This choice: Just do the job at Eastman--for now • Go Back...Chapter #38The Domestic Life of the Durrases by: Seuzz   There is no need to double-cross Patterson right away. You will have a week, at least, to yourself over at Eastman, to plot and strategize. And as you've been remarkably lucky so far, there is every chance that your luck will continue, with further developments to smooth your way.
So you reflect to yourself after Patterson has left you, and as you pull on Joe's cotton shorts and muscle shirt and tie his sneakers. He is quick and limber, both in mind and body, and already glittering possibilities are suggesting themselves. You like Patterson's scheme for itself, and as you pack up the Libra and the three blank masks he gave you, you are already pondering the qualities you need in your recruits-to-be: kids who dumb and cow-like and easily dominated.
It will be easier, though, once you've recruited Frank to your side.
* * * * *
"Feed me!" you bellow as you walk in the front door. The sound of water running in the kitchen sink abruptly ceases, and Frank's head appears around the corner. "You leave anything for a real man to gnaw on?"
"How was your play date?" he asks. You answer by clutching your head and writhing melodramatically in place. "Win, lose, or did you just wanna kill him?"
"All three." You brush past Frank and jerk open the pantry door, to stare critically at the mostly bare shelves. "He beat me on points but I beat him in sportsmanship, and then I just wanted to beat him until he bled." You frown. "Explain to me how six cans of soup divided into two equal portions results in you eating four of them."
"Dynamic scoring, Joe. Static analysis doesn't work in household economics any more than it works in macroeconomics."
"You've been snooping through my browser history," you cry. "And by thunder, you actually understood that paper?"
"You left the browser window open when you left. And there wasn't any math."
"No, but there were words of three syllables. One of these days Dunholm is gonna figure out you're just making shit up. Probably the next time you substitute 'asymptotic' for 'asymptomatic' in Health class."
"One of these days you'll slip up and use one of those words in public," he says primly.
"Hey baby," you say in your "Goofy" voice. "Your butt must be asymptotic, because it's making me sympathetic to your ass."
"Now you sound like Karter."
You flip him off and grab a bag of ramen. "I'm getting real tired of this low-carb, low-protein, low-fat diet," you grumble. "I think maybe I'll get an after-school job."
"Then you won't have time for girls. And we won't be around here long enough to make it worthwhile."
"Well, maybe there'll be a cute— Wait a minute, whaddaya mean we won't be around long?" You feel yourself pale. "Did Dad call? Is he pulling us out?"
"No. But the longer we go without a real lead, the greater the chance we're just going to have to quit."
"I hate the idea of quitting," you say with quiet heat.
"So do I, Joe, but we have to face facts. Whoever has got the Libra has got the means to make himself invisible, and he can take off in any direction at any time."
"If he's figured it out," you say skeptically as you fill a pot with water. "From everything Reilly told us, it's not a book for amateurs."
"Reilly's never seen it," Frank reminds you. "No one's seen it in a couple of hundred years. Except, yeah, whoever has been keeping it back."
"Look, given the kind of things it's supposed to be able to do, it just stands to reason it's gonna be too complicated for its new owner."
"We can't count on that. And I can quote you making that exact point," he adds quietly.
"The Devil can always cite Scripture to his purposes," you grin as you dump the noodles into the water.
"You still think it's Sawyer Harrison?" he asks.
"He's suspect number one. Fuck up that it sounds like he is."
Frank puts his hands on his hips. "You've also said you don't like the way the Libra seems to be jumping around. Not going to where it's supposed to, and then disappearing from where it wound up. You said it was like something was pulling it."
"And you told me I was full of shit."
"And you are. Maybe that's why you're so good at reading entrails."
"Oh, leave the conceptual punwork to me, Frank!"
"Point is— You pick up anything more with that thing Nash lent you?"
"Carpal tunnel syndrome," you snap. "I'da told you if I got something, Frank."
"Heel, Joe. Patterson must've really got you stirred up if you're snapping at me like this."
"Sorry," you mutter. "We're just not finding anything, and that could mean anything, and I hate the idea of ditching this job because we think it's been carried off by Sideshow Bob when it's actually just sitting on Frasier Crane's bookshelf because it looks like an antique."
"If it's sitting on someone's bookshelf because it looks old, we never will find it," Frank says. "And Dad's not gonna pay rent on this place forever."
You tug at your lip. "How about we give Rick until Saturday to give us a lead," you say at last. "After that, we talk to Reilly and Nash about some other ways to narrow the search area."
Frank laughs dryly. "I'm not talking about pulling out tomorrow, Joe, or next week or even next month. There's still that stash we found in the gym sub-basement. As long it's untouched, it's a pretty good bet our quarry is still in town and still figuring things out."
"Or it's Sawyer Harrison."
"Or it's Sawyer. But to circle back to where we started, there's not much point in your getting a job. We're either going to be busy, or we're going to be gone."
"You thought I was serious when I said I wanted to get a job?" you cry in mock astonishment. "Then when would I have time for girls?"
His brow darkens.
"I can never tell when you're fucking with me and when you're not," he says, and stalks from the kitchen.
* * * * *
Frank spends the rest of the evening working on homework, while you slump in front of the cheap laptop that the two of you share, reviewing the notes on your investigation. You, of course, can clear up some of the mysteries that have baffled them—like, for instance, the current location of the Summa Libra Personae; it's in the kit in Joe's bedroom—but they're also dealing with some puzzles that leave you frowning.
The last known location of the Libra was in upstate New York, where it had been among the effects left by a just-deceased elderly woman. It's less important how news of the Libra had gotten to operatives of the Stellae Errantes (that's the secret society of which Frank and Joe are members), just that it had. It looked to be an easy job, which is why "Dad" had given the boys the task of swooping in and carrying it off so that it could be disposed of safely, but Frank and Joe had arrived too late, and found that the book and several seemingly related items had not only vanished, they had been somehow detoured away from their intended destination. Traces and inquiries had led them to Saratoga Falls, where—and this is one of the eerier coincidences—it had briefly landed at Salopek Engineering, on the desk of one Harris Prescott. The boys staged a nocturnal raid on the facility, but come up empty handed. Oh, they had found the box that it had been mailed in, but said box had been ransacked and most of its contents carried off.
Then they had learned that several of the high school students who had worked at Salopek had been sacked not long after the box would have arrived in town, and that two of them had suffered severe accidents. One of them, Sawyer Harrison, had fallen into a mysterious coma, and a second, Taylor Mitchell, had died the same afternoon in a car wreck. That led Joe and Frank to enroll at Eastman High School (which those suspects had been attending), and there they have been since, finding only one lead: a box hidden in a sub-basement, containing a mask and a notebook whose contents were clearly related to the Libra. They had left the box undisturbed but set a watch on it, to see who would pick it up. It is still there.
"I'm off to bed," Frank announces around ten, while you're still puzzling over how the elements of their adventures fit into yours—especially that box in the sub-basement. You wave to him vaguely as he goes into the back yard, where he sleeps every night. You feel like you've reached a dead end of your own, though, and slump back to think about your own plans.
They're all mixed up with Patterson's plans, though. He wants you to get three recruits over at Eastman. But they'd just likely get in the way.
But he is going to want reports on your progress, and he might want to meet them, in which case you will want people to show him.
Also—it occurs to you—if you are doing the recruiting, you can recruit them not only to the "club" but as allies against Patterson.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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