This choice: Just give your dad the message. • Go Back...Chapter #34Stolen a Face, Sealed Your Fate by: Nostrum   It's a perfect opportunity. But the risks are too great. What if you're just being paranoid? It won't just be your dad you're in trouble with if you're wrong. Even Robert will think you've gone crazy.
You tap at the door. "Dad?"
He looks up, startled. "Yeah, you need something?"
"Mom says she's ready to watch the show with you."
For a moment he looks confused. Then he says, "Ah. Tell your mom I'll be there shortly. I just need to finish up something." He turns back to his papers.
"Finish what?" you blurt out.
He looks up again, to give you a steady stare.
"Something to do with work," he says in that Cut the shit tone he uses when he's pissed off at you.
Chills ripple down your spine. Yeah, but whose work?, you can't help wondering. Your work? Or Professor Blackwell's?
You relay his message to your mom. She nods, then gives you a frown. "Did you eat anything, dear? You came in late."
No, you haven't eaten, for your stomach is knotted with worry. But you tell her you stopped to buy some burgers on your way back.
"I sometimes feel like I don't see you enough", she says. "You're always gone. I'm glad you're out with Robert more, but I'd like it if you spent more time at home."
Her words tear you. You've got lots of reasons, now, to not stay home. But her words hit you deeper even than that. The masks, it occurs to you, are pushing everyone they involve out of their homes. Lucy is homeless. Taylor has lost his family. Now, paranoia about your own father is driving you away from yours.
You need to solve this, and fast.
Doubts and second thoughts assail you as you mount the stairs to your room. Maybe you should have taken that chance in your father's study.
--
Sunday afternoon. Another day of church, and another day of uneasiness. Even as you sing the hymns and recite the prayers, you feel no solace. Magic is real, and someone has taken a book that contains a great deal of its secrets. You have but scratched its exterior, and realized nothing good can come out of it – or perhaps, you can, but you need to dig deeper.
Which is why, when lunch is over and you've helped clear the dining table – a trivial gesture, maybe, but one to make your mom feel better – you go upstairs to find your brother. You've just gotten a text from Taylor – [Left with Lucy. Basement is yours.] – which clears the way for you to head out again to do some more work.
His bedroom door is open, and you peer in. It takes you a moment to realize what's bothering you about the tableau that greets you. He's at his desk, with the mask out in the open, polishing it.
Almost you shit yourself.
"Bobby!", you hiss, and leap into the room, closing the door behind you. "Hide that thing!"
Robert jumps, then scowls. "I told you not to call me Bobby! I'm not a little kid anymore!"
"Well, you're as careless as one! What if Dad saw you with that?"
His scowl deepens. "So what if he did? I'd just tell him it's a school project!"
"Well, don't work on it here! I was coming to find you anyway. Taylor says the coast is clear out at the old school, so let's take it out there."
"Really!?" Robert's eyes shine brightly.
"Sure. Meet me down in the garage, I'll tell Dad we're going to the library."
You fetch your book bag from your bedroom and dash downstairs. Your dad looks up from his paper as you hit the landing. "Dad? Gonna take Robert to the library to study."
His eyebrows go up. "Again? You were out there yesterday."
"What can I say, he needs help. Lots of it."
Your dad lowers his paper. "With what? And if he's having that much trouble, maybe I should –"
"I'm just kidding", you hastily assure him. "He's still got work to do, I've still got work to do. It's just convenient this way. And we're keeping each other out of trouble."
Your dad looks skeptical. "Uh huh. Are you saying you took my words to heart?"
"What words?"
"Give a little thought into your future", he says.
"Oh, yeah. Right." You grin. "Still thinking. I'll need good grades for whatever I decide, right?"
"Alright", he says, and he still looks wary as Robert joins you. "Just be back in time for dinner, okay?"
"Sure thing. See you later, Dad! Mom!" You run out the room, Robert right on your heels.
--
At first you have to wonder if Taylor remembered to bring all that stuff back out as you asked, because you can't find it. Only after fifteen minutes of searching, when despair is setting in, do you find it in the furthest corner of the basement under some gym equipment and draped with a paint-spattered drop cloth. You clear a path between that hiding place – a good one – and the front of the basement where there's light, so you can carry it back and forth more easily.
He left more than just the supplies. He also left the second sigil you made, the one you gave him for safekeeping. (Robert has the other one, and almost you ask him where he put it. But then you figure you'll just get it up from him when you go home, and transfer it out here the next time you come out.) Robert watches you work even as he rubs at the last streaks of gray on the mask he's been polishing.
The procedure, you'd hazard, is the same as before. You set a bowl – the same you'd used in the first experiment – on the sigil and fill it with the ingredients. You and Robert both cover your noses, expecting the same acrid odor as you set it on fire. There's no stench, though. But the powdery mix instantly transforms into a thick slurry, not unlike the sealant you used last summer to help fix a crack on the roof of your uncle's house. You stir it with a fingertip. The texture is exactly the same.
"So what's this stuff?", Robert asks.
"I'm checking", you retort as you pore over the two notebooks. "Gimme a minute, okay?"
It takes you less time than that, though. Between Blackwell's notes and the ones from the Eastman notebook – and a quick check of an online translator – you are soon satisfied with your hypothesis, which you jot down in your own notebook. "It's a sealant", you tell Robert. "You apply it to a mask after you've copied someone."
"How come?"
"To fix the image in place." The notes don't actually say that, but you infer it.
"And then?"
You shrug. "I guess you put the mask on."
Robert's eyes widen, and you find yourself holding his gaze in yours even as he holds your gaze in his. He bites down hard on his lower lip. A chill rushes over you as you recognize what you're both thinking.
Holy shit, this is it. This is how you make a mask. The one we got off Taylor was pre-made, as it were. But with these two spells, we can make our own. Of whoever we want. However many we want!
"So we gonna try it out?", Robert asks. "I mean, I guess I have to finish this one first before we can. But –"
But you're not listening. With tingling hands you search the box of supplies.
It's not what you're looking for, but you pause as you pull out two bottles you took from the professor's work room. Both contain a viscous slurry like the one you made, though only one is of the same shade as what you've made. You take the one bottle as confirmation that you've made your own sealant correctly. As for the other ... You return it to the box. It's useless until you've made something like it, and determined what it is and does.
At last you pull from the box what you were looking for: masks. Two of them are blank, but ready to be of use. One you got from Blackwell's villa; the other, Taylor brought back from Eastman.
But the third is the one that you made.
There's a face already in it, and if you turn it to just the right angle, you can make out who it is: Marc Garner.
"Will?", Robert says.
"Help me find a brush", you say as you drop the mask. He stares, then scrambles after as you start to tear into the drawers of the cabinets that line the wall beneath the windows.
It takes twenty minutes to find a brush, and (obvious in hindsight) it and a bunch of other paint supplies are back with the drop cloth, where Taylor providentially hid the stuff.
Robert perches at your elbow as you stir the sealant with one of the stiff, old brushes you found. But you hesitate before applying it to the mask. How much of it do you have to cover? All of it, or just one side? You try to visualize Scott's mask. The front, you think you remember, is blue – as blue as the mask of Marc. The inner surface? You're less certain, but you think you remember it being gray – the same gray as the sealant you've made. So you apply a coat only to the inner surface. You're still not certain you've done it right as you examine the finished product. But it does seem ... familiar.
"So is it ready to put on?", Robert asks.
You don't answer him. If you have done it right, and you put it on, you'll turn yourself into the living double of the captain of Westside's soccer team. But if you've done it wrong, you could wind up as another Sawyer Harrison.
"Are we going to try it out?", Robert asks. He sounds anxious and impatient.
You don't want to put it on him, for what if you screwed up? But there's even less reason to put it on yourself, for if you did screw up, Robert would have even less of an idea of what to do about it.
Maybe the safest thing is to wait and try it when Taylor is present.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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