The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Becoming Braydon Delp

Previously: "The Student Warlock" 

You have just enough of your dad's mind inside yours to judge the thing to a fineness: Harris Prescott is not going to have enough time to study whatever books Braydon Delp has read, so you're going to have to do it from inside Delp. Caleb grumbles about it when you tell him what you're going to do. "Always taking the good stuff for yourself, aren't you?" he says.

"I don't think this counts as 'good stuff'," you retort as you yank off one of Braydon's Doc Martens.

"But he has a girlfriend, doesn't he?"

"Does he?"

"Gillian Kiefer, right?"

"Mm." You have a vague memory of seeing Braydon and a girl together. "But that's not why I'm doing this." You pull off Braydon's other shoe.

And as you start to unbutton his pants, you catch sight of your dad frowning at you from behind his desk. It gives you the briefest spasm of panic at being caught out by him before you remember yourself. "Uh, Dad," you stammer, for even now, with him as an obedient golem, you can't bring yourself to order him around, "can you give us a little privacy?"

You see it in his eyes and you hear it in Caleb's snicker: You asking for "privacy" as you strip another guy of his pants. Your face burns like a hot coal as your dad stalks out, and you turn your back on Caleb as you complete the job of stripping Braydon of his things. To cover your embarrassment, when you're done with that you snatch up the mask of yourself and start coating it with the "golem goop" that you made up while waiting for Caleb and Braydon to show up.

Caleb waits until you're almost done before making the laconic observation: "So I suppose I'm not gonna be playing you anymore." That's when you realize that by coating your mask with stuff that will enslave it to your will, you have made it so that Caleb can't wear it anymore. You mutter a curse word.

"Yeah, I guess not," you say. "Well, if Braydon can hang out with me, he can hang out with you. And yes, you'll still get paid for what 'Will' does."

Caleb settles back in a chair with a contented sigh. "It's a sweet life. Someone to do my work and give me his paycheck." You snort.

* * * * *

To save time, you're already out of your clothes and into Braydon's by the time the mask has reappeared on your classmate's face, and you waste no time dropping your modified mask onto him. You ought to feel guilty about imprisoning Braydon this way, but you don't. It's for the greater good.

Well, it's to help get your dad back. Even now, you're a little ambivalent about whether that's for the "good" of the universe or not.

After "Will" has dressed, you send him and Caleb out to join your dad while you lift Braydon's mask to your face. You feel very cold as you do so.

Then you feel very warm as the mask covers you with a sensation like hot syrup pouring over you and into you.

* * * * *

You're cold again when you wake, though, and you sit up with a jerk. For a moment you are lost and confused, and you frown at the strange room you find yourself in. But is it strange? It also feels very familiar, and you're struck with deja vu.

Then all floods back, and you know where you are. But still the sense of oddity lingers, for this office is a strange place to Braydon Delp, and now you are also him, on the inside and the outside.

You are also quite alone. But you're in no hurry to catch up to Caleb, so you lay back on the desk and blink at the ceiling a couple of times. You raise your hands and look at them. The fingers are long and white. Your forearms are white too, with black hairs that stand out against the pallor. You wriggle down inside your clothes, and pluck at your t-shirt thoughtfully.

Your silver! You sit up sharply. The jewelry is spread out on the desk next to you, but it's no longer a strange affectation. Each piece is meaningful, and it tells you its meaning as you pick them up and put them on.

The silver ring carved all about with intertwined pentagrams, which Braydon empowered the day of the summer solstice by heating it in a brazier over a bed of charcoal and a dead blackbird. According to The Book of Balaam, wearing it on your right index finger—you slip it on there now—increases your potency to command others.

Around your right wrist you wrap a silver chain, among the links of which are scattered disks into which are stamped the mystical letters (of five different alphabets) associated with Sol. Have Braydon's grades improved since wearing this charm meant to invoke the academical prodigies of the Sun? Maybe by a little ...

Over your head and about your neck and under your shirt you slip the polished bicycle chain Braydon stole off Ian Rush's bike his sophomore year. Ian was a senior, and a track star, and Braydon was sunk in envy of his athleticism. It was out of no mean desire to hurt Ian that he lifted the chain, however. According to Cornelius Agrippa, the virtues of one man may be communicated to another, like an infection, through an appropriate physical medium. Braydon lost interest in track soon thereafter, but he keeps the chain still, for he likes it as a decorative piece; and who knows, maybe one day he will discover the proper way to unlock that virtue of speed that Ian put in it all those days that he pedaled furiously to and from school.

You're up now, and you stand and settle into your clothes. The grimoire you slide into the book bag that Braydon brought with him. From one of its pockets you take the bottle of mascara and step into the office lobby. Your dad looks back at you from the window he's staring out of, and does a double take. "All yours again, Mr. Will's dad," you call softly back to him. His brow darkens, but he nods. You go looking for a bathroom.

The face that looks back at you from the restroom mirror is thin and pale enough that very faint freckles stand out on your nose if you look closely enough. The heavy eyelids and down-sloping eyebrows give your large, hazel-colored eyes a slightly worried look even when you're relaxed. You darken your lashes with the mascara: not enough to look like a transvestite, but enough, with the died fauxhawk, to give you just the slightest androgynous look. You resettle your clothes and twist at the ring. Does it work? That's the thing about the magic that Braydon has tried: It does not do or grant anything that he does not, to some degree already, possess. It is only supposed to augment it, and so there is no obvious test that will confirm or disconfirm its efficacy. Braydon is acutely aware that he is playing with a theory that cannot be verified—or even tested—but tries to ignore it.

So you feel his hunger for magical power more sharply as you think of that grimoire: It certainly counts as proof that the "magic" he has tried invoking, and been roundly mocked for believing in, is real.

That worried expression softens a little as you smile at yourself. Time to go find Johansson, and to put Braydon's brain to work on that book.

* * * * *

"It's not about potions or wands or Latin catch-phrases," you tell Caleb when you're in the school basement. He's in an old, broken-down swivel chair; you're sitting on a desk. "That's not what magic is."

"It isn't?" He raises his eyebrows and lifts the cover of the grimoire to flip through the pages. "Then no wonder we fucked up, man. We been doing it wrong."

You smile sourly. "I'm just telling you what Braydon believes."

"Then Braydon's a dipshit and you're wasting your time in that mask."

"It's just a recipe book we've got there," you explain, and pull the grimoire away from him. "Braydon's got a bunch of them too, and there's nothing wrong with them. You find something that works, you write it down. But Braydon's all about finding the principles underneath the magic, like the way a chef finds the principles in back of how to cook a roast."

"Is that Braydon's analogy?" Caleb chortles. "Are you sure he's fucking Gillian? 'Cos that just sounds gay."

"Shut up, man. I'm trying to explain to you that magic is about making the elementals do what you want. Figure out the elementals, and we can figure out the spells. And if we can figure out the spells, then we can figure out what the fuck is going on with this one." You hold up the grimoire, and point to the gibberish-encrusted page that has you both stumped.

"Yeah? So you have ideas about what's going on there, Houdini?"

You bite your tongue, not at the gibe—though you and Braydon both are getting pretty tired of the way Caleb is riding you—but because you don't have a ghost of an answer to give him.

And because according to Braydon's preferred philosophy, real magic isn't even about the elementals.

Magic is about the soul, he has written in his secret journal, which is just the blank pages at the back of one of his used paperbacks. Only a special kind of soul is capable of discerning and using magic. A magician is a musician, and only those blessed with high and rare talent can practice it and develop their practice to the most perfect pitch.

He wrote that in a moment of boastfulness, and still believes it. The conceit has soured into fear and anxiety, however, as his various magical practices have yielded nullities. For it implies he hasn't got the kind of soul he thinks he should want.

Caleb is still looking at you expectantly. Luckily, your phone dings just then with a message from Gillian. Which is a perfect excuse for getting away from him before you embarrass yourself further with Braydon's lack of real knowledge.

* To continue: "Braydon's Big Distraction" 

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