Brimstone

by Rosemary Clement-Moore

  Justin578: Just help me out here, Lisa. Tell Maggie she has to get out of that sorority.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: I don’t tell Mags what to do. You can try if you want to.

  MightyQuinn: Hello! I can see you guys.

  Justin578: OK. Just say that she doesn’t need to be *inside* the sorority.

  He wasn’t going to like her answer. I didn’t, either, but I was prepared when Lisa typed …

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Just a little longer.

  Justin578: How much?

  A pause while we waited for her to type.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: I’ve almost got the components of the spell identified. Then I’ll know if it can be broken from outside or if she has to stay in the circle.

  Justin578: How long to initiation?

  MightyQuinn: Maybe two weeks.

  It had seemed so far in the future, like I had all the time in the world. And now the end of the semester, and of pledgeship, was almost here.

  And speaking of time, I had to get to the Sigma house for the chapter meeting. I couldn’t afford to be late, now that I was pledge president and all.

  MightyQuinn: I’ve got to run. Can’t be late for meeting.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: I’ll call you tomorrow, Mags.

  Justin578: Just be careful.

  I typed a quick acknowledgment to both of them, and logged off. I didn’t need Justin’s reminder that I needed to keep my wits about me. Not only did I have to keep my normal façade going, now I had to make sure no one guessed that I’d neutralized their secret signal-jamming device.

  I had to park a block away from the Sigma house—every chapter on Greek Row had meetings on Monday night—and arrived at the door flushed and out of breath. The girls were already lined up in the foyer, alphabetically by class. I joined the freshmen, sliding in beside Holly.

  “You okay?” I asked. She’d been elated yesterday, probably at thwarting her mother. But today she seemed like a guitar string, tight enough to vibrate if you plucked her.

  “Yeah. Mom’s still here.” That served as her explanation.

  Ashley, at the front of our line, turned back to tell me, “Some of us are going to the hospital after meeting. If you want to come.”

  “Thanks.” One of the juniors glared at us, and I lowered my voice. “But I’m not sure they’ll let you in to see him, since he’s in bad shape.”

  Ashley frowned. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Cole.” Her look was blank. “Devon’s boyfriend. Who are you talking about?”

  “Brittany. She was in a car accident yesterday. She’ll be okay, but her leg is broken in about three places.”

  A clammy chill started in my gut and spread out. I looked up at Holly, and she avoided my eye.

  When Sigma luck ran out, it ran out big-time.

  The chapter meeting began as normal, but the girls seemed subdued, sitting stiffly, their chatter muted.

  Holly’s mother was indeed still there, sitting with the other alumnae advisers. Victoria had on her game face, all political smiles and gracious nods; Juliana was annoyed, but pretending to be amused by her rival’s presumption of superiority. The tension between them telegraphed clearly to the assembled SAXis and put them on edge.

  And then there was Devon’s usual chair, sitting in empty accusation. I reminded myself that I was there to help her and Cole, but if I’d just wised up sooner …

  Kirby started the meeting with a rap of her gavel. “Some rumor control before we start. The Standards Board met this weekend, and I’d like to thank our alumnae advisers, including our legal counsel, Ms. Juliana Hughes, for their time. In a completely unrelated event, one of our pledges has decided to resign, and Maggie Quinn is the new pledge president.”

  The actives murmured and Kirby’s frown deepened, especially when her eyes found me among the pledges. Impatiently, she pointed to the seat beside Tara. “You’re supposed to be over there, Maggie.”

  She held the meeting so that my first act as pledge president was to cause a delay of game while I changed chairs. I had to go around the seniors, and as I did, the doors—which are supposed to stay closed once the meeting has started—flew open. Devon, wild-eyed and pale, stood framed on the threshold.

  “He’s gone.” She squeezed the words out of a throat broken with grief. “Cole’s gone.”

  No one moved or spoke; in the horrible stasis of the moment, her words refused to compute. Then she swayed on her feet, and I jumped forward, wrapping my arm around her. Her sorrow snatched away my breath. How was she still standing?

  “I killed him,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering closed.

  “What?” My brain still refused to assimilate the first shock. It flatly rejected that phrase. “What do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.” Jenna had gone to the girl’s other side. “Come on, Devon. We’ll take care of you.”

  She shook her head, violently. “No.” When her eyes opened, she focused behind Jenna, where Kirby and Victoria and Juliana had come forward while the rest of the chapter watched in silent distress. “No. I’m done with you.”

  Kirby sheathed the steel in her voice. “You’re upset, Dev. You’ve suffered a terrible loss. But don’t say something you’ll regret.”

  “Regret?” She stared at the older girl, a knife’s edge of bitter outrage in her tone. “Regret?”

  “Dev, don’t.” Kirby reached out, laid a hand on her arm. “We tried to tell you.”

  Devon wrenched from our grasp. “I regret the day I met any of you.” Her voice climbed into the rafters of hysteria as she backed as far from them as she could, pressing her back to the wall. “You did this. You made me what I am. Well, you can all go to Hell!”

  A great sob wracked her, and she threw back her head, face contorted with anguish, tears slipping into her hair. “You will, you will,” she keened. “But you’ll take me with you.”

  She slid down the paneled wall, crouched in a heap of misery. Jenna knelt, and Devon accepted her arm around her shoulders. When Kirby took an impatient step forward, Jenna’s head came up, eyes flashing a warning.

  Juliana, arms folded, turned to Victoria. “I see how well you’ve managed things.” Ignoring the other woman’s death glare, she stepped forward like an auburn-haired icicle.

  “Devon. Control yourself immediately.”

  It wasn’t the voice of a mother or the voice of authority. It was the voice of power, and it vibrated along my nerves and settled at the top of my spine, resonating in my brain. My jaw went a little slack with it, and the command was not even aimed at me.

  Devon stopped her hysterical sobbing. She raised her head and looked at Juliana, hatred and fear in her eyes, body taut with grief and useless rage. But silent.

  “That’s better. Now go to your room. Jenna will go with you.”

  I stepped forward. “I’ll go, too.”

  “No.” Juliana was implacable. “Jenna is sufficient.”

  “Devon is my friend.” I set my chin. “And so was Cole.”

  Two flags of color appeared on Juliana’s cheeks, the only sign of warmth I’d ever seen in her. As her anger grew, so did the ice in the air. This was the alpha. The queen bitch. And I had just disobeyed her in front of the whole chapter.

  Probably not one of my smarter moments.

  When she spoke, it was for my ears only. The rest of the room seemed to retreat beyond reach of voice or aid. “Do not think,” Juliana began, her eyes glittering like the sun on a glacier, “that your ability grants you any special powers or protections. Not from me.”

  “I can see that would be a mistake.”

  She studied me the way an entomologist might a bug. “I have not yet figured you out. You reek of do-gooder, but yet you’ve accepted what Sigma Alpha Xi has to offer. You seem the model, if somewhat sarcastic, pledge, but I think you are fooling them all. Yet Victoria wants to add your power to ours. She says we need you.”

  “It’s always nice to be needed.” There was something about her e
yes. Something other that spoke to the primal part of me, the part that recognized a predator.

  She tilted her head, an animal-like expression of consideration: Do I eat you now, or later? “Perhaps we do. But we need you obedient. So think about the things you love, Magdalena Quinn. And do not cross me.”

  It was my full name that did it. Prickles of bone-deep fear marched over my skin like ants. The murmuring of the girls reached me once more, and the strange, isolated feeling of our conversation dissolved.

  The triad—Kirby, Juliana, Victoria—returned to their places and rejoined a sober membership. Jenna met my gaze as she led the silently crying girl away. I watched them go, feeling in my soul that I’d failed Devon twice.

  32

  “What could you have done, Maggie?”

  Justin watched me pace his tiny apartment. Wall to wall took me only eight steps, and my legs aren’t that long.

  “I don’t know.” Frustration choked the words. “Something. I should have just stolen the book. Maybe there would be something in there to tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “You did the logical thing. If the Sigmas found their grimoire missing, they would have done anything to find it.”

  Think of the things you love, Juliana had said. I shuddered, even in the safety of Justin’s home.

  “I should have known.” Back and forth I paced. Arguing about what was done and unchangeable was easier than facing my fear of failing the next task, whatever it might be.

  “Not even you see the future, Maggie.”

  Forward and back, running my hands through my hair. “I should have found the spell sooner. I thought I had until initiation. It never occurred to me that someone would die while I was out partying with the Sigmas.”

  He blocked my path, forcing me to look at him. I raised my eyes to his, which were warm and dark, melting with compassion that I didn’t deserve. “You did not cause this to happen. They did.”

  Tears stung and blurred my vision. His handsome, earnest face disappeared behind a watery haze of guilt and grief. “I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t even see it. What’s the point of having my Sight if I couldn’t save him!”

  Justin wrapped me in his arms, tucked me tight against his chest, making me feel sheltered and forgiven. “Evil is deceptive. You fight it, you do the best you can. Sometimes you fall short.”

  He pulled back and met my gaze again, brushing the tears from my cheeks. “But you have to get over yourself. You can’t get back into the fight until you do.”

  Think of the things you love.

  I loved that he didn’t deny my feelings, he just told me to get over it. I loved that he was chivalrous to a point just shy of chauvinism, but still held me accountable to fight the good fight. I loved him for being quixotic and square, holding himself to a higher standard, but not thinking less of those, like me, who made a mess of things.

  He could have stopped me when I rose up on my toes and pressed my lips to his, but he didn’t. I think he considered it, because he froze for a moment, not in horror, thank God, but indecision. And then he pulled me close, and kissed me back.

  Friends don’t kiss like this.

  There was nothing chaste or amiable about it. His hands cupped the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair. I wrapped my arms around him, kissed him with my whole body—my whole being. My nose was stopped up from crying, and I couldn’t breathe and I didn’t care, because if I pulled away to take in oxygen, this glorious moment might end.

  It did. Justin put his hands on my waist, pushed me back just a little, his eyes dazed in what must have been a reflection of mine. “I’m still the TA for your history class.”

  An incredulous laugh bubbled out of my throat. “This is your big objection?”

  “No.” He drew me back in. “I’m just getting that off my chest.”

  And then he kissed me again, and it didn’t seem possible that it could be better than the last one, but it was. For a lawful good square, Justin knew a lot about kissing. Granted, I didn’t have a huge basis for comparison, but I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to recognize an explosion when I felt it.

  I don’t know how we got to the couch. I don’t know how we ended up horizontal, tangled in each other, our breath loud in the silence but still drowned by the pounding of my heart. His fingers danced across my ribs, and I gasped at the tickle. He started to pull away but I caught his wrist, kept his hands where they belonged, against my skin.

  I suppose that’s how I lost my shirt. The more of him I touched, skin against skin, the more I could feel him in my blood, like a drug, like a shot of tequila. The denim of our jeans rasped as we wrestled closer still. He nuzzled the curve of my neck, the line of my collarbone. I kissed his shoulder, the indentation of muscle in his bicep, and he trembled. A rush of power zinged through me. I was invincible. I could have it all.

  When his fingers touched the clasp of my bra, I wanted to shout Yes. Do it. I wanted it more than anything ever, but more than that, I deserved it. I’d waited all this time and I was entitled to this.

  The very foreignness of the thought was a splash of cold water. And I heard my voice like a stranger’s: “Stop.”

  That was so not what I wanted to say.

  Justin stopped, of course, but his hands shook. I moved away, all the way to the other end of the couch, before I could change my mind. “I need to think.”

  “Yeah.” He sat up … slowly … and rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Okay.”

  I’d reduced him to one-word answers. Which was fair, I guess, because I was incoherent myself.

  “This feels weird. I mean, I want to do this, but my head feels strange.”

  “I know.” He sat back, looked at me with an expression of chagrin. “Too fast,” he said, still monosyllabic. Still breathless.

  That was only part of it. I was old enough to vote and in love with the guy, so it wasn’t as if I would cry if my untested virtue died a timely death tonight. Except that I was getting a feeling—maybe it was my intuition, back in the game after two months on the bench—that I knew why the pledges had a proscription against sex. The strangeness of my thoughts, driving and hungry, made me think this wasn’t solely between Justin and me.

  “Let’s get out of here.” He rolled to his feet. Handing me my shirt, he pulled on his own. “I can’t think with you sitting there.”

  Probably one of the nicest things he’d ever said to me.

  As I don’t go to church much on Sunday, it seemed particularly weird to be there on a Monday night. Especially after the way I’d spent the last hour of it.

  “You pick the weirdest places to take a date.”

  Justin looked down at me in amusement as he pulled open the heavy, carved wooden doors. “You’re one to talk.”

  Good point. When you almost die on your first date, you shouldn’t cast stones. I ducked under his arm to enter. Automatically, my hand went to the font just inside, and I dipped my fingers and crossed myself. Some things were just like riding a bicycle, I guess. Spectacles, testicles, watch and wallet. Jimmy Lopez had taught me that when we were kids. He’d thought it was the funniest thing ever, but I guess you do when you’re an eight-year-old boy.

  I’d grown up in this church, and the wooden pews and stained-glass windows formed my idea of what a sanctuary should look like. It was a warm, solid place, and despite my lingering feeling of trespass, I was aware of a peaceful welcome, too.

  Footsteps echoing on the stone floor, I followed Justin down the side aisle to an alcove. Under an icon of the Madonna and Child was a rack of votive candles, each in a red glass holder. A few already burned; I reached out a finger and touched the fluted glass edge of one, then another. Someone’s mother, dying in hospice care. A husband, lost to cancer.

  This was becoming natural, the sixth sense integrating with my others. The thought came to me that this may be a Sigma gift, too. Maybe not the Sight itself—I’d had that already, except the Dead Zone thing�
��but the skill I’d developed. Or maybe it was because I’d gotten so much practice around them. Nothing like battlefield training.

  The strike of a match made me look up at Justin as he lit two candles, side by side. They flared brightly as he touched the match to the wick, then flickered in tandem. His parents. I glanced up at him, but his gaze was turned inward; not sad, exactly, but poignant. My fingers reached for his, and he squeezed my hand tightly.

  “Have they been gone long?” I asked. He’d never spoken of them.

  “Since I was ten.”

  “Does it help?”

  He handed me the matchbox. “It can’t hurt. Sometimes rituals have deeper power, sometimes they just give us comfort.”

  I thought about Cole as I shook out a match and struck it. Remembering his friendly nature and his talent and potential, I held the match and let the flame creep closer to my fingers.

  I hope you’re at peace, Cole. Forgive me for not seeing until it was too late. I swear, I’m going to stop these girls from harming anyone else.

  It did help. But not as much as solving this mystery would.

  That night, it was as if the dream had been waiting for me, long past patience. It drew me down swiftly, as soon as I closed my eyes, with no time to prepare.

  I stood in the empty Sigma Alpha Xi chapter room; the phi spiral on the floor, instead of being flat, inlaid wood, descended into the ground. Standing at the outside arm, I felt the cold reaching up from below, from the dark well of earth.

  Okay, Maggie. You’re not going to find out what’s going on from up here.

  I stepped onto the path, spiraling down and down; I kept to the outer edge; the other side dropped into nothingness. The cold intensified as I descended and the natural light faded, until I was seeing only by the frigid pale phosphorescence that came from the spiral itself.

  Dream time was stretchable, like Silly Putty; I walked until my feet were blistered and my skin was numb with cold. How long was this going to go on?

  Indefinitely. Phi was an irrational equation. Self-symmetrical, to the infinite power.