The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Fifth Column

Previously: "Joining the Club" 

You temporize. "Do you have that mask here?" you ask Abi. "The one we're going to put on Vee?"

Her face falls. "No. It's back in my room."

"Better go get it, then. She'll be waking up in, like, fifteen minutes."

Abi leaps for the ladder. "Be back in five," she promises, and leaves you alone with your thoughts.

You pace the Catacombs, casting sidelong glances at Vee. You don't like the idea of putting on that narrow, sorceress's face, but you see the upsides. Vee is bold, cunning, unscrupulous, and smart. You could use that kind of intellect on your side. Also, it would be less scary to be Vee than to hang around her, even if it's really Abi inside the Vee mask. And surely it would be safer for you. As "Mark" you are the new kid in the group, and there was no missing the black looks that Todd was giving you, and Chris wouldn't even look at you.

But you decide there are too many countervailing risks. You have mastered Mark's persona; Abi can fake her way through as Vee. If you switched, you would both be vulnerable until the morning. If you got caught out by Chris and Todd, it would be almost impossible to explain why "Mark" and Abi struck at Vee.

The mask has just appeared on Vee's face when Abi drops back down into the Catacombs, puffing lightly from her run. She's brought not only the mask you made of her, but also the sealant that she brought to the school when she re-infiltrated it. Mask. Sealant. What else did she bring out? you find yourself wondering. There was something else, wasn't there?

Abi argues with you as you finish making up Vee's mask. Not until you drop your final argument on her—what happens if you return to your room as "Mark" and Chris wants to talk?—does she relent.

"I don't know why you want stick it out as Mark," she says as she gives you the hairy eye. "There's nothing special about him."

Then I guess I'm less than special myself, you want to retort, as he's the improved model of what I was. Instead, you reply, "It's not about wanting to be him. We are, uh, going to trade up after we start making masks. Right? It's just about what's right for tonight."

"If you insist," she sighs. "So come on, let's get this show on the road." She turns toward Vee.

* * * * *

She makes you take a long walk down deeper into the Catacombs while she completes the changeover, and it seems politic to not remind her that you wore her body for awhile and so she's got nothing to be shy about. So you pace the length of a low-ceilinged tunnel that drops away to the north, until you come to a low, narrow opening out onto the river. So it's a storm drain, you realize. You muddy your shoes by clambering out onto a wet, weedy shore to look out. The school's boathouse is nearby; off to your left rise the eaves of the nearby woods. It's a chilly, peaceful evening, and you pull your sports coat more tightly about yourself as you count off the moments before you can return to Abi.

You've just set off again when you see an elfin figure picking her way down the storm drain toward you. It's Abi. Her hair is disordered, and she jumps when she looks up to find you looming ahead of her. Her eyes go wide, and her lips part. "Boss?" she squeaks.

Boss? Then it hits you. This is the fake—the golem formed by the mask of Abi and the insensate body of Davina Macklin.

"Yeah, hey," you tell her. "How are you doing?"

"I'm a little freaked out," she says, rubbing her arm. "There's this girl back there? Looks like me? I think she's—" She swallows. "The real me? She told me to come find you, said you'd come this way."

You nod. "How'd you recognize me?" Mark looks like you, but not enough that you think someone would spot you for being yourself.

"I dunno," she says. "Just a feeling." She peers at you. "You look like Mark Pederson."

"That's who I'm supposed to be. And yeah, that's the real Abi. Um, what's the last thing you remember?"

She pales. "I was going off to meet up with Vee and Kristin, and someone jumped out at me. Grabbed me." She pauses. "Vee and Kristen were supposed to be bringing me back that book I— That we were using."

You pinch the bridge of your nose. A lot has happened since then, and this version of Abi is seriously out of date. You take her by the arm—she doesn't seem to mind—and do your best to explain everything on your way back into the Catacombs. She complains of having a headache by the time you get back.

"There you are!" Vee Macklin jumps when you emerge, and she shoves her cell phone into a skirt pocket. "Did you explain everything to, uh, 'me' there?"

"As best I could. She's going to be a little confused."

"Just tell her to follow my lead. It's probably for the best," she adds, almost in an undertone. "She's supposed to be Kristen, pretending to be me, and it'll be more realistic that way if she acts like a retard. Abi," she says, addressing her replacement in a curt tone. "Go back to your room. Skip dinner. Work on the classwork I left out on the bed."

The Abi-golem gives you a sidelong look. You nod. With a heavy sigh, she trudges over to the ladder, and ascends. Vee ogles her as she goes up. "Wow," she says.

"What now?" you ask.

"Huh? Oh. Let's go through the book. Remind me of what all the spells are, what all they do, and how to do them. After that, we'll get the stuff from the boys, and start to work." She gives you an appraising look, and reaches around to rub your ass.

"After we get Todd and Chris out of the way," she says, "then we'll look around and really start having some fun."

* * * * *

It's dinnertime before Todd and Chris return from a raiding expedition into the chemistry labs, bringing back some of the supplies you need. By that time you and Vee have compiled a complete list of what you'll need for every spell and you send them back out again to bring you what they can. (But graveyard dirt, a necessary component for the golem paste, will be impossible to procure while exeats are suspended.) They also bring you back a makeshift "takeout" meal to tide you over. Supposedly acting under Vee's prompts, you cast five masks and five mind bands, and a bowl of glue and a bowl of sealant, before the watchful audience of Baldwin and Fiore. The masks you give to Todd to take off to polish using a floor buffer he as a prefect can get out of a janitorial closet. Chris lingers to watch as, still under Vee's supposed direction, you start to carve runes into one of the mind bands.

"Have you figured out that enslaving spell yet?" he asks.

You look up at Vee. She hesitates.

"No," she stammers. "Not yet. With, uh, Prescott disarmed, we don't have to rush through things. We're taking things slow. Mark and I will figure it out when we get to it."

Now Chris hesitates, and it looks like he's going to speak. But with a long, backward glance under a furrowed brow, he moves to the ladder and slowly ascends.

"Do you think he suspects something?" you ask Vee when he's gone.

"I don't know," she says. "But I better go talk to him, just in case." She scampers up after him, leaving you alone.

It's funny, you think, that Chris wanted to know about the enslaving spell. Unless, of course, it's just that he was thinking forward to when it would be time to start making switches. As you were working, he and Todd were openly discussing who would or should be replaced, with the consensus that the other prefects—Dalton Reeves, Kate Gross, Marius Hall, and Lucas Tanner—were prime candidates for the first round.

But one thought will follow on another, and Fiore's reference to an "enslaving" spell reminds you of what you were trying to come up with earlier. Golem paste. That was what Abi brought out to the school with her. She must still have some of it around, like she had that one mask plus the sealant.

* * * * *

Instead of returning, Vee texts you a little later to say that she's gone back to the school and that you should go back in as well—you can finish up work on the mind band in your room with Chris, whose suspicions (she tells you) have been assuaged. But she does ask you to bring her the book.

You're reluctant to comply—you'd rather hang onto it yourself—but you've no excuse for refusing. So you go find her after you finish the first mind band. "Thanks, Will," she says when you meet her at her room. She kisses the tips of her fingers and touches them to your cheek before shutting the door.

And as long as you're in the girls' wing, you knock on "Abi's" door. She lets you in, and after a short search you find the tub of golem paste that Abi had brought into school with her.

You bump into Todd on your way back to your room. He gives you a dark look when you ask how he's coming on the masks, and tells you he's on his way to deliver the first three of Abi.

"I'll take them," you tell him. "I've got those brain-copying things, and they need to be glued into the masks anyway."

Todd frowns, then swings his pack off his shoulder and pulls out three masks to give to you.

Only after he's gone does it occur to you that you now have the makings of a full disguise: mask, mind band, and golem paste.

And you've got a roommate—Chris Fiore—slated for replacement anyway.

Next: "The Winners" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"