The Seal of Solomon (20 page)

I felt him touch my shoulder.

“There's something wrong with me, isn't there?” I whimpered. “There's something very bad happening to me.”

“I think so, Alfred.”

“Because I looked into its eyes.” I remembered Carl writhing on the desert sand, screaming gibberish as he tore at his own face.

“It could be.”

“Well, is it or not? Aren't you the demonologist?”

“Alfred,” he said softly, patting my shoulder. “Alfred, it will soon be over,” he said.

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

36

Op Nine changed his clothes before we left, putting on a rumpled jacket and a tie with a mustard-colored stain on it. He looked like your typical high school assistant principal or a salesman at a low-end used car lot.

We went downstairs and the valet pulled the Taurus around to the front of the hotel. I saw Op Nine slip him a fifty-dollar bill. That seemed excessive for somebody supposedly traveling incognito and didn't match his getup or the vehicle we were driving. After getting a tip like that, the valet was sure to remember us.

Op Nine jumped back on the interstate and we headed north. A light, freezing rain was falling and we passed a couple of cars that had spun off the slick road, the flashing of their hazard lights sparkling red and yellow in the frozen condensation on the windshield.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Shaky.”

He just grunted back. His whole being seemed focused on the road or what lay at the end of it.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Evanston, just north of the city.”

“Mike lives in Evanston?”

“His mother does. Everyone, Alfred, without exception, has a . . . vulnerability. A pressure point, if you will. For the Hyena, that point is his mother.”

“What are you going to do to his mother, Op Nine?”

“I didn't say I was going to do anything to her.”

“I read Section Nine. You're allowed to do anything you want to her, aren't you?”

He didn't say anything.

“You could kill her if you wanted.”

“I would not want that. Alfred, simply because I have certain . . . latitude doesn't mean I take pleasure in it. It is a great responsibility and burden.”

“Yeah. Playing God usually is.”

“I did not volunteer to be a Superseding Protocol Agent.”

“That's not the point,” I said. “The point is if you had to hurt her or even kill her to get Mike, you would. An innocent old lady. Not that you
could
, but you
would
.”

“If the world were at stake—wouldn't you?”

I had to think about how to answer that, but thinking was becoming increasingly difficult for me. My head had not stopped hurting since I woke up in OIPEP headquarters. I felt a little better since my breakdown in the hotel room, though. The rotten fruit smell wasn't as bad, but the inside of my head still felt fragile.

We took the Evanston exit and soon Op Nine was cruising down tree-lined streets with brick sidewalks and quaint little storefronts, their display windows decked out for Christmas. Strands of white lights decorated the bare branches of the trees. I'd had no idea it was the Christmas season. Somehow I had completely missed Thanksgiving.

“Mom was a terrible cook,” I said as Op Nine drove us out of downtown and into a neighborhood of big houses set far back from the road, with those light-up deer and spiral Christmas trees and walkways lined with candy canes. “Every Thanksgiving she made this casserole out of sauerkraut and brown sugar.”

“That seems odd.”

“It wasn't odd; it was awful, but every year I ate a plateful of that crap—you know, so I wouldn't hurt her feelings. The turkey was always dry, the mashed potatoes lumpy, and when you sliced into the pumpkin pie, all this brown liquid ran out and filled up the plate. I'm not sure what the brown liquid was about.”

Op Nine had cut the headlamps and slowed to a crawl down the street, lined on either side with huge oaks and maples that must be breathtaking in the fall but now loomed like many-armed monsters reaching over the dark road.

“Sometimes I thought maybe she was cooking that way on purpose, so I'd lose some weight. ‘Why don't you ride your bike, Alfred?' she'd ask if she caught me inside reading a book or watching TV. Or she'd go, ‘What's Nick doing? Maybe you could invite him over to play some basketball.' She would snack on rice cakes. I don't think she liked rice cakes, but she ate them in front of me all the time, like every time I saw her she was munching on a rice cake, I think maybe the idea was to make me curious about rice cakes and eat them too. I've been meaning to see if there's been any research into rice cakes as a possible carcinogen, like maybe there's a connection between all those rice cakes and her cancer. Then I could sue the rice cake people. I don't really need the money and I know it wouldn't bring Mom back, but it would send a message and maybe even shut down the whole rice cake industry, so nobody else dies from eating too many rice cakes.”

“What kind of cancer did she have?” he asked.

“Melanoma. Skin cancer.”

“I doubt it was the rice cakes, then.”

He pulled to the curb and cut the engine. We were parked in front of a handsome two-story Colonial with a brick walkway and big columns on the front. Unlike most of the houses on the block, this one had no lights on.

“Doesn't look like anybody's home,” I said.

“I would be surprised if she were. The Hyena was a Company operative, Alfred. He understands better than most the pressure point theory.”

“So she's not here. Doesn't that mean we're wasting our time?”

“I prefer to believe he is wasting his time.”

He stepped out of the car and after a second I got out too. The rain had stopped. It was bitterly cold, a dead cold with no wind, but I could hear the wind, high in the cloud cover above us. I looked up where the light from the streetlamp bathed the underside of the clouds, but they weren't marching across the sky.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Op Nine.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“It's not wind, is it?”

“No.”

I heard voices whispering, but I couldn't make out the words, like hearing someone through a wall as they talked in another room. It got under your skin, a maddening itch you couldn't scratch.

“Are they here?” I asked. “Did they follow us here?”

He started across the street, toward the house directly across from Mike's mom's.

“What are we doing?” I asked, trotting to keep up, although my trot was thrown off by my injured leg.

“Say nothing. Follow my lead.”

He rang the doorbell. Our breath fogged and swirled around our heads.

A middle-aged lady with dark bobbed hair opened the door. Behind her, in the foyer, were two little kids, staring at us.

Op Nine went Midwestern. “Evening, how are ya? I'm Detective Bruce Givens with the Evanston PD.” He flashed a badge at her. I looked at him. His face had changed again. He didn't quite look like Op Nine or the face he used for Lord Polmeroy; he looked just like a police detective should look. My opinion might have been influenced by the fact that he just identified himself as one, though. If he had said
I'm Bob from Lucky's
Used Cars
, I probably would have thought,
Yep, that's Bob
.

“Hate to bother you,” he went on. “But I'm wondering if you could tell me if you've seen this kid before?” He jerked his head toward me.

The lady squinted at me. “I don't think so, no.”

“We've had a couple calls, some vandalism with the yard decorations. Found him wandering around the Arnold place just now.”

“Agnes's?” She looked over his shoulder at the dark house across the street.

“That's right. Says he's selling magazine subscriptions.”

“Well, I don't know about that. But Agnes is out of town.”

“He didn't try to sell you a subscription?”

“No. I've never seen this boy before.”

He turned to me. “Thought you said you stopped by this house.”

I shrugged, rolled my eyes, and tried to curl my upper lip like a hoodlum. A prep school hoodlum, judging from my clothes. I didn't say anything. I was a lot of things, but actor wasn't one of them.

“That's what I thought,” Op Nine said. “Okay, let's call your folks.” He nodded to the lady with the saucer-eyed kids hovering behind her. “Sorry to bother you. Have a good evening.” He took me by the elbow and walked me down the drive.

He stopped at the road, as if he had just thought of something. He turned back toward the house. She was still standing in the doorway, watching us, a faceless silhouette.

“Agnes is out of town, you said?”

“For two weeks. Her son sent her on a cruise.”

“He's house-sitting, then?”

“No. I think he went with her. Early Christmas present.”

He nodded. “Maybe I'll just take a look around over there.

Just to make sure everything is okay.”

He turned me back around and marched me across the street to the car.

“She's watching, Alfred. Get in the back.”

He opened the back door and I slid inside. He got behind the wheel and closed his door.

“What now?” I asked. “She isn't here.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. This is a subtle game, Alfred. No doubt he has anticipated this move and also anticipated we would understand his anticipation, and therefore would not pursue him here, thus there would be no need to move his mother.”

I thought about it. Then I said, “Huh?”

“Like Poe's purloined letter, he hides the object in plain sight.”

“Like whose what?” I looked out the window. The neighbor had closed the door, but I thought I saw a shadow in the window next to it.

“Mike took her on a cruise,” I said.

“Unlikely.”

“Why are we just sitting here?”

“I'm interrogating you.”

He pulled a thin black object from his pocket and held it toward me. I thought it was a pen.

“You want me to write something?”

“It is a communication device,” he answered. “Press the red button to speak, release to listen.”

“Oh. Walkie-talkies, I get it.” I had seen one of these before. Ashley had it in the woods outside Knoxville. I took it from him. “In case we get separated.”

“We will be separated,” he said. “You're staying here.”

“I am?”

“The neighbor is watching,” he said. He reached into his pocket again. This time he offered me the modified flare gun, the mini-3XD loaded with anti-demon ordnance.

“They're here?” My heart fluttered with budding panic. I thought of the strange whispering I heard high above the clouds.

He shrugged. I said, “I don't want that thing. I'll probably just shoot off my foot.”

“It may buy you a few moments. If anything happens, hit the blue button on top of the communicator.”

“What happens when I hit the blue button?”

“It will send a signal to me that you're in trouble.”

“Like a panic button?”

“Yes. Like a panic button.” He dropped the mini-3XD in my lap and put his hand on the door handle.

“It's a poor design, if you ask me,” I said, looking at the communicator. “Red to talk and blue to panic. Panic buttons should be red.”

“I will speak with R and D about it.” He gave me one of his rare smiles, and I had a sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to snatch the demon gun from my lap and blow his head off with it. It was so vivid, I shivered and shoved away the image of his head exploding. The shove caused a shock wave of pain behind my eyes.

“Don't worry, Alfred,” he said. “Just a quick look around.

He had to remove her quickly and he may have gotten sloppy. No more than fifteen minutes, I should think.”

He got out of the car, slammed the door, and I was alone. I watched him walk up the drive to the dark house. He stood on the front stoop for a minute. I couldn't really see what he was doing; a hedge blocked my view. I looked to my left and noticed he forgot to lock the doors. I leaned over the front seat to hit the automatic lock button, and when I sat back, Op Nine was gone.

I guessed he used some high-tech gizmo to get in the house. I didn't have a watch on, so I would have to rely on my own interior clock, which had never been that great. I was always late for class, for example. The bell would ring and I would think,
Okay, I got five minutes
. Then after only two minutes of Kropp-time, the tardy bell would ring.