This choice: Let them screw with Yumi • Go Back...Chapter #36The Shadow of Magic by: Seuzz   "What kind of a use?" you ask Frank. The halls are crowded and noisy, and you doubt anyone can overhear you.
"We can use her mask to unlock another spell, one that erases imago. It'll take the rest of the stuff out too, apparently. Pull you back from your limit."
You rub your mouth. As much as Yumi leaves you drooling--and your cock stirs as you think of her, waiting for you, unresisting--you're not actually using her. "Sure, that sounds like a plan. You can do it out at the old elementary school, release her there."
"Drop you off at the house first?" Frank asks.
"No, let me take the truck after school. You hitch a ride with Straussler. I left all my stuff over at Blackwell's, and I got stuff I can do there for the rest of the day."
* * * * *
You've been at it for several hours in Blackwell's library before noises from the kitchen tell you that you are no longer alone in the house. "Is that you, professor?" you call.
"Indeed!" he calls back, and a moment later shuffles into view. He looks like a whipped dog. "I said hello when I came in, but you didn't notice."
"I've been distracted." You indicate the mess of glasses.
"I'd ask what all this is, but I fear you have advanced beyond my understanding," he says, sounding pinched.
"It's imago," you say. "Layers and layers of it. Trying to find that damn hex you put on me." He smiles thinly. "It's getting easier as I go along, finding the patterns," you muse, more to yourself than to him. "But it's a witch."
"Speaking of witchcraft," he says, "I have a report for you on Cuthbert."
"I didn't ask for a report."
"Then it was one of your alter egos. He telephoned on Saturday. I assumed you'd be of a like mind, and complied with his request."
You could use a break, so you ask him for it. From his briefcase he draws a few sheets of paper. You glance through them as he summarizes their contents.
"I am quite certain they are descended from the 'Schlabonenmann' of Saxony," he says. "The witch that was burned at the stake was almost certainly a blind of some kind. Or perhaps a traitor to the clan. Data, of course, is incomplete as to their peregrinations. But a troupe answering to the name appeared in Pennsylvania in the middle of the eighteenth century, and disappeared into the wilderness. There are records of some of that name in the nineteenth century, sprinkled in amongst increasingly common references to 'Shabbleman.' They were well established in Cuthbert by the end of the nineteenth century."
"What about upstate New York?" you ask. "That's where the Libra was."
"That is unclear. The woman had been institutionalized in a catatonic state more than fifty years ago. The Libra was in her effects. But she was not in the care of any of her kinsmen. Rather, a trust had been established to care for her."
"By who?"
"I don't know. It was all screened."
"Huh. So why did you say 'speaking of witchcraft'? Is there witchcraft in Cuthbert?"
"The signs were apparent when I visited," he says. "You may be a Stellae, Mr. Prescott, but some magical abilities are keyed to the humors, and those may pass down through the blood."
"You think I might be doubly gifted?" You can't help grinning.
He only shrugs. "We would have to examine some of your kin, and compare their humors to your own."
You lean back, and suck on the earpiece to the pair of glasses you'd just taken off. You'd have to get ahold of one of those kinsmen first. "You say there are signs of witchcraft up there," you muse, and he nods. "If you went up there, and said you wanted an apprentice, what do you think they would say?"
He turns a little pale. "They would certainly be suspicious," he says. "They do not like outsiders, and they would not like the hint that an outsider knows or suspects something about them."
"Still, it seems to me you could do with an apprentice," you say. "Someone to boss around, now that you haven't got me." You smile wickedly.
"I suppose I could take another trip up there this weekend," he sighs.
"Do that," you say. You'd rather send him up tomorrow, but he's got classes to teach.
* * * * *
That was Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday pass in much the same manner. You go to school as Joe, where you goof off and flirt hard with girls. You don't discuss business with Frank and Jonathan at school, and they go off together immediately after basketball practice each day, leaving you to take the Durras's truck out to Blackwell's, where you continue to map your imago. You've figured out that there is no single "anchor" for the hex, which means that you'll have to trace out the entire hex before figuring out how to remove it. You do that work outside of Joe's mask, and return home before midnight, to meditate with Frank, which is the only "business" you transact before starting over again the next morning. He tells you he's really impressed with the way you are coming along on your exercises; you wonder if it's connected to the "mapping" work you're doing. It seems to be doing wonders for your powers of concentration.
And then, on Friday, in the gym showers after an intense after-school basketball practice: "You've been keeping to yourself a lot, Joe," Jonathan says as he rubs the water from his taut body. You've already got a towel around you. "Well, you've been keeping after the girls at school, like I asked. But after school--"
"You inviting me out to your place, Straussler? Cool!"
"Actually, I'd rather you invited me out to yours. Well, out to that villa. You know the one. Frank and I've been working on an extracurricular project, you know, but we've run into a snag."
"I've been meaning to ask how that was going."
"I hope you're not going to be pissed," he says, and wraps a towel around his own waist, to follow you back into the changing rooms. It's empty, except for Frank, who is getting dressed. "There's a few things to talk about."
You're not sure you like the sound of this.
* * * * *
"Fucking hell!" you scream, and kick one of Blackwell's chairs so hard it flies across the room. "And you assholes went ahead and did all this stuff without clearing it with me?"
"You're not our boss, and you're not president of the club, Prescott," Frank says, and his eyes glint with anger. "It's a democracy, and we outvoted you."
"You didn't even let me vote!"
"It's all academic," Jonathan says. "We would have outvoted you anyway--"
"I might've argued you out of it!"
"Or we would've argued you into it. Don't forget, we are you. If we'd have done it, you would have too."
You really hope that's not true. "So how many people have you killed?"
"'We,' Prescott," Frank growls. "Remember, one person, three bodies."
"A couple," Jonathan says evasively, in answer to your question. "I'm not sure how to count them."
Your partners have made rapid progress, getting through ten spells since last Sunday. Some of them are quite useful. Joe is now able to flip between his face and Jonathan's without pulling off the mask, because three of the spells combined to let him put multiple faces into a single mask. Also, now only Joe and Frank can remove their anima bands, because they made special kind of nail has bonded them to their foreheads. They have also uncovered a spell that can strip all the materials out of masks and bands--they released Yumi, and recycled her mask into a blank--and another that can copy the contents of masks and bands into blanks, to make duplicates. They also found a weird little spell that shrinks golems.
But then there are the awful ones.
The first strips minds from people, leaving them as catatonic, fleshy husks. They'd done this to Melody after removing the mask from her, then hidden the results by putting it back on. Then they'd practiced the spell after that on her, and turned her into a golem, and not a golem like Lucy. "It left nothing but substantia behind," Jonathan says. "That's an interesting difference from the earlier spell. I bet there's a way to reverse that early one, but not this one."
Not that there's anything left of the golemized Lucy anymore: Joe and Frank had used the last spell to copy the imprisoned Jonathan onto the her. The result was a doppelganger of Jonathan, and he didn't appear to be a golem, either, for he was argumentative. And when they'd stripped that imago away again, Lucy wasn't around anymore.
"Maybe you can't count up your victims," you snarl, "but I can see lots of problems. No wonder you want to--"
"Shut up," Frank says. He doesn't yell, but there's such authority in his voice that you do snap your jaw closed. "The problem we have now is that we can't get any further in the book."
"Good. But what is it, another torn page?"
"No." Jonathan starts to open the Libra, then stops. "I'm not even sure I want to show it to you. It's some kind of optical illusion, an illustration. You look at it, even glance at it, and it knocks you out."
"That's a mercy, it sounds like."
"We want to master this thing," Frank says. "We're only nineteen spells in, and there's lots of pages to go."
"We've got plenty to work with," you retort. "Blackwell's library, Cuthbert, maybe--"
"What about Cuthbert?" Jonathan asks sharply. You tell him what Blackwell had told you, and how he'll be traveling up this weekend to fetch someone down. "Don't send that old fool," he says. "One of us should go up there, pretending to be Blackwell." Frank nods.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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