The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Sweet Life of a New Magician

Previously: "An Accident and Its Aftermath" 

When school lets out, Blackwell will either be at his house or up at his office. You've a fifty-fifty chance of getting into the one while he's at the other.

Then you realize you don't need to gamble, not when you've got two spies who can keep an eye on him. "You're going out to Blackwell's after class to do some 'work'," you tell your double.

"Well, supposedly," he shrugs.

"No, I'm telling you what you're going to do. Go out and see if he's there. Call me and tell me if he is or isn't."

"Why can't you--?"

"Just do what you're told. It's to help you." You duck into the girls' bathroom and take a stall, from which you call Melody Weiss. "Hi Melody, you don't recognize my voice or number, but this is the guy you met at Professor Blackwell's on Saturday, and I'm the guy whose orders you have to obey."

"Really?" she says skeptically. "How do I know that?"

"Because you don't want me coming up to the college, finding you, and showing you." That at least shuts her up, and with surly reluctance she agrees to spy out Blackwell's office from three-thirty onward, and alert you to his movements. When you leave the school, you drive out to a strip center that's roughly equidistant from the college and the villa, to await reports.

The first call comes from Melody: Blackwell is in his office. There's no telling how long he'll be there, but you decide to gamble on hitting his villa before he can get out there, and tell Melody to call as soon as he seems to be in motion.

You call your doppelganger from the car: "I want to make this fast," you tell him. "Can you get inside and disable the gwarcheidwad?" you ask.

"Door's locked."

"So shimmy in through an open window. The thing won't hurt you."

"Tell that to Lucy. Besides, the controls are magical."

"So?"

"So, um, you magician, me golem? I can't do magic."

"Fine. Just hang out until I get there, I guess." You hang up. Stupid Prescott, always looking for an excuse to not do any work. Still, he's right; he can't do magic. And the house guardian did do something nasty to--

You nearly drive off the road.

You're so stupid, you've been concentrating too much on the Lucy mask and not enough on whatever was underneath. Lucy did magic up in the workroom, so Lucy wasn't a golem, but a real person. It was sophisticated magic as well, which means it was either Blackwell himself or another very powerful magician. If it was Blackwell, then he's now dead, and the person in the office is only a golem, and you've nothing to fear from it. If it was someone else, then you've got a good excuse to give Blackwell when you explain what happened over the weekend. Surely he wouldn't want some strange and powerful practitioner of the occult sneaking into his house under Lucy's mask.

Before you even get to his house, you've figured out exactly what you're going to do.

* * * * *

"Mr. Prescott," Professor Blackwell says as he closes the front door behind him. His address is slightly ambiguous, for you and a "Will Prescott" are waiting for him in the foyer. "I didn't see your car out front. I told you to take the week off."

"Something's happened, professor," you reply, and nod at your double; he nods back, and takes up station next to Blackwell, who gives him a wary glance. "This is really awkward, but I can explain, and I think you'll thank me later after I've explained."

"Explained what?"

"This." You give Will another nod, and he seizes the professor about the torso, pinning his arms down. Blackwell gasps, but you leap for his face and have your fingers on his brow before he can start to struggle in earnest.

And then there's no further need of explanations. You have a mask in your hand, and Blackwell's clothes are settling around a slim golem. It looks like a eerily exact replica of Lucy Vredenburg, executed in stone.

"Whoa," Will Prescott gasps, and his eyes go wide. "You know what this means, right?"

"I'm pretty sure I do," you say quietly, and regard the mask in your hand. It has no "golem shell" inside it. "But let's find out for sure." You go into the library, to put it to your face.

* * * * *

"Well, kiddies, that's the way it stands," you say, and settle back in the chair with a smile.

You're back inside Jared's face, feeling rather powerful and pleased with yourself. On the other side of the desk stand four figures.

Melody Weiss--more accurately, a golem of Melody Weiss, with the real girl beneath--is standing to one side, with her shoulders awkwardly hunched.

Yumi Saito--more accurately, a golem of Yumi, with the real girl beneath--is standing beside her. She doesn't look much happier than Melody.

Will Prescott--more accurately, a golem of yourself, with another grubby homeless bum underneath--is perched on the edge of the desk with a shit-eating grin on his face.

And Aubrey Blackwell--more accurately, a mask of Blackwell, now coated with a golem shell under your control, sitting on a golemized Lucy Vredenburg--stands off to the side. He glowers with ill-disguised anger.

You spread your hands and take in the library with an expansive gesture. "It's now mine. All mine." You lower your hands to rest them on the Libra, which the newly compliant professor has brought back to the house. "This too."

"And what are you going to do with them?" Blackwell asks sourly.

"Continue my studies. Continue your studies. I like it." Your voice softens. "I feel like this is what I was made to do. And you'll help me, Aubrey."

"Will I?" he asks in a strained voice.

"That wasn't a question, Aubrey. It was a command," you say. Stiffly, he bows. "And don't worry about it. You'll be happy to help. When you're not teaching frat brothers, I'll probably be wearing your face in here and doing your research."

"Blech," your replacement says. "Way to take one for Team Prescott." Blackwell glares at him.

"Okay, you all know what to do. Yumi, Melody, Will? Home. Aubrey, up in the bedroom so I can take your face off."

"What are we going to do about Lucy?" Will asks. "You know, the one they're going to bury." Technically, he's following your orders, for he's edging toward the doorway as the others shuffle out.

"Let 'em bury her," you shrug. "We don't need the golem underneath it, and we don't need her mask. Come by tomorrow after school for your regular two-hour workstudy assignment," you continue as you follow him out. "Then go home, show your face to dad so he knows you're still following his orders, then use Caleb or Keith as an excuse to come back here after supper. We're gonna figure out what to do about that hex."

"Am I still gonna get paid?"

"Sure. Same rate, fifty bucks an hour."

"Sweet!"

* * * * *

It certainly is.

That was Blackwell under Lucy's mask, and it was your erstwhile mentor who got carried off by the house guardian. Why he refused to identify himself is something you will have to investigate more deeply, for it puzzles you. But you only had his mask on long enough to get the general story of the past few days.

He had hidden himself under Lucy's mask in order to carry on research while sending his own double off to do other research out of town. (Lucy herself was an early victim of his; she had been his prisoner inside the hidden cellar that leads off the library when you first came, and once he had the Libra back he had used it to turn her into a golem.) Both strands of his research are connected to you, and the golem had gone off to Cuthbert to check out your family connections. Those would be the Shabblemans, those horrible cousins. Something in your lineage--something in your very being--intrigues him.

And now you're intrigued. You've got a lot of avenues to investigate. There is yourself, where Blackwell seems to have been concentrating while still in town. There are the Shabblemans. There is that hex, which you genuinely want to get off yourself, and not just for the sake of your double. There is Chelsea, whom you are still thinking of dealing with. And there is, of course, the Libra.

Ah, the Libra. You lean back and stroke it. It came to you of its own will, of that you are certain. It was connected to the Schlabonenmann of Saxony, and through them to the Shabblemans, you're sure. It had been in upstate New York, in the possession of one Margaret Shabbleman Jones, who had willed it to her Cuthbert relations. But Blackwell had waylaid it at the source, and redirected it to an address, where he would be able to steal it. That address, by astonishing coincidence, was Salopek Engineering, in care of Harris Prescott--your own father. It slipped from his grasp after he had barely cracked it open, and you of all people had laid hands on it in Arnholm's Used Bookstore.

Yes, it has been trying to get to you.

So you are torn as to your priorities. Part of you wants to dig into it, not necessarily to advance through the spells, but to unlock its secrets. Before coming to work with Blackwell, you might have been content to simply goof around with golems and masks, but now you are hooked on the subtleties of magic, and would prefer to slowly tease out its secrets by taking apart its sigils, as Blackwell had begun to teach you to do. You could use what you learn, perhaps, to lift the hex, and to deal with Chelsea.

On the other hand, you'd like to know more about yourself. Why was the Libra trying so hard to get to you? What is special about you? That would involve picking up Blackwell's recent research, on you and on the Shabblemans.

Next: "The Essence of Will Prescott" 

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