The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Student Warlock

Previously: "One Well-Armed Research Project" 

Saturday. You have the day off, but Will owes Salopek three hours of work, from nine in the morning until noon. Even so, you're up two hours before the lazybones has dragged himself into the dining room for a bite of breakfast. You let him finish his cereal before dropping the anvil on him.

"It takes fifteen minutes if the traffic is right to get home from work," you tell him. "You be home by twelve-twenty, or you're in a world of hurt. You're grounded until suppertime."

He flies back in his chair and gasps. "Dad!"

"You want to try a grounding that lasts till bedtime? Every hour of detention at school, you match it here."

Your wife looks in at you from the kitchen, her face showing almost as much surprise as your son's.

Robert chortles. "Detention at home!" he jeers.

You stab a finger at him. "You want to try it out yourself?" He shuts up and hangs his head. To Will: "Get your stuff together, I got extra words for you outside."

With the sullenness of a snail on its way to a shell extraction, Will puts his gear together and follows you out to the garage. It's all you can do to keep from slapping the hat off his head. Instead—

"Stop by your place on your way to work," you tell Caleb in a low voice, "then switch out and send, uh, Will to Salopek." Your friend instantly perks up. "Then you follow. Come find me in my office."

"What's it for?" he says with barely restrained excitement. "Is it about those masks?"

"Exactly. I got a job for you."

He grins.

You watch until he's gone, and the roar of the truck motor has hardly died away before your wife comes into the garage. "Harris," she says.

"All that in there was for Robert's benefit," you interrupt her. "I don't want him getting the idea it's okay to hit bullies, so I'm piling extra punishment on Will. I told him that if he serves out the extra detention here this weekend, I'll relax his curfew by an hour starting Monday."

She raises her eyebrows, but doesn't argue.

* * * * *

After Will is away, you go back in the house to gather some stuff for the morning's plan. That done, you announce that you've got some errands to run, and take the SUV in to Salopek. The lie is necessary because Martha doesn't like it when her husband goes in to work on the weekends, and he does his best not to. But every once in a while he has to, but will tell her he's going someplace else.

Will's truck isn't in the lot when you arrive, and you can't help snorting softly to see that he'll be at least five minutes late when he does get there. Up in your office you kill some time by working on some papers that you'd abandoned yesterday, and you're soon so absorbed in them that you don't hear your visitor until he's knocked. "Mr. Prescott?" he says.

"Oh. Caleb. How are you doing? Come in. Close the door." He obliges. "Sit down." He sits. You hold his eye. "Why the fuck was my son late for work?"

He rolls his eyes. "He stopped to get donuts first," he says, and holds up a sack. "Got enough to share."

"Not on my diet. Now, about those items you made. Those masks."

Caleb bites on his grin.

"I don't know magic," you say as you lean back. "And you don't either, and neither does my dad. It's a real pisser, 'cos that book's doing stuff we don't understand."

"I don't understand it either, sir."

"I already mentioned that fact." Caleb's grin fades a little at your words. "We need to get some help. From a professional."

His eyebrows quirk. "Like who? David Copperfield? Penn and Teller?"

"I have a couple of people in mind, but I want to start with someone, mm, small. Maybe learn just enough that we can then learn the rest on our own."

Alarm now shows in his face. "You want to show this person the masks?"

"No, I want to use a mask on them. Copy them and put it on a golem. Then they'll work for us."

"Oh." Caleb's face has lost all its animation by now. "So I guess you're not talking about using a mask on Cindy Vredenburg."

"Why, you think she would know anything about this stuff?"

Now Caleb's expression turns shifty. "Uh. Maybe."

"No you don't. I was thinking of Braydon Delp."

Caleb jerks so hard he almost comes out of the chair. "Delp?"

"He's into this stuff. More than we are. I've heard he knows about Tarot cards and stuff like that. And people gossip about him and what he—"

"But he's just a guy in high school! Like us! How about Morgana, Will, if you want—? She's a girl at least, and—" He cuts himself off as you cock your head at him.

"I told you what I want," you say. "I get the impression Delp is real serious about this stuff, and I've heard him talk about Morgana and he doesn't think much of her." You frown as Caleb clucks his tongue. "What were you planning to do with Morgana?"

"With Morgana? Nothing. But I was thinking we could—"

"Have you used any of those masks yet?" you demand. "Except on the Molester?"

He sinks in the chair. "You mean besides him? And us? And your Dad?"

"Obviously."

He shakes his head.

"And you're not going to. Go home and put all that stuff you made in a duffel bag—"

"It's at the clubhouse."

"Then go to the clubhouse and put that stuff in a duffel bag, and go get Delp and bring him up here."

"Jesus! How am I supposed to do that? I hardly know him!"

You're already taking out your cell phone, and you swipe and tap into it while you talk. "I'm sending you a jpeg," you say. "You go find Delp, you show him the jpeg, you tell him the thing is up here at my office, and that he should come in to take a look at it."

"Really?" Half of Caleb's face curls up into a quizzical smile. "What is it? Porn?"

"Delp's kind of porn," you say as you hit "Send." "It's a picture of that book we're using to make masks. I snapped a photo of it before I came up here."

* * * * *

After Caleb has gone, you take the grimoire out of your briefcase—it's been there the whole time, but you saw no reason to tell Caleb that—and a few more items. These include a list of ingredients, and you go downstairs to do some shopping.

On your way back you do a search of the complex until you find Sean Mitchell. "What's Andy got you and Will doing?" you ask him.

"Putting up new shutters on that storeroom," he tells you.

"And Will's actually helping?" You have a hard time imagining anyone of your bulk and frame being able to manipulate things of that size and weight.

Sean grins. "Sure. He's keeping me company."

You grunt. "Can you miss him for the next thirty minutes?" you ask, and Sean shrugs. "Send him up to my office."

Five minutes later, there's a soft knock at your door. "Come in, son," you say, and he enters.

You're struck by his appearance. Gone is that grinning rapscallion you sent away this morning when Caleb was wearing the mask. This kid is shy, tentative, and he looks at you with sidelong wariness. You frown. Is that really you? Or is it the golem? Is that "kid" you've been "bonding with" for the past few days really Caleb and not in any sense yourself?

When you catch him frowning in turn, you tell him to shut the door and take off his clothes. He pales, and asks if he has to.

Worse and worse. This is the golem of your {i]dad under there. It's under Caleb's control, but that's not what's worrying you. It's that you'll have to look at your dad's petrified form again when you make this switch.

Well, the sooner you make it, the sooner you'll be past it. You gruffly repeat the order to strip, and when he's done you rip the mask off, like a band-aid off a wound.

* * * * *

The last stage of the present comedy begins with a knock at your dad's office door. "Come in," your dad calls, and he shoots you a querying look. You nod.

Caleb enters. "Mr. Prescott?" he says. "I've got that friend I was telling you about who might, uh—"

"Oh yes. Come in, er, Braydon isn't it?" Your dad stands and puts out a hand to his visitor.

The latter seems to have oozed in. Braydon Delp is a short, skinny, slump-shouldered slacker in dark jeans and a dark tee; hair clumsily cut into a fauxhawk and darkened with what looks like shoe polish; mascara on the lashes of his droopy eyes; and, in a contrast to the aura of black he's surrounded himself with, an abundance of silver around his neck, wrists and fingers. Even from across the room, you can tell that the handshake he gives your dad is as limp as a twice-boiled noodle.

While pleasantries are made, you cross the room and kick the door shut. Caleb frowns at you when you snap your fingers at him; then understanding dawns in his eyes, and he unslings the bag from his shoulder and unzips it. You pull from it a blue mask.

Braydon is bending over your dad's desk, studying the grimoire, when you grab him from behind and press the mask to his face. He sinks into your arms.

"Jesus, Will!" Caleb explodes. "You could'a told me you were yourself again!"

"I just did." You've got enough of your dad still in your head that you've no time for foolery.

"So what do we do now?" Caleb asks. "I've got some of that paste I made. We can put it in Braydon's mask if we want."

"If we do, we'll use a batch I made after you left," you reply. "I put it in my dad's mask."

But do you put yourself back under his mask, take over for Braydon, or let him go and rely on the mask to tell you what you want to know?

* To continue: "Becoming Braydon Delp" 

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