The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Conspirators

Previously: "Search for Tomorrow" 

Scott Ricci's footlocker is open—as it should be for inspection—so it's the work of three seconds to shove the masks to its bottom. Then you sling Ricci's book bag, with its clinking contraband, onto your shoulder and carry it down to your room.

* * * * *

You chew the inside of your cheek and massage the knob of the shift-stick as you swing through the last curve outside Lattyville and head into the straight-away. Chancy chancy chancy, you think.

Then: Fuck it. You push the accelerator in. Its purr rising to a roar, Todd Baldwin's Mustang leaps ahead, surging past the sixty mph mark and hugging ninety before you modulate the gas intake. You chew your way through three miles of interstate in a shade under two minutes before braking back beneath the speed limit as you enter the first curve on the other side.

You study the rear-view mirror and grin: No cops.

It's a risky thing, speeding along the short stretch of highway between Lattyville and Saratoga Falls in a red sports car with out-of-state plates, and Todd's been busted three times already.

But damn! it feels good to play with his toys.

Todd Baldwin comes from a peculiar and nearly unique intersection of the elite and blue-collar worlds. His grandfather built a small hardware store into a regional chain of home-improvement and supply warehouses in Pennsylvania and upstate New York before selling out (for a fortune) to Home Depot. Then he and Todd's father—who had earned a business degree at a state university—grew that fortune through sharp Wall Street wheeling dealing. Both of them brag of having never lost touch with a hard-scrabble youth of long hours and short meals in the muddy back fields of rural Pennsylvania.

And so here is Todd, raised in the scrubby countryside by two hard-knuckled men (and their quiet, cowed wives) to claw and pummel his way to success—best at peewee football, best at soccer, best at basketball in his hole-in-the-fields elementary and middle schools—while being pampered with electronic games, expensive sports equipment, private jungle gyms, and (since puberty) an expensive private-school education. Rich enough to hold his head up with the trust-fund babies; hard enough to put down anyone who gets in his face.

And spoiled enough to think he deserves to have whatever he wants to take.

So when a bedraggled Abigail Steiner—looking like she hasn't washed or even brushed her hair in a week—crawls out of Will Prescott's truck behind the St. Francis Xavier church, you loose a hard guffaw and advance on her with exactly the medicine you know will make her feel better.

"Oh, get off!" she exclaims, and turns away in disgust as you take her shoulders in both hands and press yourself onto her. "Todd!"

"Hey, shh, come on!" You grip and knead her shoulders. "I'm trying to make you feel better."

"She's had a tough day," Shelly says as she and your replacement twin join you. "My mom's been in and out of the workroom, and she's had to hide out in the woodshed a couple of times."

"No wonder you look like shit," you tell Abi with a chortle. "No, seriously, you look fine," you tell the golem as you stand back to give her a critical gander. "Very fine," you murmur.

There is something very alluring about her dishevelment. Instead of the poised and arrogant girl in her crisp uniform, you're holding a surly, glowering wildcat dressed in calf- and arm-baring sweats and t-shirt. The clothes (Shelly's, you'd guess) are too small for her, and it's easy to imagine the fun that'd come with peeling them off her and pressing fingers and other appendages into her soft and grimy parts. You do drop a hand to pinch her ass, and she squeals and twists away.

"God," you exclaim. "I never fantasized about seeing you like this, Abi, but I think I'm gonna start. Every night."

But before you can start drooling, Shelly interrupts you. "Boss," she says, "shouldn't we be taking care of business?"

You sigh and release Abi while pulling hard on Todd's reins. It was the drive in the Mustang that did it, you tell yourself. A hot car, a hard body, and this dirty girl at the end of the drive. Gimme a ten-ounce steak and a good beer, and this would be Todd's idea of heaven.

"Okay then," you growl. "Got the keys to the storeroom? Let's go in."

* * * * *

It all goes pretty quickly, like it needs to. There were no problems moving things and people around this morning, the golems report. The one that looks like Will Prescott successfully picked up the one that looks like Abigail Steiner at the school, and with her and the supplies you stole off Vee made it back over to where the golem that looks like Shelly Nolan is living. They have brought themselves and the goods with them to the church, where your other supplies are. Once you're inside, you take a moment to pull the masks off the golems, just to double-check that everyone is where they are supposed to be.

Then you take out the special stuff that puts a golem inside a mask. You paint it on the inside of the mask of Shelly, and move it onto Todd.

That leaves you ready to take stock.

Abi and Todd are now sidelined, being hidden under the obedient faces of Will Prescott and Shelly Nolan. You have a spare mask of Abi, one that will obey your commands, and you have a spare golem that will also obey your commands. You have a mask of Westside's Coach Acuna, and a mask of a woman ("Ruth") who doesn't actually exist. You also have the supplies to make more masks—

But you don't have the Libra.

That's a real bitch.

But you do feel like you've got a good handle on the situation now. For the first time since those assholes grabbed you, you feel like you don't have to improvise just to stay safe.

You give Abi's mask to Shelly with orders to hang onto it, and you order her and Will to keep you posted on anything that they hear from the others at Xavier's. Then you return to the school.

You get a text from Fiore on the drive back, and when you hit the straightaway you call him back direct. "What's up?"

"Bad news," he says. "The girls say they can't find the book."

* * * * *

You bang on Abi's door with the side of your fist, then without waiting for an answer you twist the knob. It's locked. You give the door a savage kick. "Steiner!" you roar. "I know you're in there! Open the fuck up!"

Chris lays a hand on your shoulder, but you throw it off.

Then the door behind you opens, and a hateful voice hisses, "We're in here, dumbass!"

You wheel with a glower and throw Fiore aside as you stalk into the room that Vee and Kristen share. The two girls glare back at you. But not until Fiore closes the door does anyone speak.

All at once.

You shut the others up by shoving a pile of books off a desk, sending them crashing to the floor. "Todd, you asshole!" Vee spits.

"What is this bullshit about losing the book?" you yell.

"That's what we're trying to tell you!" Vee retorts. "Dalton must have confiscated it."

"Bullshit! Why would Reeves—? And have you asked him? Steiner, you're a prefect, why the fuck don't you go ask the son of a bitch about it?"

"You're a prefect too!"

You wheel for the door.

"Wait!" Vee says. "We don't want to be associated with it!"

"The fuck why not?"

"It's Satanic!" she hisses. "That's how come he would'a taken it! It's got a pentagram on it and everything. Magic sigils! You know Reeves. I'm not saying he's religious, exactly, but he is a fanatic about rules!"

You grab the door handle anyway. "Well, I can still ask him if he took anything from your room. I'm not tied into it."

"Dr. Shutt will have it by now!" Vee says. That's the Jefferson house master. "Or Dr. Wissner." That's the head of the whole school.

"Then you're fucked for having Satanic literature in your room. But I can still confirm with Dalton he lifted it."

The two girls seem paralyzed, and neither can object when you stalk outside.

Fiore catches up to you in the main hallway. "You're not going to really ask Reeves if he— Uh, are you?" he asks as he patters.

"Why not? It doesn't matter. He's gonna say he didn't take shit off'a Macklin."

"Why's that?"

"'Cos he didn't. Oh, open your fucking eyes, man." You wheel on Fiore. "They're covering up. Fucking perfect for them, having that dorm search staged. I'll bet money they asked Reeves to do it."

"What?" Chris's brow furrows. "Why would—?"

"To cover up for themselves! They ain't sharin' the book with us, man. And that Prescott gink ain't hidin' out here. Macklin let him go. Put the fear of herself into, then sent him scampering home. Or she's got him stashed someplace, pumping him for info about how the stuff works."

You sigh as Fiore's expression grows even more puzzled.

"They're pretending the book got confiscated in the dorm search," you explain to him, "'cos they don't wanna share it with us. They're probably gettin' ready to bug out with it." You jab in in the shoulder with a hard finger. "Go ask your girlfriend, one on one, what happened. See if you get a different story out of her. But it's just way too convenient, the book disappearing right when there's a dorm search, and when, like, we're all in a panic. They're jumping for the lifeboats, man. And they ain't saving room for you in one of them."

You hope you've put Fiore into a proper, paranoid panic with your conspiracy mongering.

So do you really need to stage a dorm search of your own? To turn up those masks you hid in Ricci's room?

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"