The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Kind of Professional Consultation

Previously: "A Girl's Final Act" 

Knuckles rap against the study door. Bamp bamp bamp. Instinctively you cover the papers you're reading with a folder. "Come in," you call.

But the handle is already turning. The door falls open and Jessica sags against the door jamb. She's holding a glass of white wine. It's filled almost to the lip.

Christ, you think. Is it going to be one of those nights? And which kind, the sloppy, weepy kind or the spitting, angry kind?

"I have book club tomorrow night," your wife of a year announces with arch brittleness. "Will you be barricading yourself in here? Or"—the wine sloshes as she tries making air quotes—"will you be 'working late'? Because, Nicholas," she continues shrilly, before you can answer, "I'm sure neither of us would want to see you helping me by trying to play host."

"It's your book club, Jessica," you reply.

She snorts. "And we both know you're so scrupulous about not dirtying your fingers in anything that belongs to me."

Damn. That's probably her third glass, and she can still declaim like she's on the debate stage at Mount Holyoke.

"If I can get home from work early, I'll help you set up. Then I'll come back here so I can be out of your way. I'm trying to give you what you want, Jessica," you add.

She sniffs, and the tendons in her neck work. She gives you a sidelong glare, then totters out. Before you can sigh with relief, though, she looks around the corner at you.

"Six inches," she hisses at you. "That's what you thought I wanted. Six inches, and that would be enough." A sneer distends her lip. "And you couldn't even muster that much!" She disappears again.

Her fourth glass, you grimly correct yourself, and sit back in your chair to tug at your beard. A spot in your gullet begins to burn. Acid reflux, Nicholas Lawhorn has told himself, and you tell it to yourself now.

For at the moment, that is who you are.

It was with a sense of loathing that you—still in Sydney's mask—summoned Lawhorn to your bedroom, to unmask him and take his place while the pedisequos took hers. He's a killer, an adulterer, a seducer, and a cultist. But as you pulled on his jeans and sweatshirt, and brushed aside long hanks of hair as you studied yourself in the mirror, you saw other upsides to the (temporary) change of impersonation. A strong, trim body; handsome (if slightly wolfish) features; the advantages of being a legal adult with a large house, a fast car, and plenty of spending money.

And inside knowledge of the local Brotherhood of Baphomet. That, of course, was your reason for making the switch.

Are you going to fulfill Sydney's ambition of fashioning a Brotherhood of her own to control? It seemed wisest to do some research before deciding.

And how better to conduct research than by turning yourself into someone who is already a Brother?

* * * * *

You're in the office break room, putting the cream back in the refrigerator, when Matt Jenkins finds you. "Boss wants to see you." He grins. "He's got a vice-president with him."

Fucker, you think. Jenkins has had it in for you—Nicholas Lawhorn—from your first day on the job. Turns out he was in line to be senior editor on the Macroeconomics team before you transferred in and took the position. So anytime it looks like you're in trouble, Jenkins perches nearby like a vulture.

"Close the door, Nick," Anthony Reid says as you step into his office. Gregory Williams, Parsons Collegiate Media's vice-president of personnel, looms in the corner with the sun glaring in over his shoulder. "Take a seat."

"We've run into a problem with your transfer," Williams says as you settle into a well-padded chair. He shifts on his feet, and his great girth rolls about, like a hillside slipping into an avalanche. The man is almost as wide as he is tall, and his figure isn't flattered by the tight, scratchy sweater vests he favors, or by the brambly beard—brown with streaks of gray—that defaces his jowls. "The man who currently has the job just signed up for another year."

You glance between your boss and his. "So I keep on trucking around here?"

"Is that a bad thing?" Reid asks. He's a contrast with his superior: slender and smooth, as though carved from cold bone. His frosty blonde hair is neatly coiffed, and his eyes are an Arctic blue.

"I thought my transfer was a priority."

"It is," Williams says. "It's only—"

"Have you talked to Seabury about using a malefictus?"

The vice-president of personnel and the Macroeconomics project manager—

—or, to use their more pertinent titles, the Sovereign Chancellor and the Temporal Commander of the Brotherhood of Baphomet (Van Dief Temple)—

—turn very stony.

"That sort of thing is a last resort," Reid says.

"In Kansas City—"

"This isn't Kansas City, Lawhorn," Reid snaps. "This is the big leagues. It's only a Temporal Magistry in Kansas City. This is the seat of a Sovereign court. Also—" He leans across his desk, hands folded, his lips twisted up into a cold, malicious smile. "There's a lot more potentia here than in Kansas City. You wouldn't light a match in a fireworks factory, would you?" He sits back. "Don't go carelessly casting any maledictuses around here unless you want to send your head and your guts into separate dimensions."

You glance over at the Chancellor. He smiles inside his wiry beard. His beady eyes are like those of a badger, or some other feral creature, peeping out of the bushes.

You shrug with your hands. "Then I guess I stick around here. Except—"

"Except what?" Reid asks sharply.

"Except nothing, I guess. Except it seems like a waste of a year."

Reid holds your eye in a long stare before stretching his mouth into a cold smile.

"You must learn to take the long view, Lawhorn," he says. "We serve Baphomet, and he measures progress in aeons, not days or even years."

You stifle a sigh. "We serve Baphomet," you mutter back, when what you want to say is, I'm in it for myself, motherfuckers, and if Baphomet won't deliver than back to Hell with him.

We serve Baphomet. The formula—the conventional salutation between Brothers—seems to surprise Reid, and after a startled moment he indicates that you can leave.

"You can do one thing for me," you tell him from the door. "You can call Jenkins in and yell at him about his subpar work around here."

"Is it subpar?"

"No, but it would make me feel better if you yelled at him."

Reid only clenches his jaw. The asshole, you sometimes think, takes his job as project manager more seriously than his commandery in the Brotherhood.

* * * * *

But maybe you shouldn't have kicked so much at that meeting, because you get a call while driving home. "Hello, Nicholas," the caller says, his voice slithering like an insinuating snake into your ear. "I hear you're unhappy. I'm unhappy too. I thought we could meet and commiserate."

It's the voice of the Sovereign Vicegerent. Is it some technique of his that makes your brain stem feel like it is going numb every time you talk to him, leaving you without the will to resist? "Yes sir," you reply.

"I'm at my office. Everyone else has gone home. We won't be disturbed."

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

You make it in ten.

The sharp stench of creosote fills your nostrils as you enter the old Saratoga Falls Railroad Depot. It is now a museum, and it also houses the offices of the Saratoga Falls Arts Council. The president of the Council, Aidan Seabury, is waiting in the gift shop, and he smiles as he gestures you to follow him into the back.

He looks like a young man, hardly older than Nicholas, but his large, staring eyes are luminous in a way that suggests they have seen more than is possible in only thirty years, and his smooth, pale skin is transparent the way as old men's skin is. But he is lithe and he moves soundlessly. There's a flutter at his white throat as he settles in behind his desk, and his long fingers flutter also as he spreads his hands.

"You want that teaching job, don't you?" he says without preamble.

"I thought that's why you recruited me from Kansas City." After a moment's hesitation, you take the chair before him.

"We accepted you because you came highly recommended." Seabury's eyes seem to glow and he smiles hungrily. Again you have Nicholas's wondering thought that Seabury might be a vampire. "But yes, there is that vacancy."

"And now you're stuck with that vacancy for another year. Maybe longer, if the asshole whose job I was supposed to take—"

"Now now." Seabury's grin widens in a way that makes you shiver. "You've already been cautioned against casual maledictuses. We'll just have to find another way of filling that position. As for you—"

He pauses to show you his canines.

"I know you're greedy, Nicholas. But suppose I offered you something almost as good as the high school?"

"Like?"

He taps his desk, and you are startled to see that there's a city map unfurled across it. Three red lines, intersecting to form a squat triangle, are drawn on it. Ley lines, you think. The intersections are points of great occult power.

Just the thought of accessing one makes you horny.

One of those intersections marks this very building—the old depot. The second marks the building where the Sovereign Seneschal has established his pool cleaning business. And the third—

You could hardly believe it last night when you got Nicholas's memories.

Westside High School sits on the third intersection.

Next: "An Intersection of Interests" 

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