Finally the music faded. Sacha brushed a hand across his brow and realized he’d broken out in a cold sweat. What a horrible invention! It was indecent. Shameful. Imagine taking a person’s deepest feelings and playing them as if they were the latest show tune! Even Uncle Mordechai wouldn’t expose himself like that. And Sacha didn’t have to wonder for a second what his father would think about it.
He glanced furtively at the others to see if they were as shattered by the strange music as he was. But Wolf and Morgaunt both seemed as cool as ever. And Lily seemed to have enjoyed it. In fact she was so enthralled that for a minute Sacha was afraid she was going to ask Miss da Serpa to play the awful thing again.
“That’s the most astounding thing I’ve ever heard!” she gushed. “It makes the best opera ever written sound trite and artificial and … and obvious. Such passion! I mean, there’s no other word for it, is there? And yet, so contained. As if whoever it is has a job to do that’s so important he can’t afford to think about what he wants — or even who he really is inside — until it’s done.”
She blinked, obviously struck by a thought that surprised her. “Do all the cylinders sound like that?” she asked Morgaunt. “All those people I pass by in the street without a second glance every day — do they all have that going on inside their souls?”
“No.” Morgaunt smiled that sly smile that set Sacha’s teeth on edge. “This one’s rather special.”
“Yes, I suppose it must be.” Lily sighed a little regretfully. “I’m sure my soul wouldn’t sound nearly so interesting. I don’t think English governesses and Newport beach parties are the sort of life experience that creates passionate intensity.”
Wolf coughed politely, as if to suggest that maybe it was time to get back to the main point of their visit. “There are a lot of cylinders in that cabinet,” he observed. “Edison’s been a busy boy.”
“Haven’t you been reading the papers? We plan to put a witch detector in every police station in the city by this time next year.”
Wolf pushed his glasses up on his nose and peered myopically at Morgaunt through the smudges and fingerprints. “If you do that, you’ll unleash a witch-hunt the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since the Salem Witch Trials.”
“Witch-hunt is such a melodramatic word!” Morgaunt’s smile broadened. “I prefer to call it a registry. A magician’s etheric emanations are every bit as unique as his fingerprints. Edison’s etherograph will generate magical fingerprints of every man, woman, and child in New York. Once we have those on file, we’ll be able to identify the author of any magical crime — or, for that matter, any unauthorized use of magic whatsoever. What’s more, we’ll have a registry of every potential magical criminal in the city. We can make it illegal to employ them. Or rent an apartment to them. Or let their children go to school. We can wash the streets clean of conjure men and soothsayers and fortunetellers. We can clean up this city once and for all and make it safe for respectable nonmagical people.” he grinned. “And, naturally, we can make sure that people do it all with our patented etherographs, sold through our dealerships, serviced by our repairmen, and rendered obsolete by our new models.”
“Brilliant,” Wolf said listlessly.
“No, Wolf. The brilliant part is what happens later, after we’ve made it impossible for any law-abiding citizen to employ witches or use magic. There’ll be no magic left to do all the vital things ordinary Americans depend on witches to do. No magic to wash their dishes. No magic to cook the food in their restaurants. No magic to make their clothes and books and toys and candy”—here his gaze slid toward Sacha and Lily. “In a little while your average American will go from one year to the next without witnessing a single act of real magic. A little longer, and they’ll forget whatever magic they used to know. A little longer still, and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as magic.”
“And then they’ll depend on your machines for everything.”
“Precisely.”
“And you?” Wolf asked in the dull tones of an accountant trying to make sure he’d gotten his numbers right. “Will people like you and the Astrals and the Vanderbilks stop using magic too?”
“Why should we?” Morgaunt asked boldly. “Magic is only dangerous in the hands of little people. It’s perfectly safe in the hands of men with the strength and foresight to guide America into the future.”
“That’s not what the law says,” Wolf pointed out, still in the same dogged monotone.
“Law!” Morgaunt scoffed. “Law is for drunks and weaklings. The only law that applies to superior men is the law of power. You should know that, Wolf. You’re no ordinary plodder.”
“Oh, I’m quite ordinary,” Wolf protested.
“You just pretend to be,” Morgaunt snapped, “because of some half-baked romantic notion of democracy and equality. But how deep would I have to scratch before you showed your true colors?”
And then Morgaunt began to work magic.
It was so subtle that at first Sacha didn’t even see it. Morgaunt still had that coldly mocking smile on his face. He lounged in his wing chair swirling his Scotch lazily in one hand. But somehow it felt like he had reached out and grasped Wolf by the throat and was slowly strangling him.
Before Sacha knew what was happening, the entire room was thick with magic. And this was nothing like the ordinary everyday magic Sacha knew from Hester Street. This magic was larger than mere human beings. It gave him the same unnerving feeling he always got when he looked into the open pits that workmen were digging all over town for the new subway lines. You walked around the city all your life thinking that you were standing on solid ground. But then they brought in the steam shovels and ripped up the cobblestones, and you realized that the earth — the real, living, breathing earth — was still alive down there in the dark beneath the city. And if it ever woke up, it would shake off New York and all its teeming millions like a dog shaking off a flea.
Wolf and Morgaunt stared at each other. The room seemed about to catch fire. The very air crackled with magic. It felt as if all the magic in the world were being sucked in around them like a great whirlpool, spiraling down into the glowing golden liquid in Morgaunt’s hand.
Morgaunt raised his glass in an ironic toast. “Here’s to you and me, Wolf. The last two honest men in new York.”
Wolf didn’t answer. a dark flush had spread across his usually pale features. His breath was as ragged as if he’d just run up a flight of stairs. Sacha wanted to rush to help him, and he could see that Lily felt the same. But they were both frozen to the spot.
And then it was over.
Morgaunt tossed back his drink with one sharp flick of his wrist and broke the spell. Wolf staggered, gasping for breath.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Morgaunt taunted. “Isn’t it time to trot off and arrest someone like a good little policeman?”
“I haven’t seen the crime scene. I haven’t interviewed witnesses. I haven’t even spoken to Edison. and you want me to arrest someone? You don’t need an Inquisitor on this case, Mr. Morgaunt. You need an errand boy.”
Morgaunt grinned. “You wound me. I would never turn you into an errand boy. By all means, conduct your little investigation. But the end will be the same no matter what you do. It’s all just a game of chess, Wolf. Ordinary players take the board as they find it. I set the board up before the game ever starts so that no matter what moves you make, I still win.”