The Book of Masks (Abridged)

An Unusual Burglary

"WHO ARE YOU?" you ask the guy grinning in at you through your second-story window.

"Don't worry, I'm friendly," he says. "I only bite pretty girls who've bitten me first. You gonna be a good kid, not yell?" His head briefly disappears, and then he's swinging his whole body into your bedroom. He rubs his bare thigh with his palm, leaving a thin red streak of blood. "Those vines need trimming," he observes.

"Now, the 'Libra Personae'," he says, rubbing his hands. "Where would you have—? Ah, here it is." He twitches it from atop your desk and flips through the first few pages. "Hardly got into it, did you? Most excellent. But we're not done yet. You wanna spend the rest of your life learning how to hold a fork and spoon between your toes? Then stay right where you are. Otherwise, go downstairs and tell your parents in a very casual way that you're gonna take a quick walk around the block. Go out your front door, turn right, and meet me two houses down. You got that?"

"Uh—?"

"I'm not gonna risk getting caught up here, Prescott, so unless your next words are 'No hablo ingles', and I know they won't be, hop to it. Meet you in two." With the book under his arm he ducks back out the window. Leaves rustle and wood creaks, and he's gone.

You swallow hard and look down at your hands. They feel welded to the tablet. So you get up and go to the door. You have to open it with your elbow, and in the process the tablet gets stuck to the front of your shirt.

So you're quite a sight, you suppose, when you get downstairs and trot through the empty living room. "Going out for a few minutes, be right back," you holler. No one replies, which is fortunate, because the knob to the front door is even heavier than the one to your room, and you spend a very sweaty twenty seconds getting even more attached to that cursed tablet as you use your forearms to twist it open.

"Over here," a clear voice shouts when you reach the sidewalk in front of your house. To the right is a white truck, not dissimilar to your own, and the blonde guy is waving at you from it. You trot over—an ungainly trot, more waddle than run what with your hands pinned to your chest. The blonde guy laughs, though not in a mean way, as he opens the passenger side truck door for you. "Oh, you made a right mess of it, didn't you, Prescott?" he says.

You glare at him as you hop into the truck. There's another guy—not dressed as an UPS man—behind the wheel. This one is dark of hair and eye, and he gives you a rather sour look as the blonde one pushes you into the middle of the cab. "I thought you said you'd get me out of this thing," you say, and waggle the tablet as best you can.

"All in good time," says the dark-haired one. "As soon as we get back to our place." He looks around you as he puts the truck in motion, and says something to the blonde one in a language you don't understand. The blonde guy replies. Then the dark one gives you a half-smile: friendlier, though still sour. "Then it should be easy, shouldn't it?" he says.

You slink down in the seat.

* * * * *

The trip ends in front of a dowdy little house in the "student ghetto" section of town just a few blocks south of the university. The blonde one—who has introduced himself as "Joe"—helps you out of the truck and leads you inside; the dark one—"Frank"—trails and closes the door. "Alright Joe, I think we can take the cuffs off," he says as he locks the three of you in.

Joe grasps the tablet, says some words you can't make out, and tugs the tablet from your grasp. "Sorry to be so melodramatic," he says as he tosses it away. "But we had to make sure."

"Make sure of what?" You flex your hands tentatively; there seems to be no residue on your skin or the front of your shirt.

"That we don't need to dispose of you as well as the Libra," says Frank. "Sit down."

"Dispose of me?" you ask in a squeak. "What do you mean by—?"

"I said 'Sit down'." Neither Frank nor Joe touches you, but you are violently thrust backward by an invisible force onto a nearby couch. Frank advances, puts his foot on the cushion by your knee, and leans in on you. While holding your eye he extends a hand toward Joe, who hands him the book. "Now you will tell us exactly how this thing"—he brandishes the book at you—"came into your possession, and what you did with it the entire time that you had it. Or else—"

Still he doesn't touch you. No one—that you can see—touches you. But something like a hand—a big, strong hand that feels like it's wrapped in chain mail—closes about your neck.

"Or else your face is going to become very closely acquainted with the ceiling," Frank says.

* * * * *

So you talk. Probably you'd have talked without the threats, as you mention—a trifle sulkily—when you're done. It's not a long story either: You bought the book at Arnholm's Used Books, got freaked out by it, tried to get rid of it, showed it to a few people, lost it for a few days after a scrum with some bullies at school, got it back after the administration intervened, and sent John Reilly a query about it. They ask you to tell it a few more times and challenge you on a few points—which you are able to meet, because you're telling the exact truth—and when you're done Frank and Joe stare at each other for awhile. "All that's open is the title page," says Joe.

"It's been in circulation for a very long time," says Frank.

"Sitting on a shelf at Arnholm's."

"And how did it get there? The professor is unlikely to have willingly parted with it."

"Prescott didn't willingly part with it, but part with it he did."

Frank snorts. "Are you suggesting a gang of high school thugs broke into the professor's house—"

"So maybe something broke in. Something more in his line of work."

"Uh, what professor are you talking about?" you ask.

"A guy named Blackwell. You know him?" Frank asks. He continues to stare hard at you even after you shake your head. "There's still a lotta loose ends, Joe," he says to the other.

"We got the book back. That's the job."

"And artifacts. We need to put away any artifacts that got let loose."

"There won't be any, Frank," Joe groans. "I told you, the title page is still locked in place. And if Prescott never sold it—"

"But the professor would have sold it, right? How else does a book wind up in a used book store?"

Joe turns pink. "At any rate, Prescott is out of it. Aren't you?" He turns toward you.

"I don't even know what's going on," you whine. "Who are you guys?"

"It doesn't matter," Frank says. "Is there anything else we need to do here?"

For a moment you don't know how to reply, but when Joe speaks, you realize Frank was talking to him. "The title page is still sealed, so he has no real claim on the book. If we want to be scrupulous, we'll give him two bucks for it."

So, to your surprise Frank digs into his pocket and pulls out one crumpled bill and some change. "You said you were trying to get rid of that book," he tells you as he pushes the money into your hands. "So tell me you're selling it to us."

"I just didn't want a bunch of bad guys getting ahold of it," you blurt back.

To your surprise, Frank smiles. It's not the most pleasant smile—it's hard and humorless and it's even a little frightening—but there's nothing mean or cruel in it. "Attaboy, Prescott," he says. "I knew you were a good egg."

If he's been treating you as a "good egg," you'd really hate to see how he treats the bad ones. You take the money and bob your head wordlessly. Frank claps you on the shoulder and tells Joe to take you home.

* * * * *

Joe doesn't prattle, exactly, on the way back to your place, but he talks a lot without saying much that's informative.

"This was a really awesome little adventure you gave us," he laughs in one typical outburst. "Gave me a chance to dress up. You like the disguise?" He plucks at the brown shirt. "Frank was all, like, 'You don't need to dress up like an UPS guy, you don't need to dress up at all, we just need to get over to this place and grab the book,' but I'm all, 'Frank, it has to look convincing when we deliver the tar baby,' and I finally wore him down and we went shopping. That's how come we were so late getting to you. But it all ended okay. Would you have said anything if I'd shown up at your place dressed normally?"

"I don't know," you reply. He talks so fast it leaves you in a daze.

"Anyway," he says, "I don't get to play dress up often enough, so maybe it's a really good thing you didn't unseal the Libra or else Frank would have a really hard time keeping me out of it."

And so on like this until he pushes you out of the truck in front of your house. You go inside and discover that no one even knew you'd been out. "Thought it was a little quiet around here," is your dad's comment.

Back upstairs, you drop in front of your computer, not knowing what to think.