"I'd like to go with Taylor and Lucy instead", you tell Frank.
"Why?" His tone is clipped.
You hesitate. It's just a feeling, a preference. But you need a reason to give him.
"Because of the stuff we're bringing back", you say, and as you say it you realize you've found the words for that feeling you've got. "I want to keep talking to him about it." About all of this stuff.
Frank says something to someone on the other end of the line, and there's a muffled conversation. "Okay, that'll work too", he says when he returns. "How long until you guys get back?"
--
You're not long returning, and after Frank (more gently this time) has checked everyone for masks, you transfer it all into his truck. You squeeze into the cab with Taylor and Lucy, with Joe driving.
"¡Nuestra casa es su casa!" Joe grandly declares on ushering you all into a tiny living room that opens out directly behind the front door. "Get comfortable, grab a seat, rest for a while." He shoves a pile of books off a brown sofa that looks and smells like a dead bear.
"You guys live here alone?", Taylor asks.
Joe grins and spreads his arms. "Ain't it great?"
It's a small, spartan little place just south of the university. Behind the tiny living room is a kitchen and dining nook, and just down a short hallway are two bedrooms and a bath. "You can have Frank's bed", Joe tells Lucy after giving you a very short tour. "Us guys'll figure out where to crash later. TV there." He points. "You two can relax on the sofa", he tells Taylor and Lucy. "Me and Will'll bring the stuff in." He plucks at your shoulder.
You step outside, towards Joe's truck, and start lofting boxes out of its back, when Joe startles you by saying, "Frank's the master of first impressions, huh?"
"My brother seems to like him", you reply.
"Well, there's no accounting for a brother's taste, right? You guy's share a room back home?"
"No."
"Lucky asshole. Me and Frank slept in bunk beds growing up. You get to know each other real good that way. But a brother can still be full of surprises."
"You don't look like brothers", you blurt out as you follow Joe back into the house.
"We're not. Biologically, that is. Dad picked us up from the gypsies. Guys like Frank and me are born before we're made. Dad ferreted us out when we were each about seven."
"You're both adopted?"
"That's the way of putting it without implicating our dad in a felony."
Joe leads you back into his bedroom and directs you to set your burden on the floor. "Now, bring me in your book bag and a chair from the dining room, and we'll jaw."
The TV is on as you cut through the living room, and Taylor and Lucy are both watching it from the sofa. He has his arm around her, and her temple is resting against his cheek. But after the day's crises, you feel nothing but exhaustion and numbness when you see them this way.
"Ah!", Joe exclaims on your return. He takes the bag from you and hurls himself onto the bed. "Pull up a seat there", he says, pointing a spot beside him. He opens your bag and starts pulling books out.
"Now, Frank is all for action", he says after you're settled, "and I assume you are too. But we need to know what we're up against, and that's where this stuff comes in. So, first of all, no judgments, but which of these spells have you executed and what have you made?" He opens Blackwell's notebook.
His expression is so encouraging that you find it surprisingly easy to start confessing everything to him. "Well, back when I had that book—"
"The Libra Personae."
"Yeah. My dad and me—"
Suddenly, your chest feels like it's being crushed as you think back to that day. That's when it all went wrong, it now hits you. If I hadn't shown the book to Dad, he wouldn't have gone to see the professor, and then—
Joe squeezes your hand in his, and smiles. You feel a flood of warmth, and the tightness in your chest eases.
"Well, we made a mask", you continue. "That got Dad all curious, because he's an engineer and he didn't understand why it would work. So he looked online and he found the professor—"
"And what else did you do? You don't have to go over the stuff with your dad again", Joe gently adds.
So you describe getting the mask onto a friend at school, which is how you met Taylor, and how you put the Emplastrum into the mask earlier that day and took turns with Robert trying it on. That last bit finally embarrasses you. But Joe either doesn't notice, or he tactfully ignores it.
"When you tried on the mask of your friend", he asks, "did you find that you had any of his memories? Did you suddenly know any of the stuff that he should know? Like his birthday or penis size?" He frowns when you shake your head. "Find me that mask", he says as he hops off the bed. "I'll be right back."
He brings three masks with him when he returns a few minutes later, and he smiles when he sees that you've not only set out Marc's mask, but all others you brought as well. Joe lays them out in a row.
"This is the second one you made", he says as he picks it up. Then he picks up another. "And this is the one you and Taylor got out of the professor's house." He turns them over in his hands, comparing them. They seem to be identical. "And you didn't put it on anyone, or put any of that Emplastrum in it?" You shake your head. "So this is the basic persona", he muses. "Which one did you use on your friend at school?"
You point to it, and he examines the inner surface. "No name", he murmurs.
"What do you mean?"
He flips over the remaining four masks. Over the inner surface of three of them floats a name: PENELOPE LUCILE VREDENBURG. SCOTT MICHAEL BICKELMEIR. HARRIS BRIAN PRESCOTT.
"Taylor had all of Scott's memories while he was wearing this mask", Joe says. "Personality too, by his account. So did the, uh, wearers of the other two masks. But you say you didn't have any of your friend's memories when you donned his persona." He tugs his lip. "Because the mask doesn't know your friend's name, it looks like, which it ought to know if it knows anything about him other than his face and form. But these other masks do know the names of— Hello!" Joe picks up the mask or your dad and rubs the inner surface, on the spot over which his name seems to float.
"It must be on account of this ridge here," he says. He hands it to you, then picks up the other two named masks to examine. On each, there is a raised place beneath the name, maybe an eighth of an inch thick, an inch wide, and several inches long. Then he shows you that there is no similar ridge on Marc's mask.
"Something extra," he says. He flips forward in Blackwell's notebook, and points to a page. "Mens," he says, reading the block letters at the bottom. "In English, the plural possessive of the word for the male of the species, minus the apostrophe. But in Latin, 'the mind'. A separate spell, huh? Conveniently modular." He turns the page. "Gluten. I'm guessing that's what you use to stick a mens to a persona. Then, when you stick them on a—"
Well, let him mumble to himself. You're too wrapped up in the mask you're holding, the one with your father's name in it. This is what Blackwell made so he could impersonate my father, it comes to you. This is the thing I was talking to, and was talking to me.
The mask suddenly feels very loathsome, and you drop it like it's a tarantula.
"Here", Joe says, and from one of the boxes pulls out a metal strip that's about the same dimension as the ridge inside the masks. "I bet this is the little devil." He examines both sides. "Score! Runework! That simplifies things. It's already prepped for— Uh oh!" He tosses the strip from hand to hand, as though it's burning his fingertips, then drops back into the box he dug it out of.
"What's wrong?", you ask.
"Nothing, I hope. I just suddenly got worried it was copying my brain! My precious, gigantic, engorged-and-throbbing-with-esoteric-knowledge brain!"
He glares down at the strip, then looks up at you. "Anyway", he continues, "that will be one of our projects, yours and mine. Figuring out how to make a mens. Making a mens!" He bursts out laughing. "A mens? Amends? Almost a joke, son! Pun, that is!"
You can't help feeling a little irritated. He's a live wire, this one, but he's more amusing to himself than to you. Or maybe you're just tired.
So when he says, "Come on in the back yard, there's something I want to show you", you tell him you'll join him in a minute, and make a side detour into the bathroom. You flinch a little on entering, for it is dingy and smells of mold, dirty socks, and pee. The toilet lid is up, and there's a yellow crust along the water line.
So this is what it looks like when you don't have a mother to clean your bathroom for you, you think. It gives you another twinge.
You're splashing some cold water on your face when your phone chimes. You pull it out with a sigh and check the screen.
Your heart nearly bursts out through your chest. It's your mother calling.
You gulp. But is it?
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