The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Strategery

Previously: "Lords of Discipline" 

You nearly swallow your tongue with surprise. "You just up and ambushed your father in his workshop?" you exclaim.

Eric Brown gives you a look. "He's not my dad, Will."

"You know what I mean! I thought he took you and, uh, Alec straight out here."

"He did."

"But—"

"We were ready for him." He puts a forefinger to his forehead. "You don't know a tenth of the ops these guys are running against each other every day. And this one was cake. Mm!" His eyes light up. "Are we having a dessert tonight?"

"No, we're having Chinese." You stare distractedly down at the rag-like form of Major Victor Brown. There is something ... unappetizing ... about the way the major is slumped on the floor, as though he's a puppet waiting to be inhabited. "Dessert doesn't go with Chinese," you murmur.

"They have pudding over at the Panda Gar—"

"Don't— Look." You pinch the bridge of your nose. "You can add him to your collection, Sydney."

"Really? We're running out of Browns, Will."

"We've still got the twins. Besides, if you turn yourself into him, we'll be able to talk in private without it looking weird."

"It won't look weird after we've got the twerps."

"You can still have him, Sydney."

Eric shrugs and turns to contemplate the major. "Keep dinner warm for me," he says. You nod, and slowly withdraw, eyes still locked on the limp body of the paterfamilias.

* * * * *

Alec is at the table, wolfing down his meal, and the twins are washing their dishes in the kitchen. Alec looks up at you from under his brow; the twins look over with the hang-dog guilt of puppies who are afraid they've done bad.

"I'll finish here," you tell them. "Upstairs and into your p-jays. You're grounded for the night."

They look at each other, and drop their plates with a splash back into the sudsy sink. "And by grounded," you holler after as they scamper off, "I mean you don't come out of your room unless one of you is bleeding! Bleeding!"

Alec gulps down a mouthful. "Not much of a punishment," he observes.

"It's to keep them upstairs and out of sight for when your dad comes back in."

"Uh huh?" He shovels up another forkful, but pauses with it in mid-air. "Except it's not really going to be dad, is it?"

You catch yourself doing a double-take at him. He is so calm, so unruffled by what he just said, that you momentarily wonder if this is really Sydney, and that Eric was the fake.

Was she really able to convert him so thoroughly after just one day inside his mask?

So it's with genuine curiosity that you ask, "What do you think is going on, honey?"

He gives you a quick look, then shrugs and jams the food in his mouth. "I figure it's above my pay grade, whatever it is," he mumbles through a full mouth—a bit of insolence that the real Alec wouldn't indulge with the woman that is really his mother. "I know it's got something to do with the demon the Templars used to worship, and that you need to do it undercover." He sucks in his upper lip as he swallows. "And that you figure we're the perfect cover for it. But who exactly you are and how you're doing it—"

He breaks off, and his eye travels up and down your body and over your face with undisguised curiosity. "It's some kind of disguise, something to do with masks." He points at you with his fork. "You're wearing something that makes you look like my mom. I know, because I was there when you got at her. But it's also something like possession, isn't it? Because I was possessed for a little while, but now I'm back to being myself. Except I'm also hypnotized or something." A little flush creeps up his throat. "Because this isn't like me, talking this way. Not to mention," he adds darkly, "what we did the other afternoon up in my bedroom."

You feel a flutter at own throat. "So why are you acting this way, if it feels unnatural?" The question drifts in the air, like a vapor.

He shrugs again. "Because it's what I feel like doing, somehow. Also, it's expected of me. I got my orders." He gobbles up the last of his sweet-and-sour and rice. "Eric and I had a long talk out on the fields while we were playing, waiting for the major to get home. Longer than the one we had last night. He explained a lot about what we were doing, how we were doing it, and what else I should be doing." He rises from his chair, plate in his hand. You stand aside to let him pass. "Same as I assume you've got your orders."

* * * * *

Eric comes inside a few minutes later to get his dinner; you tell him to finish cleaning the kitchen when he is done, then go upstairs to change into your writing wear. You pause outside the twins' door to listen; music is softly playing, but underneath you can hear the murmur of voices. You hope they are only consulting on homework and not plotting something. Eric's confession that Heather only knows a tenth of what her boys are doing to each other has alarmed you.

Your phone is going off as you enter the bedroom: a text from your husband, asking if the coast is clear. Wait for me in the study, you tell him.

"Here, I brung you some things," you tell him when you meet him there ten minutes later. He's sitting on the couch with the tense, nervous air of a man in a doctor's office, and his brow wrinkles anxiously as he looks up at you. That expression alone would be enough to set off alarm bells in his wife and children: Major Victor Brown never looks worried. You quickly kick the study door shut with your heel.

"Clothes for you to change into," you tell him as you drop the folded jeans and sweatshirt into his lap. "And this," you add as you extend a Rubbermaid container filled with the last of the rice and sweet-and-sour, "is your dinner. Chinese takeout."

"When did you get takeout?" he asks as he accepts it and the fork.

"I made it, honey. The twins are upstairs, confined to barracks for the evening, but I figured you didn't want to be out in public more than you needed to be, so I'm bringing it in to you here."

"That's against protocol, isn't it?"

"What hasn't been against protocol since Alec brought his friend Will over last Saturday?"

Victor only grunts, and starts to eat. You watch. There's a deep shadow over his face, and he is very stiff as he eats. "Is something worrying you, sweetheart?" you finally ask.

"Huh? No, I'm just—" He gives you a quick, anxious look, then sighs. "It's only, this is the first time I've been sitting with you, talking with you, Will, without my, uh, my host's memories."

"Why is that a problem?"

His brow furrows, and he squirms.

"Because I feel like a girl stuck in a guy's body, okay?" he blurts out. "It happened to me with Alec and with Eric. I don't feel comfortable until I've got the personality. Until then I feel like I'm wearing a lot of thick, padded clothes."

"But why's that a problem being with me?"

"Because it's someone watching me," he says. "It makes me even more self-conscious, which makes me even more uncomfortable."

"Then you close your eyes, and I'll close mine," you say. Then, before he can react, you shift over and onto his lap, and cover his lips with yours.

* * * * *

You kiss deeply for a long time, pulling at each other's mouths. Then you get off and force him to strip and change into the jeans and sweatshirt. The major has a lean and muscular torso with a mat of black, wiry hair spreading across his chest and a ridge of it down his stomach, and when he's dressed again you can only think of him as an animal that's been loosely draped with the accouterments of civilization.

You make him spend the rest of the evening in the best character he can manage, which means he massages your feet while he reads his book and you write yours. Tossing Heather's chaste caution away, you shove Roman and Rebecca into a downy bed and force them to screw each other in every way you can imagine.

"I've been thinking about what comes next," Victor tells you later that night, after you're in bed and snuggled under the blankets. "After we've converted the twins."

It gives you a funny turn to feel his arms around you, and not just because you're clutching hard onto a dude. This is me and Sydney, you keep thinking. We're in bed together. And we're not just dating, we're not just sleeping together. We're married. And it's like we've been married for twenty-five years and are still madly in love. "Don't count our chickens," you warn him to cover your embarrassment.

He smooches you on the forehead, then scrapes it with his night-time growth of beard. "I don't think we have any worries there. But after. There's six of us in this family. We need four more. Where are we going to find them?" He nuzzles you. "You have any thoughts?"

"Been too busy with Heather's day."

"Well, I thought about it yesterday, in Eric's classes. That kid's going to be a master tactician. It was his brain came up with the scheme for getting his dad tonight."

"Which was?"

"Simplicity. Best plans always are. I came home and hid a mask in the workshop. You were out. Then I took Alec out and we played hooky past dinner time. I knew that'd set you off, and you'd send us out to see the major for a whipping."

"You little cuss."

"But for later plans— Well, I guess first we have to divvy up the twins."

Her remark gives you pause. Is it maternal instinct or something else that makes you want to leave the youngest boys out of your plans?

Next: "Gemini Falls" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"