“Because they didn’t give me any tests except the normal IQ test everyone always gets.” She dropped her eyes and flushed slightly. “Sacha, that cylinder Morgaunt played for us? It was you, wasn’t it?”
And then she did look at him. A look that slipped through his ribs like a knife blade and cut him to the heart. He hated the very idea of having Lily Astral look at him like that.
Don’t think you know me just because you listened to some stupid song, he wanted to tell her. And then he realized that he wouldn’t want to tell her that if he didn’t secretly suspect she was right. Which made him even more furious.
“You’re wrong,” he told her between gritted teeth. “You’re dead wrong, and I’m going to prove it.”
“How?”
It sounded like a challenge. Or maybe Sacha just wanted it to sound that way. A small part of him knew how unreasonable he was being. But it was easier to be angry than to be reasonable. Anything was easier than admitting that Lily might be right.
“By summoning the dybbuk myself!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. On Horrible Bird Feet
TWILIGHT CAME EARLY on that gray fall evening. And it found Sacha shivering in the shadows across the street from his grandfather’s shul.
He’d spent the last two hours hunched in the darkest booth of the Café Metropole drinking coffee he couldn’t afford and feverishly poring over the armful of practical Kabbalah books he’d managed to smuggle out of the house under his coat. Rabbi Kessler disapproved of practical Kabbalah so strongly that he wouldn’t even keep those books at the shul. Instead they lurked on a high shelf at the back of the Kesslers’ only closet, safely hidden from impious eyes and rash young aspiring Kabbalists.
That had been a lucky break for Sacha tonight. Or maybe not so lucky. Summoning a dybbuk had seemed like a good idea (sort of) in broad daylight. But as the street lamps flickered on and night settled over the city, it was starting to seem like a very, very bad one.
He huddled into his coat and tried not to think about what else might be hiding in the shadows with him. It felt odd to be watching Grandpa Kessler’s shul from across the street instead of sitting inside with the rest of the students. He was seeing it from the outside now, like a stranger would. It looked shabbier than he remembered, and yet somehow more exotic and otherworldly too.
Mostly, though, it looked small. It was just one shop in one street in one neighborhood of a city with a million streets and a thousand neighborhoods. You could walk away from it and turn a corner or two and never find your way back again. And in New York you could do the same thing with everything else in your life, even being a Jew. People did it every day. Now, looking at his grandfather’s little shul while he waited for Rosie and Lily to join him, Sacha realized for the first time in his life that he could be one of those people. He didn’t know whether to be excited by the idea or frightened of it.
Lily arrived first, sneaking up so quietly that he practically jumped out of his skin when she touched his elbow.
“Whose school is this again?” she asked.
“Look — just never mind, okay?”
“Oh, a little nervous, are we?”
“Yes. and you’re not helping.”
“Are you sure you want to go through with this, Sacha? I mean, don’t feel like you have to impress me or anything. Just say the word, and we can go tell Inquisitor Wolf everything.”
“I’m fine!” Sacha snapped.
“Okey-dokey. Now where is that Rosie! If she’s finked out on us—”
But there she was, bustling along the pavement toward them.
“Sorry!” Rosie cried.
“Shhhh!”
“Sorry! My mother just would not go to sleep. I was at my wits’ end trying to figure out how to get out of the house without her hearing me. How’d you two manage it, anyway?”
“My sister’s covering for me,” Sacha said guiltily. “My parents think I’m at shul.” Which he was … sort of. “I’ve got a couple of hours until they’ll figure out I’m not.”
“Two hours?” Lily asked incredulously. “Is that the best you could do?”
“Oh, and pray tell how you managed!”
“Easy. My mother’s throwing a fancy dress ball tonight. She always sends me to bed early when she’s entertaining.”
“But won’t she come in to check on you before she goes to sleep?”
Lily made a face. “She’s not exactly that kind of mother, Sacha.”
Grandpa Kessler’s students were filtering out of the shul by this time, straggling onto the sidewalk in twos and threes and shuffling down Canal Street with the flatfooted walk of exhausted men who’d been on their feet since before dawn.
When the last student came out and the lights dimmed, Rosie started forward — but Sacha grabbed her by the elbow.
“Wait!” he whispered.
A moment later, Grandpa Kessler joined the last of his students on the way home.
And that left Mo.
It seemed like he’d never be done cleaning up, but at last the shammes came out, shut the door behind him, and began to bolt the heavy locks. It took forever. Actually, it took three times forever, because he had to check everything twice after he’d locked it. But at last the wait was over.
“Come on,” Sacha whispered, pulling the stolen — no, he corrected himself, just borrowed—keys out of his pocket.
Grandpa Kessler probably hadn’t unlocked his shul himself since the day Mo arrived from Poland, and it showed. The old iron keys stuck in the locks so badly that at first Sacha was convinced he’d taken the wrong ones by mistake. But finally he coaxed open the last lock, and the three of them slipped inside.
He stumbled through the dark room to the cupboard where Mo always kept the candles. He took as many as he could carry, lit them, and set them all around the rickety deal table where his grandfather’s students studied. The candle-light flared up and chased the shadows back into the corners. But it didn’t help. It just made them look thicker and more sinister and dybbuk-filled than ever.
“So what do we do now?” Lily asked.
Sacha read through the summoning spell one last time. There were a lot of words in it that he didn’t understand. In fact, struggling through the archaic Hebrew had reminded him uncomfortably of preparing for his bar Mitzvah. He was starting to think that he might turn out to be just as bad at summoning dybbuks as he’d been at memorizing Torah lines.
To be honest, he was hoping he would be.
“First we need to draw a circle on the floor,” he told the two girls. “Then we need a bedsheet.”
“Cripes,” Lily complained. “You could have told me you needed a bedsheet.”
“And chalk,” he added. “Did anyone bring chalk?”
“No. Did you?”
“If I’d brought it, would I be asking you?”
“Just because you’re scared,” Lily observed in her prissiest voice, “is no reason to be rude.”
“Shhh!” Rosie hissed. “Someone’s coming!”
They all dove to the floor and lay there while footfalls sounded on the street outside and dim lights swept across the room. As the footsteps faded off down the street, Rosie crept to the shopfront window and gave the all clear.