You quickly ponder upon the possibilities. Dealing with Lucy's double now would give her life back, and a test subject for you to deal with. You could learn how it works, how it behaves, how it thinks... But it would place Lucy straight in Blackwell's arms once more. Even if she tried to fool Blackwell by acting like the double, she'd be at risk. She's already proven that she doesn't want to do anything with your plans, and you feel Taylor would go full Scott on your ass if something happened to her.
So you resolve to do this the indirect way, by deciphering the damn book without having it. And with Blackwell's notes and the book of sigils, you feel you're sufficiently equipped to tackle the problem.
"How about we sleep on it, talk about it tomorrow?" you suggest. Taylor looks and Lucy and shrugs.
You grab and shake Taylor's hand (so different from Scott's own), and you lean forward to take Lucy's, when you feel something like a force field go up between you. So instead you give her a small wave, and trudge up the stairs and outside.
--
Your evening passes normally, though Robert seems a bit colder with you. You put it down to his being pissed at your breaking your promise to him, and do your best to ignore him. You're also wary of your father, and dinner passes so uncomfortably that your mother is driven to ask, "Is there something wrong with you three?" She gets only grunts in reply.
With the temptation of the new book at hand, homework is even more of a chore, and you give up on it before you're even halfway done with it. You lock your door lest your dad or Robert stumble in, and pull out the day's acquisition.
It begins with the same kind of exhortations as opened the Libra: cautions about executing the "Great Designs" which mastery of the "Art of Sigil" will make possible. (Maybe it was written by the same author? you wonder.) It also specifically mandates that a "Hot and Purifying Flame" be prepared and maintained close at hand when practicing "this Profound Art."
Well, there's no fireplace in your room, and you don't even have a cigarette lighter, but you read on.
A sigil, the book goes on to explain, is an "Instrucktion" that is "carved into Nature" and by its "Action and Intent modifys Nature, as the Action and Intent of a Channel modifys the Cors and Flow of a River." Okay, you think. I kind of guessed all that.
A lot of confusing guff follows, and you have to read it several times before it begins to make a hazy kind of sense. A sigil, you are informed, isn't a single magical device, but like "a Great Machine that is composed of many smaller Machines" it is a "Great Modifycation" composed of many smaller modifications.
Curiously, it's when the text uses the word "execute" that its meaning comes to you in a flash. You flip forward to one of the complicated wheels at the back of the book and contemplate it in something like a daze.
It's a computer program, you think. It's a computer program, and the world is the computer, and the sigil is giving it a program to execute!
You flip back to where you broke off, and plunge forward with renewed fervor and understanding. But though you itch to try one of the examples out, you are sufficiently cautious after the book's warnings that you refrain from setting down anything on paper, and instead try to visualize what it says would happen if you did ...
--
The next day, in Calculus, Scott (Taylor, back in disguise) tells you that something has come up and he won't be able to meet you after school at the basement as you'd planned. But he passes you some money and asks you to pick up Lucy some dinner with it. You oblige, and find her peevish and unhappy when you see her. "I'm going stir crazy," she says, but she declines your offer to take her out for a drive in your truck. You do feel sorry for her—it's probably almost as bad for her as being locked up at Blackwell's—but it pisses you off that she'd rather go stir crazy than accept a hospitable gesture from you. Back home, after dinner, you tackle the magic books again.
--
Then comes Friday, and Scott again gestures you over before Calculus starts. "I'm gonna see you when school's out, right?" he says. You nod.
Then he says, "She's hot, isn't she?"
You stare at him. Then, as his meaning dawns on you, you feel the blood drain from your face. "Wh-who?" you stammer.
"Cindy," he says, and you stagger with surprise that it wasn't taunting you about Lucy. A sly half-smile slides up the side of his face. "You were staring at her just now, weren't you?"
Now your face begins to burn. You were in fact staring at Cindy Vredenburg, Lucy's sister, who is in the same class as you, sitting on the other side of the room. You were marveling at her resemblance to Lucy just when Scott called out your name.
You shrug and mumble, "She's a cheerleader."
"Sure," Scott says. "We'll talk about it when we get together after school."
Mr. Kowalski calls class to order shortly afterward, and begins the lesson with a demonstration reducing an equation to a simpler form. When he asks for a volunteer to replicate the procedure, you surprise yourself by raising your own hand. And you surprise yourself further (and the teacher, it seems) by reducing the new equation to a simplicity that even your thirteen-year-old brother should be able to grasp. For almost the first time you can remember, a math lesson makes almost perfect sense without your having to struggle to understand it.
"What's your deal lately, Prescott?" Carson Ioeger grouses as he follows you out of class afterward. "Chatting with football players, getting math problems right. You're turning into a disappointment to me."
"What's disappointing about it?" you demand.
"Your job is look bad so I can feel good about myself. Don't make me have to start comparing myself to Tilley. That'd be just frickin' humiliating."
A strong voice sounds behind you. "Tell me you're joking, asshat." It's Scott. Neither you nor Carson noticed him following behind. He claps a strong hand on the back of Ioeger's neck. "Tell me you're just giving Will some friendly grief."
"Er, sure," Carson stammers. "Of course."
"Busting his balls," Scott muses. "'Cos you wouldn't want anyone busting your balls." He pushes Carson off balance, then swaggers away. You and Ioeger watch him go.
Carson turns to you when he'd out of sight. "You've been acting pretty distant the last few days," he says.
"I didn't mean to be."
"Yeah, well, try to make it a habit going forward, okay?" He trudges off, leaving you with your mouthing hanging open.
--
You put Carson out of your mind—he's always been a bit of a sarcastic asshole—and go to the library for your free period. You take out your math, for you're feeling inspired, but find yourself doodling sigilistic symbols instead. Your experience in Calculus has given you an idea.
The primer you stole from Professor Blackwell shows how to build sigils from scratch. There are two ways. The simplest is to join symbols together to create complex sigils like equations. The other compresses multiple instructions into a single sigil of a deceptively simple design.
Kind of like reducing a very complex equation into a smaller, more elegant one, you now realize. Maybe that's what Blackwell was doing when he scratched some simple sigils onto the pages of the notebook.
So if you could find a way to reverse the process, to expand sigils rather than compress them ...
You work at it for an hour, and find it far harder than you'd dared to hope. But it does give you a little more confidence at handling the sigils.
And nothing blows up or turns into a frog, so that's a plus.
--
Back at the hideout, you find Taylor and Lucy sitting quietly in a corner with their arms around each other. You quickly avert your eyes, but not before you've caught the melancholy expression on Lucy's face. You nod at them, and ask if you can go out get them anything. It seems like the most diplomatic way of getting out of there when it's pretty obvious they'd like to be alone.
Lucy shakes her head, but after a moment's silence Taylor says you can stop by the store and bring back a couple of gallons of distilled water.
You've just clambered into the cab of your truck when Taylor shouts at you from the door to the basement, and comes trotting over.
"I didn't want to say anything in front of Lucy," he says as he leans in the truck window, "but bring back about ten gallons of water. And some shampoo and soap."
You stare at him for a long moment before the meaning of what he's requesting registers. With a gulp, you nod and twist the key in the ignition.
But Taylor stops you with a hand on your arm.
"Hey, Will, thanks for everything," he says. "I know Lucy doesn't like saying anything, but she is grateful."
"Yeah, sure."
"I am too." He hesitates. "I'm going to take her out tonight for a drive," he continues. "She's going a little stir crazy."
"She told me she was."
Taylor nods, but he still doesn't release your arm.
"You know, it's Friday night," he says. Right, you think. You're taking her down to the river for a date. "You seeing anyone?" he asks.
You shake your head, and bite your tongue.
"Well," he says, "I could use someone to cover tonight. Cover for Scott, I mean. I can't be out being him if I'm off with Lucy."
"So what are you going to do?" you ask.
He gives you a look. Again, it takes you a stupidly long time to realize what he's implying.
He's offering to let you wear Scott's mask for a night on the town.
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