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still asking himself that question when he stepped into the booking hall of the Inquisitors Division of the New York City Police Department.
    At first glance, the Inquisitors Division looked just like any other police station. High ceilings. Dirty walls painted in an institutional shade of green. Marble floors littered with spittoons, cigarette butts, and tobacco stains. An ornately carved booking counter. On one side of the counter was the waiting area, where victims and criminals were packed elbow to elbow on hard wooden benches. On the other side was the typing pool: two dozen efficient-looking girls in prim and proper shirtwaists pounding away at clattering typewriters.
    The Inquisitors stood around the booking counter, gossiping and joking and flirting with the typing pool girls. Some of them were in uniform and some were in plain-clothes. Most of them looked Irish. And all of them looked far too intimidating for Sacha to risk more than a quick sidelong glance at them.
    It wasn't until Sacha saw the criminals that he truly realized this was no ordinary police station. Scanning the faces of the suspects chained to the long wooden bench was like reading an illustrated catalog of magical crime. There were horse whisperers decked out in soft tweed caps and rumpled corduroys. There were ink-stained hex writers from every corner of Europe. There was even a fresh-faced traveling salesman toting a leather-bound edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica.
He had a look of long-suffering innocence on his face that seemed to say getting arrested was just a terrible mistake. But the cops all knew him, and this obviously wasn't his first trip to the lockup. He must be a conjure man, Sacha decided. The encyclopedia probably turned into rats (or worse) as soon as he'd pocketed your final payment.
    In fact, a lot of the suspects seemed to have been here before. There was something practiced and coordinated about the way they all slid down the bench, with a little clink of their chains, when the desk sergeant finished booking a suspect and called out "next!"
    At the moment the sergeant was struggling to keep the peace between a scrawny little fellow and a shrieking woman who seemed determined to take the law into her own hands. The arresting officer was doing his best to keep the pair apart, but he was no match for the victim's stiletto-sharp umbrella.
    "You again, Bob?" the sergeant sighed as the outraged woman swiped at the little man but hit the arresting officer's ear instead. "We oughta start charging you rent."
    "I'm innocent this time!" Bob cried. "I swear I was just picking her pocket!"
    "Come on, Bob. You think I was born yesterday?"
    "It's the truth, Sergeant! I just needed a couple bucks to take a flutter on the ponies."
    "I'll give you a flutter!" the fat woman bellowed. "He stole a lock of my hair, officer. Yanked it right out while he was pretending to bump into me. But I'm onto him. I grew up in Chicago, an' I know a conjure man when I see one. One minute it's 'Pardon me, missus,' and the next minute you've been hexed into signing away your life's savings!"
    "Don't worry, ma'am, we'll get to the bottom of this. Bob, are you willing to submit to a lie detector test?"
    Bob puffed out his scrawny chest and tried to look virtuous and indignant—not so easy when you're being poked in the ribs by an umbrella. "I got nothing to hide."
    The sergeant sighed and turned around to scan the desks behind him. "Margie! Lie detector!"
    One of the typing pool girls looked up from her machine, squinted at the accused with her hands still poised over the keys, and drawled, "He's lying."
    "Aw, come on, Margie!" Bob cried, the picture of outraged innocence. "How can you tell from all the way over there? The least you could do is look a guy in the eye before you call him a liar!"
    Margie came over to the booking desk and looked Bob in the eye. Sacha recognized her now as the bored girl who had administered his Inquisitorial Quotient test. He