Brimstone Read online

  “When?” I set my hands on my hips. “I haven’t forgotten about your thesis, and class, and teaching assistant job. You think I have no consideration, but—”

  “Would you stop?” He faced me, mirrored my belligerence. “I never said you asked anything that I don’t want to give. Time, resources … driving your getaway car.”

  “You said you were whipped.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’m perfectly able to say no to you, Maggie.” He held up the phone. “As in ‘No, we are not calling your demon-summoning friend.’ ”

  I folded my arms. “You know what, Justin? Even if you were my boyfriend, I would only take that under advisement.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, at the stubborn set of my chin and the fight in my stance. Then, with a sigh he handed me the cell and the plate of pizza.

  “Thank you.” I caught his eye, making sure he knew I meant it.

  He sat on the single barstool and pulled over the pizza box. “You’d just call her when you got home, so you might as well do it where I can hear.”

  At the desk, I put the phone on speaker so that I could eat and type while I talked. Lisa answered on the third ring. “Maggie?”

  “Hi, Lisa. I need your help with something.”

  “Fine, thank you,” she said pointedly. “And how are you?”

  “Are you busy?”

  “It’s ten o’clock on a Friday night. Why would I be busy?”

  “Great.” I saved the photos and attached them to an e-mail. “I’m sending you some pretty big picture files.”

  Silence. “Are we ignoring the fact that you haven’t returned my phone calls for the last two months?”

  I felt the blood rush out of my head and pool in my stomach. “Two months? It hasn’t been that long.”

  “Yes. It has.”

  Oh my God. I had a vague memory of Mom telling me she’d called. Once. Was it like the Post-it notes—written, then forgotten?

  “Lisa … something’s been going on.”

  She sighed. Loudly. “Let me go to my computer.” I heard the squeak of a chair and the slide and click of a mouse. I took a few bites of pizza while I waited. “What am I looking at?” she asked.

  “It’s a long story. There’s an incense burner, a lamp, and a …”

  “I know what this is.” Another pause, another mouse click. A worried sigh. “Magdalena Quinn. How do you get into these things?”

  “So, do you understand it?”

  Her voice turned droll. “My Latin is a little rusty to translate on the fly.”

  “But you could interpret what this is supposed to do?”

  This time the pause was loaded. “Why are you asking me to do this? Where’s the square?”

  “Um, the square is right here,” I said without turning around.

  A beat of realization. “I’m on speakerphone, aren’t I.”

  Justin called from across the tiny room. “Hello, Lisa.”

  I did glare at him then and picked up the phone, turning off the speaker. “Now it’s just you and I.”

  “Why, Maggie? You said I shouldn’t be studying this stuff.”

  “And you said the whole reason you were doing it was to counter it.” I let that rest between us a moment. “Are you going to put your money where your mouth is?”

  “Is that what this is? A test?”

  “No. It’s strategic outsourcing.”

  That made her laugh, once, and softly. “Okay. It’s going to take me a few days. I’m just a dilettante.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that.”

  “What are you doing with a boy in your room at ten—no, ten-thirty at night?”

  “He’s not in my room. I’m in his.”

  “God, Maggie. There’s hope for you yet.”

  “Good-bye, Lisa.”

  Shutting the phone, I let my shoulders sag. I didn’t realize how tense I’d been until I felt Justin’s hands on my arms. My dress was sleeveless, and his fingers were warm on my skin as he gently turned me to face him.

  I stared at the top button of his shirt, the hollow at the base of his throat, shy but expectant. Giving in to my hopes, I raised my head and closed my eyes, waiting. He let go of my shoulders, and reached for …

  My pledge pin.

  He unfastened the clasp from my dress without so much as brushing anything important. Then he went to the kitchen counter and dropped it into a glass of cloudy water—salt water, for spell-breaking. Of course.

  He glanced at me curiously. “Feel anything?”

  Oh, the irony. It burns us, my precious.

  “No.” I folded my arms over my chest. I felt plenty, but didn’t think that was what he meant.

  “Huh.” His brows knit in disappointment. “I thought maybe that was the source of the spell.”

  “What spell?”

  “The one where you keep forgetting that you’re supposed to be investigating the Sigmas.”

  Now I felt something. Incredibly stupid. I dropped onto the futon, pressing my fingers to my forehead. “It isn’t that I forget. It’s that I keep losing focus. Losing time.”

  Justin fished the pin out of the glass and sat beside me. “There must be something else. You’ve got to search your room, Maggie. Anything Sigma-related …”

  “I know.” I held out my hand and he dropped the gold pin into my palm. “This was too obvious. That’s why I didn’t think of it.”

  “Sure,” he said, leaving If that makes you feel better unspoken.

  There are two ways to sit on a futon: perched on the edge, or half-reclining. So we reclined, side by side, half friends and half something else.

  “What’s next?” His baritone voice rumbled in my ear.

  You realize we’re meant to be together, or I accept that we’re not. But I wasn’t making the mistake—again—of assuming we were in the same headspace.

  “I have to be with the Sigmas on the parade route at six a.m. to help put the finishing touches on the float. I don’t have to ride on it, thank God, because I’m taking pictures for the Sentinel.”

  He turned his head to look at me. “The Avalon paper? Not the Report?”

  “Yeah.” I gazed at the ceiling, ignoring his gaze on my profile. “The guy who was covering the Homecoming festivities came down with strep throat. Ethan Douglas called this morning and asked if I’d do it.”

  “Okay.” His tone was condemningly neutral.

  “I know!” I thumped the cushion with a frustrated fist. “But how could I leave him in a jam? Curse this SAXi luck!” Justin laughed and I sat up, thinking about the problem while I could, before I lost focus again. “It’s a karma engine or something. The probabilities always go in their favor. It’s like they’re manipulating chaos theory.”

  “Nothing is without a price, especially where magic is concerned. So, what’s the trade-off? Something has to be powering this magic.”

  “That’s what I’ll work on.” I flopped back down, turned my head to look at him. “You’ll remind me when I forget, right?”

  His hand covered mine. “If you promise to be careful.” He looked me in the eye, weighting his words. “They’re not really your friends, Maggie. Their goals are not your goals. You can’t trust anyone.”

  That was the thing. Even knowing that this blanket of complacency was false, was laid on me somehow, it was hard to remember. Trust no one. Not even, it seemed, myself.

  29

  I woke slowly on Sunday morning, enjoying the warm light on my eyelids, floating on the surface of sleep like a leaf on a lake, suspended between awareness above and the knowledge below. The shreds of a dream were close this time, the closest they’d been in months, but as soon as I tried to grasp them they skittered away, blown by a wind that stank of old bones. I stretched my thoughts like fingers, but the images dissolved and sank out of reach.

  “Dammit!”

  “Magdalena Lorraine.” Mom’s voice popped my eyes open. She stood at the open French doors, her arms full of folded jeans that I mus
t have left in the dryer. “That’s a hell of a word for Sunday morning.”

  I groaned and sat up, pushing my hair out of my face. The only thing worse than no dream was psychic hangover with no dream. “What time is it?”

  “Ten.” She stayed on the study side, viewing my bedroom with extreme displeasure. “What on earth happened in here? It looks like a tornado touched down.”

  And it did. Shoes spilled out of the closet, drawers vomited out their contents. “I was looking for something.”

  “Well, clean it up before tomorrow. You don’t want to start the week like this.” She used the “My house, my rules” voice, and I didn’t argue. “Did you have a good time at the game?”

  “It was work. I took pictures for the Report.”

  She found a place to set the jeans. “You were out late.”

  “The game went late. Overtime. We weren’t supposed to win, but we did, with this crazy play.” Even I knew it was awesome, and I didn’t even like football.

  “I noticed that Justin drove you home. And you sat talking in the car for quite some time.”

  “Jeez, Mom. At least it was the front seat and not the back.” I wondered if I would have been so cranky if Justin and I had done anything other than talk about the Sigmas.

  “Okay, okay.” Raising her hands in surrender, she turned toward the stairs. “Hurry up and get dressed. Dad said he’d take us to brunch before your pledge meeting.”

  Pledge meeting. Speak of the devil.

  When I walked into the Sigma house and saw Kirby and Victoria in the foyer, I thought for sure they were on to me. I mean, on to me in a way they could prove. I froze in the doorway, ready to flee, but then I saw Holly behind them giving me the thumbs-up.

  “I’m afraid we have some bad news,” said Victoria, a great disparity between her sober expression and her satisfied, even gleeful, mood. I didn’t know which Sight to trust.

  Kirby, on the other hand, was all displeasure. “Brittany was brought before Standards this afternoon, and asked to leave Sigma Alpha Xi.”

  Behind them both, Holly was almost doing a happy dance. I let the front door close. “But, what happened? She was such an … enthusiastic pledge.”

  “A little too enthusiastic.” The chapter president looked ready to spit nails; it wasn’t aimed at me in particular, but the white-hot frustration held tightly in check made me question Brittany’s safety.

  “That’s not important,” said Victoria, taking my arm and guiding me toward the chapter room. “She broke the rules, she is out, and now you, as vice president, must take her place.”

  I pulled away from her grasp. “What?”

  She regarded me calmly, never considering I’d refuse her. “It’s time to step up, Maggie. Your sisters are relying on you.”

  Placing a hand on my shoulder, she urged me through the inner doors. The temperature in the chapter room was so cold, I thought someone had left the window open. But then I saw Juliana seated in the armchair, and realized the icicles were metaphorical. Maybe that was why Victoria was so smug. I wondered if she’d convinced the other alum to help her get Brittany out of the way, on the pretext that Holly would move up.

  The other pledges were sitting in a loose semicircle, very straight-backed and uneasy. I didn’t think it would take any superpowers to pick up on the atmosphere. Tara stood between the girls and Juliana, as if she were defending her chicks.

  Jenna met me at the door with a hug. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Brittany’s all right, and you’re going to be where you ought to be, so don’t worry about Kirby or Juliana.”

  “Um … okay.” I could tell she believed it, whether it was true or not. Her protective assurance seeped in through her embrace, and lulled my judicious fears.

  Kirby had gone to the head table; Victoria positioned herself opposite Juliana, as if to counterbalance the weight of her anger. The carpet covered the floor, but I guessed the spiral’s arm encompassed us all.

  “Let’s get this thing going,” said Kirby, all steel, no glove. “I am very sad to announce that Brittany has decided to resign from Sigma Alpha Xi.”

  No murmur of surprise or outrage; no one called the chapter president on this blatant lie either.

  “According to the chapter bylaws, we will now install the new pledge president. Maggie?”

  Jenna placed a hand on my back, and, feeling like I was climbing to the guillotine—Juliana’s glare was sharp enough—I let her lead me to join Kirby and Victoria, making four points around the circular table. Brittany had been installed like this, but with just Kirby and Tara present, and I’d felt no real sorcery then, which was why I wasn’t having a complete freak out.

  “With this sign,” began Kirby in a pro forma tone. Jenna unclasped the pledge badge from my shirt and looped a little gavel charm through the pin.

  “And with this flame”—the chapter president struck a match and lit a white candle, like at the pledge ceremony—“we install you as president of the pledge class, and charge you, by the North Star you wear as your emblem, to guide and represent your sisters, in all things and in all ways Sigma Alpha Xi.”

  The three of them gazed at me expectantly. Was I supposed to say Amen? So say we all? Then I realized Kirby was holding out the candle. I was supposed to accept it.

  When I’d insisted to Justin that the only way for me to get to the bottom of the Sigmas’ power was from the inside, this wasn’t what I had in mind. Yet as I looked around the circle, at their studying expressions, I realized it was a test of faith.

  Of course it was. But not between me and the Sigmas.

  Here I go again—stepping off the ledge, trusting everything to turn out right. I reached out and took the candle, and accepted all things Sigma.

  Amen.

  When the alarm pierced my sleep on Monday morning, I hit the snooze button and rolled over, pulling the covers over my head. The erased feeling was worse than ever. Instead of a neatly excised spot in my psyche, there was a raw, torn hole where a dream should have been. When I took stock of the situation, I tried to look on the bright side. At least now I knew I was blundering around in a fog.

  The second alarm went off, and I went to the shower and soaked my head under the hottest water I could stand. After I’d come home from pledge meeting, I finished my column—Victoria was not going to be happy about my writing that our alumni mixer looked like an episode of Desperate Housewives—and tried to figure out why it disturbed me that Brittany had been kicked out of the sorority. She was annoying but harmless, and she really bought into the whole Greek thing.

  So why get rid of her, other than to clear the way for a more favored candidate? Was it that she was bossy? Or because she was disobedient? Maybe all these inane tasks and absurd rules were really a test not of commitment or “sisterhood,” but obedience.

  Mulling it over, I dressed in jeans and a purple sweater, dried my hair, and put on some lip gloss. When I was done, I still had no answers, and all the good the hot shower had done in clearing my head was wasted.

  Muddled and fuzzy again, I grabbed my books and my satchel and left for my first class of the day—journalism with Dr. Hardcastle. I felt the need for industrial-strength caffeine, and swung by the campus Starbucks for a latte, then hurried to the arts building through the morning chill.

  As I walked, the fuzziness fell away, replaced by a vague unease. It couldn’t be the three espresso shots making me jumpy—I’d only had time to drink down two of them at most.

  By the time I reached the classroom, I felt wound like a clock. And when Professor Hardcastle came in and pointed to me, I wasn’t really surprised.

  “You. Quinn. Go over to the journalism lab. Take your books and do whatever Mike tells you.”

  I didn’t ask any questions, just grabbed my stuff and went, dropping the remains of my latte into the trash can by the stairs. I had adrenaline to carry me to the fourth floor and down the hall at a double-time pace.

  The air seemed to thicken as I neared
the lab. With a hand on the doorframe I swung into the room, where the staff worked in hushed voices. Weaving through all that anxious industry, I went to Cole’s office and found Mike sorting through files.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Cole didn’t show up this morning.” Mike ran his hands over his cropped black hair. “He’s not answering his phone or e-mail, and none of the stuff he usually has waiting on Mondays is here.”

  I edged past the assistant editor and sat in the chair, logging on to the computer with Cole’s pass code, which he’d given me to use after Hardcastle griped that a freshman was spending too many hours in the lab. “He last accessed this file—tomorrow’s edition—on Friday. Will that help you?”

  “It’s better than starting from scratch. Can you put it on the public server?”

  I moved the file then jotted down the pass code in case he needed it again. “Has anyone gone to Cole’s place to check on him?”

  “I was planning to, once I got things going here.” He looked at me as if the idea were his own. “Could you do it?”

  Try and stop me. “Where does he live?”

  Mike gave me directions to an off-campus apartment and I headed there with dread eating at my insides. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he and Devon had gone away again, and had car trouble getting back. Maybe they eloped. But my heart banged against my ribs the same way I banged on the apartment door.

  “Cole!” I shouted through the window and rapped on the glass. Just as I’d decided to get the manager or call the police, the door swung open.

  “What?” he growled, squinting at the sunlight. He was almost unrecognizable, with several days’ growth of beard and cadaverous shadows under his bloodshot eyes. On Thursday he’d appeared fine, but now, only four days later, he looked as if he’d spent a month in a cave.

  I swallowed my shock. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  His gaze was feverish, glazed. “What do you want?”

  “You didn’t show up this morning. I was worried about you.”

  “I’m working.” He left the door open and retreated into his apartment. When I followed, he said absently, “Don’t step on any pages. They’re in order.”