The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Two-Faced Girlfriend

Previously: "What Happened to Hannah" 

It's a neat balancing trick you're going to have to pull off—hiding stuff from Katy without tipping off that that's what you're doing. You could hide the mask you made of Coach Schell simply by stuffing it inside a desk. But the thing you made with Hannah Westrick is way too big and heavy for you to move and hide. You're terrified that Katy is going to come looking for you, and find you down here with it.

That's why you text her back an OK!, lock up the basement, and drop off the book at your house before heading over to Panera. You will study up on that next spell tonight in your bedroom.

* * * * *

You don't see Katy when you stride into Panera a little later, and you're just taking out your cell phone to text her when you hear your name shouted. "Will!" You look over.

Shit! you think when you see Stephanie Wyatt, seated in a back corner, waving at you. At least she's smiling at me. I wonder if Katy's been softening her up.

"So I guess we're going to have to set up the thing with Hannah for later," Stephanie says as you approach. "It figures she'd flake out on us."

"Set up what thing?" you ask Stephanie in alarm. Has Katy told her something without telling you that she told her?

"The thing with Hannah," Stephanie says. She gives you a very direct stare. "The thing we were talking about today and yesterday."

Even then, it takes an embarrassingly long time for the penny to drop. "Katy?" you exclaim.

"Dur! I mean—" She looks a little abashed. "You didn't know it was me?"

"How could I? You look just like, uh—!"

"I told you I was going to come out like this! That way—"

"I thought you were only thinking about doing that! You didn't tell me you were actually going to!"

"I'm sorry! But jeez, calm down, Will! Are you okay?"

You can't help flinching under that hard, jewel-like stare of hers, even if it is a lot less scary than the real girl's. "I'm fine," you assure her as you flop into the seat across from her. "Just surprised. And nervous. On account of we're somewhere someone might see us!"

"Oh, thbpt! So what if they do?" Her lips twitch into a sharp smile. "Can't Stephanie hang out with you? I mean, if you're hanging out with her friend Katy."

She holds your eye. Then, suddenly, she walks her fingers across the tabletop to snatch at your hand. You jerk away and she laughs. "Does Stephanie scare you, Will?" she snickers.

"No! She just freaks me out, 'cos she's a freak!"

"She is not a freak!" The smile falls off her face.

"I don't mean it like that! I just mean—"

You struggle for words as Katy glares at you. Now she looks a lot more like Stephanie. A pissed-off Stephanie.

"Okay, yes, she scares me," you gasp. "She's the only girl at school that does."

Katy relaxes. "Yeah, I can tell. She does that to a lot of people." She titters—a very un-
Stephanie-like sound. "She did that to me the first time we met."

You give her a squinty look. "You really like Stephanie, don't you?"

"Well sure."

"You really look up to her, I mean."

A faint blush rises up her cheeks, and she looks away with a shrug. Her brow hardens and her jaw sets, and again you catch a sudden, close resemblance to the real girl.

"It's nice, sitting here with you," you say.

That earns you a sharp look. "You mean with Stephanie?"

"No, with you. But there's an extra buzz with you being like this," you confess. Now it's your turn to walk your fingers across the tabletop to snatch at her hand. But she doesn't jerk away, but just gives you a very Stephanie-like direct stare.

At first you're worried that you might have offended her, making it sound like you think Stephanie is sexier than her or something. But then you feel something traveling up your calf.

It's her foot. When you start, Katy lifts her eyebrows.

"What are you doing?" you squeak.

"You have to ask, Prescott?" she says in a very even tone. Oh God, you think, she's actually trying to channel Stephanie! But while flirting with me!

And it's actually pretty hot.

"Do you really want to stick around here?" she asks. It's like she's trying to purr, but it comes out like a growl.

"Where do you want to go?" you squeak.

"Anywhere people can't see what we're gonna get up to."

* * * * *

The next day. Katy wanted to set up another ambush for Hannah, but you put her off by pleading that you wanted to get deeper into the book because there might be some "pretty sweet" things farther in that could make for even better pranks. It's after school, and you're at the elementary school basement again, trying hard to concentrate on the next spell.

Because you had no luck working on it last night.

For something like two hours you and Katy entertained each other on the university campus, where Stephanie knew of a quiet, shadowy corner where you could nestle and murmur at each other. And then, after she declared that she had to go home, you spent the rest of the evening on your bed, reliving the evening and thinking about ways of going further with her.

"I've never kissed a boy," Katy confessed when she had you in that dark corner, with her arms draped around your neck. She smooched you lightly on the lips. "Neither has Katy," she added, and that made it even hotter because it was like she was roleplaying Stephanie.

You kissed back. Tiny little sucking smooches on the lips and under the nose. You sniffed at her hair and ear, and she nibbled at your neck.You stroked and held and squeezed each other, and after awhile you and she slid down the side of the wall to the ground, to hold and pinch and bite at each other. No clothes came off, but she let you caress her strong, bare thighs all over, and she did put her hands up the front of your shirt to stroke and rub your chest and belly.

You took frequent breaks, to walk around the grassy quads between the buildings and to talk. She asked you about your family and history, and she told you about hers. About her older brother, who is so smart and athletic, and about her little brother, who's really smart but is kind of a dweeb, and about her dad who is a real tightwad even though he owns a really successful furniture store downtown. It took you awhile to realize that she was still roleplaying, talking about Stephanie's family, not her own. So this is what it'd be like to go out with Stephanie, you kept thinking to yourself with buzzing excitement. It was also, strangely, a turn-on to realize that Katy was also getting off on the impersonation.

Which made it very weird in eighth-period Astronomy, when you strode into the classroom and almost tripped over a desk when Stephanie—the real Stephanie, you'd presume—lifted her face from her phone long enough to give you a nod of acknowledgement. You popped out in flop sweat all over. Jesus, if she knew what I got up to last night! you thought.

But you've got a crisis to deal with, and you came out to the elementary school both because that's where your supplies are, and because that's where Hannah's remains are, to remind you that you need to buckle down to work.

* * * * *

"I already used it on Hannah," you tell Katy later that night when you meet her at the Dairy Queen. She gasps, and her eyes widen.

They are her own eyes because you are meeting her under her own face. When she called to invite you out—she's rather forward that way; no waiting on the boy to call her—she had giggled and asked if you wanted to meet up with Stephanie again. You thought you'd flatter her by telling her that you wanted tonight's date to be with Katy Conlee.

And maybe that's why she said she wanted to meet at the Dairy Queen instead of the university. And maybe it's why, when you went in for a kiss, she turned her cheek to you and blushed furiously. Maybe it's easier for Katy to make out while under a mask, you wondered. Or maybe Stephanie's more of a tigress than I give her credit for.

Anyway, she's too shocked now by what you just said to be affectionate.

"Yeah," you continue. "I texted Hannah, got her to meet up with me because I said I was a friend of yours, and, well— Pop!" You mime pushing a mask into someone's face.

Which is what you did, sort of. Only it's more complicated than that.

The new spell called for the same stuff as in the last two spells, only with even less graveyard dirt and no human body. This you had to mix together over the sigil and burn into a black, oily paste, like tar, and apply to the inside of a mask. (You used the mask you made of yourself.) Into the mask you then dropped a hank of your own hair and set it on fire. It evaporated in a puff of smoke, leaving the interior of the mask a grayish white, like the skin of a lackey.

And that's what it was, in a sense. A lackey inside of a mask.

"So, now she has to do what we tell her," you inform Katy. "Well, what I tell her, because it looks like I'm its master."

"So it's like she's mind-controlled?" Katy asks in an awed voice.

"More or less."

"But we can't impersonate her?"

But before you can reply, Stephanie Wyatt and Kristy Suffolk come striding into the DQ.

Next: "That Voodoo That You Do Too Well" 

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