“Of course not. I left specific orders that nothing was to be done without my authorization.”
I thought about that. “It’s hard to find good help these days, isn’t it?”
She gave one of her gentle English trilling-type laughs.
“Dr. Mingus has been terminated. You won’t be seeing any more of him.”
“That’s good. He didn’t have much of a bedside manner. What about Nueve?”
Her smile went away. “The Operative Nine has been suspended pending a full review of his actions upon my leaving Camp Echo.”
“Oh. What’s that mean exactly?”
“It means he’s in deep doo-doo.”
“You got the board to change its mind?”
“I made the board’s mind irrelevant. I’ve taken on emergency powers, Alfred, which I am allowed to do under certain unique circumstances. And this circumstance certainly qualifies as unique.”
“What about Ashley? Is she in trouble too?”
“Don’t you think she should be?”
“So you arrested her.”
She studied my face for a long time before answering.
“What do you think I should do to her?”
I thought about it. “Nothing.”
She seemed surprised. “Really? Nothing at all?”
“I don’t think she ever wanted to hurt me. She was trying to protect me the best she could, but she was in a bad spot, because of Nueve. Because she . . . well, I guess she loves him. And you can’t always choose who you fall in love with, like those girls in vampire stories or in real life when a girl falls for a doper. It’s one of those things that just happen and then you’re kind of trapped in a situation you want to control but can’t. It’s almost like being an Op Nine or a knight like my dad or even somebody really messed up like Jourdain.”
She was looking at me like a mom with a babbling kid who was just learning how to talk.
“The thing-that-must-be-done,” I said. “My father swore to protect the Sword no matter what, even if that what meant the Sword would kill him. When he was the Operative Nine, Samuel had to think the unthinkable, even if the unthinkable meant putting the SD 1031 in my head. See? Even Nueve and Mingus—well, maybe not Mingus, that dude was seriously messed up with a capital mess—thought there was no choice, and Ashley was given one between just abandoning me to Nueve or trying to help me the best she could . . . though I wish she had told me when she had the chance.
“And Jourdain. I think he really believed his dream that the Sword would come back if he took revenge for what I did to his dad. What happened to Jourdain anyway?”
Just like with Ashley, she said, “What would you like to happen to him?”
“Nothing. Well, he probably should get some therapy. We both should. I used to hate going to therapy, but now I’m thinking we should maybe do a group thing. Me, Sam, Ashley, Jourdain.”
She laughed like I was making a joke, but she didn’t know it was only half a joke.
“Not Nueve?”
“I don’t think therapy would do him any good. He’d probably just whip out his sword cane and chop off the therapist’s head.”
Thinking of heads reminded me. “We gotta get those skulls back,” I said. “Put them back in the graves where they belong.”
“The twelve are being taken care of even as we speak,” she said.
“Good,” I said. “Which leaves the thirteenth. What happens to me now?”
Again, just like with Ashley and Jourdain: “What would you like to happen?”