a gown that clashed with whatever Maleficia Astral was wearing.

From what he’d read in the papers, Sacha had assumed that Mrs. Astral would be haughty and snobbish. But instead, she was bewitching. Her eyes were the brilliant iridescent green of hummingbird wings. Her clothes were impeccably ladylike, yet they flowed over her body like water rippling over rocks, revealing every sinuous curve and graceful movement. And her voice … well, when Maleficia Astral spoke to you, it was absolutely impossible to think of anything but Maleficia Astral.

“So you’re Lily’s little friend,” Mrs. astral cooed at Sacha. “I’m so very pleased to meet you. Lily’s told me so much about you.”

“No I haven’t,” Lily said churlishly.

“But, darling, don’t be shy! Of course you have! I’ve heard no end of charming stories about the fun you two have together!”

Sacha doubted that. But he thought it was nice of Mrs. Astral to say so. Unlike her daughter, she apparently cared about making people feel welcome and comfortable. Basking in the warmth of Mrs. Astral’s smile, he tried to be charitable toward Lily. It must be hard to live up to such a dazzling mother. Not that Lily wasn’t pretty enough in her own way. But she couldn’t hold a candle to her mother. As for personality, he supposed Lily must take after her father there. And while that sort of personality was no doubt very useful in a captain of industry, it was hardly the thing for a girl!

The tea arrived, and Mrs. Astral made a point of serving Sacha personally. She asked him how much milk and sugar he wanted in his tea as if he were a grown man instead of a boy. And when she handed him his cup, her hand brushed his in a way that made him feel very grown-up indeed.

“Now, Sacha,” she said, fixing him with her brilliant green gaze, “you must tell me all about your fascinating work with Inquisitor Wolf! He’s my hero! I’m simply desperate to meet him!”

“Then why don’t you invite him to dinner?” Lily interrupted.

Mrs. Astral cast a cool eye upon her daughter, as if she’d just noticed her presence and wasn’t entirely pleased about it. “Darling, what are you wearing? If you must go out in public like that, can you take some decent clothes in a bag and change before you come home? What if someone saw you?”

Before Lily could answer, Mrs. Astral turned back to Sacha.

“Where has Inquisitor Wolf taken you so far, Sacha? I hope he’s not keeping you too much under wraps. I hope he’s introducing you to the kind of people who can help your career. Has he taken you to see Teddy Roosevelt yet? They’re great friends. Or at least they used to be, back when poor Teddy was still the commissioner of police.” Mrs. Astral’s lovely face clouded over as if it made her unutterably sad to even think about “poor Teddy” not being police commissioner anymore. “It was so hard on him, being run out of town by that distasteful scandal! Why, he was so mortified that he ran off to Africa on safari and still hasn’t come back.”

“Yes,” Lily said with relish. “and when J. P. Morgaunt heard Teddy was gone, he went straight down to the Union Club, opened a case of champagne, and made a toast: ‘May the first lion Teddy meets do its duty!’”

“Lily!” Mrs. astral chided. “I’m sure dear Mr. Morgaunt would never say anything so bloodthirsty!”

Actually, Sacha thought this sounded like exactly the kind of thing dear Mr. Morgaunt would say. But it did seem rather coarse of Lily to mention it in polite company. And Mrs. Astral’s shock seemed like just another proof of her refined nature and womanly delicacy.

She leaned forward to pour Sacha another cup of tea. “You must be a tremendous help to Inquisitor Wolf. I’m sure he’s made use of your extraordinary talents already. Is it really true that you can see witches?”

“Well,” Sacha said modestly, “I don’t like to brag about it.”

“Oh, but you can tell me. I wouldn’t think it was bragging. I know all sorts of extraordinary people. I cultivate extraordinary people.”

“Like mushrooms,” Lily muttered. “By keeping them in the dark and burying them in mounds of bull—”

“What’s that, darling?” Mrs. Astral interrupted. “You really should learn to stop mumbling. And try not to frown like that. It makes you look even more ill-tempered than you are. I’m sorry, Sacha, you were telling me about how you help Inquisitor Wolf catch witches. How do you spot a witch? What is it that gives her away to you?”

On the other end of the sofa, Lily slammed her teacup into its saucer with an outraged rattle, but Sacha ignored her. “Well, uh… I don’t see the same thing every time. Sometimes it’s a kind of aura or halo. and other times it’s more like feeling than seeing.”

Mrs. Astral rested her chin on one hand and leaned forward as if she couldn’t wait to hear more. “And does a witch have to do magic for you to see these emanations, or can you see them all the time?”

“They have to do magic in front of me,” Sacha said. But this sounded rather unimpressive to him. And he definitely wanted to impress Mrs. Astral. So he added, in what he hoped was a grown-up and mysterious voice, “Most of the time.”

Mrs. Astral sat up and seemed almost to catch her breath at this. “Most of the time? What about the other times?”

“Well, you know … there are different clues.”

“Such as?”

“The usual,” Sacha said haltingly, trying to stumble out of the lie he’d tangled himself in. “Pointy noses, and warts, and wrinkles—”

“Oh!” She laughed in a way that struck Sacha, just for an instant, as not very nice. But then she smiled at him, and he forgot about it. Her green eyes glittered as she leaned forward to pat his hand. “How very clever of you!”

Mrs. Astral yawned and glanced over Sacha’s head at the monumental grandfather clock. “My, how late it’s gotten!” she cried. “How time passes when one’s in such charming company! Tell me, Sacha, how were you planning to get home? Is your family’s car coming to fetch you, or can I offer you a ride in ours?”

“No, thank you!” Sacha practically yelped. He could just imagine the look on the chauffeur’s face when he got his first glimpse of Hester Street.

“Really, I insist. In fact, I can’t think why I never thought of it before.” Lily’s mother rang the bell and a uniformed maidservant appeared so fast that Sacha wondered if she’d been listening at the keyhole.

“Biddy,” Mrs. Astral ordered, “instruct the chauffeur to drive Mr. Kessler home. And tell him that from today forward I desire him to drive Mr. Kessler home every night when he picks Lily up. That will give you two a little time to relax and chat after work every day. Won’t that be fun?” She smiled graciously at the two children and swept out of the room in a fragrant cloud of frangipani and orange blossoms.

As soon as her mother was gone, Lily kicked the coffee table hard enough to send tea sloshing into the saucers. “I don’t know why she’s being so nice to you!” she snarled. “She must want something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is!”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You think I have nothing to offer because I’m poor? You think that makes me not worth talking to?”

“Frankly, yes. at least as far as my mother’s concerned. She’s a dreadful snob.”

“It seems to me like you’re the snob, not her. She’s not the one who could barely bring herself to invite me here!”

She rolled her eyes. “I knew you were rude. But I didn’t know you were stupid, too!”

“I’m stupid? How stupid is it to take a job where you’re too embarrassed to even introduce the people you work with to your mother?”

He expected Lily to fire back a blistering retort, but instead she just stared at him with her mouth hanging open. “Wait a minute. You think I was embarrassed to introduce you to her?”

Before he could make sense of that question, she half dragged him across the room and pointed to a framed engraving on the wall. “You want to know about my mother? Take a look at that!”

The engraving showed two women shaking hands with each other in the middle of a ballroom. Both women were dazzlingly beautiful, and one of them bore a striking resemblance to Maleficia Astral. They smiled at each other as sweetly as if they were the best of friends — but each one held a vicious long-handled ax hidden in the silk folds of her ball gown.

The caption below the picture read “The Reigning Beauty Greets Her Newest Rival.”

“That’s my mother,” Lily announced. “And what’s more, she’s proud of it. Proud enough to hang that picture on the wall and laugh about it. The purpose of her life is running New York society. The only thing she cares about is being rich and beautiful and in control. She doesn’t even have time for her own daughter unless it makes her look good in front of her rich friends. So you tell me, Sacha Kessler, why would she waste her time on you?”

Sacha opened his mouth to return her insult in kind — but then he saw something in her face that made him swallow his anger. It wasn’t snobbishness that had made Lily sneak him into her house, he realized. It was shame. Lily Astral was ashamed of her own mother. So ashamed that she had been just as desperate to keep Sacha from meeting Mrs. Astral as Sacha was to keep Lily from knowing he lived in the Hester Street tenements.

A tickling little mouse of a thought scampered through his mind. He wasn’t ashamed of his parents, it whispered to him. Now that the beautiful Maleficia wasn’t in front of him, he could see that her charming small talk had mostly been mean-spirited gossip. Sacha’s hardworking father had a dignity that Mrs. Astral would never match, for all her jewels and money. And as for Sacha’s mother, the most embarrassing thing she’d do if she ever met Lily was stuff fattening food down her throat and shrei about how skinny she was. So if Lily was brave enough to let Sacha meet the mother she was so ashamed of, then surely he could be brave enough to tell her that he lived in the tenements?

But somehow he couldn’t. In fact, knowing how Lily felt about her mother made it even harder. And he knew why, too, though he didn’t want to admit it to himself. Lily wouldn’t despise his family for being poor. She’d do worse than despise them. She’d feel sorry for them. She’d want to help them. And the last thing on earth Sacha wanted was Lily Astral’s charity.