The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Loot Box

Previously: "Burglars Three" 

Dylan sniggers.

"Imagine," he says, "being so set up you have a secret lair and everything where you can do your magic experiments, and it's the one place that someone can just randomly bust in and find it!" He looks between you and Caleb. "Like that old school basement you guys were hanging out at!"

You don't mind Dylan teasing you. You've got the book back! And a few more things.

It took some work hauling the trunk out of the barn and back to your truck. Then, at Dylan's, you had to use a hammer and screwdriver to chisel off the lock. But inside—

Besides the book, the trunk contained a bag of dirt, a couple of tubs of goopy black paste, three masks, and a free-floating mind-band. Two of the masks are polished but blank, and don't contain any mind-bands. But the third has a mind-band in it, identifying it as a copy of someone named RORY TAYLOR BYNUM.

It's Caleb, who's been a cold douche of water all night, who punctures the swelling relief.

"You know those guys are going to come looking for it," he says. "And they're going to know where to look and who to look for."

Dylan shrugs. "So we disguise ourselves."

"We can't disguise ourselves while going to school!" Caleb explodes. "Or being at home!"

"I can disguise myself," Dylan retorts. He fingers one of the blank masks. "I'll just copy myself the body of some big bruiser they can't fuck with. This is my place, and except for a couple of classes where I have to show my face, I wouldn't have to come out of it."

Caleb snorts. "What about Will and me?"

"Do they even know who you are?" Dylan retorts. "I'm the one they're gonna come for first!"

"They can look for me," you say. Caleb's words have left your heart sinking with fear. "They got my cell phone number."

"So throw your cell phone away."

"I can't do that! And that's not the point! They can get my address. They got my name, they can get—! And I can't disguise myself!"

The atmosphere, which had been so happy just a moment ago, is now fraught. Finally, Caleb asks if you're free to spend the night with him at his house. "Sure," you reply. "Why?"

Caleb hefts the grimoire. "'Cos I think we got some homework to do."

* * * * *

You're up until three in the morning at his place, slouched in the floor with chips and sodas and coffee. Only part of the time is taken up with reading back through the grimoire. The rest of it is taken with speculating about Charles and his friends, and what they have gotten up to.

They have unlocked three more spells in the week since you lost the book to them, and they would have unlocked more except that they fucked the book up somehow. The last open page has been damaged, with half of it torn away. All that is left of it is a set of ingredients that look identical to those that make a mind-band, along with a single, gnomic instruction. But the bottom half, where there would be a sigil, is gone. The page that follows is partially visible below, but the text is completely illegible, looking as though it has been dunked in water until the ink has bled and run.

How Charles and his friends damaged the book you don't know. But it looks as if they got impatient and found a way to try turning the page without executing the spell. Though it bitterly disappoints you to see the book busted, you feel almost equal relief that they foiled themselves.

But you've got more than enough to worry about with the two other spells.

The first—which comes directly after the spell making the golem—is the most disturbing. You had not had a chance to look at it closely before losing the book, and you're now kind of glad you hadn't. It looks almost identical to the spell that makes a golem, but instead of using four hundred pounds of cemetery earth, it calls for forty pounds, and a human body. Whether that means a corpse or a living person, you're not sure. But the result is another golem, according to the reverse of the page. What the spell does, if anything, to the person used in the spell is not described. You and Caleb are a little aghast, though, at the implication that Charles and his friends did execute the spell. You don't like wondering if you and Caleb would have been able to resist experimenting with it as well.

The spell after that is more puzzling. Again, it calls for the same ingredients as go into a golem, but in much smaller quantities—only a handful of dirt, for example. The result is supposed to be a paste that is applied to the interior of a mask. The book calls the resulting mask a ludius, and it explains that, though it can be worn without danger by the magician, when set upon another person, or golem, it creates a copy that must obey him, as a golem does. However, by removing the mask, the victim can be restored. You and Caleb both agree that there is no way to tell for sure what it does without testing it out.

There is one quick way of making a test, though. The interior of the mask of Rory Bynum is a grayish color, and you and Caleb can only conclude that it has been treated with the stuff made by the seventh spell in the book.

* * * * *

It's only nine in the morning when you roust Dylan from bed by banging on his front door. He is very cross, and demands to know what you're doing up so early.

He is even more cross after you and Caleb have grabbed him, and tried tearing his face off.

"We've got a real problem," Caleb explains after you're settled in Dylan's living room. "These guys have a way of making instant golems, and of replacing anyone with a fake."

It's Saturday, and you and Caleb got up very early to drive out to the old elementary school, where you experimented—gingerly!—with the mask you got from Charles's trunk. With some rope from your truck, Caleb tied you up and sat on you, then put the mask onto you. When you awoke (only moments later, it felt to you) a very pale-in-the-face Caleb hollowly related what had happened. You had transformed into someone who answered to the name Rory Bynum, who was very peeved to find himself tied up with a strange guy sitting on top of him. Caleb only got a few answers from him—like, that he went to Eastman High—before deciding that he had better get the mask back off you before you got free. You are able to tell Caleb that you have no memory of anything that happened while the mask was on you, and he says that Rory Bynum claimed never to have heard of Will Prescott.

"There was no way it was going to obey me," Caleb tells Dylan, "but then, we're not the magicians who made the stuff. Still, the point is, those guys could put a mask onto the real person, and it would turn him a copy of someone that would obey them. That's why we had to test you, to find out if you were one of those fakes."

Worse, after the three of you look over the spell again, and puzzle out some of the possible implications, it appears that masks treated this way would be even more dangerous. Charles could make a mask of himself, treat it with the "golem paste," and set it upon Rory Bynum, or anyone else, then don a mask of the other person. Then, if the stuff works as advertised—

A big "if," Dylan snorted, and with a roll of his eyes glanced over at the golem that still stands in the corner.

But if the stuff works as advertised, he could replace and impersonate the other person, while leaving an obedient duplicate of himself behind so that he wouldn't be missed.

"These guys could turn us into golems," Caleb says. "Also, they could turn themselves into other people and come at us from any direction!"

But Dylan doesn't seem very fazed.

"Sure they could," he sneers. "If they had the book and the supplies. But they don't, right? What they need to be scared of is us doing it to them!"

Caleb flushes, and leans forward on the futon.

"Sure, we got the book now! But we don't know how much of a stash they've got held back! We got some stuff out of Whitney's trunk, but is that all of his stash? How much is he hiding up in his bedroom? How many masks have him and his friends got? We don't know!"

That does sober Dylan up. "So what do you think we should do?"

You jump in.

"Well, look, I'm not sure we need to panic yet," you say, for you've been thinking a little past what Caleb has said. "We know they made three masks in the last week. Well, there's three guys, and it takes someone about a week to polish one up. If they've got a bunch of other blanks, it's going to take them at least until the end of the weekend, and probably till Monday or Tuesday, to polish up three more, and that's if they don't do anything else. So we got a little bit of time."

"You weren't thinking that when you busted in here a little while ago," Dylan grumbles.

"Well, you're the one who's got the biggest target on his back," Caleb tells him. He points to the two blank masks. "You should use this stuff to get a hiding place while we figure out what to do."

"Or," Dylan counters with a proposal that floors you, "we can text those guys, tell them we've got the shit back, and talk about making a deal."

Next: "The Best Defense" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"