The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Fast Work and Fast Talk

Previously: "The Fire Behind the Face" 

You spring to your feet and whirl back toward the hallway. "Boss?" calls Gordon. You flip him off over your shoulder as you stalk away.

In the bathroom you splash cold water on your face, then lift your head to study your reflection. It's Joe Durras's face, alright, the one you told him you'd be "adding to the collection." You lean forward to study it.

It's a good face, and the magic has reproduced it perfectly, right down to the tiny little hairs at the corner of the nose, which he missed when shaving this morning. He has a smooth brow over dark eyebrows; piercing blue eyes; a straight, regular nose with the smallest bump in the bridge to give it a little character. Good cheekbones, a firm jawline, and taut cheeks to connect them. A strong chin, and lips that part easily into a wide smile that shows strong, white, cavity-free teeth.

You run your fingers over them all, pulling at the warm, supple flesh and at the hairline where lush, brilliantly blonde hair sprouts.

You're giving yourself wood even before you stand back to take in the rest of your new body. Pectorals like meaty plates, perfectly smooth and hairless, with large brown boy-tits. Round, strong shoulders and sculpted biceps and triceps. Strong forearms (but not gross) downed with light hair. Hands with shiny nails as the end of strong, clever fingers. A flat, hard stomach with ridges and a little outie, and a trail of soft hair leading down to the bush inside which dwells a fat trouser snake and a tight set of balls. A butt you could bounce quarters off of, and strong, shapely, well-muscled thighs and calves. You fold your arms and stand back to regard this reflection. Your eyes glint and your hair bristles with pleasure.

"Oh, fuck yeah!" you murmur to yourself. But the greed you feel for this body comes not just from your appreciation for it, or even for Joe Durras's own appreciation of it. (He started with good material, but he's worked hard to improve it.) It comes from knowing what can be done with it, even without—

You catch yourself, and frown. Even without ...

You snap your fingers and open your palm. Nothing. Again, you snap your fingers and ... Nothing. You run a tongue inside your lower lip. Concentrate. It should be second nature, but ... concentrate. You snap your fingers, open your palm ...

There should be a golden light there, an orb like a miniature sun, glowing softly and floating just over the palm of your hand. You could brighten or dim it, illuminate a dark room with it, or cause it to explode noiselessly in a brilliant, blinding flash.

But there's nothing. Just your palm.

You close your eyes to concentrate. I'm standing in the hallway, looking at myself, you tell yourself. I'm in the hallway, in the hallway—

You open your eyes. You're still in the bathroom, and when you look out the door there's no aethereal twin, knitted from purest light, grinning back at you

You step into the hallway, grind your bare feet into the ratty carpet, and launch yourself toward the living room. You shamble and stumble, taking three steps before fetching up with a bump against a wall.

That's the cruelest blow of all. I'm the Flash, man! I should be able to take one step and in half a second move thirty yards!

And your thoughts! They're not slow, exactly, but they do feel gummy and sticky, like your brain is webbed with honey. You're used to thinking at a blazing speed. This is like running through wet cement.

Still—

You step back into the bathroom, to regard your reflection again. That glow of satisfaction flares to life again, and your mouth and eyes settle into a knowing grin.

Yes, even without Joe's special powers—his "prodigies," as he and his friends call them—you know what can be done with this body, animated by this personality—in class, in the gym, and especially ... with girls!

* * * * *

You swagger back into the bedroom and, still naked, start packing masks and brain bands into the cardboard box. You don't pause even when your phone buzzes. "Yeah!" you snap into it.

"Where are you, Joe?" Frank asks. "You're not skipping again, are you?"

"Define 'skipping'. I ran into Black," you bulldoze on and it gives you an adrenaline rush to fall so easily into Joe Durras's personality, "and we came out to Matthias's trailer. I'm tossing the place now."

"You what? Joe, you didn't just—!"

"Stop yelping at me like someone dropped a crawdad down the front of your Jockey's."

"What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm showing initiative, Frank! The little fuck's at school, isn't he? At least, he should be. So I saw a chance, I took it, and it's paying off. Well, not yet."

"Whaddayu mean?"

You have to tamp down the giddy joy you feel at fooling the guy you're talking to. "I mean, the place is clean, so far," you say as heft the Summa Libra Personae—the very thing that you and your partner have been searching for—and grin at it. "Okay, it's not clean, not after the shakedown you gave it yesterday. Fuck me, he didn't even sweep up the cereal from off the floor. But I'm not finding anything." You grab up a fistful of brain bands. "Not a sign of nothing."

"That's bad, Joe. Sounds like he bugged out."

"Yeah it does, doesn't it? I was avoiding saying it because I didn't want to hurt your feelings after the bad play you made of it yesterday—"

"I made?"

"Trying to scare him."

"It was your idea!"

"And who's the dumbass who went along with me? If you'd put your foot down and kept still instead of rattling his cage"—you heft the box under a brawny arm and carry it out into the kitchen, to set on the rickety dining table—"he wouldn't have run, and now here we are."

"Where we both are, Joe."

"Yeah. Except I'm not convinced he did run. Didn't I say he should be at school now? If he is— Keep an eye out for him."

"What are you thinking?"

"Nothing. 'Intuiting' is closer to it. I'm chewing over the way he buffaloed us yesterday. That's not something we were warned could happen."

"It was unnatural, you told me."

"Everything about this business is unnatural, Frank." You hike back to the bedroom and bounce your bare ass onto the bed. "But yesterday was unnatural even for the degree of unnaturalness we were told to expect. There's something else going on here, an extra layer." You snatch up your underwear and start pulling it on with one hand. I don't think that was our guy yesterday, not the one we're looking for."

"Who else would it have been?"

"I don't know. But there was an enchantment there, something to stop him from telling us the truth. That kind of thing is supposed to be outside the Personae's subject area."

"So it's something our target learned from another book, cast upon himself to protect himself from questioning."

"But how would he know he needed that kind of protection? Also, we didn't even look over this place yesterday, we just saw the living room." You shove your legs into the Levis. "I'm looking at the bathroom right now, and— Let's just say, if I was a warlock and I had the Personae, either I wouldn't be living here, or I'd be researching some pretty heavy duty spells about getting hair out of sink traps! No, if I was our guy, this isn't the place I'd be holed up."

"So who is it living out there, and why couldn't you untwist his tongue?"

"Don't you have a class to get to, Frank?" You'd like to get him off the phone, because you're trying to get your socks on while cradling a very small iPhone between your shoulder and ear.

"I've got study hall this period."

"Must be nice. Me, I'm booked solid with classes, including that fucking tutorial with the only tutor at the school who hasn't got tits!"

"May I remind you, Joe, that you haven't been to one of your classes yet today?"

"I was at practice! I scored two shots off your—!"

"That's not a class, and shut your complaint hole. I asked, who's living out there, and why couldn't you—?"

"Well, that's what's making me frantic. We know that 'Gordon' is Dane Matthias, both because he says so and because I untwisted his tongue. But if 'Matthias' isn't Black, if he's some other victim or a flunky or something, then why was his tongue locked? I dunno, Frank." You push your feet into your sneakers. "But I don't think this was our guy. This place is too disgusting, so I'm thinking it's a dead end. I'm thinking our fucker got into it, then backed out and went somewhere else and— Yaaaah! Oh! Oh oh oh! Fuck!"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing! Everything! It felt like I was having a brainstorm but then it didn't come! Fuck! Do have any idea how frustrating that is, Frank? Oh, of course not, because you don't have ideas. But it's like you're about to cum inside a girl but then— Oh, wait, you wouldn't know what that's like either."

"No, I know exactly what that's like, Joe. It's like the feeling I get when I'm about to punch a smart-mouthed little brother right in his smart little mouth, but he—"

"Yeah yeah. But this is a dead end, either way." You toss your shirt over your shoulder and make one last sweep of the room, to make sure you're not leaving anything incriminating behind. "The thing to do is to watch Matthias."

"I will. You coming back up to school?"

The more important question is, Do you get Caleb to help you by giving him Frank to impersonate?

Next: "Covering Tracks" 

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