I parked in the garage beneath Samson Towers, in the space marked “Reserved” with a very dire warning beneath the word that all violators would be towed at their own expense.
I walked through the huge atrium, past the waterfall gurgling and splashing in the center. The guard behind the security desk gave me a respectful nod, and I thought of my uncle Farrell, who’d had the same job before my life got really weird.
I took the express elevator to the penthouse suite.
Samuel came out of my father’s old office wearing a worried expression.
“Oh, there you are,” he said. “I was getting concerned.”
He followed me into Bernard Samson’s office and closed the door behind us.
I told him about my meeting with Abby.
“This is very grave news, Alfred,” Samuel said when I finished. “As the director, she will be under great pressure to obtain the Seal from you.” And the Company, as you know, can be ruthless. The Charter requires that she designate a new Operative Nine and you and I both know what that means: a Superseding Protocol Agent will not let the director’s personal feelings toward you compromise a mission to regain the Seal of Solomon.”
“And sometimes good people have to do bad things,” I said. He nodded. I said, “Well, I’m still not sure I buy that argument, Samuel.” I sank into the fat leather chair behind my father’s desk.
He sat across from me, clearly worried. “Perhaps I should not have left the Company.”
“But if you stayed, I wouldn’t have a legal guardian. Well, I guess I would, but it might be Horace Tuttle, and I really don’t like Horace Tuttle.”
“I will do all within my power to guard you, Alfred,” he said. He got very serious, which was a lot more serious than most people get. “I will never abandon or betray you, though hell itself contend against me.”
“Don’t say that.” I laughed. “We’ve been down that road before.”
He nodded, and a dark look passed over his face.
My face grew hot. I shouldn’t have said that. It didn’t come out right and now it was too late to take it back.
“Anyway, I told you to forget about it,” I added quickly. “I know why you thought you couldn’t come with me to face Paimon. That wasn’t you at the devil’s door.”
“Oh, that is the terrible thing, Alfred, the thing I must live with until I live no more: it was me, and I have wasted many hours trying to convince myself otherwise. Too often we blame the temptation itself for our succumbing to it.”
I winced. “Please, don’t talk about temptation.”
I got up and went to the window, turning my back to him.
I stared out the window at the street below.
Over a month had passed since my fall from the demon’s back, but the memory was always there, fresh as if it had all happened yesterday.
I ordered Paimon to undo all the damage his legions had caused and, while they rebuilt the world, Paimon brought me to a high place. It stretched out its hand, said, Look, my master, at what might be.
And it wasn’t the world that lay at my feet, with me the master of it, but my high school. I saw myself lounging at a lunch table, surrounded by the most popular kids in school, and me, Alfred Kropp, wearing a letterman jacket, tanned and muscular with a face full of brilliant white teeth, the center of attention, a cheerleader on either side, one blond and one redhead, hanging on my every word.
“No,” I told the demon king. Being the Big Man on Campus didn’t interest me anymore.
It stretched forth its hand again, and I saw a white house with blue shutters in a neighborhood of shady streets. It was dusk on an autumn day and kids were riding their bikes in the failing light. Inside the house I was sitting at the kitchen table with people I didn’t recognize, but I understood they were my new family: a quiet and kind man at the head of the table, a pretty, talkative woman, and me, their new son.
And they loved me. There was no grand adventure in this offering of the demon king, no brushes with death or heroics or a world teetering on the brink of destruction. It was just a regular life: girls and dances and Friday-night football games and holding hands at the movies.
They will know what you love and fear, Samuel had told me, and what I saw was both in one, what I loved and feared all together.
The no was harder this time. A lot harder.
Return us not to the Vessel, my master, and it is thine.
It stretched forth its hand again, and now I saw Ashley and a castle by the sea, and the breeze caressed her blond hair as she sat beside me on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and in her bright blue eyes were a thousand answers to questions I didn’t even need to ask. I put my arm around her and she laid her head on my shoulder under a brilliant blue autumn sky.
Will thou not let us stay and serve thee, lord?
I looked into its eyes. It didn’t matter now, because the shoe was on the other foot, so to speak. I looked into its eyes and whispered, “No. No.” Forcing out the words like I was squeezing them through a razor-thin fissure. “No.”
When I thought about it, the stare into the demon’s eyes had been unbroken since that night in the Sahara—I had never looked away.
But no, it was longer than that. I had been looking into the demon’s eyes for years.
And on that day, the day I commanded them to return to their Holy Vessel, for the first time since the day my mother died, I looked away from the demon’s eyes.