The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Space Behind the Face

Previously: "A Prisoner in the Attic" 

You sit in bed, eyes and ears straining into the dark. Not long after you hear the scream, the floorboards in the hall softly creak—not footsteps, exactly, but the weight of something large and heavy moving along. The sounds come opposite your door, and stop.

You try to keep awake, but you catch yourself dozing in and out. Light begins to show through the window, but light is not the same thing as dawn; and remembering the shadow you saw against your window, you keep away from the shades. When the glow becomes so strong that you're sure the sun must be up, you creep to the window and twitch the curtain aside.

The window to your bedroom faces east ("a propitious direction for the novitiate," says Blackwell), but the horizon is still only smeared with light. You watch patiently and intently, until a sliver of the sun rises over the limb. You hurry over to the door and open it.

Teeth. Hundreds and hundreds of long, sharp teeth greet you.

You stare into them for only an instant and then they are gone, but it's enough to send you flying backward into your room. You blink and try to clear your head of the ghastly vision and its implication. The thing was sitting outside your door for hours, waiting for you to open it, to break the seal around the door jamb so it could get in at you. You are trembling hard, and it takes several minutes for you to recover.

You are still jumpy, even though you know it is now safe, and bolt up the second staircase. The door is unmarked and the key still in the lock, but that's not how the Guardian would have gotten in anyway. The key rattles as you turn it, and then you stumble into the workroom.

A long dark smear has broken across the sigils Lucy had prepared, but of the girl there is no sign. The inner room yields nothing either. Then you notice that the window is open. You look out.

There is something on the ground, obscured by the shadow of the house.

You run downstairs, out the kitchen door and around. There, on the grass directly below the window, are Lucy's clothes, disordered and empty.

There is also a mask.

You pick it up and examine it, and see Lucy's face reflected like a ghost within. You let out a low whistle.

* * * * *

The first order of business is to get rid of the broken sigils in workroom before they start attracting unpleasant things. With a bucket of soapy water and a mop you make short work of the chalk marks. The trailing stain left by the Guardian remains, however. You do a lot of thinking while you scrub, but you are careful not to get distracted, and check every corner of the room for stray marks. You even crush her bit of chalk to dust and let it blow from your hands on the breeze.

Then you go downstairs into the library. The vampire cyclops-monkey grins malignantly at you from its niche. You regard it directly. "They wouldn't accept a golem, would they?" you ask it. "I'd say it was a person, and that he or she got out of the clothes and mask and scampered off, except—" Well, except that the Guardian has an unmistakably smug and satisfied expression on its face. You nod thoughtfully. "Looks like they gave you something tasty in payment for him, or her," you tell it.

You've gathered up the remains of Lucy Vredenburg and put them in the kitchen. You briefly consider putting on the mask to see what memories and explanations it carries; fortunately, before you do so, you remember that the last memory will undoubtedly be of the Guardian closing in on her. Considering what you felt when you glimpsed only the transparent reflection of its evaporating Cheshire grin, you decide not to.

You pour yourself some coffee and sit down to a good long think.

Someone was under that mask, but who? The most obvious suspect is Aubrey Blackwell himself. Lucy was a fake, a golem, and just as you can switch between your identity and the identity of a golem under your control, he could switch between his identity and that of Lucy. Perhaps it is a golem-slave duplicate of Blackwell that is traveling, and the real Blackwell (for whatever reason) stayed behind as Lucy. But if this is so, why didn't Blackwell just come clean with you last night? Why didn't he take off the disguise? Why would he risk meeting the Guardian just to keep his secret? Why wouldn't he just sleep with you to avoid running such a horrible risk?

No, it must have been someone else. Maybe Blackwell has another confederate, another student or associate. He practically confessed to as much once. The real Lucy may be hidden under a mask of this adept, just as the real Yumi is being hidden under your own visage in another mask. But you can't restore Lucy unless you find out who this associate is and get the mask off her, and though you don't especially care about Lucy herself, you know that her disappearance will cause complications.

This is bad, not just for the confederate (to say the least!) but for yourself. You'd really like to cover it up by hiding the fact of this cock up. Blackwell is going to be beyond furious, because you will have cost him an associate and made a terrific mess of things, all because of your own stubbornness and lust.

On the other hand, you might be able to finesse things a little bit. Your mentor is very good at seeing through lies, but it is true that you didn't believe Lucy was telling the truth. And perhaps she wasn't telling the truth either. There is some chance, however small, that this confederate was up to no good, and that you did exactly the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons. Maybe you should call him, or confess to him what happened.

And if you do that, you'll be able to go to Meghan's party. That is where you were planning on making a switch into an alpha student anyway.

Next: "Losing Lucy" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"