This choice: Return to life under Rosalie's face • Go Back...Chapter #72Two Into One, Part 1 by: Seuzz   Frank calls early the next morning, so early that Jonathan--his hair a tangle--has to stumble out of the bedroom to hand you the phone. "I was about to put on my makeup," he says in Chelsea's sunniest chirp. "But then I was thinking maybe I shouldn't if you were going to be going in as Chelsea today. You'd probably want to do it yourself."
You glance up at the bedroom door just as Jonathan shuts it again. Your own head is a woolly mess, inside and out. "How about you just cover for Chelsea today?" you mumble. "The real Chelsea and I can hang out at Jonathan's."
"Oh really?" he says archly. "Like I bet you guys didn't hang out all night already?"
You bite your tongue. No we didn't, she and your brother spent all night screwing, you don't say. Three times they woke you up. "I've got stuff to do," is all you say. "What do you think of Jordan?"
"He's a jerk, but he'll work for me. Can Joe have a mask ready for me after school?"
"Maybe tonight. He has class, and he has to get stuff."
"Okay then, bye, I'm already running late." He hangs up.
Since you're awake now, you get up and shower and fry yourself some eggs. Footsteps go into the bathroom while you're cooking, and water runs, and it runs for a very long time, and you've eaten and washed the dishes before the bathroom door opens again. Jonathan comes out first, gives you a wink and a grin, and goes upstairs.
And then Joe appears, wrapped only in a towel. "Don't look at me like that," he says as he opens the refrigerator door and avoids your eye. "It was a bonding exercise, that's all."
"Did it work?"
"Sure. I guess." He holds your eye now as he tips back the jar of OJ and swallows long and thirstily. "Weren't you there?"
You shake your head violently.
"I knew you weren't there inside me," he says. "Chelsea said the same thing, but--"
"I swear, Joe, I wasn't. And if I had been--"
"Huh. I guess we're all sympatico, then. She's quite a girl. Maybe you and Rick were right about that combo, and about it working with her."
"Did you do any meditation exercises with her?
"No, just sexual. Did we bother you?"
"No," you lie.
"I'm glad. We tried to be quiet." If last night was them being quiet, you wonder what it would have sounded like if they'd tried painting the ceiling with Joe's cum. "You were zonked when we came out to get the Libra. That's how come I wondered if you were--"
"Get the Libra?" you interrupt. "Why did you--?"
"To get the golem layer out of Jonathan's mask. She couldn't put it on otherwise, right? Yeah, she's going in to Eastman today."
"How come?"
"Because she's sick in the head." He glances back up at the bedroom door. "Yeah, I think I'm starting to like her." You feel numb, and say nothing. "Well, that, and she said I should probably hang out with you today. Said you had some technical stuff to work on, and I should help. So she's covering for me."
Oh yeah, the stuff you need to explore with merging imago. Now you glance thoughtfully past Joe up at the bedroom door. It's a smart managerial decision on her part.
The door opens as you're staring at it, and Jonathan comes out, dressed in a creamy sweater and slacks; his hair is still damp, but brushed around in a way that looks careless but studied. "Dudes," he says with Jonathan's insolent twinkle. "You leave anything for your host?" He brushes the side of Joe's torso with lean fingertips as he opens the refrigerator.
"I'm gonna fire up a video game," you stammer, and your knees wobble as you totter over to the game player. You relax into the beanbag, but can't relax into the game. You try not to eavesdrop, but it's hard to ignore the voices from the kitchen. Mostly, though, it's just talk about Eastman. There's no obvious flirting, and though you steel yourself against it, there's no sound of kissing when Jonathan leaves, shrugging on a letterman jacket and grinning at you around the piece of toast clenched between his shining teeth.
"I'm going to hold you down and punch you until you bleed," Joe says as he sits down cross-legged next to you.
"I'm sorry, Joe! I just--"
"Chelsea said you were thinking about turning yourself into Rosalie. Well, into her doppelganger. I say go for it."
"Why? So you can--?" You feel yourself turning very red.
"Nah. Or yeah, if you want." He rubs your thigh, and you jerk away. "I'm just messin' with you. But it makes sense. It'd put you in good with Chelsea."
"I can get in good with Chelsea on my own, I think."
"I mean, at Westside. The way she was describing it, it'd be a lot easier for her to be friends with a new girl than with someone already there, or with a new guy. And, you know--" He smiles tightly. "The combination of Chelsea's head and Will Prescott's, in her body? I think she's extremely bi curious, in all sorts of ways."
You almost swallow your tongue. To cover you discomfiture, you turn it around on him. "Sounds to me like you're--"
He leaps on you, and to show that you're going to give him room to run without your leash, you stay in your own body, even after he's hit you hard a couple of times.
* * * * *
The day is given over to work, studying the Libra.
The challenge: How to merge two full sets of memories, talents, dispositions, and other mental whatnot into one imago, so that you can give Frank and Joe (and yourself) maskless disguises. In theory it's doable: the mental aspects of imago are flexible enough that you could add an entirely new set of mental properties to an existing imago. The problem is that imago is so complex that it would take a very long time to make the changes in a piecemeal fashion. "If I could just merge them," you say. "If I had both sets in front of me, and could just force them together--" You trail off.
"But that would require two copies of the same sigil," Joe says, for he sees the same problem. "You'd have to have Frank's imago in one mask, with a voodoo doll on top of the sigil. And then you'd have to have Jordan's imago in a mask, with a voodoo doll, on top of another copy of the sigil."
"And there's only one copy in the book. And we can't copy it because--"
"Because the book is locked against making copies." Joe frowns. "Thing is, you've already made up your own modifications of the sigils. You're probably smart enough that you could have invented that 'modify' sigil on your own."
"Would I have been able to write it down, if I had?"
"The spell shouldn't prevent the independent discovery of sigils," Joe says. He cocks his head. "What if you tried writing down the sigil without using the book to guide you?"
"From memory? That's like copying."
Joe turns the Libra to the front page and studies the symbols there. "It's a narrowly crafted lock," he muses. "It won't let you copy the sigils with the book open. But if you closed it--" He shuts it firmly. "Just try it. Let's see what happens."
And so you settle over a large sheet of paper at the kitchen table and try to make up your own copy of the "modify anima" sigil. You try not to work from memory, and just let your own knowledge of how the spell is supposed to work guide you. Joe helps, pointing out corrections as you go along. Bit by bit it takes form, and Joe grows quiet as the symbols come together and the circle fills in. When you're done he picks it up and carefully examines it. "Well?" you ask. "Is there any way to test it, short of--?"
"No, you got it," he says quietly. "I can tell. This thing is live." He puts it down gingerly and looks at you. "You said the last page in the book was blank? I wonder if it is now. Because this thing here feels like a graduation exercise. If you can do this, I'd say you've mastered the Libra."
You take a deep breath, and a tremble goes through you. Are you now a master of the book's magic, on a par with the author of it? Slowly, you open the Libra, and turn pages until you come to the last one.
But it's still blank, and still refuses to turn.
There's disappointment in Joe's sigh as you shut the Libra again.
* * * * *
That's all done by two, and after that you put on Will Shabbleman's face as a disguise and drive your friends' truck into town to pick up mask-making supplies; with a wad of bills from Jonathan's dad, you're able to get enough for dozens of masks.
You've got them all laid out when Chelsea (under Jonathan's face) and Frank (under Chelsea's) show up at around four-thirty. "Jordan won't be free until six," the latter says. "I already talked to him about coming out here. We gonna be ready for him?"
"Sure," you reply, and explain to your confederates how it will work. You explain to your confederates how it will work. "And even if I mess up--"
"If you mess up," the Chelsea-disguised Frank interrupts, "it'll be my face you're messing up."
"No loss," Joe says carelessly.
"We'll still have your face and Jordan's on file," you say.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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