The Seal of Solomon

“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.

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.