Chapter #44A Sisterly Swap by: Seuzz   Ian Carpenter's elfin features--still brown from the summer--light up as he enters the house. "Nice of you guys to finally invite me over," he says. From anyone else it would sound like a veiled complaint, but Ian is almost always sincere when he says nice things.
"Well, I wish it were under happier circumstances," you say as you close the door. "We don't mean to be inhospitable, but home life here is, uh--"
"Mom's in an asylum, and Dad had to run off on a job," Joe says.
Ian's eyes pop with concern. "Shit, guys," he says. "I didn't know--"
"We don't advertise it," you say, and gesture him into the living room. Asylum? you think to yourself. Why does Joe always have to try to be clever? "But with Dad gone for the next few weeks, it'll just be us. So we can open the place for entertaining."
"If it's gonna be bad times for you--" Ian starts.
"It's gonna be great times," you say. "And you're gonna help us fill it with friends. Joe?"
You wrap your arms around Ian's torso, and Joe puts a mask to his face. He slumps in your arms, and you throw him onto the sofa. "I'll get Tilley. You get his clothes off."
"I wish it was Jessica," Joe mutters as you exit the living room.
You tap once on the bedroom door and open it without waiting for an answer. Lynch glares up from the bed. "Bathroom," he sneers when you ask where Keith is. "I didn't want him here with me without any clothes on."
You rap on the bathroom door. "Yo, Tilley, your new face is here." The door opens a crack. "Come on, you're mobile, Carpenter isn't." The naked Keith glances at Lynch, then scuttles through the bedroom with his hands over his crotch, and darts out the door. "Why so shy about seeing Tilley naked?" you ask Jason. "That was you under Kendra's mask, right, when Tilley did it with her?" He glares. "So it's not like there's anything you haven't seen. Or touched. Or felt inside you."
He stands up. You cough into your fist and he retreats. You close the door on him.
* * * * *
"Okay, you can go back to Westside, tell Patterson that Tilley is in for Carpenter," you tell the golem-Keith.
He looks at Ian, who is buttoning his shirt with a vexed expression on his face.
You roll your eyes. "Ian, tell the dipshit here--"
"Huh?" he says. "Oh, yeah." He nods vacantly at his replacement. "Go tell Patterson whatever." He sits on the couch and starts to pull on his socks.
"Is everything okay in there, Keith?" you ask after the golem has left.
"Yeah, sure, I guess," he says. "You're throwing me into the deep end, you know."
"Ian's easy to run."
He looks at you, and it strikes you that he's locked inside a kind of flinch. "Well, can I hang out here until I'm ready to go home?"
"I got people coming over. I don't want you here. Nothing personal, or against Ian. But they don't need to know that he's mixed up in this."
"Okay." He is very subdued. "Can you at least tell me where this guy lives?"
* * * * *
It's a stunning revelation when he makes it, and it astonishes you. He hasn't got Ian's memories. In fact, he has never gotten more than wispy hints of memories when he's put on a mask. All these times that he's been putting on masks, he's been faking it through. And the same, he says, goes for the others—they too only get hints of personalities when putting on the masks.
You leave him in the living room alone long enough to duck back into the bedroom to talk to Lynch, who mulishly confirms the the same. He's able to tell you more, though, which he has learned from Patterson. For everyone but you, it appears, the memories are frozen shut and only slowly start to thaw out over the course of many hours, but they fully unlock after a good sleep.
You don't share with either him or Keith that you are able to get the memories instantly and fully, and when they query your surprise, you only stammer back that you get them a lot quicker.
So that's a complication.
Still, you don't need Ian Carpenter under foot this evening, so you give Keith Ian's address and advise him to turn off his phone, go home, and hide in the bedroom by pleading the need for a nap. "Maybe you will fall asleep," you tell him, "and that'll speed things up. At least, it'll give you an excuse for not talking to his folks."
Then you dismiss him from your mind and turn to other plans.
* * * * *
Mrs. Pak is a small woman, and she greets you and Joe with a kindly mien as she lets you into the house. "Dana!" she calls.
"Actually, we're here to see Sarah," you say. "I'm the teacher's aide in one of her classes, and I just wanted to stop by and talk to her about a project."
"Is there something wrong?" Her face fills with alarm.
"No, not at all," you say. "She had some questions about a school project, and we're just stopping by to fill her in." Dana has appeared at the head of the stairs in answer to the summons. "Can I just go up and talk to her? Joe, you can stay down here."
You leave the charming one behind as you mount the stairs. Dana smiles at you, but she also looks around your shoulder at Joe. You feel a small pang of jealousy, for no good reason, since you can slip back under his face any time you choose.
"Hey Dana. I actually wanted to see you too," you tell her. She looks up at you with a slightly startled expression. "Can we go to your sister's room? It involves both of you." She blinks but leads you along the hallway, and knocks at a door. You lightly brush a stray strand of hair from her shoulder, and she gives you another little smile.
The door opens, and Sarah gasps a little when she sees you. She hesitates a moment, then steps back to admit you. It looks like she's feeling a little doubt, now that the moment has come.
You don't want to give her a chance to fuck anything up. So as soon as you and Dana are in the room, you close the door with your foot, take the mask from under your jacket, put an arm around Dana, and press the mask to her face. She falls into the crook of your arm, and you lower her onto the bed.
Sarah gives a little yelp, and you quiet her with a word. "You need to put this one on too," you say as you pull her own mask out of your backpack. "It'll put all your most recent memories into it." After much thought, you've decided to golemize it with her hair: It'll cause fewer suspicions if she knows her replacement is under her control.
Sarah takes the mask with shaking hands. "I guess it's too late now," she murmurs.
"Just think of David," you reply.
The magic words. She sits on the floor and puts it on.
You look around the room while the two girls are unconscious. It looks like a typical teenage girl's room, you decide, even though you've not been inside many. Some posters on the walls; stuffed animals in the corners; frilly curtains. You briefly wonder if Dana's room looks much different.
You look at the two girls. They are not so much different: Flat, pie-pan faces, but attractive in that East Asian way. Dana's hair is shorter and more stylishly cut. She's a little bigger than her sister (no surprise); Sarah has a track-and-field physique. Her apparent athleticism might be something she could miss. You'd probably miss Frank's almost feral physicality if you switched back into Joe; on the other hand, Joe has the much better brain and is better with the girls. You don't know Dana well enough to know if she's smarter than her sister.
A glow from the bed shows that Dana's mask has reappeared; a few seconds later Sarah's mask also appears. You take them up and switch them. Instantly, Dana changes into Sarah and sits up. "You okay there?" you ask.
The fake Sarah looks down at the new Dana, who is still unconscious. "I thought I was supposed to be--"
"You are," you say. "She is. Look at your clothes."
Sarah looks down and winces. "I wanted to be--"
"Someone has to be Sarah. That someone is you. Start getting changed."
"Not in front of you," she retorts.
You sigh; there's the downside of not being the golem's master. You gently shake the new Dana awake. "Come on, honey. Today's the first day of the rest of your life."
She sits up with a gasp, and her hands go to her face. She looks up at you with a look of terror, then looks over at her sister. Briefly she just stares.
And then a smile creases her face. Probably she doesn't mean it to look evil, but it does. "Hi sis," she says. Sarah winces.
"You're going to have to fake your way through as Dana until morning," you tell her. "That's when you'll get her full personality and set of memories. Now get changed," you order, "and meet me downstairs."
"Sure," she says softly. "David wanted to get together to study tonight. I told him I had plans." Her lips purse into a smirk. "Plans just changed."
Lynch is waiting out in the car; you were going to stop by David Johnson's house when you were done here. Dana would give you an easier way into his house. But that would mean telling her about the switch you've planned.
Alternately, you could make that switch later on, after picking up Carrie and Joanna and arranging for their swap.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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