The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(27)

Abby led me into another room. A girl with skin the color of copper, blond hair, and huge blue eyes was sitting on the sofa. She stood up when she saw me.

“Ashley?”

“Hi, Alfred,” she said, and then she hugged me. I smelled lilacs. I looked down and there were those enormous blue eyes looking up at me.

“They told me you’d changed,” she said.

“The dress wasn’t my idea,” I said.

“I don’t mean the dress.”

She stepped back—the hug had lasted about four seconds too long.

“I thought you quit,” I said.

“They made an offer I couldn’t refuse.” She glanced toward Abby.

“Ashley agreed to return to the Company on the condition we assign her as your extraction coordinator.”

“Oh,” I said. “What’s that mean?”

“It means Ashley is in charge of coordinating your extraction from our interface.”

I looked at Ashley. “I hate OIPEP,” I said.

She laughed. “Why don’t you change, Alfred? I’ll meet you outside.”

She left, a bouncing swirl of golden-haired blondness.

“Bathroom over there, clothes in the closet beside it,” Abby said. She looked at her watch. “We need to leave in the next fifteen minutes to stay within security parameters.”

She patted my arm and started to go.

“Abby, wait,” I called after her. “About Samuel.”

“Samuel?”

“You know, Op Nine . . . Samuel. Is he okay?”

“Yes, Alfred. We’ve moved him to a safe location.”

“Well, if I’ve learned anything from the past, there’s no such thing.”

Abby laughed.

“I wasn’t making a joke,” I said. “So he’s not here.”

“There’s no reason for him to be, is there?”

I thought about it. “No, I guess not. It’s just, we kind of had an argument the last time I saw him. Can you let him know I’m okay—that everything’s going to be okay now?”

“Of course, Alfred.”

“Who is Sofia?”

She looked at me for a second without saying anything, reminding me of Nueve’s stone-faced stare at the dairy farm.

“Sofia?”

“He said she was a ghost from his past.”

She slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry, Alfred, I don’t know any person named Sofia.”

“Nueve said she was the goddess of wisdom.”

Abby gave a weird little laugh. “Did he?”

“What’s the Thirteenth Skull?”

“The . . . what?”

“Thirteenth Skull. Jourdain is looking for it.”

“Is he? How . . . extraordinary.”

“So you know about it?”

She nodded.

“You’re about to tell me it’s classified, aren’t you? You’ve got that ‘it’s classified’ look.”

“I was about to tell you Jourdain is chasing a chimera if he is searching for it. The Thirteenth Skull is a myth.”

“What’s the myth?”

She shook her head. “What does any of it matter now, Alfred? In a few days, none of this”—she waved to indicate the world according to OIPEP—“will be your concern. You’re free now.”

She turned on her cherry-red heels and hurried from the room. I took a quick shower to wash off the mud and cow poo, found a toothbrush by the sink, and scrubbed my teeth, then yanked on a regulation black OIPEP jumper I found hanging in the closet. Using the mirror in the bathroom, I combed my hair with my fingers, thinking I probably wouldn’t be combing my hair if Ashley wasn’t my extraction coordinator. She had quit OIPEP after encountering sixteen million demonic fiends in the Sahara, which totally freaked her out, and I never thought I would see her again. Just my luck when I did I was wearing a dress. But I’d also lost a lot of weight and grown another inch and my hair had those funky, cool gray streaks in it and I was thinking that’s what happens when you go through a big change, the old you lingers in your mind’s eye, like a ghost limb of an amputee.

They were waiting for me in the outer room, Ashley, Abby, Nueve, and Mr. Needlemier. I slid into the empty seat next to Ashley and said, “I’m a guy again.”

“Smooth,” Nueve murmured.

He turned to Mr. Needlemier. “In ten minutes we depart for happier climes. The Company has agreed to extract Senor Kropp in exchange for the item stolen from Company possession.”

Mr. Needlemier nodded nervously. I thought of bobble-heads.

“So,” Nueve said, “do you have the item?”

Mr. Needlemier looked at me. I nodded. He unlocked his briefcase and pulled out the Great Seal of Solomon. I took a deep breath. Now OIPEP would have both the Great Seal and the Holy Vessel with all those demons locked up inside it, able to free them and do whatever the hell they wanted with them. I looked at Abby. If she wasn’t the director now, I thought, I wouldn’t do it. I didn’t trust OIPEP that much— never had—but I trusted her. Abby would keep the Seals safe. She’d make sure nobody ever released the Outcasts of Heaven again.

Nueve reached over and practically snatched the ring from Mr. Needlemier’s quivering fist. His dark eyes shone as he held it up. The Seal glittered under the fluorescent lights.