The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Losing Lucy

Previously: "The Space Behind the Face" 

It's still very early, but you call your Will Prescott golem and roust him out of bed. "I need you over here," you tell it. "Two heads are better than one."

"Dad won't like me heading over there."

"Don't tell him you're coming over to Blackwell's," you reply. "Jesus, don't tell me the guy who's lying to everyone by pretending to be me is more honest than I am. And pick up some doughnuts on the way over. Coffee too. Also, bring all the cash you've got. You know, that Aubrey was giving me."

"I've been buying Xbox games," it tells you guiltily. You curse it out good and hard, but it says it has several hundred dollars left, which hardly mollifies you. You'd hope it couldn't blow all that cash on toys.

* * * * *

The first thing you do when it arrives is twitch the Prescott mask off and load it with your own most recent memories so you don't have to explain things to it; this also has the effect of bringing it up to speed on all your most recent research. Luckily, this doesn't take long, and Yumi doesn't awake during the brief time that her true form is exposed from beneath the golemized mask. "Whoa," your doppelganger says when you've got the mask back on her. "You've gotten good over the past week."

The two of you then get right to work, pouring over books and drawing up and studying sigils; you argue over the meaning over various symbols (arguments you aren't displeased to lose when your double has the better of them), make suggestions, and toss out ideas. Being a magical creature, it can't perform any of the tests, but as an intellectual aid it is very good. It's a great pleasure having someone as smart as you to help you out without jealousy or contrary purposes. You get through at least twice as much stuff than if you been working alone.

The idea is to get into Lucy's mask in a way that will let you get what information you can out of it without exposing yourself to the horror of what happened to it; if possible, you'd like to get the horrible memories out of it completely. And yet as the morning turns into the afternoon you don't feel you are getting anywhere. You don't have the Libra to guide you, of course, and few of the other books in the library give much help either. You and your twin are able to draw up copies of the sigils for the mask, the seal, and the metal band from memory, since you have made such a close study of them under Blackwell's guidance. Your admiration for the author of the book grows immensely as the day proceeds, for you see that he or she was clearly able to leave places in the sigil constructions for elaborations on their basic function without leaving any gaps that could cause the sigil to unravel.

"It's like there's a hole there," your twin says at one point, gesturing to one of the symbols. "If it were open, you could thread a simple recapitulate sigil through that would let you copy the contents of a sealed mask into a blank one. But these other functions around it ... Well, they don't seal it off, but it's like they cause that hole to swallow itself. If you could just find a way to slip it some magical ipecac, you could get it open long enough to thread that bit through."

* * * * *

By mid-afternoon you are both baffled. You can't find a way to break into or modify the Lucy mask, to erase memories of the previous night; you can't even copy its contents onto another mask for further study. You are going to have to find a way to make Lucy disappear in a way that won't raise any suspicions, by Blackwell or anyone else.

So it's a stroke of luck a little when a little after lunch you find her car. Last night, after locking her away, you had gone to move and hide her car but could find no sign of it. At the time you had concluded that she had taken a cab or gotten a ride, though this struck you as very strange. But while standing atop the mausoleum and taking a clipping from the yew tree (its leaf pattern is articulated in one of the sigils you are studying) your attention was caught by a glint of light. Investigating, you found her SUV hidden behind the house and within a thin screen of trees. It's another oddity: why did she take the trouble to hide it so well?

And so by three o'clock, you were receptive when your doppelganger exhaled a deep sigh, rubbed its eyes with the heels of its hands, and said "Why not just stage a car accident?"

"We haven't got a golem to wear the mask."

"Sure we do. We've got Blackwell's golem, the one under the Yumi mask."

"He'll miss it."

"Just tell him that it's at school under Yumi, and then you skip school so you don't have to swap out with it. Tell him you're making good headway on research and don't want to interrupt your studies here by going to school, even as Yumi."

"But who do we hang the Yumi mask on? I mean, for real, since the golem is going to be in a car crash."

"Hang it on the real Yumi. There's no conflict between a fake Yumi mask going on the real Yumi, as long as there is a golem in between."

"So who do I hang my own mask on?"

"Anyone. Caleb. Gordon Black. Someone no one will miss. Jesus, am I the only one using your brain this afternoon?"

* * * * *

You wind up going with the following plan: You will put the Lucy mask on Blackwell's golem and stage a fatal accident. Reluctantly, you will paint the inside of the Yumi mask with golem goo (of which you have leftovers from an earlier batch) so that you can put it on a homeless guy and turn him into a Yumi slave. Yumi, for the time being, will remain hidden under the Will Prescott mask.

This is less problematic than it sounds, because after the fake Lucy is buried you'll dig her up and retrieve mask and golem both from her coffin. Then you'll be able to return the golem to Blackwell's house, and maybe you'll be able to find a way to recycle the mask in the meantime.

To test it out, you bully Yumi (who is not under your control yet) into returning to the house. You strip the golem of the Yumi mask and put the Lucy mask on it. If you're lucky, you'll be able to question it about what is going on. If you're not lucky—

Will claps his hands over his ears. "Jesus, shut it off!"

You slap your hand over Lucy's mouth, muffling her shrill screams of bug-eyed terror. Her eyes bulge and stare into nothingness. "Lucy! Lucy!" You slap her while Will grasps her flailing limbs, and she pauses and gasps. You get in her face and stare into her eyes. "Lucy. Listen to me. You're okay. Everything is okay." She looks at you, without comprehension. Then her eyes go out of focus and—

"Just take the fucking mask off her," Will shouts over the pandemonium. You rip it off, but her cries of horror still echo through the house.

"Well, we can be sure of one thing," you say. Your voice is trembling a little. "Put her behind the wheel and buckle her in, and she'll go straight over a cliff. Let's take her out to Plumtree Road." That's a treacherous, switchback-laden road in the hills outside of town.

You've just gotten the golem into Lucy's SUV when the house cell phone rings. That'll be Blackwell, and you and Will curse in stereo.

"Is Lucy there?" Blackwell asks, sounding distracted. "Have you seen her this weekend?" he asks when you say she isn't. To the second question you again demur. "One of her girlfriends is looking for her, and she called me," he says. "I was hoping you'd have seen her."

"Her girlfriend has your private number?" Your heart skips.

"Yes," he says slowly. "She's another student of mine. Melody Weiss. Let me give you her number. I'd appreciate it if you talked to her. It's not like Lucy to disappear."

You take down Melody's contact info and clap the phone shut. "Complications?" Will asks from the front door. You tell him what Blackwell said. "Christ, how many students does this guy have? It's turning into Hogwarts around here."

"He didn't say she was a magic student."

"What other kind of student would have his private cell phone number?"

You drum the wall with your knuckles. "Maybe we should talk to her before getting rid of our friend out there."

"Or maybe we should get rid of our friend before her friend comes snooping around."

Next: "New Information" 

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