Brimstone (50 page)

“We
know
, Devon,” said Kirby. I’d always thought of her as Victoria Jr., but the edge in her voice was more overt. Mrs. Abbott was velvet-gloved steel. Kirby had less finesse, or wasn’t bothering with it now. “Did you think you could keep it a secret?”

“No.” Devon sounded as though she was crying. “I just didn’t think it would matter so much.”

I heard Jenna’s voice next, soothing and kind, good cop to Kirby’s bully. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. But you have to give him up.”

Kirby spoke without pity. “We told you that Cole wasn’t right for you. No, I will not shush, Jenna. We told her! There are rules to how this works, and she ignored them.”

“But I met him before initiation. I didn’t know,” Devon sobbed. “And by then I’d already fallen in love with him.”

“I know, honey.” Jenna’s voice, full of sympathy. “But that’s why you have to let him go, now. It’ll only hurt him more if you wait.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Devon had found some defiance. “You don’t know everything.”

“I know enough not to break Victoria’s rules.”

A tiny pause, enough for a horrified gulp. “Victoria knows?”

“Not yet.” Kirby’s voice was heavy with implied threat.

“And she doesn’t have to,” Jenna said, offering a way out.

There was a longer silence now, then Devon spoke firmly. “I’ll give back my pin. I’ll quit the Sigmas.”

Kirby’s laugh had razor edges. “Sure you will. Before or after that show in the university art gallery this December? Don’t act so holy, Dev. You want that showing as much as you want Cole.”

The doorknob rattled, covering any answer to that.
Maybe Devon didn’t have one. With no time to retreat, I raised my hand as if I’d just arrived and was about to knock. The door swung open, and I nearly hit Kirby in the forehead.

“Oh!” I jerked my hand back. “I … Gosh, I’m sorry. I was looking for Devon to …” I held up my pledge book—an unadorned binder full of loose-leaf paper. “… you know. For my book.”

Jenna brushed past Kirby and grabbed my arm, turning me away from the room and the president’s dagger stare. “Not right now, Maggie.” She sounded harried, maybe worried. “Maybe after chapter meeting.”

I didn’t bother to pretend I didn’t know something was wrong. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Boyfriend troubles.”

“You really are serious about that no-sex thing, huh?”

“For pledges, yes.” We’d reached the top of the stairs. “For actives … well, it depends. You have to be very selective, Maggie. That’s why we don’t want pledges to get too involved with anyone before they know the rules.”

“Of what? Who passes the test?”

“Yeah.”

“And Devon’s boyfriend doesn’t? Because he’s not Greek?”

She gave me a gentle push toward the stairs. “It’s complicated and it’s none of your business. Go to the TV room. There are a bunch of actives to interview there.”

I could tell I’d reached the limit, pushed as far as I could under the guise of In Everyone’s Business Girl. With a last look over my shoulder, I headed down the stairs. Jenna returned to Devon’s room, where Kirby stood in the doorway, watching me leave.

Holly had forgotten she was angry with me, until Brittany came into the TV room and started trying to organize the pledges for a slumber party. Then she remembered, and left me to go on to the meeting by myself.

Following the others down, I stopped on the bottom stair when I saw Victoria and Kirby talking in the lobby. The chapter president saw me first, and the alumna turned a moment later. “Maggie!” Victoria smiled and gestured me closer. “Come tell me how it’s going with you.”

Obediently, I closed the distance. She linked her arm with mine and drew me into the empty chapter room, which had been set up for the evening’s meeting—table for the officers at one end, chairs arranged in rows facing it.

“I saw the photo you took in the
Report
. And your classes are going well? Are you finding some time to socialize?”

Everything about her said that she knew—or at least had a very good idea—that things had been going stellar for me. “Yes, ma’am. A blast.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re enjoying the benefits of being a Sigma Alpha Xi.” Her tone was a study in ambiguity. She could have been talking about purely social benefits, but I didn’t think so.

“I am a little disappointed,” she continued, “that you weren’t elected pledge president. It would have been yours if you hadn’t abstained.”

I picked my answer carefully. “I didn’t feel that I could in good conscience vote either way.”

She looked at me. I can’t read thoughts, but I didn’t have any trouble interpreting hers:
A conscience. How quaint
.

Aloud she told me, “You’re already off to a great start, Maggie. Being a pledge officer could have been part of that.”

I chose to misinterpret her. “Actually, at the
Report—
”

She turned to me, a layer of her mask falling away. “How do you think you got your position at the paper, Maggie? Do you think they’d keep you on for a moment if you were unable to continue that column?”

The chapter room seemed suddenly empty and isolated, the air stuffy and thick. Carpet covered the design on the floor, but I seemed to feel it pulsing with life beneath the soles of my feet, like a hibernating animal.

What the Hell?

No, wait. Let me rephrase that. Something a lot like fear gripped my chest, made it hard to breathe.

How had I forgotten this?

Victoria took a maternal tone, which seemed even scarier with the stifling power trapped inside the room with us. “We discussed this, Maggie. I see potential in you. But you must assert your position over the others early. Every class has a leader, and it is important you take that role.”

“Brittany seems to have her stuff together.”

Victoria dismissed her with an irritated wave of her hand. “She’s not an alpha wolf, just a yapping bitch cub.”

The velvet gloves were off. I could keep playing stupid; I could run away, forget about the Sigmas and whatever the Hell they had under the carpet; or I could man up. Get my Forces of Good game on.

I visualized power flowing into my deflector shields, hiding my purpose. “Here’s the thing, Victoria. I’m not a front-of-the-pack sort of girl. I’d rather let Brittany be president than have her fighting me at every turn.”

She considered me for a moment, then surprised me by laughing, shaking her head. The atmosphere immediately cleared, as though she’d released a spell. I’d fooled her, or she was pretending I had, and I couldn’t tell which.

“I like you, Maggie.” Her hand rested gently on my shoulder. “You’re good for this group precisely because you have a mind of your own.” Her fingers tightened, not painfully, but in firm affection. “That you are at initiation is what matters.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“In the meantime, you do need to be more of a presence. Spend time with your sisters, go to the mixers. Have fun.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’ll be working on the Homecoming float with the Gamma Phi Epsilons.” She put her arm around me as we walked toward the door, where girls were queuing up for the meeting. “Gamma Phi Eps and SAXis make very good matches. Ask Jenna and Kirby.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to have boyfriends as pledges.”

“Maggie, those rules are for the girls with no understanding of what’s going on here.”

“That would be me, Victoria.” That much was honest.

She smiled. “You know to trust me, and your officers. As long as you let us guide you, you’ll have a good head start when initiation comes around.”

Initiation. It all came down to that. I don’t know what worried me more—that I had to play the game until then, or that the longer I played it, the easier it got.

I
left the SAXi house immediately after the meeting, explaining that I had a midterm paper due, which was not a lie. After waking up to the chill of autumn that morning and working on Homecoming articles all day at the paper—not to mention my audience with Queen Victoria—I had a tense awareness that time was slipping away. My Spidey Sense usually kept me very goal-directed, but for some reason I’d been spinning my wheels for weeks, and now I had to make up lost ground.

The university library had two distinct halves. The west side was a century old; the shiny “new” section was built
twenty years ago. They didn’t match up exactly, so getting from one side to the other involved stairs and doglegs, making me sometimes feel like a hamster in a Habitrail.

I preferred the old half, which had a strong sense of continuity in the musty smell of old paper, in the cramped stacks and scarred wooden tables. I followed the bread crumbs of the Dewey decimal system to the shelves I wanted, then stood staring at the spines, waiting for something to shout “Pick me! I’ll answer all your questions, even the ones you’re too clueless to ask.”

Regrettably, the books remained silent, so I grabbed some useful looking titles, more or less at random. Staggering out of the stacks under the weight of eight fat tomes, I had to wonder why the more abstruse the subject, the more impressively massive the book had to be.

I set them on the nearest table and paused to catch my breath. Somehow I was not surprised to see Justin emerge from between another set of shelves, carrying a large book of his own.

He stopped when he saw me, and we stood that way for a moment. I had a weird feeling in my stomach, sort of like déjà vu but not quite. His hair was messy, his jeans and sweater rumpled, and I missed him more than ever.

“Are you stalking me?” I asked.

His mouth curved in a lopsided smile and he pointed to the next table over, covered from one end to the other in paper and books. “I live here. Maybe
you’re
stalking
me
.”

My inner voice hummed in a contented
See, I
do
know what I’m doing
kind of way. I sighed. “Nothing in the universe is entirely random.”

“What’s that?” he asked, bemused.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

He cast me a curious look, but let it go. I remembered that we’d argued—well, discussed intensely—the last time we spoke. It seemed as though he might say something about that, or at least something personal. Instead he set down his own book and picked up one of mine.

“The Encyclopedia of Earth Magic.”
He glanced at me, then warily picked up the next two.
“Sacred Geometry. Finding the Goddess Within.”
Until he read them aloud, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder if we had a particularly esoteric library at Bedivere.

“Taking up some new hobbies?” he asked.

“No.” I retrieved the books and neatened the pile self-consciously. “I’m working on a project.”

“What kind of project?”

Crap.
Now
my skills at subterfuge chose to fail me?

When I didn’t give him an answer, he laid his hand on the stack of books, as if he was going to keep them from me. “Like your friend Lisa?
That
kind of extracurricular project?”

“God, no.” I tucked my hair behind my ears and explained … sort of. “It’s an angle for the column. Origin of symbols, female power. That kind of thing.”

He looked at me, hard, then relented. After all, I wasn’t exactly lying. “What do you want to know? Anthropology of occult folklore is
my
deal. Why didn’t you just call me?”

What a stupid question. Because I was stubborn, and he’d hurt my feelings, of course. It occurred to me that because Justin was older—definitely more knowledgeable and probably more sensible—I’d more than once put him on a pedestal. But really, guys could be so obtuse sometimes.

Instead of pointing this out, I asked, “Don’t you ever think you’re crazy to believe this is real? Even in the face of experience?”

“Of course,” he answered quickly. “Faith isn’t absence of doubt. It’s belief without proof, not without question.”

He spoke as if he would know, which I found interesting. Justin’s character was so clearly defined: forthright, gallant, conscientious. But for such a straightforward person, he was still a mystery in some ways. He’d never given me much detail on what had formed him, or set him on this unusual course of study.

The silence lengthened, and he answered my unvoiced question. “I guess that’s why I’m here, trying to bridge the gap between faith and science.”

I let myself smile at that. “Not enough windmills to tilt at?”

He smiled, too, and the distance between us—from Avalon to Ireland, from Greek Row to the Bedivere library—seemed to shrink for a moment.

But only for a moment. “Hey, Maggie.” Will appeared from around one of the shelves. “I thought I heard your voice.”

I stifled a sigh, and greeted Will with a wave. He ambled over, a couple of books tucked under his arm, and gave Justin a friendly nod. “How’s it going?” Then to me, in a teasing voice, “No fair getting help from the TA on your term paper.”

Casually, I turned the stack of books to hide their titles. “If I really need help in history, I
can
get it at home.”

Will shook his head sadly, but his eyes were laughing. “I just knew you were going to throw off the curve.”