Chapter #32A Betrayal by: imaj   You hand the air hostess back the tray with the leftovers of your meal. She smiles artificially at you with impossible white teeth and thanks you. There’s one advantage to flying back home as Siobhan, as you are now. It’s much easier to get comfortable in the cramped confines of the plane in her petit form. You shift a little in your seat, ignoring the protestations of the businessman in the window seat next to you, and settle into something approaching comfort. Finally you close your eyes and meditate.
The cramped and hot confines of the plane fade from your awareness and you find yourself at the heart of the secret inner space of your mind. All around you dozens upon dozens of stars proceed on their stately orbit. The glowing light of them all is intense, such is their number. You’ve picked up a lot in the last few days as a result of your adventure in Saratoga Falls.
Still, you remember that decision you made in Oxford all those years ago: To remove any imagos as soon as you no longer needed them. With Charles’ permission you can now clear out a good many of sets of personalities and memories. The troublesome remenants of Florence Shabbleman’s imago will especially pleasing to purge.
But you’ll leave her to last, the better to savour it. You start by drawing up to your last but one acquisition. The glowing star that represents the imago of Doctor Maria Vasquez in your mindscape is a cool, serene blue. You probably should remove her from your collection, but as you examine her imago in more detail, you find yourself reluctant. Maturity has, if anything, only made Maria even more attractive than she was as a high school student. The physical component of her imago would serve well as what Rick Breddon calls a bedroom face – an identity that you can use to seduce people with. Her professional knowledge, the skills and experience of being a doctor, would be useful. You very carefully purge her personal memories, you’ve got no business being there though you are curious how she managed to hide her intelligence so well back at Westside High School.
Next up is the tattooed man you found posing as a nurse in the hospital. You’ve already reviewed the contents of his memories thoroughly with Charles and you have no want to go back to that dark place again. He was a killer before his path crossed with Fane’s and the gifts they gave him only made him worse. You don’t dwell on his murderous assignments, but instead consign the memories of them to oblivion.
You move onto the memories of the Fane employees, a cluster of multihued stars so close to each other in your mind that they seem almost to have merged into one colossal entity. You pick away at them one at a time, giving each a cursory examination before purging it from your mind. The memories were more or less useless to you. Fane does such a good job of keeping its operations compartmentalised from each other and no one knows much outwith the job they were tasked with. The Project Ishtar people didn’t even know that much.
One surprise waits for you as you dig through the memories. Lurking at the heart of the cluster of stars is one star grander and more magnificent than the rest. It gives off a warming glow as you approach and you can’t help but wonder who’s imago it is and how it got there. So you dive at it, and as you get close enough to see who it is you have to wonder why you didn’t realise earlier.
The majestic star is the imago of Charles Brennan.
You must have picked it up by accident at some point. Perhaps it was when he caught you by surprise in the Project Ishtar laboratory. The little static shock you felt when you grabbed his hand must have been the imago.
You really should remove it at once. His memories are no business of yours at all, and yet… What is it like to be the king of all the planets? You pick a memory at random and bring it close, suddenly finding yourself elsewhere.
*****
“The man inside the book,” you say as Charles in the memory. You recognises his poky little study in Olympia, the tiny confines made all the tighter by the presence of Father Ed and Nash Carnes. They seem a little younger than last you saw them. Yes, the thought comes to you from the memory, this is a little over five years ago, just after you left with Miko on your apprenticeship. “He worries me.”
“Herranymuss van Gassdarf,” states Nash, mangling the pronunciation of the sorcerers name. “I’m shuah aff it Chazz.”
Hieronymus von Gerssdorff, the name is familiar enough to Charles. The author of the Libra Personae, presumed missing centuries ago. “He’s inside the book? It’s a phylactery?”
“Ya,” nods Nash. “An’ the boy’s hadda meetin’ wit him.”
You, Charles really, frown thoughtfully.
Ed, however, turns an odd shade of puce. “Dammit all Chuck,” he says angrily. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I was worried about.” He leans forward in his chair, with that righteous expression that always comes before Ed says he told you so. “That I warned you about,” he thunders. “What we going to do now? I say let him sleep.”
You – the real you, not the you that is Charles in the memory – shudder at that comment. Ed can only be referring to the Banks of the Acheron, the same place Frank took the Fane employees after the raid on Protean Industries. They’ll get a trial of sorts, but what Ed proposed here…
“You think Von Gerssdorff might have influence over him,” you ask, still speaking as Charles did in the memory.
“Will’s just a kid Ed,” says Nash. “He ain’t ‘sponsible for what Gassdarf did.”
“He lost his innocence as soon as he opened that book,” snarls Ed unpleasantly.
“Ed,” you scold. “Whatever happened before, he’s one of the Stellae now Ed. He isn’t in danger is he Nash?”
“Could be,” shrugs Nash. “Hard ta say with Gassdarf.”
Ed glowers at you, but he says nothing. “Well we just keep an eye on the boy then,” you tell him. “Quietly though. If Von Gerssdorff is using Will for some purpose we don’t understand, I don’t want us tipping him off that we know.”
*****
You open your eyes as you put the memory to one side, finding yourself back on the plane, midway across the Atlantic. To your surprise, you find that you are shaking. How could Charles do this? Leave you in danger without telling you? Have you hanging around as some kind of bait for the Van Gerssdorff guy?
“Are you ok miss,” says the businessman in the seat next to you.
You almost snap at him, but you fight down the urge to vent your sudden and uncharacteristic anger. So the man you thought you saw when you passed through the Libra Personae all those years ago is real, and he might be dangerous? You need to know more.
That’s when you realise that you do know more. Charles’ memories are in your head now. They might prove a useful source of information, but they aren’t the only one. The memories of Florence Shabbleman lurk at the back of your mind as well. She might not have been especially powerful, or even particularly knowledgeable, but she knew tricks that the Stellae don’t. If that isn’t enough, you have all the spells of the Libra buried within you as well. If Van Gerssdorff is as dangerous as Ed’s reaction suggests, you’ll need every little scrap of knowledge you can get.
It isn’t a betrayal of your principles, you rationalise. You need those memories. That’s why you aren’t removing the imagos.
You doze fitfully all the way back to London, a faint smile on your lips.
Wills adventures continue in "New Moons" 
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