The Inquisitor's Apprentice Read Online Free PDF

Salomon Ben Gabirol said, 'When God created woman, he made a mystery beyond all mysteries.' Hey, listen! We have a few minutes before I have to put you on the subway. What do you say we stop off at the Metropole for a cup of coffee?"
    Sacha stared at his father in amazement. The Café Metropole was Uncle Mordechai's territory. It was a place for fun and frivolity, where young men wasted time and money that they should be spending to support their families. If his father was willing to buy two whole coffees at the Metropole—and to stand at the bar for the precious minutes it took to drink them—then he must think Sacha's first day of work was a truly momentous occasion.
    Sacha nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and they set off for the Bowery.
    The turn north from Hester Street onto the Bowery always amazed Sacha, no matter how many times he made it. It was like crossing an ocean in a single step. Hester Street was a piece of the Old Country, where laundry hung from every fire escape and familiar faces smiled at you from every doorway. But the Bowery ... well, the way neighborhood women talked about the Bowery said it all. If they ran errands to the cluttered little shops on Hester Street, they'd say they'd been out to fetch bread or eggs or milk or buttons. But if they went to the Bowery they'd say, "I went to America today."
    And they were right. It
was
America. Plate-glass windows displayed everything from diamonds to cash registers. Horns blared as horse-drawn omnibuses battled with motorcars for control of the thronging avenue. Iron trestles marched overhead like monsters from a Jules Verne novel. And every twelve minutes—you could set your watch by it—the Elevated roared overhead, belching coal smoke and shaking the nearby buildings until their very foundations rattled.
    People were different on the Bowery too. They moved differently: with the purpose and efficiency of workers who had stripped off all their old habits in order to survive in a new country and a new century. Polish tailors mingled with the children of freed slaves and Italian stonemasons and Irish ditch diggers, shuttling back and forth every rush hour like cogs in a vast machine. Looking up the Bowery was like looking into the future. And at seven thirty on a Monday morning, the future looked like it was in a hurry.
    Sacha and his father struggled through the tide of commuters until they reached the corner of Grand Street. Then they dove out of the current and staggered through the polished mahogany doors of the Café Metropole.
    The Café Metropole was the spiritual home of every exiled European intellectual in the city. Your rude waiter (and the waiters at the Metropole proudly bore the title of rudest in New York) might have a master's degree in Theoretical Magery from Budapest or a doctorate in necronomics from Heidelberg. The shabby fellow drinking coffee at the next table could be a distinguished Kabbalist, or a radical Wiccanist philosopher, or an exiled aristocrat from one of the great magical dynasties of Europe.
    Of course, no one actually
did
magic at the Metropole; it was just about the most obvious place in New York for the Inquisitors to run one of their infamous undercover stings. Still, the Metropole's regulars included witches and wizards educated in the top European universities. And—according to rumor—even a Mage or two. There was no doubt about it: when you drank at the Metropole, you weren't just drinking coffee. You were drinking in a thousand-year-old tradition of Old World magic.
    At this hour the Metropole was full of humble working men grabbing a morning cup of coffee on their way to the docks or factories. They all seemed to know it was the first day of Sacha's apprenticeship.
Mazel tovs
rained down from every side. Even the pale and preoccupied Theoretical Magicians huddled in the back corner looked up from their geomantical proofs and smiled vaguely in Sacha's direction.
    Mr. Kessler