“A dybbuk. Or something very like one. Is it possible that your husband’s machine could have been used to manufacture it.”
Lily gasped. But Mrs. Worley just laughed. “Wherever did you get such a ridiculous idea?”
“Is it so ridiculous?”
“Of course! I’ve read all the newspaper articles about Edison’s etherograph over and over again. It’s just my husband’s machine dressed up with some new bells and whistles. It’s a harmless toy. This idea of theirs about fingerprinting magical criminals is quite distasteful, of course. But manufacturing dybbuks? No, Inquisitor. I know the machine inside and out, and that’s quite impossible.”
“Perhaps Edison added some other component—”
“There’s nothing you could add that could change it into what you’re describing. Look, I’ll show you how it works if you don’t believe me.” She smiled at Wolf’s apprehensive expression. “I assure you, it’s perfectly safe.”
Wolf sat down stoically in the chair she offered him, stretching out his long legs as if he expected to be a while. Mrs. Worley flicked a few switches. The machine hummed to life. The spindle turned, and the wax cylinder began to spin. And then … nothing. The needle hovered without descending. The fluted trumpet speaker was silent. As far as Worley’s machine was concerned, Wolf’s chair could have been empty.
“There’s a problem,” Wolf said.
“Yes. But it’s not with the machine. It’s with you.” Mrs. Worley hesitated. “I’ve never tried to record an Inquisitor before. But some subjects are more … resistant than others.”
“How so?”
“I think it has to do with having magical powers.” She bit her tongue, obviously worried she had offended him. “Not that I mean to be impertinent, Mr. Wolf. But you being an Inquisitor, well, one naturally assumes…”
“I understand. You think I’m resisting the device.”
“It’s probably something Inquisitors learn to do naturally, dealing with magical criminals the way you do. But if you can just … well … let it happen?”
Wolf leaned back in his chair. “Mrs. Worley, I surrender myself to you entirely.”
She started the machine up again. This time Wolf seemed to be listening intently for some sound no one else could hear. He must have heard it because after a moment he smiled and blinked in surprise. And then he laughed softly to himself and opened his hands in the same quick gesture with which he had freed the grounded swallow.
In that instant the needle sprang to life, and the Soul Catcher began to play the same unearthly music they’d heard in Morgaunt’s library.
But where that song had been excruciating, this one was … riveting. It was impossible to stop listening, just like it was impossible to stop staring when you rode the elevated right past people’s living room windows. Suddenly Sacha knew things about Wolf that he never would have guessed at … things he really didn’t have any right to know. He felt embarrassed, like he’d been caught stealing something.
“There,” Mrs. Worley said at last, switching the machine off. “Harmless, see?”
“But rather unnerving.” Wolf swiped the back of his sleeve across his brow. He looked pale and clammy and even more disheveled than usual.
“That’s just because of your being — you know. Ordinary people actually find it rather pleasant. Just as they enjoy admiring themselves in a mirror or looking at old photographs. Vanity, I suppose. But, as I said, quite harmless.”
“And that’s it?” Wolf asked.
“That’s it.” Mrs. Worley pulled the little gold and white cylinder out of the machine. “If Edison has made the machine into anything more than a parlor toy, then he’s invented something new, and I wouldn’t know enough to help you. Would you like your recording, though?” she asked when she noticed that Wolf was still frowning at it. “As a souvenir?”
“Thank you,” Wolf said gravely. he took the cylinder and slipped it into his pocket.
Wolf seemed to recover his composure rapidly after that. He decided he wanted to see the machine in action again, and when Lily volunteered to sit for it, he didn’t argue. Worley’s machine had no trouble recording Lily, though the tune it played back was sweet and wistful and disarmingly un-Lily-like. Sacha gazed at her, searching her face for a hint of this hidden gentleness.
“What are you looking at?” she snapped.
“Nothing!” What on earth had he been thinking? Lily Astral wasn’t sweet or sad or gentle. And if Worley’s ridiculous machine made her sound that way, then what better proof did you need that it was all a load of hooey?
“And anyway,” Lily prodded, “it’s your turn now, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t think I really—” Sacha began.
But then he noticed that Wolf had suddenly gone all vague and bland and absentminded. Wolf wanted him to do this. And resisting would only make Wolf start wondering about the very things Sacha least wanted him to think about.
“Sure,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant.
He sat down. The chair seemed to creak unnaturally loudly under his weight. Mrs. Worley turned the machine back on. It whirred and clicked for what seemed like an eternity. The cylinder spun. The needle hovered, and…
“That’s odd,” Mrs. Worley said.
Wolf leaned over her shoulder. “Is he doing the same thing I did?”
“No. And the machine’s working perfectly. You saw how well it recorded Miss Astral just now. It’s just — well — it’s almost as if—”
“Almost as if what?”
“As if there’s nothing there to record.”
Sacha stared at Mrs. Worley, trying to comprehend her words. He felt numb. He tried to work out what she meant, but all the ideas that occurred to him were so horrifying that he flinched away from them before the thoughts even had a chance to form in his mind.
“Sacha?”
Sacha jumped. How many times had Wolf said his name before he noticed?
“Sacha? are you all right?”
He looked into Wolf’s eyes and saw a depth of sympathy there that he would never have imagined possible if he hadn’t just heard the man’s soul turned into music.
He had a swift, startlingly vivid image of Wolf snatching him out of danger and throwing him up to safety just as he’d done for the grounded swallow. For one dizzying moment, he thought of confessing everything. Then he thought of Morgaunt’s laughing threats and the towering walls of Sing Sing and the sinister Semitic face of the Kabbalist in Edison’s etherograph ads. Wolf was a good man, but he was still an Inquisitor. Telling him wouldn’t solve Sacha’s problems. It would only hurt the people Sacha loved.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
Sacha had no idea how he made it back outside without being sick to his stomach. He could see Wolf and Lily staring at him. He could see the questions and doubts and suspicions swirling behind Wolf’s eyes. But it felt like he was stuck at the bottom of a well and they were much too far away to reach him.
Wolf ushered the two children into the cab, muttering something about having to apologize to their mothers for keeping them out so late. Sacha looked longingly down the Bowery toward Hester Street, only a few short blocks away. But he was trapped in his lie, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He was cold and weary and footsore by the time he finally turned onto Hester Street. To his relief, everything looked normal. The street was quiet at this time of night, but there were still scattered signs of life on the front stoops and fire escapes. Sacha slowed his pace a little, figuring that now he could take the time to catch his breath before he went inside.
And then he felt it. That same swirling, sinking motion he’d sensed in Morgaunt’s library, when he’d felt like all the magic in New York was spiraling down into Morgaunt’s golden glass of Scotch. Only now there seemed to be no center to the whirlpool. Just the bleak, aimless, drifting rattle of dead leaves scattering before a storm.