The Book of Masks (Abridged)

Lessons on the Sly

IT'S BEEN A BUSY AND EXHAUSTING DAY, but still you push on. A quick glance at the next spell confirms that you've got all the ingredients for it on hand (assuming that that's real graveyard dirt Gordon packed in the remaining sandbag before he had his "accident") and it won't take long to test it out.

So you set a bowl onto the sigil at the bottom of the page, fill it with the requisite dirt and powders, fluids and crystals, and even a lock of your own hair. You hunker down, and with gritted teeth and narrowed eyes drop a lighted match into it.

FOOM! A purple bloom of light fills the old school basement, then fades. There's an acrid burning odor, but it's not as foul as the stench from when you cast the mask, and it quickly fades. When you peer into the bowl, you find it filled with a slurry-like paste. You dip a finger in it. It's only the least little bit sticky.

As you lift the bowl for another look at the spell, the page comes away. This is very odd, but it has long ceased to be a surprise. The book, as you'd noticed when you bought it, has some kind of occult lock on it. A page will not turn loose until you have performed some kind of required action—like giving it blood—and executing this new spell was apparently like turning a key in the lock. You flip the page and study the reverse side, which explains the stuff you have just made.

But it's too long and complicated to figure out immediately, so after blinking at it a couple of times, you close the book. You've already missed suppertime, so you drive into town to grab a burger. When you get home, you give your parents a story about grabbing a meal with some friends.

* * * * *

The next day is Sunday, which means church, and you don't hear from Chelsea until well after lunch, when you're changed back into comfortable clothes and are propped up on your bed with the book, your cell phone, and a notebook.

"Steve wants to get together with Gordon," she tells you. "I could make him say no, but maybe I should keep him in character?"

It's odd that it sounds like she's asking you, but you agree with her. "No point in us getting together anyway, there's nothing going on at my end yet," you lie, "except some reading and translating."

You then launch into the story you'd prepared for Chelsea, same as you had a story for your parents last night. "It'll be awhile before I know anything. I still have to study those spells like Gordon did when he made those statue things. You know, the ones that needed the graveyard dirt?"

"Eww," Chelsea says.

"Well, those are the ones that, uh, made him have his accident, so those are the ones that I need to play with. To study and figure out, you know?"

"I guess."

"Right, and that's gonna take awhile. Didn't you say something about how it took a week for him to do that one spell?"

"Something like that. You know, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention."

That's right, Chelsea, and you just go on not paying a whole lot of attention, like a good girl. "Well, I'm getting ready to do that one, and if that one's going to take me, like, a week, to be done with—"

Chelsea protests. "But that's not the one that caused his accident!"

"I know! But I want to go through these things slowly and carefully. I don't want to— You know, your boyfriend screwed himself up because he was— I mean—!" You start to stammer. "He's, he's really smart, Chelsea, I don't mean he's—"

"He's a dumb lummox, is what he is," Chelsea says. "You don't have to say nice things about him on my account, Will. I'm not going out with him because of his brains."

Obviously. "Well, I don't want the same thing to happen to me. You don't want the same thing to happen to me, right, because then—"

"Yeah yeah. Look, how long do you think it's gonna take you?"

"A week? At least?" You hold your breath and listen to the silence on the other end before resuming. "I know you want him back—"

"That would be fine," Chelsea says, and she sounds very thoughtful. "It was really smart what you figured out yesterday, putting that mask on him, so at least we've got it set up so no one misses him. And he's a lot easier to get along with."

"Well, as long as you're not super rushed," you say, and wonder that she's taking things so well. "And Gordon is still doing what he tells you?"

"Sure. He doesn't even sulk about it."

"Then would it be okay if he got me some more of that cemetery dirt?" You flip back to that spell. "Four hundred pounds?"

"You want him to help you get it?"

"Uh, can you get him to just do it himself? Like he did before?" You don't want to spend any time at all with Gordon Black, not even a pliant one.

"I guess. When do you need it?"

You tell her that Tuesday will be soon enough—Gordon can get the dirt on Monday night, after it's good and dark, and you'll transfer it into the bed of your truck on Tuesday morning at school. "Also, I'll need some money," you improvise, "because I'm running low on some of the supplies that I'll need. I've got a hundred bucks of my own," you lie—

And Chelsea falls right into the hole you've dug for her. "I'll get you another hundred tomorrow," she sighs. "Honestly," she adds with a grumble, "who knew magic could be so expensive?"

You hang up, and return to translating and puzzling out the new spell.

* * * * *

It's late in the afternoon before you think you've got a handle on it. And even then you feel very uncertain. The Latin is tricky, and of course you are dealing with something a whole lot more complicated than chemistry or physics. But after comparing what the book has to say about this new spell, and about the previous spells, and after studying the ingredients ...

Well, to start with, there's the spell that makes a statue thing, like the one that Gordon spent a week making. The best word of that, you decide, is "golem." Like in the old Eastern European legends. Those things were basically robots: animated, personality-free statues that obeyed their masters. So the book teaches how to make a statue that will obey its master, but it only becomes animated if you put a mask on it, and then it will also turn into a duplicate of the person whose form was copied into the mask. Good for making a servant, and as a side benefit for making a servant who is the duplicate of someone real. If you could get rid of the original, and substitute the duplicate ...

You shiver at the idea.

Then there's the spell that Gordon used on himself. That spell turns people into golems. You'd told Chelsea that you thought you were supposed to use a corpse in the spell, but now you're not so sure of that. Anyway, Gordon had used himself, and it had worked on him. He's a golem now, and if you put a mask on him, he will turn into animated duplicate of the person whose form is in the mask. So at least he's looking like himself again, but you could use any sort of mask on him, which would turn him into anybody else. (Your lips twitch at the thought of turning him into Cassie Harper, the diminutive chatterbox who sometimes follows you around.) But he has to obey Chelsea, because Chelsea is the one whose hair was used in the spell.

And this new spell? It creates a paste that you spread inside a mask, like the sealant. If you then put the mask on someone, it turns them into something like a golem, but a golem that is already wearing a mask. And the duplicate, like the golem, has to obey whichever person whose hair was used in the spell.

You have the mask you made yesterday, and you take it out and look at it thoughtfully. It still has to be sealed, and it has to have a metal band affixed to it. But after that, if you put it on someone ...

If you put it on yourself, say, and copied your own image into it ...

And then you put that new sealant into it ...

And then you slapped it onto the face of someone else ...

Like, if you slapped it onto the face of Chelsea ...

Then Chelsea (or whoever) would turn into a duplicate of you. But this duplicate would be your slave, doing whatever you told him to do.

Then, if you had a mask of ... Well, of Chelsea, and you put it on yourself ...

Then you'd turn into a duplicate of them. Of Chelsea, in this case.

Voila. The world would still contain a Will Prescott and a Chelsea Cooper. But you'd be Chelsea Cooper, and Chelsea—transformed into a duplicate of yourself—would be your slave.

But why are you having this fantasy?

* * * * *

Well, that's not hard to figure out. It's because this magic stuff is turning out to be very dangerous, and you've just figured out how it can be used to hurt people.

How it can be used to hurt yourself, for instance, if you're not careful around Chelsea. After all, if this idea, the idea of a "Chelsea Cooper" who has enslaved a "Will Prescott" can occur to you, it can occur to her, but in reverse. And she's got her Neanderthal boyfriend to help her out, if she ever decides she wants to enslave you.

The way you see it, you can do unto her before she can do unto you. Or you can use the masks to run away and hide.

Or you can show all this to Chelsea. If you show that you trust her, maybe she'll go on trusting you.