The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Picking a Warlock

Previously: "The Basics on Baphomet" 

Sydney still has gymnastics practice to attend, so after going off campus for a bite to eat you return to wait for her in the parking lot. She smiles at you when she comes out, all the way over on her long trek from the gym to your truck. "Are we doing something now?" she asks when she's at your window.

"Maybe. Braydon Delp? You remember me asking you about him?" She shakes her head. "Guy who's into the occult?"

She gives a little shrug. "Yeah, what about him?"

"I was thinking that if we want an extra mask around, we could get a mask of him."

Now she winces.

"That's a little on the nose, isn't it, Will?" she says. In a teasing voice, she adds, "You're not worrying about the 'muscle' I was telling you about, are you? Not feeling a little jealous?"

"No, I—!"

"Because I haven't been encouraging him."

"Encouraging him?" you echo, and your heart moves sideways in your chest. "This guy's been chasing you?"

"Sure. Since the start of school. You're not shocked, are you?" She steps back from the truck to give you a full view of her figure. You groan inwardly.

Her face glows with health. Her blonde hair cascades in golden sheets. Her pedestal-like neck is taut and graceful. Her skimpy t-shirt drapes over her shelf-like bust and her short-shorts show off long, strong, bronzed legs baer from mid-thigh to her ankles.

"Well—" You gulp down the squeak that has infected your voice. "I was thinking Delp because, sure, he's on the nose but, you know, he seems to know something about this stuff, and even if he's not— not the expert that your, uh, dad was— that you are— Um." You chew your lip as you stare her up and down with watering eyes. "Every little bit he knows could help?"

She shrugs. "Whatever, Will. Just don't ask me to flirt with him. Because I don't even like flirting with Blake."

* * * * *

I don't even like flirting with Blake. You didn't query the confession, but you gnaw on it all the way home. Was that the guy she wasn't "encouraging"? And did she mean that she was flirting with him, only she didn't like it? Or was it just a clumsy way of saying that she didn't like the idea of flirting with him so she hadn't been?

And why are you feeling so jealous?

Because I want Sydney to be my girlfriend. Dur! you chide yourself.

But you put it out of your mind (as best you can, which isn't very successful) after you're home and laying plans for Braydon.

He's not very helpful in arranging his ambush. After texting around to various acquaintances, and acquaintances of acquaintances, to get his contact info, you reach him by text only to learn that he's hip deep in adventuringing. Lol, he informs you, i just killed a quest mate. He's at King Kong Komics, he goes on to inform you, RPGing with Christian and his friends. When you ask if you can meet later, he only says, talk later.

You're done with your homework and are eating dinner when you get another reply from him: meet besandwitched at 7? It's nearly that hour now, but he agrees to linger till eight, and you hustle down to meet him after helping clean up.

You stop short in the doorway of the sandwich shop, though, when you spot him, for he isn't alone. There's a girl with him, sitting on his side of the booth and pressed up close to him. Her coffee-dark hair is cut back in a short bob, and she glints at you with bright eyes and a chipmunk smile as you approach. Braydon himself looks very tired even as he slurps from a coffee cup.

"Hey Will," he sighs, and his eyes droop with disappointment as you drop into seat opposite him. "So what's up?"

"Um," you say, and look at the girl. She only smiles toothily at you while Braydon leans his hand in his chin and shows you big eyes filled with boredom and pain.

"I, uh, wanted to talk to you some more about the, uh, stuff we were talking about earlier today."

He cringes. "Baphomet?" He breathes out the word as though it's covered in thorns and so is painful even to say.

"Well, kind of. I was asking about it because of these." You push drop the notebooks you brought in front of him, and he wrinkles his nose as you open up one of them. "They seem like notes and, uh, stuff from a secret society that's into it. Baphomet, I mean. A 'brotherhood of Baphomet'."

He peers down at the page. "Uh huh?"

"So I was wondering if maybe it was legit."

The girl rest her own chin in her hand, hiding a smile behind her fist, and glances between Braydon, the open notebook, and you. Mostly she seems to be staring at you, and the longer she stares the more embarrassed you feel. She's also dressed in dark clothes, like Braydon, but her eye is so bright and her skin so clear that the clothes only accent the luminous glow that comes off her. She's like the quarter Moon, you decide. Mostly eclipsed but naturally bright; clothed in black to accentuate her brightness, not to cloak it.

Braydon sighs a couple of times as he flips pages. "Handwriting's hard to read," he grunts. Then, a few minutes later. "It's all just stuff someone jotted down, isn't it?"

"Yeah." That was the impression you got: Sydney's dad, while still learning his occult stuff, was writing notes to himself, which he would go back and add onto when he learned some more.

"Where'd you get them?"

"Um ... A friend showed them to me."

"Who? Johansson?"

"Huh? No!"

"'Cos I heard he's gone off the deep end."

Firmly: "It's not Caleb. Just somebody I met recently."

"Oh my God," the girl says. Her voice is low, but it bubbles with mischief. "It's not Sydney McGlynn, is it?"

You almost fall out of the booth. "What?" you ask with boggling eyes.

"Is it?" Her eyes glint, and her teeth show behind her knuckles.

"I—! What makes you think it's Sydney?"

"It is, Will!" she exclaims, and her eyes pop. "The new girl you've started hanging out with!"

You don't know which is more shocking, that this girl knows you've been hanging out with Sydney, that she's guessed who gave you the notebooks, or that she knows your name when you don't even know hers. Your jaw hangs open for what feels like a couple of years before you summon up the strength to faintly stammer, "What have you, been watching me?"

She bursts into giggles, and Braydon gives her a look. "I've just noticed," she says.

"Noticed what?"

"Is there anything going on between you?" she asks. "Anything except—" She bites down hard on her lower lip, to suppress a laugh. "Except Baphomet?"

"We're just studying together!"

"Yeah?"

"Not Baphomet stuff!" Your face is burning.

"Okay, what classes do you have together?"

"Um ... Okay, none. But she's tutoring me in math! In calculus," you add in a stammer.

The twinkle in her eye deepens.

"Well, don't let her get away with thinking that's all your interested in, Will!" she says. "Her mad math skillz. You need to re— reciprocate. Reciprocate, right?" She nudges Braydon. "That's a math thing, isn't it? Reciprocate?"

"Reciprocals," he murmurs back, then looks up at you. "Where did your friend find these?"

"Um ... I don't know? They just gave them to me, thought maybe I'd be, uh, interested."

Braydon's eyebrows go up. "Why would you be interested in them?"

"I don't know," you mumble. "I guess maybe I was saying something to them about—" You duck your head so you won't notice the way the girl scrunches up her nose in amusement every time you say "they" instead of "she." "About doing an RPG thing. You know." You shrug. "Material for a campaign."

"Well, if you're not interested in them, I'll take them off you."

Shit! "Uh, they're not mine to— What I mean is, she— They—" You glare at the girl, who has burst into giggles. "They loaned them to me, that's all."

"You can say 'she', Will," Braydon sighs. "Gillian's not going to stop laughing until you do."

"Fine. She— And I'll let you think it's Sydney, okay?" you shout at the girl. "That way you won't guess who it really is!"

Gillian almost falls under the table with breathless laughter.

"Okay, she didn't give them to me, she only lent them. But—"

You've been wondering all this time how you'd get Braydon off alone to copy into a mask, and now that you see it, you seize it. "But if you want to talk to he, we can go see her right now." You start to get up. "I'm supposed to meet up with her anyway."

Braydon stares, then with a shrug gets up too. Gillian hops up excitedly to join him.

But you glare at her with your hands on your hips. When it finally dawns on her that you're trying to shake her off, her smile turns to a frown. "Will!"

"It's kind of a private thing, okay?"

"Will!"

"Gillian," Braydon says. He turns and puts his face into hers. He murmurs while she glowers, and after an awkward moment you mutter something about "waiting outside" and stalk out the door.

Braydon joins you a minute later. "I wish you wouldn't make my life so hard, man," he sighs. "You'll have to take me home now. Gillian was driving."

But that just makes it all kinds of convenient, doesn't it?

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"