The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Coffee and Unwanted Company

Previously: "The Lackey With Two Faces" 

It's Saturday, but you're late getting over the elementary school because your dad decides that this is a day that the house should be cleaned. Thank God it's still drizzling outside, or he'd have you working outside too!

But by one-thirty you and your brother have cleaned your rooms and the upstairs and downstairs baths and vacuumed everything except your parents' room, and after that you're finally able to get away.

A cold front has moved in with the rain, and you shake the raindrops off your windbreaker once you're down in the basement. You look around with a sour expression. The place is starting to get a smell. It's not a smell you can identify, though, and after concentrating on it, you decide it's just a combination of lousy weather, damp earth, and a slightly bad conscience about last night's events.

There is still an ample chance that you will make a mask of yourself, to use either for shenanigans or to cover for yourself the next time you don't want to go to school or get caught for chores, but for now you curl up with the grimoire.

After a few minutes you look around with wrinkled nose. The rain is patting softly on the windows, which should be a comforting sound. But it's very cold down in the basement, and this seems like the day for a fire and a hot cocoa or hot coffee, and you've got neither one. Maybe that's why you don't like the scene.

Or maybe—you dart a glance over your shoulder—it's that petrified Jeff Spencer in the corner, gazing off to the side with blank, unseeing, half-lidded eyes. You don't like glimpsing it out of the corner of your eye, but still less do you like having your back to it.

Well, the thing to do is to keep busy. Having reacquainted yourself with the process for the next spell, you start gathering the materials. You've got more than enough stuff left, for it doesn't require much. Only a handful of cemetery dirt, for instance, and you've still got half a bag of that stuff, along with the rest of the chemicals. And you've got plenty of hair; in fact, while you were cleaning house your dad growled at you about needing to see a barber.

Into a bowl you mix everything but your hair, running your finger around the sigil each time that you add something. Then you set a match to the black, smelly liquid it makes up. It burns very purple and very bright for a few seconds, then goes out, leaving a much thicker kind of paste behind.

It's supposed to be painted on the inside of a mask, and since by this point you don't especially care if you ruin the mask you made of Caleb, you paint the inside of it. Strangely, Caleb's name continues to hover over the surface of the mask, even though the mind-strip has been completely covered over. Into the mask you lay a hank of your own hair and set it on fire. The entire interior of the mask catches flame for an instant, and goes out. The hair is gone, and the interior of the mask is now a mottled gray—the same color as a golem.

You set the mask onto the book, then lift it. The page turns, and—

Something somewhere in the basement goes clack.

And that's enough for you. Probably the noises are just the building settling as the cold air seeps into it, or the drip of water leaking in through the ancient roof and rafters. But whatever, you don't care. You grab up the mask and the grimoire and flee for happier precincts.

* * * * *

It was probably a foolish move, taking yourself and your book to a public establishment, particularly one like the Koffee Kauldron, which is one of the innumerable kooky food-and-drink places near the university. But its polished walnut tables and gleaming brass fittings appealed to you on this gray, cool, drizzly day, and it has a fireplace in the back room. That fire was crackling merrily when you arrived, and as the place is largely empty you were able to secure a booth not far from it. With your dwindling stash of cash you have bought yourself a foamy latte and are bending over the book with your cell phone and a notebook and pencil close at hand.

You've not been at work long when you're interrupted by a pair of pale, thin hands that drop onto the book and drum it. "Prescott," a clipped voice says, and you look up into the face of Christian Knouse. "What are you doing here, you uncultured motherfucker?"

From certain angles Christian looks like a rabbit, while from other angles he looks like a fox. He has sharp eyes and slightly pointed eyebrows, and a very pointed nose over a small mouth. He is pale all over, except for the massive mole halfway along his right jaw, and his soft, blonde hair floats about his head in a cloudy wisp. He has an undernourished build, one not disguised by the oversize sweaters and slacks that he favors. But his blue eyes glitter like ice cubes behind his glasses, and his lips twist like he's holding back a witty remark until the right moment to drop it.

A rabbit or a fox? Or a half-elf, half-orc in the tabletop RPGs that are his passion and the passion of his friends?

"Hey man," you reply. "Just hanging out here with a good book." You lay a proprietary arm over the grimoire. "What are you doing here?"

"Fueling up. God damn it," he exclaims. His voice is thin, but penetrating. "You'd think Eric could at least keep some fucking pastries in stock, but no, it's all perishable meats and moldy vegetables." He drops into the seat opposite you and rakes his hair with long, thin fingers. "At least he's paying for the food run."

"Eric?" you ask. "Eric who?"

"Kim. King Kong Komics," he says, and now you attach the name to the triple-wide Korean-American owner of a comic book shop a few blocks over. "Yeah," Christian drawls. "You ever eat at his sandwich shop, the one in the next-door annex?"

"I don't think so."

"No one has." He raises a slim hand. "I swear to God I will blow anyone who can prove to me that he's bought and eaten anything from that shop. But that's where we're running our campaign today—well, fuck, it's where we run it almost every day—and 'cos Eric can't be assed to stock his place with stuff that actually keeps, me and Braydon gotta make a food run down here so we can at least keep nourished. But like I say, at least Eric's paying for it. Hey, whatcha workin' on?"

"Oh, just a thing. Is Braydon here?" you glance around and don't keep the worry off your face.

"Pickin' out the shit up front. I drove, he can carry. What's the thing?" He hooks his hands around the book.

Briefly you resist, then relent and let him pull it over toward. His eyes sparkle and his eyebrow work.

"Whew!" he whistles. "Goddamn Latin. You taking Leavey's class?" He stabs you in the eye with a very barbed lift of the eyebrow. You shake your head, and brush your phone to indicate you're using an online translator. "Looks pretty hardcore. Handwritten. How old is this thing? And what is it?" He flips back through the earlier pages.

"Just a thing I found," you say, and reach over to take it back.

But Christian keeps ahold of it. "Hey Braydon!" he yells, and his friend looks around the corner from the next room. "C'mere!"

With gritted teeth you watch as Braydon Delp, wannabe-warlock, saunters over. Like Christian, he is of slight stature and scrawny physique. He dresses all in black, even to daubing his lashes with black eyeliner. Also, like Christian, there is something very soft in his manner, though in Braydon it comes across as melancholia. He nods vaguely at you, and concentrates on his friend.

"Lookit this," Knouse says. "Look like something you'd be interested in?"

Braydon bends over the grimoire, and you hold your breath. His eyebrows go up in a peak, and his lips pout into a slight frown. "Interesting sigils," he says, and lays a white, worm-like finger on one of them. "What is it?" he asks you.

"Just a book I found at Arnholm's," you say. "It's not even real, it's like a stage prop," you quickly improvise. "See?" You reach over and try to flip the back pages without success. "Not real."

"Maybe the pages are glued shut," Christian says. "You should try steaming them open. What's it called? We could use something like that as a MacGuffin in one of our campaigns, especially if it's got evil spells in it. It's got evil spells in it, hasn't it?" That eyebrow goes up again, and the whites of his eyes show. "Tell me it's chock full of evil spells. Please tell me you're turning into a fucking warlock, Prescott."

He holds your eye, then with an obscene cackle pushes Braydon out of the way and gets to his feet. "Later!" he calls back as he struts off.

Braydon remains behind. His glance holds a speculative gleam, and for a moment you think he's going to say something.

But he just chucks his chin at you, smiles, and oozes off after his friend.

* * * * *

The latest spell, when you decipher it, is very interesting. It allows you to "hide" someone by putting them under the face of an obedient lackey. But the description is sketchy. You think you will probably have to test it out, on a couple of different people in a couple of different ways, before you can be confident of knowing how it works.

You've already prepped one mask with the stuff: Caleb's.

Next: "A World of Possibilities" 

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