The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Price of Progress

Previously: "The Fumble" 

With the help of an online translator, it takes only a quick perusal for you to establish that you don't have the stuff on hand to execute the next spell. A deeper search online convinces you that you don't have enough money for the necessary items, either.

But you've got a week before you'll see Cindy again, so as you've already violated her instructions (first by accident, with Yumi, and then intentionally) you decide to press on.

First, though, you'll have to get some more money.

* * * * *

"Hey," you murmur to Caleb when you find him at his locker before classes on Monday. You bump up close to him. "For twenty bucks I'll tell you all about the date I had with Cindy Vredenburg last weekend."

Caleb does a double take at you, then snorts. "I'm not paying you nothing to listen to your wet dreams," he says. "'Specially not when I'm having knock-out wet dreams of my own."

"No, this is for real. We—"

"Any 'real date' you had with Cindy isn't worth twenty cents, let alone twenty dollars. I will, though," he adds after giving you a speculative glance-over, "give you twenty dollars if you let me watch while you go tell Seth about the last wet dream you had about his girlfriend."

Now you snort. But then you catch yourself. "For two hundred I will."

Caleb gives you a look. "No you wouldn't."

"Okay, maybe you're right. But for two bucks I'll tell you about our study date."

"Will," Caleb says with a sigh, "if you need the money, take that job at Salopek that your dad is holding back for you and which you're too fucking much of a slime to recommend me for." He pushes backward into the crowd surging through the hallways.

* * * * *

Keith too is unwilling to purchase a recital of your study date with Cindy, and even ostentatiously launches himself from his desk and plops himself in a chair on the opposite side of room, telling you that you're not even safe to sit next to if you're going to be spreading stories like that. (But then Mr. Hawks, who maintains a seating chart, makes him move back.) But someone must have been talking about it, because as you're leaving English class for lunch, a strong arm wraps itself around your neck, and you're wrenched onto a different tack.

But it's not Seth or one of his friends, though that of course was your first, panicked expectation. It's only Carson Ioeger. "Let's you and me lunch, Prescott," he says. "Where do you like to hang out when you're not eating with James and me?"

You lead him back behind the school, to the corner between G wing, the baseball fields, and the tennis courts, where you and Caleb and Keith typically hang out. He texts James your location, and waves your own friends away when they shamble up to join you.

"I hear you're doing some deep, undercover intelligence work," Carson tells you after James has joined you, and you've all got your lunch bags open and the food spread out between the three of you. "What's your plan?"

"Undercover work? What are you talking about?" you ask.

"You have insinuated yourself into the company of Cindy Vredenburg," Carson says.

"Well, I had a study date with her, sort of," you admit.

"Yes, I understand that's the cover story you've settled on," Carson leans forward, peering at you over carefully steepled fingers. "What is the actual nature of the operation?"

You look between him and James, hoping to see some kind of laugh pass between them. But though James gives you a dark and skeptical look, he remains as seemingly grave as his friend.

"The fuck are you going on about?" you demand. "I just had a kind of study date with her last weekend. That stupid book you fucked up with. She wanted to ask me—"

"But you spent some time together, and—"

"So we spent some time together! Jeez! We met for coffee, and—"

"I told you," James tells Carson, "that it's a big fat cow flop."

"The fuck?" you ask. "What are you—?"

"He hasn't got the imagination," James continues.

"But we do," Carson tells him. "Prescott," he says, "how would you like to do the Lord's work and strike a blow for justice?"

"Oh!" You get now what this is about. "Fuck, no! You guy's aren't going to—"

But then you catch yourself, and glance between them. You can hardly believe it when you hear the words coming out of your mouth. "How much?"

"How much what?"

"How much will you pay me to do the bullshit thing that you want me to do? 'Cos I'm not getting into it otherwise."

Carson and James exchange a look.

"Jesus, Prescott," Carson says, "if you're gonna be fucking mercenary—"

"You bet your fucking ass I'm gonna be mer—! Whatever you said. I want money! Dollars! Guilders!" You put out your palm. "That's the only way I'm risking my ass for—"

"Okay, how much?"

You make a face. "You tell me the plan, and I'll tell you how much it's— No! You tell me how much it's worth to you, cocksucker! Then you tell me the plan, and I'll tell you how much it's worth to me to—"

James cusses and clambers to his feet. But Carson grabs his arm and hauls him back down.

"Thirty—" Carson starts to say.

"Fuck no!"

"Apiece, from me and James—"

"Go fuck yourself!"

"You won't get in any trouble!"

"Tell that to Tilley! You know that Seth took his pants off him, then put him on the roof of the school because he thought that Keith was the one that glued his books together. Right?"

"Because Tilley's a victim. Are you a victim?"

You clap your mouth shut and fume.

"Okay, a hundred," Carson says. "A hundred plus the apprenticeship you gain by studying with the sensai"—he lifts his hand for a high-five, which James gives him—"for your no-risk participation in a blow for cosmic justice."

You roll your eyes. "So what's the scheme this time?"

* * * * *

You settle for a price of a hundred and twenty, half paid up front. Between that and the stash of old birthday and holiday money you have at home, it gives you enough to swing getting the stuff for the next spell, and you go shopping after school lets out.

It's tedious work once you get down to it. The spell requires you to cut a metal strip and to do something with it and some mirrors inside a sigil, including carving some rune work into it. The first set of runes go on fine, but you find that that the second set—which will complete the spell when they've been dug into the treated metal—are much hard to get in, so that you have to spend several hours scraping and digging into the strip with a steel-nib pen before the runes finally "take" without fading away again. By your bedtime though—and it would have been faster if didn't have homework to do as well—you are able to lay the newly made strip across the page of the book, and when you lift it the page comes away as well.

On the reverse is a single sentence.

* * * * *

"I think it copies the mind," you explain to Cindy the next day. "You know, the way the mask copies someone's body, this one—"

"Jesus Christ!" she hisses as she snatches the metal band away from you. "I thought I freaking told you not to do anything else!"

You shrug. "I was bored."

No, that's not true, and you hastily give her a lengthy addendum. Cindy has a haggard look on her face by the time you finish telling her about meeting Yumi, and about the other things that have occurred since you parted last Sunday.

It's after school, and Cindy should be inside the gym watching her boyfriend and the rest of the basketball team at practice. That's where you found her when you went looking. She was sitting by herself up in the bleachers, and to catch her eye you had to mount the bleachers on the other side, to sit a few rows behind a different cluster of cheerleaders. You squirmed there until you were sure that Cindy understood that you wanted to see her, then exited. A few minutes later, she joined you outside the gym, and followed you around to the student parking lot. It's a very public area, but for that reason it should look like you just bumped into each other.

"Just give me the stuff back," she growls at you. "Jesus, I can't fucking trust—"

"I got it in my truck," you tell her. "And I figured you'd want it back because I'm, uh, untrustworthy. You sure don't want me doing the next spell in the book."

She catches her breath. "Why, what does it do?"

"I don't know. But it calls for four hundred pounds of dirt from a graveyard."

Her eyes pop. "No! Shit?"

"Yeah, I don't think either of us want to get into that, even if we had a place to put it. It also needs a lot of rocket fuel and some matches."

Cindy bites her lip and looks around the parking lot. "I need to go back in," she says.

"Don't you want to get the stuff back from me?"

"No, you keep it. The stuff is creepy enough I don't want anything to do with it. I'll talk to you about it later."

Not until she's gone do you realize that she accidentally walked off with the metal strip you made last night.

Next: "Another Story From Cindy" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"