Hell Week (29 page)

"Fire," I said. "Get out of here." She blinked in confu- sion, and Justin, who'd come into the circle with me, turned her toward the door and gave her a gentle push.

I let him make sure she got out, and moved to the next girl. Lisa intercepted me, took the pepper for herself, and handed the scissors to Devon. "We'll do this. Get to the middle."

She and Devon got to work; I braced myself and pushed through the remains of the protective outer ring. The full force of the inner circle lashed at me like psychic sleet; I could hear a second chant now, a long, liquid phrase that licked unpleasantly at my ears.

Jenna's voice faltered in surprise when she saw me; Kirby snapped at her, "Keep chanting." The girls were east and west on the compass that was worked into the heart of the spiral, encompassing the pledges. Victoria was south, and to the north, at the altar, was Juliana.

Victoria's eyes were closed in concentration, and Juliana ignored me completely. To interrupt her position or her rhythm would risk breaking the spell.

I tried to remember all of Lisa's contingencies and in- structions. Equal and opposite. Dropping my duffel at the southern end, directly behind Victoria, I took out what I needed. Wooden bowl. Dried herbs. Lighter, which I stuck in my bra to keep handy.

The chanting didn't change; I had no warning before a high heel came down on my hand, pinning me to the floor. Only Victoria Abbott would wear pumps with a toga.

"I wanted you to join us, Maggie." Her gentle disap- pointment was completely at odds with the tasteful two-inch heel digging into my palm. "Why did you have to betray me?"

"Maybe it was after you let Juliana lock me in the closet to die." I spit the words through teeth clenched in pain. "That doesn't establish a whole lot of trust."

I drove my shoulder against her knee, only meaning to unbalance her, but I heard something snap. She collapsed, holding her leg and shrieking in agony.

"Oh God." She writhed and howled, and I stared at her, horrified at what I'd done.

Kirby hit me from behind and my body met parquet with a bone-jarring crack, driving the air from my lungs. She seized my hair and yanked; I grabbed her wrist to stop her from tearing my scalp as she hauled me across the floor, back out through the spiral. I wheezed and squirmed and dug in my heels, desperate that she wouldn't drag me out. If I lost this battle, it would not be in a girl fight.

Fumbling a hand in my bra, I found the lighter. The flame sprang to life, and I hauled myself up by my grip on Kirby's wrist and held the fire to her arm. Flesh sizzled; she dropped me with a shriek of surprised pain and I hit the ground, leaving a hank of hair behind. In a blind rage she kicked at me, but I rolled away and scrabbled back to the bag.

She lunged, her mouth twisted in fury, her fingers raised like claws. I flung a handful of cayenne pepper into her face, and she stumbled back like I'd maced her, screaming and wiping at her eyes.

I rested my hands on my knees, panting for breath, get- ting my bearings. Devon and Lisa were working their way around the circle, snipping cord and waking the girls. While one came out calmly, another came out terrified and sob- bing. Next, I searched for Justin, who was carrying a strug- gling girl toward the door while she beat on him in blind confusion. It was hard to see through the incense smoke, but it looked as though Justin's nose was bleeding, and Lisa might have a black eye. Devon just kept cutting the cord.

"Have you gone crazy?" I looked toward Jenna's voice and found her kneeling beside Victoria. Her mentor lay curled in a ball of pain, and Jenna pulled her head into her lap and yelled at me, as much in fear as anger. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I resumed gathering my supplies. "Don't even go there, Jenna."

Her gaze was stricken, accusing, and honestly hurt. "I thought we were friends." "We are." I was honest, too. "And friends don't let friends make deals with the devil."

"What?"

I ignored her for the moment. In all this chaos, Juliana had never stopped chanting, and the pledges stood like wax figures, transfixed, bound for the transformation.

Dropping the bundle of herbs into the wooden bowl, I flicked the lighter and set them to smoldering. Marjoram and basil, sage and clove. This was the second undoing, the retransformation.

Juliana's incense was the scent of seduction, of per- fumed harems and dark, secret places. It was the perfume of power and wealth, of worldly pleasures.

My incense smelled of Thanksgiving dinner, of home, of protection and family. It was the scent of things bigger than ourselves, of intangible treasures. As the smoke wafted over the inner circle of pledges, I saw them quiver, as if stirring in their sleep.

Lemon oil, to restore and renew. I dripped some into my bowl and blew across the embers. Kaylee and Nikki raised hands to their eyes. Mugwort, smelling of clean, damp earth. The rest of the girls woke up, shaking off the dazed funk the way a dog shakes off water.

The process had reversed. And Juliana knew it. She stopped chanting, slammed the ornate brass censer down on the altar, and glared at me through the smoke. "You, child, are really beginning to piss me off."

"I have that effect on people." I still had to finish one thing, but I couldn't move from my position, south to Juliana's north, and my comrades were still freeing the last of the Sigmas. "Holly!" Putting my trust in her, in the independent spirit under her mother's manicured thumb, I tossed her the vial of lemon oil. She caught it, and I pointed to my forehead. "Put it here. It will cut the last connection--"

"Holly Eleanor Russell!" Juliana snapped in a very ma- ternal voice. "Don't you move."

Holly whipped her eyes back and forth between us, sus- pended on a thread of indecision. Then, squaring her jaw, she turned from her mother and went to Kaylee, dotting the girl's forehead with the oil. Immediate effect. The ballerina- sized brunette started cursing like a sailor and ran for the door.

The rest of the pledges didn't question, just fled as they were released. Jenna ducked as Nikki hurtled over her and Victoria in her haste. Finally, only Holly remained, and she, too, turned to go.

"Freeze!" Juliana's command halted her daughter as if she had rooted to the spot.

The equation, hanging in balance, tipped back to Ju- liana's side. The pledges were free, and the actives were safe. The pattern was scattered, and chaos was as random as it ever had been or would be. All except here, where the inner circle remained.

"Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" Jenna demanded.

"Did you never tell them, Juliana?" I threw it across the circle, keeping her attention on me. "You're a lawyer. Wouldn't lack of full disclosure invalidate the contract?"

"What contract?" demanded Kirby. Her eyes were red and swollen, and they widened as she saw Devon come into the circle of candlelight. Justin and Lisa followed her, rebalancing the pattern: four of them, four of us, and Holly in the middle.

I looked at the woman on the floor beside Jenna. "You didn't tell them, either, Victoria? I thought you cared about these girls."

"I do." Her makeup was streaked and her face contorted with pain, but she managed a veneer of composure. "Juliana found the book and set up the spell. But I was the one who worked it out so that no one had to die, and we could all of us benefit."

"Cole died." Devon shook with rage as she stepped toward Victoria. "Cole died because of what you Sigmas made me."

"No. Because you couldn't follow the rules. Your sisters tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen. Did you think love would conquer all?"

Devon still had the scissors in her hand, clutched like a weapon. Victoria's mocking tone goaded her forward, but Lisa's voice stayed her. "Don't, Devon."

She looked up at her like a lost little girl. "I'm already a killer, so what does it matter?"

Gently, Lisa took the scissors from her. "It matters. Be- lieve me."

"My God." Juliana's voice was all contempt. "Just shut up already. I offer you the world, and all you do is whine."

The grimoire had, through all this, squatted like a living thing on the altar. Now Juliana pulled it closer, and flipped back the sleeves of her robe. "I was tired of sharing anyway. Holly, come here."

The girl moved like an automaton. Her mother didn't glance at her, just turned to a new page in the book. Raising her arms, she started speaking again, a chanting drone of renewed vigor. The flame on the altar lamp jumped and danced, and I felt the power surge from someplace deep and elemental, beyond human reckoning.

Justin had joined me, standing close by my shoulder. "What's going on, Maggie?"

"I don't know." This wasn't in the parameters. The air was turning colder, growing thick. Devon and the Sigmas darted their eyes warily from Juliana to me as Lisa came to my other side.

With a contemptuous disregard for all of us, Juliana lifted the censer. The smell had turned bitter and noxious, like stale ice and refrigerator coolant. Cold rolled out with the smoke, raising goose bumps on my skin. It crept into my bones, along with the realization of what she was doing: calling the thing that lay hidden at the heart of the pattern.

Equal and opposite.

My backup plan was really more of a desperate improvi- sation. I blew across the wooden bowl in my hands, fanning the red embers to tiny flames that fought against the clammy air. Kicking the duffel to Lisa, I said, "Time to pull a rabbit out of your hat, Gandalf. Justin, there's a piece of notebook paper in there. I need you to hold it for me."

The glass on the pictures around the room had started to frost. Devon drew her jacket closed, Jenna and Kirby rubbed their bare arms, and Victoria huddled into herself. Standing beside her mother, Holly's lips were turning blue.

Juliana's voice became harsh, rasping out the sharp, cut- ting words of her chant. Staring across at me, she pulled Holly's arm to her and picked up a bronze dagger from the altar.

"Don't!" I started forward, without a clue how I could stop her. Justin's hand held me in place, kept the balance from tipping even farther.

"She's mine to use," the woman said. "They're all mine."

"You can't own people," I argued. "And Hell can't take them--her--without her consent."

I heard Jenna's indrawn breath, and felt the cold inten- sify in answer to my naming.

"They chose to be what they are, regardless of how they were created." Juliana paused, as if she were listening to in- structions whispered through her soul on an ill wind. When she spoke again, it was with cunning. "But you can trade places with them if you like. You have real power, and I would get a lot of bonus points for you."

"Give me a break, Ice Queen," I said, "do I look like an allegorical lion to you?"

She smirked. "I didn't think so." Without warning, she put the tip of her blade to her daughter's thumb and cut until blood flowed freely. It dripped into the censer and hissed on the embers of incense. The smoke poured out like fog, flow- ing down the altar and across the circle. Frost spread in the wake; it rimed the tablecloth, the floor, and came toward us like a diamond-hard tide.

I held out the bowl toward Lisa and she dropped in nuggets of frankincense and myrrh. The resin caught im- mediately, flared ruby and amber in the rude wooden vessel. "Paper, Justin."

His eye scanned the handwritten page. "Are you out of your mind?" "Look." I used enough bravado to convince both of us. "I don't even want to know what she's summoning over there. So excuse me if I go straight for the big gun."

Jenna dragged Victoria away from the encroaching frost; Devon--after palpable indecision--ran forward and grabbed Kirby, pulling her behind Justin, Lisa, and me--a strange sort of trinity if there ever was one.

Raising the bowl, I breathed across the smoke, sending it out carrying the first words of my own spell.

"Veni Sancti Spiritu."

Come Holy Spirit.

Justin crossed himself, and Lisa whispered, "Amen." 39

The frost slowed, but kept creeping toward us. Juliana gritted her teeth and growled a guttural string of words. She could have been ordering a metaphysical pizza for all I knew. I had just enough Latin to get through my own invocation. Catechism class was finally paying off.

"Veni, Creator Spiritus!"

I said it more strongly now, since the first tentative whisper hadn't called down a bolt of lightning at my audacity.

The infringing ice covered the floor, a sea of frosty white. We stood on a shrinking peninsula, and my bare feet cringed from the burning chill. "Mentes tuorum visita."

Come Creator Spirit. In our souls take Thy rest.

The incense in my bowl glowed, as if fanned by intangi- ble breath.

"Imple superna gratia."

Come with Thy grace and heavenly aid . . .

The frost stopped, inches from my toes.

"Quae tucreasti pectora."

And fill the hearts which Thou hast made.

Holly crumpled, like a puppet whose strings had been snipped. Just as abruptly, the ice retreated, a fast-motion thaw melting the ground for the coming spring.

It converged on Juliana, ran up her robe and over her chest to her bare arms and neck. For a moment she was en- crusted, like spun-sugar candy. Then the frost sank into her skin, and what looked out of her eyes was no longer human.

"Uh, Lisa?" I held the bowl in two shaking hands. "Did she just absorb that . . . whatever . . . into herself?"

"Yeah." She sounded as poleaxed as I felt. "That's unex- pected."

"Why isn't it cancelled out?"

Justin answered. "The blood. You've got to--"

"You bitch." Victoria had gained her feet, lurching on her wretched knee, eyes fixed on Juliana's face. "You're still hogging all the power for yourself. You were never satisfied with an equal share."

Juliana--or what was left of her in there--stared at the other woman with disdain. "Like you would know what to do with it, Vicky. You never did want to go all the way with any- one really powerful." Jenna tried to pull her back, recognizing the danger-- maybe even Seeing it for what it was. "Victoria, please. She's not . . ."