could see magic drifting lazily around her head like smoke rings. He would never have thought that magic could look bored, but there was no mistaking it: This was bored magic.
"Yep," Margie said. "You're lying."
"Margie! I thought we were friends! How can you do me this way?"
But Margie just yawned and walked back to her typewriter.
Sacha was still shaking his head over this when a mountainous Inquisitor in full uniform appeared in front of him. The name on the giant's gleaming Inquisitor's badge was Mahoney.
"And why aren't you in school on this fine Monday morning?" Mahoney asked him.
"I'm not supposed to be in school," Sacha protested. "I work here."
"Are we hiring children now?"
"I'm not a child, I'm thirteen!"
"Well, excuse me," Mahoney said with a good-natured grin. "And who might you be coming here to apprentice for?"
"Inquisitor Wolf."
Mahoney's friendly grin vanished. "You're the boy who can see witches."
"IâI guess so," Sacha stuttered.
"And what might your name be, if you don't mind my asking?"
"K-Kessler?"
"K-Kessler." A smile spread across Mahoney's face. But this time there was nothing good-natured about it. "What kind of name is that?"
"Uh ... Russian?"
"It don't sound Russian to me."
Sacha was almost whispering now. "Jewish?"
"Well, well." Mahoney called out to the Inquisitors gathered around the booking desk. "Lookee here, fellows! It's Wolf's new apprentice. The freak. And that's not the half of it. Turns out he's one of the Chosen People!"
Someone snickered. Cold, unfriendly eyes turned toward Sacha from every corner of the room. Even the criminals seemed to be looking down their noses at him.
Later, Sacha thought of all sorts of things he could have said to Mahoney. Like that he was as good an American as anyone else. Or that Mahoney could go back to Ireland and eat potatoes if he was smart enough to find any. Or ... well, none of it was exactly brilliant. But it was all better than what he actually said. Which was nothing at all.
"Run along, then," Mahoney said when he saw that Sacha wasn't going to stand up for himself. "And don't worry. You and Wolf ought to suit each other fine. He's the most un-Christian soul that ever walked the halls of the Inquisitors Division."
***
Inquisitor Wolf's office was the last door at the end of the hall. It was a small, dusty room shaped like a shoe box, and its only window looked out on a blank brick wall covered with a painted advertisement for Mazik's Corsets and Ladies' Foundation Garments: "
It's not Magicâit's Mazik!
"
Every inch of wall in the office was stacked to the ceiling with case files. Someone had tried to impose order on the mess by stuffing the files into cardboard boxes, but most of the boxes were so full they were practically exploding. Dog-eared mug shots jockeyed for space with grimy newspaper clippings, unidentifiable objects taped to index cards, and handwritten notes scribbled on everything from train tickets to Chinese laundry receipts.
Amidst the avalanche of paper stood a desk so clean that it was hard to believe its owner worked in this disaster zone of an office. Behind the desk sat a young black man wearing a blue and white striped seersucker suit, a silk tie in a fashionable shade of mauve, and a haughty expression.
At first Sacha mistook him for a grownup, but in fact he was only sixteen or seventeen. Yet he was so self-assuredâand so impeccably dressedâthat he made Sacha feel like a grubby little boy. What on earth was he doing here? Surely he couldn't be an Inquisitor? He must be some kind of clerk, Sacha decided.
"Sit," the clerk told him, without even looking up from the file he was scribbling in.
Sacha looked around for a chair, but the only one he could see was buried under case files, just like everything else in the office. Sacha took the files from the chair and tried to decide where to put them. The top one on the stack was labeled CHINATOWN (IMMORTALS OF) . Sacha hesitated, wanting