Brimstone (57 page)

Jenna met me at the door with a hug. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Brittany’s all right, and you’re going to be where you ought to be, so don’t worry about Kirby or Juliana.”

“Um … okay.” I could tell she believed it, whether it was true or not. Her protective assurance seeped in through her embrace, and lulled my judicious fears.

Kirby had gone to the head table; Victoria positioned herself opposite Juliana, as if to counterbalance the weight of her anger. The carpet covered the floor, but I guessed the spiral’s arm encompassed us all.

“Let’s get this thing going,” said Kirby, all steel, no glove. “I am very sad to announce that Brittany has decided to resign from Sigma Alpha Xi.”

No murmur of surprise or outrage; no one called the chapter president on this blatant lie either.

“According to the chapter bylaws, we will now install the new pledge president. Maggie?”

Jenna placed a hand on my back, and, feeling like I was climbing to the guillotine—Juliana’s glare was sharp enough—I let her lead me to join Kirby and Victoria, making four
points around the circular table. Brittany had been installed like this, but with just Kirby and Tara present, and I’d felt no real sorcery then, which was why I wasn’t having a complete freak out.

“With this sign,” began Kirby in a pro forma tone. Jenna unclasped the pledge badge from my shirt and looped a little gavel charm through the pin.

“And with this flame”—the chapter president struck a match and lit a white candle, like at the pledge ceremony—“we install you as president of the pledge class, and charge you, by the North Star you wear as your emblem, to guide and represent your sisters, in all things and in all ways Sigma Alpha Xi.”

The three of them gazed at me expectantly. Was I supposed to say Amen? So say we all? Then I realized Kirby was holding out the candle. I was supposed to accept it.

When I’d insisted to Justin that the only way for me to get to the bottom of the Sigmas’ power was from the inside, this wasn’t what I had in mind. Yet as I looked around the circle, at their studying expressions, I realized it was a test of faith.

Of course it was. But not between me and the Sigmas.

Here I go again
—stepping off the ledge, trusting everything to turn out right. I reached out and took the candle, and accepted all things Sigma.

Amen.

When the alarm pierced my sleep on Monday morning, I hit the snooze button and rolled over, pulling the covers over my head. The erased feeling was worse than ever. Instead of a neatly excised spot in my psyche, there was a raw,
torn hole where a dream should have been. When I took stock of the situation, I tried to look on the bright side. At least now I
knew
I was blundering around in a fog.

The second alarm went off, and I went to the shower and soaked my head under the hottest water I could stand. After I’d come home from pledge meeting, I finished my column—Victoria was not going to be happy about my writing that our alumni mixer looked like an episode of
Desperate Housewives—
and tried to figure out why it disturbed me that Brittany had been kicked out of the sorority. She was annoying but harmless, and she really bought into the whole Greek thing.

So why get rid of her, other than to clear the way for a more favored candidate? Was it that she was bossy? Or because she was disobedient? Maybe all these inane tasks and absurd rules were really a test not of commitment or “sisterhood,” but obedience.

Mulling it over, I dressed in jeans and a purple sweater, dried my hair, and put on some lip gloss. When I was done, I still had no answers, and all the good the hot shower had done in clearing my head was wasted.

Muddled and fuzzy again, I grabbed my books and my satchel and left for my first class of the day—journalism with Dr. Hardcastle. I felt the need for industrial-strength caffeine, and swung by the campus Starbucks for a latte, then hurried to the arts building through the morning chill.

As I walked, the fuzziness fell away, replaced by a vague unease. It couldn’t be the three espresso shots making me jumpy—I’d only had time to drink down two of them at most.

By the time I reached the classroom, I felt wound like a
clock. And when Professor Hardcastle came in and pointed to me, I wasn’t really surprised.

“You. Quinn. Go over to the journalism lab. Take your books and do whatever Mike tells you.”

I didn’t ask any questions, just grabbed my stuff and went, dropping the remains of my latte into the trash can by the stairs. I had adrenaline to carry me to the fourth floor and down the hall at a double-time pace.

The air seemed to thicken as I neared the lab. With a hand on the doorframe I swung into the room, where the staff worked in hushed voices. Weaving through all that anxious industry, I went to Cole’s office and found Mike sorting through files.

“What’s going on?”

“Cole didn’t show up this morning.” Mike ran his hands over his cropped black hair. “He’s not answering his phone or e-mail, and none of the stuff he usually has waiting on Mondays is here.”

I edged past the assistant editor and sat in the chair, logging on to the computer with Cole’s pass code, which he’d given me to use after Hardcastle griped that a freshman was spending too many hours in the lab. “He last accessed this file—tomorrow’s edition—on Friday. Will that help you?”

“It’s better than starting from scratch. Can you put it on the public server?”

I moved the file then jotted down the pass code in case he needed it again. “Has anyone gone to Cole’s place to check on him?”

“I was planning to, once I got things going here.” He looked at me as if the idea were his own. “Could you do it?”

Try and stop me. “Where does he live?”

Mike gave me directions to an off-campus apartment and I headed there with dread eating at my insides. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he and Devon had gone away again, and had car trouble getting back. Maybe they eloped. But my heart banged against my ribs the same way I banged on the apartment door.

“Cole!” I shouted through the window and rapped on the glass. Just as I’d decided to get the manager or call the police, the door swung open.

“What?” he growled, squinting at the sunlight. He was almost unrecognizable, with several days’ growth of beard and cadaverous shadows under his bloodshot eyes. On Thursday he’d appeared fine, but now, only four days later, he looked as if he’d spent a month in a cave.

I swallowed my shock. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

His gaze was feverish, glazed. “What do you want?”

“You didn’t show up this morning. I was worried about you.”

“I’m working.” He left the door open and retreated into his apartment. When I followed, he said absently, “Don’t step on any pages. They’re in order.”

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.

T
he 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.