Chapter #20New Plans by: Seuzz   It's easy to see over the heads of the crowd when you're six and a half feet tall and the guy you're looking for is also a giant. "Yo, the old man just called," you tell Gordon. "I gotta split."
"Screw him." Gordon doesn't even look at you. He is too busy scrutinizing girls who are not his girlfriend.
"Nah, somethin' about my granddad. I better go. Where's Meghan?" Gordon nods his chin toward the kitchen. "I'll slip her one for you too," you say, and slap hands with your best friend.
You give Meghan your thanks, a good-night squeeze, and shove your tongue deep inside her mouth until she begins to gag. There's an extra swing in your swagger as you step out to your car and toss the Yumi mask, which you've been carrying unobtrusively under your arm, into the back seat.
* * * * *
You have a lot of work to do, so you disable the security system entirely. Up in the third-floor loft you pull down the rest of the golem-paint you'd made as part of your earlier batch and coat the inside of the Steve Patterson mask. Your argument with Yumi this afternoon shows you how difficult it can be to deal with a golem that is not under your control, and you don't want to put Patterson's mask on Blackwell's golem directly. A golem layer inside the mask will override that control.
"Where you going now?" you ask Steve once you've got the mask finished and on the golem.
"Home, I guess." He grimaces as it pulls on his socks. "Wish I was still at the party. Kim was being totally into me."
"Don't be such an egotist. She's like that with everyone. What time is practice on Monday?" Your "Steve" memories have faded.
"Seven," he says brusquely and stands up with a grunt of satisfaction.
"Then be here by six-thirty for the switch-off. Now show me your loyalty. Give me a kiss good-night."
Steve hesitates for only a fraction of a second, then covers your mouth with his. You choke a little: you'd forgotten that for Patterson a good-night kiss always includes hard tongue action.
* * * * *
You wake to the ringing of the cell phone. It's Blackwell, and he sounds distracted and unhappy. "Lucy will be stopping by today. Please let her in and help her with whatever she needs."
"She came by here Friday night, you know."
"Yes, I know. There was a miscommunication. You were very diligent. But in the future, please know that she has free passage into and out of the house."
"Does she know about the security system? Because I might not be here."
"Then please linger. I will call her and tell her you are waiting."
You hope he's not too mad; you also hope that she hurries, so you quickly change into Jared. And she isn't long, entering just as you are sitting down to breakfast.
"Sorry about the other night," you call out, and hurry after her.
"It's okay," she says brusquely.
"Can I help you with ... whatever it is?" She shakes her head. You catch her by the arm at the top of the stairs. "Look, I'm trying to make it up to you."
She looks at you evenly. "I know who you are and what you look like under that thing."
"I'm not hiding anything. It brings out my inner beauty."
Her tone is chilly. "Well it brings out something in you." You let her finish her errand without your help.
* * * * *
After she goes you take a shower—even masks, when worn, pick up stench and dirt on their forms after awhile—and tread down wetly into the library. The vampire cyclops-monkey stares at you, malice glittering from its eye. You give it the finger. "Bite me. So you didn't get to eat anything last night. I'll pick you up a burger when I go out."
You sit at the desk, chin in hand, drumming your fingers. Vague, inchoate, complex plans well up in your brain and sink back down again. Three golems you've budgeted for. You've used up two of your ration points, on "Will Prescott" and now on "Steve Patterson." You could use the third in another mask. You muse: If you made a "Jason Lynch" mask, you could trap Gordon Black inside it. You could then trap Jason inside the Patterson mask. A regular mask would then let you become Gordon Black, basketball captain. The other two triple-alphas would be under your thumb. Or maybe Chelsea instead of Jason. Anyway, some arrangement that would give you an iron grip on the social hierarchy.
Or you could make as your third an all-purpose golem, like the one Blackwell has. That would short-leg your control over the school. Unless you brought in an ally? Despite Blackwell's warnings, you've been thinking about Caleb, and Keith too. They would be fun to work with, putting them inside the bullies. It's too bad the curse is getting between you guys.
You sigh. One way or another, you're going to need at least one more mask. It irritates you that Blackwell took the Libras, since it means you can't get started today, when you have the house to yourself. At least you can do a little studying and practice.
You pull out some paper and one of the special fountain pens and start drawing up a mask sigil. You have studied the elements of that sigil so thoroughly by this point that you can do it from memory, constructing it from its parts. You're curious to see if there is some way of erasing an image from a mask.
An hour later you push away from the desk and get a snack from the kitchen. Without thinking, you set the sandwich down as fetch down one of the sigil codices. As you flip through it a movement catches your eye: smoke. You look up in time to see the sandwich burst into flame.
Shit! You leap over an intervening desk and push the sandwich to the floor, where you quickly extinguish it. You look around: no scorch marks to the floor or the desk. Nothing to show that anything bad had happened. Good. The sigil, though, is blackened.
Three things go through your mind simultaneously.
First, you realize you must have set the sandwich down inside the sigil. You are always careful with sigils because of the danger of things like this. In this case, though, you'd been careless because the sigil should be dead. Because of the book's magic, only the sigils on its pages should be alive; the copies Blackwell made were only marks on a paper and needed no more special careful handling than a grocery list needs careful handling. That means ...
Second, the sigil you made was alive. And that means Blackwell is mistaken about the Libras, somehow. What else is he mistaken about? And if you can make sigils without the book then ...
Third, you can craft items from the Libras without the Libras itself—masks, at least, and maybe more. That means you can carry on making things outside of Blackwell's ken, if you dare.
Your earlier ideas come crowding back; you need to use the day. If you want to lock down the alpha-goon squad you should concentrate on making masks. But if you want to bring Caleb and Keith in on this, you need to figure out that curse and see if there's a way of lifting it.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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