The Seal of Solomon (21 page)

A light rain began to fall again, rain mixed with little pellets that I figured was snow but maybe I had some Volkswagen-sized hail coming my way. I looked at the Christmas lights on the lawns, distorted by the wet glass of the car window, blurry-edged and dreamlike, and I remembered my “catch Santa” phase when I was a kid in Ohio. I was nine and determined to get a look at the jolly ol' elf with my own eyes. I drank four cans of Coke in an hour, and I really had no idea that caffeine was a laxative as well as a stimulant. I spent half the night on the john, doubled over in pain, afraid to call Mom for help, because I'd have to reveal my scheme.

The rain started coming down harder, and the ice pellets pinged on the roof and tapped on the windows. How long had he been gone? I could hardly see the house anymore for the rain. I began to imagine all sorts of horrible things happening to him in there. Had Mike anticipated this move (Op Nine had said he would) and was he waiting inside, crouched in the dark? Maybe Op Nine was already dead and Mike was sneaking up behind the car . . . I jerked around in my seat and peered out the back window, one hand gripping the gun, the other clutching the OIPEP communicator. I didn't see anything, but that didn't mean there wasn't anything, so I hit the red button and said loudly, because I didn't know where the mike was on the thing, “Op Nine, Op Nine, this is Alfred Kropp. Come back.” I released the button, realized I made a mistake, and pressed it again. “Uh, Op Nine, this is Alfred again. ‘Come back' means ‘please answer,' not literally ‘come back.' Sorry about that. Come back. I mean, over.”

Silence. I examined the sleek metal body of the communicator, but didn't see any controls besides the two buttons, no on/off switch and no volume control. Maybe there was a wireless earpiece that went with it and Op Nine forgot to give me that one little bit of essential equipment. Whatever was wrong, no sound came from the communicator.

Now what do I do? Wait here for him? I didn't think it had been fifteen minutes. Ten, tops. Maybe twelve. Twelve and a half, no more than that. Do I go in? And do what? If Mike was in that house, he'd take me out easily, probably much more easily than he took out Op Nine. Okay, so I stay in the car. Thirteen minutes now. Maybe. I could just hit the blue button. If Op Nine didn't come out, that meant something really bad had happened. If he did, I'd just apologize and say I hit the button on accident. He'd believe that after all the accidents I was responsible for. If Op Nine got killed in this operation, it would be my fault for losing my head in that battle and trying to take on those demons myself. I thought of Carl, or rather Carl's animated corpse in the morgue, the empty eye sockets and the hole where his heart should have been, and that was my fault too . . . but no, that really wasn't my fault; why did I think that was my fault? Carl got demon-fried before I laid hands on the ring. So I wasn't to blame for that, was I? All that happened before I got the Seal, didn't it? I tried to remember, but my memory was as fuzzy as the Christmas lights through the wet windows. Again I caught a whiff of that odd rotten smell, distinct as when you eat too much garlic and a half hour later you can smell it oozing from your pores.

I pressed the red button again. “Op Nine, Op Nine, this is Alfred. Answer if you can hear me. It's raining. Over.”

I counted to five, and then tried again. “Op Nine, really need to talk to you. This is Alfred, over.”

Nothing. Not even static. Maybe it was defective or maybe the batteries were dead. You would think highly specialized operatives—particularly a SPA like Op Nine—would check their equipment before a covert op like this one.

There was only one way to test it. Technically, I wasn't in a panic—not yet—but I was about as close as you can get. I decided I could always tell him I hit it accidentally.

I pressed the blue button.

I counted to ten. Nothing happened. He didn't come bursting through the hedges, gun drawn, to my rescue. He didn't come at all, even after I reached sixty and then gave up counting, slipped the mini-3XD into my coat pocket, and eased out the door that faced away from the street, so the mother of the saucer-eyed kids wouldn't see me. I ran bent over to the hedge, then ducked around it, putting it between me and the road. Now maybe if I stood up and walked casually toward the front door she might mistake me for Op Nine—or Detective Bruce Givens—though that seemed unlikely, since he was about three inches taller and twenty pounds lighter. Sometimes you have to go with all that's left, even if all that's left is foolish hope.

I sauntered up the walkway to the front door. I didn't see how Op Nine got in, but I figured I'd start with the door. The concrete was slick with ice and I had to walk very slowly. At the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch was a flower bed filled with leafless shrubs and a small figure standing guard, just to my left.

A yard gnome. I had a thing about yard gnomes, like I told Dr. Benderhall; I'm not sure why. I put them in the same class as clowns: something that's supposed to be funny but really is kind of scary. This particular yard gnome had seen his share of winters. The paint on the face was flecking off and the paint that remained had faded to various hues of gray.

I dropped to a crouch and shuffled to the door—I wasn't sure if I could be seen over the top of the hedge. I could hear the neighbor now:
Quick, call the cops! It's that huge-headed
hooligan!

So how did he get in? The front door was locked and the two windows on either side were closed and latched down. Maybe he could melt through walls, like a phantom. First I had him pegged as a cyborg; now he could melt through walls.

So I froze up again and tried the blue button one more time while I leaned against the front door.

At that moment, I heard the dead bolt slowly pull back. I scrambled to my feet, turned, and watched as the front door creaked open about two inches.

“Op Nine?” I whispered.

Nothing. So I took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and stepped inside my own personal house of horrors.

37

The first thing I noticed was the smell of cat. It's an unmistakable odor and also unavoidable, no matter how often you change the litter box. If this was a movie, the cat would leap out of the dark at me, I would scream, the audience would jump, and then both of us would go “whew!” right before the slasher came barreling out of the shadows with the butcher knife. I should probably neutralize the cat before proceeding.

The second thing I noticed was the yard gnome.

Was it the same gnome from outside? In semidarkness almost everything took on shades of gray, so I couldn't be one hundred percent positive, but it could have been the same gnome, now standing a few feet inside the entryway. Same height, same rubbed-out face, same creepy ambience that all yard gnomes have.

Cold air blew through the open door behind me, so I pushed it closed, keeping my eye on the gnome. It didn't move. Well, I didn't really expect it to come to life, did I? Yard gnomes don't come to life, not in the real world. Then I thought, with a pang of sadness, that the real world was gone, the world I knew before Bernard Samson, OIPEP, the Sword of Kings, and the Seal of Solomon came into my life.

That world was gone and never coming back, even if we somehow got the genie back in the bottle. Like Dr. Merryweather had said, we had crossed the threshold into a new reality, and maybe it wasn't looking into the demon's eyes that had me so screwed up—maybe it was the loss of everything that made sense to me.

“Okay, look,” I said to the gnome. “I'm not afraid of you.” Probably the first time in the history of the world anyone had said that to a yard gnome—also probably the first time anyone had ever lied to a yard gnome.

He just stared back at me wearing that sly little grin.

To heck with it. “Op Nine!” I shouted. “Op Nine, where are you?”

The lights in the entryway blazed on and the floorboards creaked behind me. I whirled around, jamming my hand into my coat pocket, fumbling for the mini-3XD Op Nine had given me in the car.

An old lady stood by the front door, wearing purple house slippers with a flowery print that matched her robe. On her left hand she wore an oven mitt. In her right, she held a gun, pointed directly at the center of my forehead.

“If you move, dear, you're dead,” she announced.

“I'm going to take my hand out of my pocket,” I said. “Okay?”

She nodded. “Slowly, dear. It's late and I'm jumpy.”

I slowly brought my right hand into view and then raised both into the air.

“I'm not a burglar,” I said.

She smiled. I got an eyeful of large, sparkling white teeth with oversized incisors, just like Mike's. She had a small head and a wide, round face, crisscrossed with wrinkles and deep creases, her eyes bright blue and kind.

She dropped the gun into the pocket of her robe and I took that as a signal I could lower my hands. We stood there for a second, staring at each other.

“I'm Alfred Kropp,” I said.

“I know who you are, dear,” she said. “Michael said you might show up. Well, not you specifically, but someone from his company.”

“That's actually who I came in looking for,” I said.

“Well, you won't find him here. I sent him on his way. Police detective!” She trilled a little laugh.

“That's good,” I said. “I was afraid maybe you shot him.”

I was trapped between her and the yard gnome by the stairs. Why would someone put a yard gnome by their stairs?

“I've baked an apple pie, Alfred. Would you like a slice?”

“I'm not really that hungry.”

“I insist.”

“I guess I am a little hungry.”

“After you, dear. To your left.”

I walked through the formal dining room and into the kitchen, which was decorated in a country theme, rooster figurines and Jersey cow kitchen doodads and a red and white checkered tablecloth on the table.

The pie was sitting on the sill over the sink, and steam still rose from its golden brown lace crust. My stomach rumbled. I was starving.

“Please sit down, Alfred,” she said, waving me toward the table. “A few more minutes to cool and it's ready to slice. A la mode, dear?”

I cleared my throat. “Just the pie, ma'am. That's fine.”

I wondered where Op Nine was. Probably scrambling around outside, looking for me, though I wondered how I missed him. Most likely he was beside himself, while I sat in Mama Arnold's kitchen, eating pie.

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“Michael's told me all about you.”

“Where is Mike?”

“I have no idea, dear.”

She pulled a gallon of milk from the refrigerator and poured a big frosty glass. She set it on the table in front of me. She smelled of vanilla.

“Somebody told us you were on a cruise,” I said.

“Mike made up that story. He wanted me to leave, of course, but why would I leave? I may be old, dear, but I can take care of myself. I go for target practice twice a month.”

“Well,” I said, because I didn't know what else to say. “Everybody needs a hobby.”

Right by the litter box stood another gnome. And there were gnome refrigerator door magnets and gnome figurines standing like little guards around the pie pan on the sill.

“You like gnomes,” I said.

“Gnomes keep evil spirits away.”

“You're worried about evil spirits?”

“Aren't you?”

“Mike's told you what happened?”

She was standing on her tiptoes by the sink—she was only about five feet tall—sticking her nose near the pie.

“I had to know why he was so desperate to get me out of this house.”

She put on another oven mitt and picked up the pie. She set it on the counter and shook off the mitts. Her hands were very small, but her knuckles were big, from arthritis, I guessed, and mottled with age spots. She grabbed a big knife and cut a fat slice that she slid onto a little plate with a picture of a gnome painted in the middle.

“He's a good boy, but he associates with the wrong sort of people—not you, Alfred. You're a wonderful child with great potential. I hate to see you squander it on people like those Mike used to work with.”

She cocked her round little head and her voice dropped.

“Listen to that!”

It was the freezing rain, the little pellets smacking against the roof and the kitchen window.

“I do hope something can be done soon,” she said. “I'm worried about my spring bulbs.”

“That's why it's real important we find Mike, ma'am,” I said. “We can't do anything about it till we find him.”

She placed the pie in front of me and stood back, folding her arms across her chest and just beaming down at me.

“Taste it, Alfred,” she said. “I am the best baker in the tri-counties.”

“Maybe just a bite,” I said. “But then I have to go. Op— my friend's probably wondering what happened to me.”