The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Killing a Mood

Previously: "Stuff Gets Real" 

"Killing?" you shriek. "I'm not gonna kill someone! Even if I could—" You choke on the words replace them with a robot.

Sydney freezes and gives you a sidelong look. She stands in the middle of the basement—ankles together, arms folded, shoulders hunched—like a spike. Her expression is hooded but calm even as you feel your eyes bulging and your jaw working.

She gazes at you for a long minute, then closes her eyes and shrugs.

"Alright, Will," she says. "It was just an idea."

Instantly you feel abashed. "Look, I'm sorry," you stammer. "I know this guy, whoever he is, hurt you. And I want to help you. Really, I do. But—" The thought using magic to kill a guy leaves you light-headed and short of breath.

"No, I understand," she says. "You're right. I guess. If I really wanted to get back at him I guess I could just use a gun or a knife or poison or something that would get me caught."

You make a face at her sarcastic gibe.

But then your jaw sags. "Have you, have you really—ng'um—thought about—?"

You don't have to finish the question. You can see it in the hard eyes she turns on you. She has. She really and definitely has thought about killing the man who killed her father.

"Oh, Sydney," you groan. "If there's anything I could do to help you. To make it better for you."

She doesn't reply.

You fumble your way over and hang your arms around her to pull her into a light embrace. She doesn't hug you back, and only relaxes a little. "Anything but that." you tell her.

"What would you say, Will," she says into your shoulder, "what would you do, if you woke up one morning and read online or heard at school that I'd been arrested for killing my step-dad?"

* * * * *

Her step-dad? Shit, it's her step-dad who killed her father?

"I'm not totally sure, not absolutely," she tells you after you've recovered from the shock. You have to take the rest of her story sitting down, though. While you hunch on an old conference table, she leans against a bookcase, her arms still folded. "But the way he acts," she says, "the things he does, his relationship with my dad. It all makes sense that he'd be the one who did it. And I know he used the rituals of Baphomet, to do it."

Her stepfather's name is Nicholas Lawhorn, and like her father he worked for Parsons Collegiate Media. "Except he was in marketing. The snake," she snarls. He was also a member of the Brotherhood of Baphomet, one of five in their cell in Kansas City. "There's always five," she explains. "Five or ten. My dad was his superior, in the Brotherhood and at Parsons. Except that Nicholas"—she calls him by his given name when she has to refer to him at all—"didn't report to my dad at the company."

Among the notes that her father left behind were minutes of their meetings and records of their rituals, and running through them was a constant thread: the insubordination of Nicholas Lawhorn and his obvious ambition to take over the cell. Sydney's father, as leader, was privy to arcane knowledges not known to the others, and coordinated with other cells of the Brotherhood; Lawhorn hardly bothered to disguise his burning thirst to take Matthew McGlynn's place, and in private notes McGlynn recorded his suspicion that Lawhorn was secretly using malign and forbidden rituals to sabotage him.

"And my father died in a car wreck," Sydney tells you. "It's a standard trick. You put an aureax in the car with them. It takes the steering wheel and drives them off the road, killing them. No one ever questions a car wreck, unless it's done with mechanical sabotage, and an {i]aureax isn't mechanical sabotage."

"But your mom married this guy," you point out.

Sydney's complexion curdles so hard you think her skin's about to split and peel back, exposing the skull.

"Yes. Oh, fuck him. Fuck him! God damn it!" She pushes a stack of old school desks to the floor. "That ... fucker!" she gasps. "He was always at our house, back in Kansas City," she hisses, "'cos he and my dad were in the same business together. My dad didn't like it, I could tell. He thought Nicholas was a snake, and I think—" She hiccups. "I think he thought he was after my mom, too. But he was always showing up unannounced, with a wine bottle or something. He and my dad would lock themselves in the den to talk. But Nicholas was always coming out and making nice with my mom. And he was all over her after the funeral, being so ... so fucking comforting and ... and shit!" She buries her face in her hands, and her shoulders shake.

"I try not to blame her," she moans after she's recovered herself somewhat. "She felt lost, I'm sure. Lonely. And that asshole— Well, he can be charming. Even I can see that. But he doesn't love her, I can tell. After they were married he— Well, he's not bad to her, but he doesn't pay hardly any attention to her anymore. I've caught her crying a couple of times. She always stifles it and says she's just thinking about my dad. But I see the way she looks at Nicholas, and I know she doesn't love him either."

"So why did he marry her?"

"To get at my dad's things! My dad hid them all, I told you. Nicholas spent the first month after the marriage—they didn't even go on a honeymoon!—he spent it 'cleaning and reorganizing' things." She says it so you can hear the sarcastic quotation marks around "cleaning and reorganizing." "He was just snooping, snooping hard, and I could see it made him mad that he didn't find anything. Or not everything he wanted to find. I'd found it and hid most of it by then. I have to be really careful, you know," she adds in a fearful aside. "I don't think he suspects me. I just try to play the, you know, popular cheerleader." She strikes an ironical pose with her arms and hands in the air. "But sometimes I catch him looking at me, and I think he wonders. I did catch him snooping through my stuff when we were packing to move here from Kansas City."

"But he didn't find it?"

"No. I'd packed it all up separately and given it to my friend Alexandra, told her to mail it to me after we got an address here in Saratoga Falls. Even then, I had her send it to one of my new friends here, and I picked it up from her. Told her it was an ultra-secret birthday present for my mom."

* * * * *

Sydney's theory sounds very plausible. But even as sympathetic as you are toward her, you know that it's all supposition and guesswork. And though you know there is a way of finding out if it's true, you are firm against doing anything like what Sydney wants.

You are even firm against using a memory-band on Lawhorn to confirm her suspicions, even after Sydney has suggested it herself.

"Do you really want to know?" you tell her. "Do you really want to put his brain inside yours, and see him doing the stuff? You don't just get the memories," you continue when she stares back at you with a hard expression. "You get the feelings and the personality, too. Do you really want your dad's killer inside your head, and to feel what he was feeling when he did it? While he was planning it?"

"It would make me hate him more," she says.

"That's what I'm scared of!" You grip her by the elbows, and she shudders. "Sydney! I'm not going to let you kill a guy, not if I can help it! And I probably couldn't stop you, not if you actually got inside his head and saw and felt all the shit that's probably up inside it!"

She bursts into tears, and her eyes fall as she weeps. "So he's just going to get away with it! So you're just going to let him—"

"I'm not going to 'let' him do anything! I'm going to stop you from doing anything just as bad!"

She glares at you through her tears. "That's the same as letting him get away with it!"

You fall back onto the conference. "Sydney! I just can't—"

"You could but you won't, Will!" She whirls and stalks up the stairs to the doorway. You call her again, and you chase her outside. But she gets in the car before you can reach her, and she locks it when you grab the handle. You step back and watch with an aching heart as she drives off without giving you a look.

* * * * *

You give her an hour to cool off, then send her a text: i'm sorry pls we can still talk. She's very long in replying—a wait that leaves you in agonies—but she doesn't cuss you out: Yes we can still talk.

let me think sydney we cant do that thing but maybe something else. When she doesn't reply, you add, we can do smthing to hurt him i pranked caleb we can do smthing way worse to him. When still no reply you add, we can make his life hell.

How? she asks.

You don't know, and you tell her you'll think about it.

And as you think about it—though nothing immediately suggests itself—you flip through the grimoire. In making that golem thing you have unlocked a new spell, and study it to see if it will give you an idea. It uses the same ingredients, almost, as went into the golem, so you guess it will make something of the same kind. But there are two key differences.

The first is that it calls for a lot less graveyard dirt, only forty pounds. The second is that calls for a human being as one of the ingredients.

And that's when it first occurs to you that maybe you should get rid of the book entirely.

That's all for now.

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