This choice: Yes, you'll trust him with the truth • Go Back...Chapter #29The Offer of a Lifetime by: Seuzz   Joe clasps his hands over yours. "Do you trust me, Melody?" he asks, and gazes deeply into your eyes.
You do. It wells up like a certainty, not an expression of hope or faith.
"I trust you, Joe," you say. "I don't trust Blackwell. I never did--"
The words suddenly seem to be pouring out of you. "And it was mistake to ever get mixed up with him. I didn't mean to do anything to him, but just being around him did it to me. He was going to do something to me, and it was just my dumb luck that I managed to-- To--" Tears are suddenly running from your eyes. Dammit, Melody seems like such a tough cookie, but she's really just nerves strung to the snapping point. "That I managed to do it to him first!"
How long you'd have cried you don't know, but Joe squeezes your hands, and the waterworks suddenly stop. Joe stares at you with grave sympathy. "I'm a big girl, and I will tell the truth without crying," he says. You frown with puzzlement, until he explains. "Just repeat what I said," he says. "The best way to deal with bad things, is to tell them that you're not going to be scared of them. Say it out loud, and you'll believe it. Repeat after me: I'm a big girl, and I will tell the truth without crying." He squeezes your fingers gently.
"I'm--" You gasp, for the words are going to sound strange coming from Will Prescott. "I'm a big girl, and I will tell the truth without crying." To your surprise, it seems to work, for you feel a surge of strength and calmness. Joe smiles at you encouragingly.
"Well, first thing to say is, I hope you believe in magic," you say. "Real magic, I mean."
"I do," he says, and smiles warmly. "I know lots about such stuff."
"In that case--" Oddly, you are sure he won't laugh or sneer at what you feel compelled to say next. So you say it very simply and directly. "I'm not a big girl, actually. My name is Will Prescott, and I'm a guy."
A glint comes into his eye. "You go to school at Westside, right? You work at Blackwell's in the afternoon?"
"Yeah," you croak. "How did you--" He shushes you, and bids you continue. "Well, I guess it all started when I went out to Arnholm's Used Bookstore about a month ago."
* * * * *
It's very easy to talk, and you feel more and more relief the longer you talk. Joe listens with a rapt fascination, and there's no judgment in his eyes, even when you describe how you trapped Blackwell upstairs and sent him to his doom, and how you trapped Yumi and Melody under masks of themselves. Nor does he flinch when you talk about the anima band and how you put it on Melody so you could come out here to pump him for information. Only when you draw to an end does a something like fear return to you, for you now are completely exposed to someone whose background and intentions are utterly opaque to you.
But his smile is gracious when you're done. "You really were honest with me, Prescott," he murmurs, using your name as though it were you and not a simulacrum of Melody sitting in front of him. "I don't think I'd even have had to force you."
"Force me?" you echo, feeling real alarm.
"Never mind," he says. He lays one of his hands on that golden disc, and upon the placement he'd been scribbling on. "And don't worry. You're in for a wonderful surprise."
You can't help feeling doubt about the word "wonderful," for you're not in the mood for surprises.
"I'll tell you about myself now," he continues. "My name really is Joe. Well, not really, but that's what everyone has called me for years. Blackwell was a black magician. I guess you could call me a white magician. There's a group of us. Maybe Blackwell mentioned them to you? The Stellae Errantes?" You shake your head. "Maybe he's never heard of us. It's not like we'd ever heard of him until a few months ago."
"Why are you interested in Blackwell?"
"We weren't. We were interested in that book you found, the Libra Personae. It's a bad book, and we were trying to get it back, so we could hide it where no one could ever use it again. But that's really not important right now. What's important is you, and what's going to happen to you."
Now fear does rise, to choke you.
"I thought there was something a little funny about Melody when I met her, but you're the one that met me here tonight," he continues. "And you're the one that answered my questions and played my little games. I don't think you were totally honest. You were pretending to be Melody. But you were honest enough that I could see what you were." He smiles and leans across the table at you. "Blackwell told you that there are natural-born magicians. He was right. There are, and I'm one of them. So are you, Prescott. You are one of the rarest and most powerful kind there are. There's only one place for people like you and me. You're going to have to become a member of our society. You're going to have to become a Stellae."
* * * * *
He'd talked more, a lot more, about some very tricky and secret stuff. You'd suggested at one point that you go some place private, but he'd shaken his head. "You can trust me," he'd said. "But you'll trust me more if I insist on us staying out in public." He'd stopped holding and touching you after your confession to being a dude, but he remains gentle and courteous.
As for what he'd said:
There are various ways that people can do magic. Most of them are like Blackwell: they get it out of books. Others have a knack that arises out of a quirk of their being. Sometimes it's something in their imago; more typically it's something in their essentia. So it is with those magicians that he calls Stellae: Their essentia resonates with the planets. ("The wandering stars," he'd translated the name of their society.) "Each planet confers its special gifts," he explains. "Each of us have two planets. There are only a few dozen of us, and because we each have a different pair, we each have our own unique abilities that arise from their blending."
Given what you've studied recently, you are able to follow it all pretty well.
"For hundreds, even thousands of years, the Stellae have existed as a secret order. We're good guys. We don't try to conquer the world. We try to protect it, because there are a lot of bad things out there. Monsters. Things that descend from other planes of existence. Bad men, like Blackwell. Artifacts, like the Libra. It's a dangerous existence, but it's fun too. Like the secretest, coolest club in the world." At that point, he'd reached out to squeeze your hand again: not from affection, but from excitement. "You will love being in it."
"But how do I join?" you ask.
"We ask you to join. You don't have to, but you'll want to. You'll be happier inside it, because you're made to belong inside it. Isn't that what you said you felt, when you realized that everything Blackwell had was now yours?" You nod. "That's what it's like, but even more so. You weren't made to have Blackwell's stuff. That's just a shitty copy of the real stuff. The things that excite you, that you want to do, we can show you, teach you. And you'll be able to do such amazing things with them. And you'll be doing good things with them. Not selfish things, like Blackwell was doing. And you won't have to be afraid of anything, like what ate Blackwell. Because the rest of us will be there to watch your back. And you'll be there to help us."
His face and his eyes shine brighter and brighter as he talks, and you can't help being swept up in his enthusiasm. But you're not so overborne that you don't ask after the alternative. "You said I don't have to join. What will happen if I don't?"
A flicker of disappointment shows in his face. "You don't want to turn us down, dude," he says. "It'd be like saying you don't want to come down on Christmas morning."
"I just want to understand everything," you stammer.
"Well," he sighs. " We won't leave you with what you've got now. All the people you copied and enslaved? They'd have to go free. We'd take all of Blackwell's things away, probably burn his house down. We'd definitely take the Libra from you. You'd go back to your normal life. You'd find it very boring. We'd leave you our contact info, because, frankly, you'd almost certainly go so mad with boredom you'd come back and ask us to join. If you didn't, well--" He shrugs. "You'd make your peace with being a normal, boring, regular old dude. Oh," he adds. "We'd also figure out a way to take that hex off you, so you wouldn't have to worry about that."
From somewhere below the table, a phone tweets. You grab at your book bag, but it's not Melody's. Joe takes out his phone, checks it briefly, and turns it off.
"You don't have to decide right away," he says with a quizzical smile. "But honestly, this is the kind of thing where you should trust your gut. A snap decision is going to be correct one. It's not a rational choice, where you have to weigh up the pros and cons. It's an existential choice. And second thoughts are just going to cloud the clarity you have at the moment.
"So what's it going to be, Will?" He puts out his hand. "Are you going to join us?"  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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