Brimstone Read online

  “I never would have thought up this plan on my own. Even with Justin’s help.” Maybe we could have come up with something, but not this quick and this detailed. Lisa had said it herself. No one could out evil-genius her.

  She slipped on her jacket, pulling her hair from under the collar. “He’s going to help you with this, right?”

  “Somehow. I’m still hoping to convince this other pledge, Holly, to help me, too.”

  “Okay.” We walked down the stairs, through the dark house to the front door. She stood with her hands in the pockets of her coat, still thinking. “I’ll be in touch this week. Be careful, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “And keep Justin nearby.”

  I smiled slightly. “You don’t even like him.”

  “Not the point. I trust him, which is more important.” Hand on the door, she turned back again. “Maybe I can fly back after my test …”

  “How will you afford another ticket?” I said it bluntly, because I desperately wanted her to do just that, but knew it couldn’t happen. “Gandalf taught Frodo a lot, but in the end he had to go into Mount Doom alone.”

  “But Frodo had Sam.”

  I laughed, but it was fond. “Lisa, you are so not a hobbit.”

  She smiled a little, too. “Good point. Be careful, Frodo.”

  “See you on the other side, Gandalf.”

  36

  Justin and Gran had hit it off before he and I had even met, so I guess it wasn’t that weird to come into Froth and Java and see them sharing a table. Especially since Justin had had Thanksgiving dinner at our house. Gran waved me to the third chair, and I took the box of Lucky Charms out from under my arm and plunked it down.

  Justin looked from the breakfast cereal to my face. “What’s with the box?”

  I tilted my head and said with a vapid sorority-girl smile, “They’re magically delicious.”

  “If you do that in a fake leprechaun voice,” said Gran, her accent as thick as an Irish Spring commercial, “I’ll see you grounded till Christmas, see if I won’t.”

  Justin laughed, and I grinned as I took off my jacket and sat down. “Hell Week?” he asked.

  “No. It’s Sisterhood Week.” I nodded at the box. “Some Sigma has a twisted sense of humor.”

  “So, today it’s cereal.” He moved it off the table. “And yesterday your clothes were inside out. That isn’t too scary, as hazing goes.”

  “We live in a kinder, gentler, more litigious society.” I stole the corner of his coffee cake. “Most of the national sorority offices and school administrations have cracked down so hard on hazing that no one wants to ask pledges to do anything. Even to stand up when an active enters the room, or do interviews for pledge books.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Most sororities aren’t.” I’d researched this for my Phantom columns, the ones that would never be finished. “On the other hand are ones that circle the fat areas on the pledges’ bodies with Sharpies so they know what to ‘improve.’ ”

  Justin sat back. “You’re making that up.”

  I shook my head. “These are things girls have reported.”

  “After they dropped out?”

  “After they graduated. The need to belong is so strong, they’d ‘voluntarily’ do things like drink a fifth of vodka and then go Christmas caroling through a fraternity house.”

  Gran set down her cup. “Do they not read the news, about what happens to girls? How can young women do that to each other?”

  “The same way that young men dare each other to drink until they end up in the hospital. They think they’re invincible.” Maybe I was soapboxing a little, but it was relevant to my dilemma. “The predominant feeling on Greek Row is that they are specially blessed with luck and good looks and success. Who’d suspect that the Sigmas had contracted with Hell to make it true? The devil’s best trick was convincing man he didn’t exist.”

  Justin looked at me quizzically. “Who said that? C. S. Lewis?”

  I broke off another piece of coffee cake. “Kevin Spacey, in The Usual Suspects.”

  He frowned at the decimated crumbs on his plate. “Do you want your own one of those?” I shook my head, since my mouth was full. “How about a latte?”

  At my nod, he excused himself to Gran and went to the counter. “He looks tired,” she said, watching him go.

  He did, but honestly, you couldn’t tell that from the back. I’m just saying.

  “It’s not me, Gran.” My classes were over until exams next week, but Justin’s work wasn’t done. “He’s got papers to write and he’s grading Dad’s term papers, and he’s helping me … Okay, maybe that’s my fault, but not like you mean it.”

  “I don’t mean it any way, miss.” She looked at me hard. “Unless the lady protests too much.”

  “No, ma’am.” After a whole semester, what was a day or two more unrequited? If I didn’t reverse the Sigmas’ spell, and/or sever their underworld power connection, I doubted this would be my biggest problem.

  “Are you ready?” asked Gran, following my thoughts easily.

  “Yes.” I had Lisa’s duffel in the trunk of the Jeep, and I had the Plan. The only thing I could do at the moment was wait, and play the Sigmas’ game.

  She laid her hand on mine, and I felt a gentle tide of warmth. “You won’t fail, Maggie mine. You are strong and smart.”

  “So are they, and they’ve got twenty years of experience, a chapter full of accomplices, and a demon on their side. I’m just one girl with a half-assed plan.”

  “Then why not just give up? Why fight at all?”

  I looked up from the coffee cake, which I’d crumbled into bits. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “And that,” she said, stroking my cheek with her cool fingers, “is why you are much more than one girl with a half-assed plan.”

  I hadn’t been on a scavenger hunt since I was ten, but that was the plan for the evening. It was as if I’d joined a Mephistophelean Girl Scout troop.

  My pencil sliced through the next item on my team’s list. So far we’d acquired a copper colander, a Manolo Blahnik shoe box, a rabbit’s foot, and a picture of a celebrity.

  “Okay. We still need a hard hat, some Silly Putty, and a bottle of Tabasco.” I looked at Holly and Kaylee. We’d been ordered to the Sigma house after dinner, chosen teams—two pairs and a trio—and gotten our lists. “Ideas?”

  Holly looked at her watch. “None, except we’ve got to hurry if we’re going to beat the others.”

  Kaylee peered over my shoulder. “Maybe we should split up. The cafeteria will have Tabasco bottles. And I think I can get Silly Putty from my roommate.”

  “There’s that new building going up on the north end of town,” I said. “You two head back to campus. I’ll get the hard hat.”

  “You should go in pairs off campus. That’s what Tara said.”

  Holly took the list and folded it into her pocket. “Kaylee, you head to the cafeteria. We’ll meet back at the house.”

  We ran to the Jeep, parked up the street near campus. I checked for traffic then pulled out, heading toward Beltline, and from there north. Neither of us spoke. Ever since Devon’s breakdown, Holly had been quiet and distant, especially with me. This might be the only time I’d have to talk to her about initiation.

  But how to start? You were right, your mom probably did sex your dad to death didn’t seem tactful enough to win her over to my side.

  “Holly, do you know why the pledges aren’t allowed to have sex?”

  “Why? Have you been a naughty girl?”

  “No. Well, not yet.” I passed a puttering Ford in the left lane. “Do you?”

  “No.” She was too sullen to be convincing.

  “You said something once. About a succubus. Remember?”

  “That’s crazy.” She folded her arms and looked out the window. “Besides. If it was true, there’d be a lot more dead fraternity guys, wouldn’t there.”

&
nbsp; So she’d thought about it, opened her mind at least once to the idea. “Don’t you think it’s weird your mom, who wants so bad for you to be a Sigma, hasn’t told you anything about initiation?”

  “She’s not allowed to.”

  I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye as I drove. “Why not? If it’s all just fake magic?”

  Her head snapped toward me, and her expression wasn’t so much disbelief as denial. “You’re nuts.”

  “Okay.” I backed off quickly, since it would do no good to force the issue. I couldn’t afford to have her slam the mental door on me. “Just remember, you may think you have no option but to obey your mother. But you do have a choice.”

  She looked at me, perplexed, her arms loosening their tight fold. “You said you’d do this with me, Maggie. You’re not backing out, are you?”

  “No. I’ll be there. And I hope we will be in it together. On the same side.”

  Did she get it? She seemed to understand so much, but so little. There was no telling, not even with my superpowers, what she was thinking as she subsided into silence.

  We easily climbed the chain-link fence and dropped into the construction site. It seemed I’d acquired a knack for breaking and entering.

  “I’ll look that way, you go there.” Holly gestured vaguely. “They’ve got to leave some extra hard hats around for visiting inspectors and stuff, right?”

  “They do on TV.” Not that I would put anything on my head that I didn’t know where it had been.

  I pulled my flashlight from my back pocket; like any good girl detective, I kept one in the car. The construction site was full of eerie silhouettes and dangerous obstacles. Probably why they kept a fence around it, to keep kids on dares from falling into a hole or getting squished by an I-beam.

  As I wound through piles of lumber, the shaft of light fell on a sawhorse table. Score. I wondered if hard hats were expensive. I felt a lot worse about stealing than I did about trespassing.

  Picking the oldest-looking one, I called into the shadowed darkness. “I got it!”

  A thump echoed from the skeleton of the building. I stopped. Listened. “Holly?”

  No answer but the soft clink of metal on metal.

  You know those scenes where you watch the movie detective go into the spooky building, and you want to shout at them not to be an idiot, because everyone knows that something bad is going to happen? Now I knew how the other side feels. It’s a compulsion to go look, a twisting in your vitals that says whatever is there can’t be worse than turning your back on it.

  I swept the flashlight over the concrete slab, shadows taunting me just out of the beam. Another creak, and a whisper. One sneakered foot in front of the other, I went into the belly of the beast, the light bouncing over the girders like a prison searchlight.

  Movement. Edging forward, I saw a great loop of chain, each link as big as my hand. It hung from a pulley overhead, swinging slowly on an intangible breeze, the metal moaning softly.

  My phone rang, and a scream escaped before I could stifle it. I fumbled the cell out of my jacket pocket and answered, still scanning the site for Holly. “Hello?”

  “Maggie, I’ve found Devon.”

  “Lisa?” I whispered.

  Behind her voice I heard the noise of a diner or a truck stop. “I’ve got her with me, and we’re driving back to Avalon.”

  “You’re in Alabama? What about your exams?”

  She didn’t answer either of those questions. “I’ve explained things to her and she’s explained some things to me, and we’ll be there by tomorrow afternoon.”

  Relief and worry bubbled together in my chest. “Just be care—”

  A hideous, clacking rattle shook my bones. If Marley’s ghost had been a twenty-foot giant, this was the clanking his chains would have made as he visited from Hell. I whirled and saw the real chain moving, the pulley screaming as it spun, and something massive plummeting toward me.

  I flung myself away as a huge tub of rivets crashed to the ground where I had been standing. My ears rang with the concussive sound; my head pulsed with it, as if the seams of my skull might shake apart. The first time Holly called my name, I could only stare at her in numb shock.

  “Maggie! Are you all right?” She’d come out of the darkness and crouched beside me. I heard an echo of my name and realized it came from the phone that I’d dropped to the concrete.

  “I’m okay.” I hoped my answer would carry to Lisa, too.

  Holly pulled me to my feet. “Oh my God. You were standing right there!” Her hands shook and her face was so pale she seemed to glow in the moonlight. “Talk about lucky.”

  I’d ripped my jeans and skinned my palms when I dived for safety. But all things considered, no complaints. “Yeah. Lucky.”

  Only I wasn’t. I’d thought losing the column last week had been about Victoria’s patronage, and Mom was a warning. But I thought about Brittany now, about the backlash effect Lisa had mentioned. Had my luck been revoked, too?

  37

  By the next afternoon, I’d gone to the door so many times to look for any sign of Lisa and Devon’s arrival, Mom threatened to tie me out on the porch like a dog. After that, I tried to discriminate the car noises, and after a false alarm for the mailman, I heard an engine turn off and two car doors slam.

  I opened the door to see that it was not the cavalry arriving just in time, but Jenna and her roommate, Alexa. With a hand on the knob, I hesitated, uncertain. Then Jenna stumbled and wiped out on the front walk, and I hurried out to her side. Stupid crusader instinct.

  The air was frigid—I hadn’t grabbed my jacket—and I helped Jenna sit up. “Are you okay?”

  “Nothing damaged but my pride.” Actually, she’d skinned her elbows and palms, and as Alexa gingerly rotated her ankle, she winced, going pale beneath her cold-reddened cheeks.

  “It’s just twisted,” she said. “Help me up.”

  We did, and she wasn’t so bad off she couldn’t laugh at herself. “Well, that’s not how I meant this to go.” She grinned at me, and said formally, “Maggie Quinn, we are here to escort you to initiation into the Sigma Alpha Xis.”

  “But it’s only Thursday,” I said. “I thought it would be Friday. And nighttime.”

  “The idea is to make it unexpected,” Alexa said, helping Jenna balance with her weight off her left leg.

  It wasn’t as if I couldn’t escape. Even I could outrun a girl with a gimp foot. But that wasn’t the issue.

  “Can I at least get my jacket?” And my cell phone.

  “The heater’s on in the car.” Jenna looked behind me, toward the house, and waved. “Bye, Mrs. Quinn.”

  “Have fun, girls!” Mom grinned at me as she closed the door. At least she would tell Lisa where I was. That was my best hope now. What was the point of a plan if it all went to crap when the bad guys didn’t do what they were supposed to?

  Jenna was warmly expectant as she waited for me to join them in the car. She turned and smiled at me from the front seat. “Stop scowling. It’s an act of trust, Maggie.”

  God, I hated those.

  I sat on Jenna’s bed, shivering in the sleeveless white shift she’d handed me. She indicated that the other pledges would arrive soon, too, change their clothes, and we would all wait together.

  There was nothing to stop me from walking out. I could forget the Plan. While everyone was distracted bringing in the pledges, I could find the grimoire and burn it. Or maybe create a diversion or delay until Lisa and Devon could get there.

  The door opened, interrupting my internal debate. I poised for fight or flight until I saw Victoria Abbott, looking smart in one of her designer pantsuits. “Are you ready?”

  “Is it time?” I asked, almost not panicking.

  “Just about. I was hoping you could settle an issue for me.”

  Warily, I edged back. “I’m supposed to wait in here.”

  “You have special dispensation.” Smiling almost maternally, she stepped back to a
llow my exit into the hall. I followed her down one flight of stairs, but instead of continuing to the ground floor, Victoria pointed to the left. “This way.”

  My bare feet slowed as we approached the end of the hall, where Juliana Baker-Russell-Hattendorf-Hughes waited beside the yawning door of the initiation closet.

  “Don’t you look pretty,” she purred. “Vestal-virgin chic.”

  “Appropriate, I guess.” The temperature seemed to plummet the closer I got to Juliana. I didn’t know if this was literal or if my extra senses were using this as code for Evil ahead, get the hell out. If so, I wished for a shorthand that didn’t raise so many goose bumps.

  I rubbed my bare arms, deciding to play stupid. “Why are we at the initiation closet?”

  “How do you know what it is,” Juliana asked, circling me like a cat, “if you haven’t been here before?”

  “Everyone knows it’s where the chapter stores the initiation stuff. And the Christmas decorations.”

  Juliana shot Victoria an irritated look that would have made me laugh if my terror level hadn’t just shot from orange to thermonuclear red.

  “Here is what I think, Magdalena Quinn.” The glacier glint in her eye drove me back a half step, toward the open closet. “Victoria says we need you. But I think that no matter how much power you have, you are simply more trouble than you are worth.

  “In fact,” she said, in that voice she used when she didn’t want anyone but me to hear, “some thing tells me you’re a threat to our sisterhood. And I can’t have that.”

  She moved inhumanly fast. Her hand flashed out and hit me hard in the chest, knocking me backward onto the bare wooden floor of the closet.

  “This will keep you out of my hair for now.” She stood with one hand on the jamb, the other on her hip. “And if you’re very, very good, and don’t make a disruptive fuss, then in all probability that water heater in the corner might not spring a leak in the gas line.”