The Book of Masks (Abridged)

Dead Ends

THE NEW SPELL is an exciting one, but though you are sorely tempted to use the fresh band right away, you decide to wait: Each new spell has pulled up something useful, and maybe something even more useful is around the corner. You hunch over the book to read the next page ...

"Will!" your mom calls from downstairs, and you jump. "Are you up?"

"Heading for the shower!" you shout back.

* * * * *

It's relatively late in the afternoon before you get back to the old school, where you carefully spread out all the material at a table before settling down with the book. You read it carefully and discover that the next spell is fairly straightforward: It just attaches a band onto a mask. It's the work of only fifteen minutes to get it on, and then you use the modified mask to turn the page.

The other side (again, characteristically) tells you how to use it. Putting the band onto the mask means that anyone who now puts on the mask will not only look like you, they will have access to all your memories and personality traits, making for a perfect imposture. Soberly, you reflect that you will have to keep your mask in a very safe place, and you hide it in one of the desks back against the storeroom wall.

You make up a new, blank mask, then take it and the book back to your house before it gets dark.

Your dad is working late again, so you take your dinner upstairs and turn your attention to the latest spell. It takes a lot of careful reading, translating and note taking; and with a sinking heart you go online to see how easy it will be to get the materials. The outlook is grim: it calls for a lot of chemicals and fuels, some of which may be hard to find and all of which will be quite expensive. You've already blown through almost all of the advance your dad gave you.

But it's the main ingredient that gives you the most pause, even though it should cost next to nothing: earth taken from a graveyard.

You drum your fingers on the desk and stare off into nothingness. You'll be starting that job at Salopek next week, but it'll be two weeks before you get a paycheck. It's an engineering company; maybe they will have some of the expensive items, and you could lift some? Tricky, risky. You open up your desk drawer and look down at the blank mind bind you still have. You could put it on someone at Salopek, and that might tell you how to get ahold of anything that they have out there ...

But that's still only a medium-range plan.

Well, you can still make a start. Tomorrow you'll see about getting out into a graveyard.

* * * * *

The next day. You stop a few feet from your locker and blink. Three girls, two in cheerleader togs, are standing in front of it, chatting intently. One is Kendra Saunders, one of the snootier and stuck-up members of the squad. The second you don't recognize. The third--

Oh my God. It's Chelsea Cooper. Head cheerleader and unofficial queen of the school. The tippy-top of the tippy-top of the pyramid. On a clear day you can almost see her from the gloomy alley that you and Caleb and Keith inhabit.

Nervously, you glance over your shoulder to see if her boyfriend, the basketball team captain, is around. Dude will punch you into next week if he sees you up close and talking to his girlfriend, which you'll have to do if you're to get into your locker. You gulp and draw up.

"Hey," you say to the third girl while pretending to not notice the other two. "I need to get into my locker here," you mumble.

Chelsea turns on you with a bright eye. "Oh, hey," she chirps. "Have you seen Lisa around?" You stare and shake your head. "Don't you share lockers?"

You feel the color rising in your cheeks. "No," you murmur. "She's over in C wing."

Chelsea's smile instantly falls off her face. "I thought you shared lockers with her." She wheels on the third girl in her trio, who though you don't recognize her as a cheerleader is of exactly that type. "You said they share lockers."

"No," the poor girl mumbles. "I said they're going out together."

"You said they share lockers." Chelsea's sweet soprano is like a sheath for the icy dagger in her voice.

The girl shrinks up.

"We were going out," you blurt out, "and we did share lockers for a little while." That's not true, but you are feeling really sorry for the girl. "But not any more."

"Well, thanks for nothing anyway," Chelsea snarls, and she stalks off with Kendra in tow. The third shoots you a quick look -- of gratitude? anger? bafflement? you can't tell -- and hustles after.

You, though, take some compensation in watching Chelsea's magnificently swaying ass until it vanishes around a corner.

* * * * *

Fortunately, the town has several cemeteries, and the small one in Acheson is rarely used. You wait until it is good and dark, then drive out to it, parking in the back. The book said nothing about dirt from an actual grave, so you pick a spot near the wall and start digging.

It's long, hard work, as the spell calls for four hundred pounds of earth. You begin by carefully packing it into sandbags, which you stack neatly by the wall. But the wind comes up, and the trees begin to creak, and the thin, crescent moon falls below the horizon, leaving you plunged further in darkness. That's bad enough, but you are soon made jumpy by the sound of cars passing. You're sure no one can see you, but if someone spots your truck and comes investigating, you'll have a hell of a time explaining what you're doing. Before long, you're just shoving dirt into bags and pushing them feverishly aside.

Your arms are aching badly long before you're finished, but you grimly press through to the end, taking the bags back to the school and transferring them to the basement. Back at the house, you can barely lift your feet from the floor as you shuffle into the living room. Your dad and father swing around to gape at you; Robert puts his hand over his nose.

"What the hell have you been doing?" your dad demands.

You glance down: you are covered in dirt and sweat and grime and ... well, you hope it's nothing worse than those three. "Uh, just out with some friends. Kind of started, uh, rough housing."

"Into a tub," your father orders, stabbing his fingers at the stairs. "And put those clothes in the garage before you get in. There's no way they're going into a regular load."

You roll your eyes and return whence you came. Your clothes are filthy, you have to admit as you peel them off. Far filthier than they should be, you think, to your own discomfort.

You take the new mask into the bathroom with you, and start polishing it while you soak in the tub. You haven't much hope that soap and water will make the job go faster, and it doesn't seem to. You rub and you rub, and your mind drifts back to Lisa and thence back to the episode at your locker. Chelsea is a cunt, but God! she is gorgeous. Long, golden hair; thrusting lips; bosoms you could rest a saucer on; an ass that swishes invitingly inside that pleated cheerleader skirt; long, strong, shapely legs ...

The mask slips from your hand to the floor beside the tub, and soon you are polishing something else.

* * * * *

"Caleb, can I borrow some money from you?" you ask him the next day when you're in the library.

"How much?"

"Two hundred?"

He smiles. "Probably. Lemme call my financial adviser." You blink as he takes out his cell phone. "Yo, Warren," he says jauntily into it. "How's the market doing, old bean? You don't say. Telephone's down. Railroad's down. Steel's down. How is ILovePrescott-dot-com? In the shitter? That's too bad. And PrescottSucks-dot-com? Through the roof? Tsk tsk. Should've put my money there." He closes it and serenely returns your glare. "Sorry, old chum. Portfolio completely wiped out. Gonna have to let some of the servants go, in fact, it looks like."

"You could've just said 'Fuck you'."

"Yes, I could've. In fact, I think I will. Fuck you."

"You're still sore about that job at Salopek."

He twists his mouth up hard. "You take a job that I wanted and you didn't. A job with a pretty good salary and lots of connections. And before you even start it, you hit me up for ... two hundred dollars??"

"I've got the job! I'm good for it!"

"You're good for fuck all, Will."

"You want the job? I'd give it to you, but--!" you start, and then snap your mouth shut. Your brain starts to feel hot.

Will Prescott has the job, sure, but does Will Prescott--the real Will Prescott--have to be the one who shows up? If Caleb wore the mask you made of yourself he could go out there for you. Of course, that would mean taking him into your confidence, but you've come real close a couple of times to doing just that. And after seeing what you've stumbled onto, he'd probably be real happy to chip in some money right away for those chemicals.

The downside--well, one of several, you suppose--is that he'd want to keep at least part of that work salary for himself. But you could afford to be generous, since he'd be doing you a big favor. Heck, you might even give him ... thirty percent of your paycheck?