Brimstone Read online

She didn’t continue; she didn’t really have to. The weight of personal history lay heavy on the line.

  I said the words for her. “It’s a demon.”

  “Yeah.” She breathed easier once it was spoken. “The pages you gave me don’t show its name. That’s the biggest hitch in figuring out the countermeasure.”

  “Lisa, all you have to do is help me work it out. You don’t have to be near the thing. It’s my deal this time.”

  She didn’t even address that. “How long until initiation?”

  “End of next week, I think. Sometime during dead days.”

  Ah, life’s little ironies.

  “Dad bought me a plane ticket home for Thanksgiving,” she said, “so I’ll see you this weekend. We’ll work it out then.”

  “Okay.” I hung up and stared at the screen, my head full of information, unsorted and chaotic. One thought, though, lay on the surface.

  Victoria had been married to Peter Abbott for eighteen years. But on the flip side of that was Juliana Baker-Russell-Hattendorf-Hughes. So it seemed they hadn’t gotten rid of the black widow completely.

  When I got to the journalism lab for my usual Tuesday-afternoon duty on the Report, Mike avoided my eye and sent me to see Professor Hardcastle. Somehow, I didn’t think this was going to be good news.

  I hitched my satchel higher onto my shoulder and headed down the hall, my sneakers squeaking on the newly polished linoleum. Dr. Hard-ass looked up as I came into his cluttered shoe box of an office, then turned back to his computer.

  “Quinn. Right. That Phantom business stops now. I don’t want to deal with the complaints and letters.”

  “Okay.” I don’t know why I said that, when it wasn’t okay. The column had an end date. This was like canceling a TV series right before May sweeps.

  But churning with the anger and disappointment in my stomach was a sudden fear. A yellow flag had just gone up. Luck is not supposed to happen in reverse.

  “You can submit photos and stories for consideration,” he said, “but you’re off the staff. And don’t expect any more favors. You were Cole’s pet project, not mine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all.” He waved me out, his eyes still glued to his screen.

  I left the office and stood in the hall, not quite sure what to do next. Newspaper staff was the thing that kept me from going postal, kept me focused on something besides the waiting game with the Sigmas.

  With the thought of the sorority, something clicked in my head. The Sigmas giveth, and the Sigmas taketh away.

  Think about what you love, Magdalena Quinn.

  I didn’t even bother reaching for my phone. I just took off for the history building at a dead run.

  34

  I slid to a stop at Dad’s office door, grabbing the frame to keep myself upright as my exhausted legs tried to buckle. My face burned with exertion and my heart pounded so hard, I thought my eardrums might blow out. Fitness hadn’t gotten me there, only adrenaline.

  Justin was at the computer, and on the phone. He glanced my way, doubtless alerted by my gasps for oxygen, and didn’t look surprised to see me. Just carefully neutral and calm.

  “She just came in, actually.” He spoke into the phone, talking about me. “Don’t worry, Dr. Quinn. I’m on it. You want me to call your mother?” I staggered into the office, worry ratcheted up to panic. “Okay,” he told Dad, and hung up.

  “What?” I demanded. It came out as more of a plea.

  He stood up and came around the desk. “Catch your breath, Maggie.”

  “Is it Mom?” My stomach ached like I’d swallowed a handful of tacks. “The baby?”

  “At your mom’s checkup, her blood pressure was really high. They’ve admitted her overnight for observation and—”

  I started for the door, all action, no thought. Justin caught me by the shoulders, made me stop and listen.

  “Everything is okay, Maggie, but they’re watching her closely. Here’s the room number.” His hand slid down my arm to capture my fingers, keeping me from running off while he grabbed a Post-it from the desk.

  “I have to teach your dad’s class, or I would drive you over there. Are you calm enough to manage?” He bent to hold my gaze, expression inarguable. “Maggie?”

  “Yeah.” That didn’t sound very convincing, so I said it again more firmly. “Yeah.”

  The dazed, distant feeling resolved into the here and now. Justin saw that in my eyes, and released me. But not before he touched my hair and promised, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  The elevator ride to the OB floor of the hospital was the longest in my life. I hurried down the hall, checking numbers, passing carts full of flowers and rooms full of laughing, giddy people. How could they be so happy when worry was trying to claw its way out of my gut like a cat from a bag?

  Finally I found the room, and tapped on the open door. “Mom?”

  “Magpie!” She smiled at me from the bed. I ran and hugged her tightly until she gave a laughing protest. “I’m not dying, sweetheart. We’re all okay.”

  “The Quinnlette, too?”

  “Yes. I just have to stay in bed until tomorrow, while they poke around and see if my blood pressure goes down.”

  “Can I do anything?” I asked. “Get you anything?”

  “No, sweetie.” She squeezed my hand in reassurance. “Your dad went downstairs to get me a few magazines from the gift shop. My biggest problem is I have nothing to read.”

  “So you’re really okay?”

  “I feel fine.” Which was not the same thing. She didn’t look ill. In fact, with her hair in a ponytail and her face free of makeup, she could almost be one of my classmates. A slightly annoyed classmate. “Sit down and stop hovering.”

  I did, talking to her about inanities until Dad came in, his arms loaded with periodicals. “Why didn’t you call me?” I demanded.

  He gave me a stern look. “Hello, Maggie. Glad to see you, too.”

  I gave him a hug and a proper greeting, then asked again. “Why no phone?”

  “Couldn’t get through. You must have been in one of the older buildings.”

  Pulling my phone from my pocket, I checked. Four bars of signal and no voice mail waiting.

  “Honestly, Michael,” said Mom, “did you buy every magazine in the place?”

  I left her in Dad’s care and slipped out of the room, finding the nurses’ station at the hub of three pastel-colored halls. “I want to talk to someone about Laura Quinn, room three-eleven.”

  A nurse with dark skin and steel gray hair sized me up; when I didn’t flinch, she grabbed a chart and flipped through a few pages. “What’s your name?”

  “Maggie Quinn. I’m her daughter.”

  “Your mother’s blood pressure is still quite high. We’re keeping her in bed and monitoring her condition.”

  “What does that mean, quite high? My blood pressure goes quite high every time I watch the news.”

  She raised a we-are-not-amused eyebrow. “Yes, but you’re not pregnant, I assume. If you were, it would be called preeclampsia, and that can be a very bad thing.”

  All my bravado drained away, and I clutched the counter with white-knuckled fingers. “You mean she might lose the baby? Or …” I couldn’t say the other possibility.

  The nurse’s expression softened a bit as she closed the chart. “Your mom is okay for now, and so is the baby. We’re keeping a close eye on them both. She’ll probably be on bed rest when she goes home, maybe blood pressure medication. The numbers aren’t so high right now and there’s no significant protein in her urine, so that’s good. But she’s got a way to go to full term.”

  “Okay.” I closed my eyes and assimilated that. “Okay,” I repeated, as if that would make it true.

  “The main thing is to give the fetus as much time as possible to grow and for her lungs to develop.”

  I nodded, understanding what she was saying. My sister was a ways from being able to survive on her own.


  Thanking the nurse, I wandered farther down the hall, not ready to go back to my parents just yet.

  Think about what you love, Magdalena Quinn.

  It was one thing to threaten me. It was another to have my nature altered to the point where I was facing a life as the spinster cat lady. But to drag my mother and unborn sister into things? That was fighting dirty.

  Next week was Hell Week, the trials of sisterhood leading up to initiation. I was scared and pissed off, but I could only go forward, so I focused on the pissed. The SAXis were going down. I was going to use what was left of my Sigma luck against them, and I was going to show them a thing or two about how to handle demons.

  35

  Wednesday night, I had just enough energy to sprawl on the couch with Justin and watch a mindless Thanksgiving special while we recovered from the efforts of getting the house ready for Mom’s return. He and Gran had consolidated all their folklore knowledge to protect the house: doors, windows, and hearth. Justin washed the porch with a concoction that an Irish woman had sworn to him would keep witches away.

  Gran had put together little bags, like sachets, and told me to put them under Mom’s pillow and mattress. “What’s in them?” I’d asked after an experimental sniff.

  “Angelica root, mostly. My own granny swore by it.” Next she handed me a jar of bath salts. “Get her to have a nice long soak with these, too.”

  I might be able to manage that, if I passed it off as aromatherapy. Hard enough getting her to wear the medal I’d gotten her—St. Margaret of Antioch, patron saint of pregnant women. I was covering all my bases.

  “The house is as secure as we can make it,” Justin assured me. “She’ll be safer here. Home is a sanctuary.”

  I agreed. “And hospitals are nasty.”

  We sat side by side on the couch, our knees touching. I was aware of him in a vivid way, but too tired to do anything about it, even if I weren’t worried about putting him in a coma.

  “Think you can get some rest this weekend?” he asked, interlacing our fingers.

  “Yes. Holly said she and Juliana are headed back to Chicago until Sunday.” I gave a tired laugh. “Hell is closed for the holiday.”

  I would need the downtime, for rest and preparation. And turkey. Not to mention pumpkin pie. I had to keep up my strength, after all.

  Lisa sniffed the air as soon as I opened the front door, and arched a brow. “Been practicing your herbology?”

  “Gran,” I said in explanation, and invited her in with a gesture. “I saw you stumble on the front walk. Are you okay?”

  “Stepped on a loose rock.” I could never hide much from her, and she slanted a wary look at me as she came in. “Why?”

  I pointed to the porch before I closed the door. “Witch repellent.”

  She turned to stare at me, her expression carefully blank. “Does that mean it doesn’t work very well, or that I’m not very much of a witch?”

  I studied her for the first time in three months. She’d lost weight, and she hadn’t been hefty to begin with. Tall and lean in her jeans and leather coat, her chestnut hair falling in a silky curtain around her shoulders, she looked composed and powerful. But there was a shadow on her. I could See it written on her heart, indelible and absolute.

  “What do you want it to mean?” I asked, keeping my own answer out of my voice.

  She looked away first, something that never would have happened with D&D Lisa. “I think we should get to work.”

  We went upstairs, wasting little time on pleasantries—how’s your mom, fine, etc.—and got down to business. Lisa had brought a black duffel bag with her, and we sat on the bed with her visual aids laid out for my instruction.

  “The spell is divided into three parts,” she explained. “Binding, transformation, and amalgamation. You’ll have to break each one. First is the binding. It closes the circle and makes the members one unit for magical purposes.”

  “Do they lose free will?”

  “Not exactly. It’s more like a permanent version of that charm on your door.”

  I got that. “Complacent and unlikely to ask questions.” She nodded. “So, the girls wouldn’t necessarily know what’s going on?”

  Lisa met my eye levelly. “What sane person would think the reason they’re lucky and successful is an elaborate contract with a demon? Does that excuse them for not questioning it? I’m not the one to answer that.”

  She flipped to a new page of her notepad, closing that door firmly. “Moving on to part two. Transformation. This is the part that empowers or transforms the girls to be able to draw energy from the guys.”

  “Which you said began at the pledge ceremony.”

  “You get a gold star for paying attention.” She pointed to her drawing, where stick-figure girls were arranged at the center of the spiral. “Part two completes what was started when you pledged. It’s not permanent until then.”

  I hadn’t taken this into account. An exit. “So, if I didn’t go through initiation, I’d go back to normal?”

  “I think so. The problem is that there’s a backlash effect. That’s likely what happened to that girl who got kicked out.”

  “Brittany.”

  “Right. As long as you haven’t been channeling too much energy, you would probably survive it.”

  Part of me wished I didn’t know that, even with the worrisome word probably, I could get out of jail free. “Part two,” I prompted, turning the subject back to initiation. “Transformation is finished, and the pledges become karma vampires.”

  “Right. Straight up, no power sharing.” She turned to the next page, where her notes were completely indecipherable. “Only it doesn’t stop here. Part three is amalgamation, which ties the knot tighter. That’s the pyramid scheme part. All the energy—which is all magic is, at its essence—that the actives collect from the sex feeds upward through the pyramid. As below, so above. Basic alchemy.”

  “So do all the alums stay connected to this scheme?”

  “The binding is permanent, unless broken by a counterspell. Each time they initiate more Sigmas, it refreshes all three parts of the spell. An alumna wouldn’t have to be there every time, but she’d get a bigger piece of the pie if she came back every now and then.”

  “Okay.” My brain was full. “So, do we know why Peter Abbott isn’t dead after eighteen years married to Victoria?”

  “This is the ingenious part.” She spoke with real animation, the weight of her baggage lightening in her enjoyment of the puzzle. “Remember I said that sharing the wealth reduces the draw on an individual. Hook up with a guy once or twice, he might ace his test the next day, feel like he’s got the flu, but no harm no foul.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say no foul. You’re still taking something that isn’t yours.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a renewable resource. As long as there’s recovery time …” She looked up from her notebook and saw my expression. “Okay. Maybe some foul.”

  “Maybe a lot of foul if you fall in love with someone and can’t sleep with them.” I was mostly thinking about Devon. But not entirely. “How did Victoria get around that?”

  “It’s so simple. She funneled some of the karma power to the Gamma Phi Ep house, protecting them from the effects of the drain. It’s a current converter fueled by their own stolen energy, feeding their own stolen energy back to them.”

  “So, the guys have no clue?”

  “It’s completely passive on their part.” A smile curved one corner of her mouth. “Well, not completely passive.”

  “Don’t need a mental picture, thanks.”

  “Prude.”

  “Yes. So how do I break this down?”

  Lisa went back to her notebook. “I’m reasonably confident I’ve got the components right.”

  “Reasonably confident?”

  “Well, the modifications are the problem. I know all the pieces, and I know how I would combine them. But neither of us has been through Victoria’s version.”

&nb
sp; I sighed. “We need Devon. She’s got no loyalty left. I’ll bet she’d tell us everything she knows.”

  “Do you know where home is for her?”

  “Birmingham. How many Brinkerhoffs can there be in Alabama, I wonder?”

  “Not a clue,” said Lisa, though I could see her storing the information as she got back to business.

  “Basically everything that the Sigmas do, you have to counter. They bind, you break.” She began removing things from her duffel bag. “It may be as simple as this.” She held up a pair of silver embroidery scissors, laid them down, and pulled out some more vials. “Salt or salt water. Lemon oil. Valerian. Black or red pepper.”

  “It’s like cooking.”

  “Spells are all about combining the right ingredients plus a power source. So … yeah. Kind of like cooking. Only they’re using hellfire in their furnace.”

  “I know. I’ve seen it in my dreams.” Her busy hands stilled and she looked at me, maybe sensing I had more to say on the subject. I steeled myself, because speaking this aloud seemed to make it more real, and more frightening. “It’s not the same as Azmael.”

  Lisa considered that, filed it away. “Worse?”

  I shook my head, not really denying or agreeing. “Different. Formless, elemental. Powerful. Deep, raw power. How am I going to counter that?”

  “Everything they do, you do the opposite.” Reaching across the bed, she grasped my pendant, holding the tiny crucifix tightly between her fingers. “Time to put your money where your mouth is.”

  By one in the morning, we had concocted a plan. It was either brilliant or insane. Funny how there’s so little middle ground in these things. The logical parts were all Lisa. The insane parts were mine.

  Lisa threw everything back into the duffel bag, zipped it, and set it on the floor. “Keep that with you. You think the ritual will be at the end of the week?”

  “Yeah.” I linked my hands overhead and arched my back in a stretch. “We’re not supposed to know exactly, but they’ve told us all not to go anywhere on the weekend.”

  “Okay.” I could see the intricate wheels in her brain turning. “My plane leaves at about eleven tomorrow morning. I’ve got two papers due and finals start on Tuesday.” She offered this like an apology.