Brimstone Read online

  I tiptoed through a minefield of paper, all covered with notes scrawled in a bold, assertive script that bore only a slight resemblance to Cole’s neat, professional printing. Reference books towered on every flat surface; sticky notes covered the wall by the desk.

  “Have you slept at all?” I tried to sound calm and not completely freaked out. “Eaten anything?”

  “Don’t need to.” He sat down at the computer. “Can’t. Have to get this out before I lose it again.”

  I stepped over a pile of fast-food wrappers. “Cole, I think you’re sick. Ill, I mean.”

  “I’m fine, if you’ll just go away and let me work.”

  “Come with me to the Health Center, and then I’ll bring you back here to write.”

  “No!” He jumped out of the chair, shaking me off. “Haven’t you ever had an idea so incredible, so glorious that it burns inside you, and you have to pour it out or be completely eaten up?”

  I followed him, trying to reach any part that might still hear reason. “I know it feels that way, Cole. But the book will still be here after you rest—”

  “I have to keep working.” He began moving around the room, rearranging piles of paper.

  “No, really. You have to stop.”

  “Don’t you understand?” His voice was plaintive, almost pleading. I put my hand out to him, to restrain or reassure. He caught it, brought it to his chest, and laid my palm against his heart, beating as fast as a bird’s. “I can’t stop.”

  Fire raced up my nerves. Inspiration was too mild a word. This was the forge of creation, the blazing gift of da Vinci or Michelangelo. Of Shakespeare or Beethoven. Of all of them together, in one human body too fragile to hold the terrifying genius that had been ignited there.

  My dawning realization brought a smile to his face. “I knew you’d understand, Maggie.” Then his knees buckled, and he collapsed.

  I leapt forward, but all I could do was keep him from hitting his head. My fingers felt scorched where I touched him, but it wasn’t figurative this time. All analogies aside, Cole was burning up. His skin felt desert-sand hot.

  Laying his head down gently, I ran for the phone and dialed 911. The dispatcher was able to call up the apartment address while I told her Cole’s symptoms as best I could: blistering fever, seriously altered mental state, and, finally, unconsciousness. She read off a list of instructions for me in case he started having a seizure, which I prayed—really prayed, as respectfully as I could—wouldn’t happen.

  When I hung up, I soaked a dish towel in the kitchen sink, then bathed his face until the paramedics got there. They would think he was sick, or on drugs, or maybe even crazy. But there was no mundane explanation for this.

  Cole had been touched by sorcery, and the price for his fit of genius had been more than his body could pay.

  30

  The emergency-room resident had a brisk demeanor, very businesslike.

  “We think it’s meningitis.” She briefed me outside Cole’s curtained cubicle while I folded my arms tightly and tried not to shiver in the frigid, antiseptic air. “I’ve started him on broad spectrum antibiotics, and we’ll do a lumbar puncture. You’ve called his girlfriend? What about any family?”

  “Devon may be able to help you, and if she can’t, his parents’ number should be on his school records.” She nodded and made a note. I’d found Cole’s wallet and brought it with me, so they had his social security number and his insurance card—hopefully everything they’d need to help get him better.

  “So … he hasn’t regained consciousness?”

  The doctor didn’t look up from her clipboard. “No.”

  “That’s not good, is it.”

  It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t answer it. “I’m going to start you and the girlfriend on prophylactic antibiotics, and possibly the students in his dorm as well.”

  I tucked my icy fingers more tightly under my arms. “He doesn’t live in a dorm.”

  “What about anyone else he worked with?” she asked.

  “I can get you the names of the newspaper staff, but he’s been keeping to his office a lot.”

  “That could be part of the infection, if he kept the lights low. Light sensitivity is—”

  The crash of the double doors from the waiting room interrupted her. I turned to see Devon pushing off the restraining hand of an orderly and quickstepping toward us. Her blond hair was a mess, flecked with the same multicolored paint that spattered the oversized shirt she wore.

  “Where is he, Maggie?” Her blue eyes were wide and bright with frantic worry. “Jenna just said—”

  She broke off, her gaze focused on the curtain behind me. Ignoring the doctor, she shoved it aside and crossed to the bed to touch Cole’s face, as if that were the only way she could believe it was him. Her countenance shattered, the pieces dissolved into helpless tears. Sinking to her knees, she pressed her face to his hand and cried as if her heart had been ripped out.

  “Miss—” The doctor glanced at me, and I supplied a name. “Devon. We’re treating him now. Calm down and I’ll explain what’s going on.”

  Devon continued to sob, giving no sign she’d heard. I crouched down, putting my arm around her. “Come on. There’s a chair right here. We’ll pull it close, and you can listen to the doctor.”

  Her slight weight lay against me, her strength all turned to grief. “It doesn’t matter.” Her choked words were almost too muffled to hear. “It’s my fault. I just love him so much.”

  I glanced up to see that the resident was consulting with a nurse, and took the chance to whisper in urgent secrecy. “What’s going on, Devon? I can’t help if I don’t understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Her voice had become a mournful drone. “It’s done. They’ll save him or they won’t.”

  A pair of sneakers appeared in my line of sight, and I followed the scrubs up to the face of Dr. Disapproval. “If she doesn’t calm down, she can’t stay here.”

  Devon pulled herself together after that last, fatalistic whisper. She drew back from me, wiped her streaming eyes, and stood up. “I’m all right.”

  Her withdrawal was more than physical. I felt her defenses going up, and I knew she’d tell me nothing more now that she had her wits about her. The grip was tenuous, but unless it slipped, my time was wasted there.

  I’d stolen Cole’s keys when I stole his wallet, but I hadn’t turned them over at the hospital. I planned to remember to do that after I’d checked out his apartment.

  The paramedics had made a mess of his piles of paper. I picked some of them up, glancing at the notes. From what I could tell with my grasp of not-entirely-current affairs, Cole was writing a thriller based on the international politics of oil. Sort of like that George Clooney movie where he grew that awful beard. What I didn’t get was what Devon had meant when she said that she was his muse. I didn’t see the connection between cute, artistic Devon and OPEC.

  Laying that aside, I started searching for any clues to what might have happened to him. I riffled through his bedroom, under the mattress and under the bed itself, and through the medicine cabinet. I checked his desk, the kitchen, beneath couch cushions. Nothing out of the ordinary; no poppets, voodoo dolls, talismans. Nada.

  My phone rang, the caller ID flashing the number for the journalism lab, and I answered. “Maggie? It’s Mike. How’s Cole?”

  “Not so good. They’re thinking it may be meningitis.”

  “That sucks. Poor guy.”

  “Yeah. You’re going to be getting a call about a prescription for preventative antibiotics.”

  “Wow. I never thought I’d get that kind of call in regard to a guy.”

  I reminded myself that he didn’t know how serious this was. “That’s more than I need to know about your personal life, Mike. Did you call just to check on Cole?”

  He got down to business. “Listen. I was going to finish my article on Saturday’s football game with some quotes from the trainer who came up with the defensi
ve strategy. Coach attributes the win to him. But now I’m doing Cole’s job, so I need you to call this guy and ask him about it.”

  “I guess I—”

  “Great.” He gave me the name and a phone number. “Sooner the better, Maggie. Thanks.”

  He hung up before I could say anything else. I looked at my watch. It was midafternoon, I’d missed biology, and at this rate I wouldn’t make it to my last class, either.

  What the hell. I dialed the number Mike had given me and Troy, the student trainer in question, answered quickly. I explained who I was and what I wanted, and he laughed.

  “I can’t believe Coach is giving me props for that. I just came up with the idea, and he was like, hey, this is great. And I was like, whoa, I’m just a student trainer. I thought, they won’t listen to me, but I couldn’t not say it, you know.”

  I deciphered that into English, jotting on a legal pad from Cole’s desk. As I did, something struck me. “When you say you couldn’t not tell the coach your idea, do you mean you felt a responsibility to the team, or …”

  “Well, yeah. Like, I want to win. But also—and this is weird, right? It was one of those ideas you know is really great, and you’ll just pop if you don’t say it. You know?”

  Yeah. I think I did know.

  “Thanks. I hope I’m not keeping you from class or anything.”

  “Nah. I took the day off. I was feeling kinda crappy yesterday. Probably too much partying, right?”

  “But you’re okay now?” He assured me he was. “Do you know a guy named Cole Bauer? Ever take a communication class?”

  “You’re, like, joking, right?”

  “You live in a dorm?”

  “Yeah. Is this going in the paper?”

  “Um. No. This is just for, um, demographic research. Thank you for your time …” I glanced at his name. “Troy.”

  I hung up and tore off the page, then sat back, looking at the pieces of future bestseller littered around the room. Supernatural inspiration. There was something there, something important, but it stayed elusive. And Cole didn’t have time for me to chase down dead ends.

  I decided that exposure to meningitis was a good enough reason to skip class, so I spent the rest of the afternoon in the journalism lab, helping Mike get up to speed on Tuesday’s edition of the Report. Fortunately, since he asked me to prepare something on meningitis, I had an excuse to call the hospital for updates on the patient’s condition. (“Unchanged,” all afternoon.)

  In the end, however, the doctor called me. Cole’s lumbar puncture was positive, and I was to start taking the Cipro they’d given me as a preventative.

  Meningitis, Wikipedia told me, was an infection of the membranes covering the brain, and it could cause all sorts of things, including brain damage, hearing loss, and, oh yeah, death. (That’s when I paused in my research to take the antibiotics.) The disease was particularly contagious in close living quarters, like college dorms.

  Lovely. I called the university Health Center and spoke with a nurse practitioner who told me that yes, they were aware of the situation, and they were working with the community hospital, outbreak prevention, blah blah blah.

  I jotted down a few quotes, then asked, “Do you have any record of the last time a BU student was diagnosed with meningitis?”

  “Hang on.” The tapping of a keyboard came over the line. “It was about twenty years ago. Oh dear.”

  “What?”

  “One boy died, and another one was in the hospital for two weeks and had to drop out of school.”

  “Did they live in the same dorm?”

  “Let’s see. Not the same dorm, but the same fraternity house.”

  “I don’t suppose it was Gamma Phi Epsilon.”

  “There’s no note of the name.”

  “Great. Thank you, Ms. Stevenson. You’ve been a big help.”

  I hung up and stared at the computer screen for a long while. The date she’d given me, twenty years ago, would have been about the time that Victoria and Juliana were in school. And for the first time, it dawned on me that my mom would have been, too.

  Typing like a madwoman, I entered the information from the Health Center and the quotes from the nurse practitioner into the article, called the hospital one more time (“Status unchanged”), and uploaded the draft to the server.

  “Mike,” I called, grabbing my jacket and book bag, “article’s ready for proofing. I need to run home for a few minutes before meeting tonight.”

  He didn’t look up from the screen, but I saw his hand appear over the monitor and wave.

  On the walk to the Jeep, I tried Devon’s cell again, then Justin. Neither answered. I called Lisa, too, but got her voice mail as well. I tried not to imagine anything ominous in it, but it was hard not to when I had no idea what was going on except that it was bad, and getting worse all the time.

  Mom was fixing a snack when I got home—a sandwich of peanut butter, sweet pickles, bacon, and mayonnaise. On toast, with a glass of milk on the side.

  “It must be an obedient-stomach day,” I said, going to the fridge for a Coke.

  She sat on a barstool, elbows on the counter, as she took a big bite of sandwich. I didn’t know who this woman was, who’d replaced my stickler-for-manners mother. “I have to eat while the eating’s good.”

  Eyeing her plate, I said, “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “What are you doing home?” She wiped a drip of mayo from her lip with a ladylike dab of her napkin. That was more like her. “You don’t usually come home before chapter meeting.”

  “It’s been a weird day.” I leaned against the opposite cabinet. “Listen, Mom. Do you remember two Gamma Phi Eps who got meningitis while you were in school?”

  She took a sip of milk, her expression thoughtful. “Yes,” she said, then with more surety, “yes, I do. I was a sophomore, I think.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember who they were dating.”

  “Goodness, how would I know that?”

  “Well, they were Gamma Phi Eps, so …”

  “So chances are they were dating Sigmas.” She bit into her sandwich and chewed it, and the question, over. “No, wait. They weren’t Gamma Phi Eps.”

  I leaned back in surprise. I was sure I’d been on the track to something.

  Mom reminisced, smiling at things past. “We were all so jealous of the SAXis. Homecoming, Greek Week … It was always Sigma Alpha Xi and Gamma Phi Epsilon.”

  “And that didn’t seem odd?”

  “That they were so lucky? Not really. Do we have any potato chips?”

  I got them out of the pantry, and she put a few in her sandwich. “There was something, though, now that you remind me, about their being jinxed.”

  “Jinxed?”

  “Yes. I think the Deltas started the rumor, because they were always coming in second in everything.” Her face lit with a click of memory. “That’s right! Those guys who got sick weren’t Gamma Phi Eps, but they were dating Sigmas. That’s when the joke started. It was those guys, and a Phi Delta broke his leg, and then everyone came down with food poisoning after a SAXi party. A couple of the guys even ended up in the hospital with dehydration.”

  “But this jinx. It didn’t stop the frat guys from wanting to date them?”

  Mom shook her head. “It was a mark of status. The SAXis’ boyfriends were chapter presidents, football captains, fellowship recipients … I guess when you think of the good things that happened to guys that dated Sigmas, it pretty much balanced out the bad. So they couldn’t really have been jinxed, right?”

  I didn’t answer. She laid down her sandwich and looked at me closely. “Right, Maggie?”

  “Sure, Mom.” Funny how much concentration it can take to read a Coke can when you don’t want to look at your parent.

  “Oh, Maggie.” The maternal unit in question sighed. “You’re not in the middle of something weird again, are you?”

  Picking up my satchel, I headed for the stairs. “Weirder than my
being in a sorority in the first place? Come on, Mom.”

  Question evaded, I went up to my rooms, hearing her call up to me: “Did you clean up that mess?”

  “Sure!” I yelled back, staring right at my self-ransacked bedroom. Dropping my bag onto the study sofa, I went to close the French doors. Out of sight—

  The door swung shut and there, two inches in front of my face, was the answer. Crimson and indigo, compass and North Star. Even a stupid octopus. The door decoration had been there since the night I pledged, turned back against the wall.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  31

  MightyQuinn: I’m such a *moron*!!!

  0v3rl0rdL15a: You’re not a moron, you idiot.

  MightyQuinn: How could I not SEE this?

  0v3rl0rdL15a: That’s the whole point of it. Did you soak the door thing in the bathtub like I told you to?

  MightyQuinn: Yes. I used a whole carton of salt.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Table salt or sea salt?

  MightyQuinn: Are you sure you don’t think I’m a moron?

  Justin578: No one is a moron. Can we get back to business?

  I’d gotten Lisa and Justin online—despite the fact that he hated IM for anything but brief exchanges—because they were both in semipublic, and a phone conversation about sorcery was bound to attract the attention of their classmates.

  As soon as the door decoration—which I’d seen on Holly’s door, too, so I wasn’t special—was submerged in the salt bath, I’d felt something like when your ears pop in an airplane, a change in the pressure around my head. And clarity. Finally, I could think and talk about the Sigmas without the muffled, wool-headed feeling.

  I considered the plethora of crimson and indigo decorations in every SAXi room I’d seen, and wondered how many girls never questioned their good fortune, accepting it with perfectly normal Greek elitism. But that led to more questions. If you accepted something suspicious without question, did that make you guilty, or just stupid?

  Either way, it didn’t change what I knew, now more than ever, I had to do.