"An apology is fine," you mutter. This has all been very freaky, very scary, and God only knows what Christian and them will say when you show up at the river, pale and trembling, like a linen sheet in a breeze.
But curiosity is tugging at you. Anger, too. Someone did something to you during that blank spot in your life, and you'd like to know what.
That's what you tell them. "But Braydon Delp, huh? He got really weird for a bit, came to a bad end."
"How?" Frank demands.
You lick your lips. "Set himself on fire."
The ticks from the grandfather clocks fill the room. "Tell us everything," Frank says.
"Wait," says the person who is looking like Aubrey Blackwell. "We'll tell you what we know first. That might jog your memory for details about Delp."
"First take that mask off, Joe," Frank says. "If you're creeping me out, which you are, stars only know what you're doing to Prescott."
Blackwell chuckles and puts his hands to his face. He murmurs low words, then falls back unconscious. But it's not Blackwell anymore. It's Joe.
Frank tweaks something from his hands. "It's a mask," he says. "A magical mask. You called magic a lot of bullshit, and maybe the stuff Blackwell taught you in that class was bullshit. A lot of what gets said about it is bullshit. But there's stuff out there that-- We don't like to call it magic, but you can call it magic since you won't have any other words for it."
"It made him look just like Blackwell," you gasp.
"Exactly. That's what it was designed to do. Gave Joe all of Blackwell's memories too, and he'll have to put it back on later so we can explore what that cocksucker was up to. But this is the kind of thing Delp was playing with."
He sits on the corner of the desk, and continues.
"Delp--or Blackwell, when Delp was working with him--found an old book, a book of magic called the Libra Personae. It's a very bad book, very dangerous. It has spells in it that let you make things like this. You make a blank version of one, and then you put it on someone's face." He mimes raising the mask to his. "After that, if the spellcaster puts it on, he turns into a duplicate of that person. Perfect disguise, inside and out. Inside the body and inside the mind. They look just like the person they copied, and they can act just like them too. They can do everything the original person did. Unless the wearer slips up on accident, the imposture would never be spotted."
"And you're saying that Delp made a mask of--" You gulp again. "Of me?"
"Apparently." Frank's eyes narrow. "Now, if you make a mask and put it on, you've got a problem, don't you? There'll be two versions of the person running around. What happens if they meet, or if someone sees them in two different places?" He cocks an eyebrow. "You have to get rid of the original if you want to stop that from happening. Or if you want to take their place."
"Jesus," you whisper.
"You could kill them, but apparently there's a neater way of doing it." He turns the mask over and shows you its interior. The name "AUBREY DESMOND BLACKWELL" floats above its surface, which, unlike the bluish outer surface is a whitish color. "You can put a special layer inside a mask." He rubs the interior. "That special layer contains another spell, one that overrides the consciousness of the person wearing the mask. It's like they go to sleep. They forget who they are, and think that they are the person whose image is inside the mask. They go around acting like that person, because they've forgotten that they're not."
"What good does that do?" you ask.
"Don't you see? Here's an example. Suppose I have two masks. I put one on myself, and copy myself into it. I put the other on you, copying you. Then I put on your mask. Suddenly, I look and can act just like you. But there can't be two of you, and, anyway, people will wonder what happened to me. So I take my mask and put that special layer in it. Then I put it on you." Again, you flinch as he raises his hand to your face. "Now you will look and act just like me. You'll forget who you are and will take my place while I take your place. The difference is that I'll know who I am, and will do whatever I'm planning to do while I'm looking like you. And you'll live my old life for me without causing any problems."
"Oh my God!" You raise trembling hands to your face. "And Delp--?"
"So we gather. I don't know where he put you, but we can guess. Probably he put you under a mask of himself, and for a few months--however long that blank spot was--you went around acting like Braydon Delp. Meanwhile, he was pretending to be you."
You shudder all over. For two months, or more, Braydon Delp was living with your family, sleeping in your bed, goofing off with your friends-- "But why? Why would he--?"
"I dunno," Frank says. "Maybe you had something he wanted. You had a hot girlfriend back then?"
You grimace and shake your head. You were a total doofus around girls when you were in high school.
"Well, maybe it was something else. Maybe he just wanted to hide somewhere and you were convenient. But eventually he let you out. When the mask came off, you wouldn't remember the time you were gone, because you were asleep. You said the amnesia got blamed on an accident?"
"A hit and run. Yes."
"Delp must've staged that to explain why you came down with amnesia. You're lucky he didn't kill you. Or maybe he meant to."
You grip the arms of the chair. You never liked Delp much.
"Whatever," Frank shrugs. "Even if he didn't kill you, the accident covered things up nicely."
"But where do you guys fit into this," you ask. "How do you know all this, and how'd you get mixed up in it?"
"This kind of thing is our business," Frank says. "There's magic out there, and there's also people like Joe and me, who make it our business to take guys like Delp out of commission, and to bottle up their magic. We came to Saratoga Falls a few years ago, the same time Delp was starting to play around with these things, because we'd gotten a report that the Libra was here. We went undercover at Eastman High School, as students--"
"How old are you?"
Frank scratches his cheek. "I guess we're twenty-three or twenty-four now. We were your age. We belong to a group that's in this business I described, and we've been training since we were little kids. Anyway, we went undercover at Eastman, nosed around. And then one day--details of how it happened aren't important--a guy named Will Prescott found us and said he could help us."
"I never--"
"We know that now. It was Delp. Somehow he'd figured out who we were. Maybe that's how come he disguised himself as you, because he didn't want to approach us under his own face. He told us about Aubrey Blackwell, who was a black magician we'd been investigating, and that he could help us get into his house to look around. He spun a convincing story, so we went with him. Stupidly, we got caught. Last thing we remember is being held in place by some magic spell while Will Prescott advanced on us with a mask in each hand. That would have been five years ago."
You're both quiet for a bit. Joe stirs, but doesn't wake. "So how'd you escape?" you ask.
"I don't know. I was at the car dealership when I suddenly remembered who I was. For five years I thought I was a guy named James Black, but suddenly I knew I was Frank Durras. I also remembered that an old schoolmate of his, Adam Karter, was really my brother, Joe. I went to find him. He was already looking for me, because he'd also woken up. We got the masks off each other, because we also remembered how to do that. Delp had been under them, doing stuff as them, and it left an impression. Also--" He makes a face-- "He gloated a lot over us after he got those masks on us. Anyway, that was this afternoon, only a few hours ago. We came out here, confronted Blackwell, discovered that he was also a fake. We set a trap for you, after finding your info online, because we thought you were behind it all. And here we are."
Where you are is still in a state of confusion, but you say nothing. Joe wakes, and stretches. "So I'm back," he says. "Where do we start?"
"I already debriefed him, Joe. Now we need to find out about--"
"Fucker."
"So where's the real Blackwell," you ask.
"Dead," says Frank. "You don't want to know. Tell us about Delp."
But you're of no real help: Delp got weird, obsessed with the occult, and one day set himself on fire. That's all.
"Bad end for bad rubbish," Frank says. "Unless he faked it to cover up his disappearance. We need to get back to Olympia."
"We need to investigate here, too," Joe says. "We'll split up, I'll go back home, you poke around here. Prescott can help, can't you, Prescott?"
"I guess," you say with vast reluctance.
"He could help in Olympia, too," Frank says. "Take him back for further debriefing?"
Joe looks at you. "How 'bout it, Prescott? Wanna stay here, or get a closer look at the kind of thing you had a close brush with, maybe get some closure?"
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