Hell Week (20 page)

The back door slammed, then footsteps rang in the hall. "Holly?" I knew Juliana's voice now. Her telling Victoria to eff off had made a big impression. "The waitstaff said . . ."

She appeared in the doorway to find Holly looking wan, while I mopped her brow and her damp red hair.

"Oh, Holly." Her expression was a mixture of disgust and disdain. "Are you determined to humiliate me? You couldn't be drunk at one of your own parties?"

"What fun would that be?" Holly asked, convincingly inebriated and belligerent.

Juliana eyed me next, and I felt the full weight of it in my stomach. "And you. What have you been up to, Maggie?"

"She's been with me, Mom."

"Holly wasn't feeling very well," I said, lies on top of lies, all smoke screen. "I thought I'd better stay with her." Victoria appeared behind the other woman and took in the scene. "Oh. Holly, really."

Juliana turned her attention to spin control. "Fortunately, Holly had the good sense to take herself out of public view."

The currents of power shifted again, and Victoria now had the upper hand. "Do you realize how serious this is? At the very least, she should be brought up before Standards."

"Oh, really. You want it to come out that a minor got drunk at your house?"

Victoria didn't blink. "She'd nevertheless be out of the sorority."

To my surprise, Juliana backed down. She might have the edge where mojo was concerned, but Victoria had boxed her in. Her eyes flashed at the knowledge, and her mouth went white at the corners, making her look much closer to her real age.

"I won't forget this, Victoria." She turned to go, calling her daughter to heel. "Come on, Holly."

"Can't I just go back to the dorm?"

"Now." In her anger, all semblance of shielding dropped away, and she stood before us, a mass of fury and frustra- tion. Holly rose, jaw jutting but silent, to face her.

I felt a protective spark in my chest, wanting to shield the girl who, screwed up as she was, had helped me. But Vic- toria's tiny head shake silenced me; I would only make things worse for Holly by speaking up for her.

Instead I just offered her a hand up, and steadied her once she was on her feet. "Will you be okay?" I whispered.

"You say that like I've never done this before." She gave me a tipsy salute and trailed after her fuming mother.

When they left, the chapter sponsor folded her arms and leaned against the doorframe, studying me, reminding me I wasn't off the hook yet.

"You two have become rather good friends, haven't you?"

"We hit it off during Rush."

"Her mother expected her to be the head of her pledge class. Holly lacks your ability and ambition, but don't let your friendship bring down your guard."

"No, ma'am."

"Even among wolves, there are alphas and there are betas."

"I understand." In the other room, I'd thrown my purse onto the bed, and it began to buzz in time to my vibrating phone. Had it been thirty minutes already?

"Go ahead." Victoria stepped aside to let me pass.

I answered as soon as I fumbled the cell free from my bag. "Hi, Mom."

"Are you on your way?" Justin's voice brooked no argu- ment.

"Just about. Let me ask." I closed my eyes for the briefest moment, hoping my cloaking device would last just a little longer, then turned to face Victoria. "My mom's not feeling well. Wants to know if I can come home."

"Of course," she said. "You have to take care of your family."

I smiled a humble thank-you and she accepted it with a regal nod. "On my way now," I said into the phone.

"You'd better be," he said, before I closed the phone and picked up my purse.

"Thank you for hosting the party," I told Victoria, falling back on good manners to get me out the door. "I'm happy to do it," she answered, in the same polite tone. "Now, go home and take care of your mother. She's in a delicate condition, after all."

"Thanks," I said again, and made my exit through the back door to where my Jeep was parked down the street.

It wasn't until later that I thought to wonder when I'd told her that Mom was pregnant. 28

Justin lived in an efficiency apartment, part of off-campus housing, not far from Greek Row. I'd never been to his place before. Actually, I'd never been to any guy's apartment be- fore, so I had no idea how his compared.

Mostly, he had books. There was a futon, a milk-crate side table, a large desk with neatly organized work stacked beside a closed laptop, and some cinder-block-and-plank shelves that held CDs, a small TV, and a smaller stereo. But mostly books.

"It's not much," Justin said as he gestured me in. "But make yourself at home." "Sure." Small, but obviously his space. Posters on the wall; a distinctive quilt covering the back of the futon. Two enormous bulletin boards over the desk were filled with notes and pictures of green, wet places and weathered Gaelic faces.

A framed picture on the bookshelf showed a formally posed couple. The man stood behind the woman, his hand on her shoulder, her fingers covering his. They smiled at the camera, but there seemed to be a connection solely between them. They could only be Justin's parents. He looked just like his dad, but he had his mother's friendly brown eyes.

Another photo showed Justin looking about fifteen or sixteen and very gangly, laughing with another boy who had him in a headlock. They wore khakis, oxford shirts, blazers with a crest on the pocket. The other boy was bigger, with shoulders like a linebacker, black hair, and startling blue eyes.

I picked up the picture. Images welled in my head, in- complete and indistinct: classrooms and chapel, rough- housing after school, fights and reconciliation.

"We look like a couple of dorks in those uniforms." I hadn't heard Justin come up behind me. "That's Henry," he said, nodding at the photo.

"The one who almost got kicked out of school with you?"

"Yeah. We'd planned to go to the same college. Man, was I mad at him when he went to seminary instead."

"You don't think he'll make a good priest?"

"It's a little hard to reconcile that with the guy who used to sneak Playboys into our dormitory." He set the photo back on the shelf. "Are you hungry?" My stomach growled at the thought of food. Aside from a few canap�s, I hadn't eaten. "It feels later than nine o'clock."

"I'll order a pizza while you upload the pictures."

He'd brought in my camera case, and I'd had my laptop in the trunk of the Jeep. I set up on the end of his desk and rolled the chair over, careful not to catch the skirt of my dress in the wheels.

Justin hung up with the pizza place and joined me. "Okay. Let's see what you've got."

I opened the pictures on the laptop screen. "This is the incense burner from the pledging ceremony. The lamp was there, too."

Propping one hand on the desk and the other on the back of my chair, he leaned over my shoulder. "Can you zoom in on the symbols?" I did, and he made a thinking noise.

"They look like astrological signs," I said.

"Or alchemical, which borrowed a lot from astrology. Go to the lamp." He leaned in closer to look. "Yeah. Those are definitely hermetic."

"What's that?" I asked, trying not to breathe too deeply, because he smelled so good.

Fortunately--or not--he went to the bookcase and pulled down a hefty tome. "Hermeticism is an occult tradition, based on the writings or teachings of the god Hermes Tris- megistus."

"Like the Greek god Hermes?"

"Sort of. Hermes rolled up with the Egyptian god Thoth. Both were bringers of knowledge to their cultures." He set the book in front of me, pointing to a bunch of symbols that looked like the ones on the chapter's brassware. "Except that the only thing fraternities have to do with real Greeks is their letters." I looked up at him. "So what's this got to do with the Sigma Wicca Phis?"

He flipped a few pages, to a grainy picture of a guy dressed in a strange robe holding a staff of some kind. "Hermetic occultism had a renaissance in the nineteenth century. This guy, Aleister Crowley, formed a group called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Huge influence on twentieth-century mysticism. Their ritual drew from every- body: Kabbalah, hermeticism, Egyptian paganism, alchemy, astrology . . ." He made an "and so on" gesture. "Some people think hermeticism also inspired the Illuminati, Freemasons, groups like that."

"More secret societies," I said, half to myself.

"Right." He scanned the thumbnails of the rest of the pictures, and pointed to one of the book. "What's this?"

"That"--I tried to keep my voice even--"feels like bad news." I clicked and brought the image up front. Foreign words and strange symbols crawled across the screen, and I shuddered.

He leaned closer than before, peering over my shoulder. "Oh my God." Reaching around me, he took over the track- pad and clicked through the first few pages.

"What is it?" I asked, knowing I wouldn't like the answer.

"It's a . . . Well, it looks like a grimoire." I could feel the ten- sion in him, despite his attempt to keep his tone academic.

"A grimoire is like a spell book, right?"

"More or less." He pushed away from the desk, paced a little, came back to look again. "You said this thing was old?"

"Really old. And very creepy."

"Authentic grimoires were written in medieval times as kind of magical primers. Some contain astrological corre- spondences, recipes for mixing medicine, instructions for making talismans . . ."

"That doesn't sound too bad." It was a feeble attempt at hope; I knew it couldn't be that simple.

"Others have instructions for spells and potions, infor- mation on angels and demons, and directions on how to summon them."

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. "Oh."

"Very." He stared back at me, past traumas looming large and dark in our shared history. The air thickened with dreadful possibilities.

Someone pounded on the door. Justin jumped, and so did I, with a girly squeal to make it worse. He gave a shaky laugh, breaking the tension. "Pizza's here."

While he paid the driver, I turned back to the computer screen. I couldn't make anything of the book pages. I recog- nized the Latin, but even the diagrams were esoteric and uninterpretable.

I drummed my fingers on the desk, thinking about ritu- als and artifacts. I tried not to think about summoning demons. But that was like saying "Don't think of a purple elephant." So I thought of a purple elephant, and picked up my phone.

Justin came out of the kitchen with a plate full of more pizza than even I could eat. "Who are you calling?"

"Lisa. We need a witch on our side."

"No." He took the phone from me. "We don't."

I stood, followed his retreat. "Maybe she can figure out what this stuff is supposed to do." "I can figure it out." He held the plate in one hand, and the phone easily out of my reach.

"When?" I set my hands on my hips. "I haven't forgotten about your thesis, and class, and teaching assistant job. You think I have no consideration, but--"

"Would you stop?" He faced me, mirrored my belliger- ence. "I never said you asked anything that I don't want to give. Time, resources . . . driving your getaway car."

"You said you were whipped."

"Well, I'm not. I'm perfectly able to say no to you, Mag- gie." He held up the phone. "As in `No, we are not calling your demon-summoning friend.' "

I folded my arms. "You know what, Justin? Even if you were my boyfriend, I would only take that under advise- ment."

He stared at me for a long moment, at the stubborn set of my chin and the fight in my stance. Then, with a sigh he handed me the cell and the plate of pizza.

"Thank you." I caught his eye, making sure he knew I meant it.

He sat on the single barstool and pulled over the pizza box. "You'd just call her when you got home, so you might as well do it where I can hear."

At the desk, I put the phone on speaker so that I could eat and type while I talked. Lisa answered on the third ring. "Maggie?"

"Hi, Lisa. I need your help with something."

"Fine, thank you," she said pointedly. "And how are you?"

"Are you busy?"

"It's ten o'clock on a Friday night. Why would I be busy?" "Great." I saved the photos and attached them to an e-mail. "I'm sending you some pretty big picture files."

Silence. "Are we ignoring the fact that you haven't re- turned my phone calls for the last two months?"

I felt the blood rush out of my head and pool in my stom- ach. "Two months? It hasn't been that long."

"Yes. It has."

Oh my God. I had a vague memory of Mom telling me she'd called. Once. Was it like the Post-it notes--written then forgotten?

"Lisa . . . something's been going on."

She sighed. Loudly. "Let me go to my computer." I heard the squeak of a chair and the slide and click of a mouse. I took a few bites of pizza while I waited. "What am I looking at?" she asked.

"It's a long story. There's an incense burner, a lamp, and a . . ."

"I know what this is." Another pause, another mouse click. A worried sigh. "Magdalena Quinn. How do you get into these things?"

"So, do you understand it?"

Her voice turned droll. "My Latin is a little rusty to translate on the fly."

"But you could interpret what this is supposed to do?"

This time the pause was loaded. "Why are you asking me to do this? Where's the square?"

"Um, the square is right here," I said without turning around.

A beat of realization. "I'm on speakerphone, aren't I."

Justin called from across the tiny room. "Hello, Lisa." I did glare at him then and picked up the phone, turning off the speaker. "Now it's just you and I."

"Why, Maggie? You said I shouldn't be studying this stuff."

"And you said the whole reason you were doing it was to counter it." I let that rest between us a moment. "Are you going to put your money where your mouth is?"

"Is that what this is? A test?"

"No. It's strategic outsourcing."

That made her laugh, once, and softly. "Okay. It's going to take me a few days. I'm just a dilettante."