Prom Dates from Hell (14 page)

“Yeah.” I held up my hand, knuckles out. “But look! I got in a punch, at least.”

“Good for you.” I couldn’t interpret his tension, but I thought it might be that he was trying hard to restrain old-fashioned protectiveness. He confirmed my hunch when he asked, as if he couldn’t help himself, “But you’re all right? Your voice still sounds awful. I can’t believe you didn’t mention the almost dying part last night.”

“I didn’t almost die.” I refused to believe anything different. “Do you think she was really possessed? I mean, her head didn’t spin around or anything, but it was freaky.”

“Possession is a term with a lot of baggage. Let’s say, ‘Overshadowed.’”

I shivered. I’d started thinking about the whatever-it-was as the Shadow, with a capital S. The word fit. “I’m cool with less implied
Exorcist
in my life.”

Justin tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the steering wheel. “I wonder why the Minor one and not the leader? Or one of the boys, who might have easily done real damage to you?”

I shrugged and reached for the door handle. “Weak-minded but mean. She was the perfect hostess.”

17

t
he Earth Science Building was limestone and granite, surrounded by a green lawn, spreading oaks, and tall pines. Bedivere University nestled just north of the center of town, an old, relatively small private school. A strong emphasis on arts and humanities doubtless accounted for the low enrollment. A shiny new science building was in the planning stages, but I would miss the cozy anachronism of the present one.

The chemistry lab lay on the second floor, up the stone steps and through a rabbit warren of plaster and paneled hallways. We found the room and peered in. It wasn’t much different from the high school–rows of slate-topped lab benches, each with a sink and a gas spigot. (I’ll bet the college kids were allowed to use theirs, though.) It was bigger, and had more equipment along one wall, as well as a computer workstation where a woman typed diligently.

“Dr. Smyth?”

She looked up. “Miss Quinn?”

“Maggie,” I confirmed. “This is my friend, Justin MacCallum.”

The professor was about my mom’s age, with some of the same no-nonsense demeanor. Dr. Smyth had flaming red hair and a wildly curving figure not really hidden by her lab coat. She picked up a piece of paper and gestured us over, her expression serious. “Before we begin, I have to ask. Did Professor Blackthorne put you up to this?”

I blinked in surprise. “No ma’am. I asked him for help.”

Dr. Smyth subjected me to an exaggerated scrutiny, then clicked her tongue and nodded. “All right then.” She laid the paper on a meticulously neat lab bench. “What you have here, Miss Quinn, is a rather fragrant potpourri of organic compounds, amino acids, and a few minerals.”

I scanned the list, as indecipherable as the foreign symbols in my dream. A couple of the suffixes rang a bell, though. “Ethanethiol and methanethiol? Those wouldn’t be, ah, putrescine and cadaverine, would they?”

“No. Those are from the sulfhydryl group.” Dr. Smyth sounded a little pissed, so I tried to prove I wasn’t an idiot wasting her time.

“Dr. Blackthorne mentioned the thiols. Rotten egg smell.”

“Yes. And swamp gas and cabbage. Skunk odor, too. Down here—” She pointed to two lines on the printout I wasn’t even going to try to read, let alone pronounce. “Those are the two smelly little buggers that cost me a steak dinner.”

“You bet a steak dinner on putrescine and cadaverine?”

“What would you have bet?” she asked curiously.

“That I might never eat meat again.”

Justin had been reading over my shoulder. “I’m guessing those names are fairly descriptive?”

“Oh yes.” Dr. Smyth explained with relish. “Both are released by the breakdown of amino acids during the putrefaction of animal tissue. In small amounts, they are present in living flesh as well, but we only notice them when things die and start to rot.”

“Nice,” I said, ready to move along. “Sulfur, sulfuric acid…”

Justin took the sheet from my hands. “That’s green vitriol. It was a standard ingredient in alchemy formulas.”

“Exactly,” said the professor. “You see why I thought Silas might be pulling my leg. Especially with this one.” She pointed to the list. “
Artemisia arborescens L.
Tree wormwood.”

“Wormwood?” I asked. “Where have I heard of that before?”

“You may have heard of absinthe.”

“There’s a biblical reference, too,” Justin added. “And C. S. Lewis used it as a name for a junior demon in
The Screwtape Letters
.”

That all sounded familiar. “Isn’t it a poison?”

Dr. Smyth shook her head. “Not this variety. It comes from the Middle East, and was brewed into a medicinal tea.”

Justin spoke thoughtfully. “In Russian folklore, the literal translation for the plant is ‘bitter truth’ and it’s associated with a spell to open the eyes of deluded people.”

Dr. Smyth gave him an odd look and I explained, “His thesis.” She nodded like this clarified everything. Maybe to another academic, it did.

I took the list back. “What’s
Cinchona officinalis
?”

“That’s where your fluorescence comes from. Quinine.”

“Quinine?” Boy, which one of these was not like the others. “Like, for preventing malaria?”

“Yes. It’s another organic compound. It binds to the blood cells so tightly that the malarial parasite cannot.”

My mind was spinning, drawing a strange sort of picture. I flipped over the printout and sketched a flat, vaguely bowl-like shape. “Let’s say I’m an alchemist.”

“Okay,” said Dr. Smyth, in a humoring-the-nutcase sort of voice. “Why are we saying that?”

What could I say that wouldn’t get us tossed out of her lab so fast we bounced? She already suspected that Professor Blackthorne had set her up. I glanced at Justin, but he was no help. My next accomplice was going to be a much better liar.

“I’m working on a project.” Dr. Smyth continued to gaze at me, bemused. “A creative writing project,” I said with sudden inspiration.

The corner of her mouth lifted. I still got the feeling she was humoring me, but she said, “Okay, I’ll bite.” She leaned her elbows on the lab bench and looked at my drawing. “Is that your cauldron, then?”

“It’s more of a brazier. For a fire, you know?”

“What is it made out of?”

“Does it matter?”

“Certain metals may be reactive with your potion.” She seemed intrigued now. My dad was the same way, a sucker for an intellectual discussion, no matter how off the wall. “I assume that’s where this exercise is headed.”

I took up the gauntlet. “Say I start a fire, then add sulfur, which burns blue, right?”

“Yes.” Dr. Smyth gave me a quizzical look. “But what purpose does it serve? It can’t be just for aesthetics.”

I considered the question. Professor Blackthorne is my favorite teacher, but chemistry is not my strongest subject. “Fire supplies the energy for the chemical reaction, right? What if the sulfur—or brimstone, since we’re thinking like alchemists—is meant to evoke the energy of the earth?”

“Or of Hell,” Justin added. I frowned at him, but he didn’t back down.

Dr. Smyth nodded. “Right.” She wrote “Fire and Brimstone” on the sketch and then, “Energy source.” “If we allow for supernatural in your plot, then we allow for Hell.”

“Can’t we leave that out of the equation for the moment?” I could rationalize alchemy. It was, in its way, a science. “‘Hell’ sounds so melodramatic.”

“Let’s say the power of the underworld for now,” said Dr. Smyth, writing it in parenthesis. “That covers the physical and spiritual possibilities. Now, what are we trying to accomplish with our spell?”

Their eyes went to me expectantly. I had been chewing on the idea for a while, but it was a struggle to voice. Talk about melodrama. “A curse. We’re trying to curse someone.”

Justin held my gaze for a silent moment. It was the first time I had acknowledged out loud that this wasn’t a random spirit or undirected supernatural event. The thought that someone could have meant to kill or injure Karen or Jeff was an uncomfortable one.

“Excellent!” The professor continued with a brisk enthusiasm that drew me back to humor. We bent over the table to watch her scribble notes. “Wormwood—the bitter truth. We want to teach the cursee a lesson. The quinine…”

“It binds to the blood,” I said. “Binds the curse to the victim.” A thought distracted me: Or binds the servant spirit to the summoner.

Dr. Smyth continued. “Right. Putrescine and cadaverine. Well, those are harder.”

“Not really,” said Justin. “Eye of newt, toe of frog. Or whatever else is handy.”

Dr. Smyth looked at him. “But why? Literary tradition? If the character goes to the trouble of putting this formula together, everything must have a purpose.”

“A burnt offering,” he suggested.

“Toe of frog?” she scoffed. “Not much of a sacrifice.”

I straightened. “Decay is a kind of breaking down. Maybe we’re trying to break down our victim, reduce him.”

Dr. Smyth tapped the pen. “Seems a bit of a stretch metaphorically.”

“So is ‘bitter truth,’” I protested.

“That has a folklore precedent. But then, so does eye of newt and toe of frog.” She jotted down “newt & frog.” “But of course, it’s your story, so you can write it any way you want.”

Didn’t I wish.

She and Justin squabbled amiably over what icky rotting things could be added, for what metaphorical or alchemical purpose. To Dr. Smyth it was an academic exercise, an amusement, and for a little while, listening to them, I let myself think of it that way, too.

But I realized what she didn’t. The organic compounds, the nasty ones, didn’t have to be part of the formula. They could be intrinsic to the thing that the spell had called.

I thanked Dr. Smyth again as we left. “I appreciate all your help.” We stood at the door of her office and I had the printout, with all our notes on it, folded in my hand.

“Not at all,” she said. “I enjoy an esoteric puzzle, now and again. Good luck with the project.” It took me a blank moment to realize she meant my very fictional fiction assignment. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her lab coat and continued. “The main thing to remember is that the supernatural has rules, just like the natural world. You simply have to figure out what they are.”

“Right. Well. Thanks again.”

We turned to go, but her voice called me back before we’d gone more than a few steps. “Maggie?”

“Yes, Professor?”

“I’m still curious. This substance that seems to have inspired your story. You never said where you came across it.”

“The school gym,” I said, because I was out of lies.

“Hmm.” Her expression was doubtful, but she let it go. “Well, that would definitely convince me to wear flip-flops in the shower.”

18

“y
ou’re quiet,” Justin said once we were in the car.

“I’m trying to banish the mental image of Drs. Smyth and Blackthorne playing McGonagal and Snape in their off-duty hours.”

He chuckled. “I’d like to meet Professor Blackthorne someday.”

“He’s a trip. I wish he taught English.”

“It probably wouldn’t be the same.”

“It would have to be better than what I’ve got. Ms. Vincent has no sense of humor.”

“I’ll bet that’s hard on you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that you sort of live and die by the wisecrack.”

I wondered if that was a good or bad thing in his eyes, and how much it mattered to me. “I like to keep my tongue honed to a sharp edge. I never know when I’ll need it in a fight.”

He navigated the left turn onto Beltline before he spoke again. “Want to get some lunch?”

“Don’t you have to study?”

“I have to eat, too.” Taking my silence for assent, he pulled into one of the restaurants on the strip. The Cadillac Grill had been a diner in the fifties. Back when
Grease
and
American Graffiti
were hot, someone had refurbished the building to all its
Rock Around the Clock
glory. Kitschy, but the food was good. We got one of the last tables without a wait.

I ordered a Coke, a cheeseburger, and fries without looking at the menu. Justin had iced tea and the chicken finger basket.

“Did they have chicken fingers back in the fifties?” I asked. “And what kind of name is that for food? Chickens don’t have fingers and if they did, I wouldn’t want to eat them.”

His brows screwed up in the center. “I’m not really supposed to answer when you do that, am I?”

“No. I’m just showing you how clever I am.”

“By mocking my food? Not very.”

The waitress brought our drinks; I took a deep gulp of mine, and settled back in the vinyl seat. “So. What’s your deal? You know practically everything about me, and I know almost nothing about you.”

He clearly couldn’t decide whether to be amused or not. “What do you want to know?”

I started with, “How long have you been at Bedivere?”

After a sip of his iced tea, he answered, “I transferred here last fall. I’m finishing my bachelor’s and taking some grad-level courses.”

“Are you in a big hurry to tackle that ivory tower?”

He smiled sheepishly. “There’s a graduate internship I want to do this summer, and I had to have some preliminary courses to apply.”

“Why Anthropology of the Bizarre? I mean, that wasn’t something they really talked up at
our
Career Day.”

An odd reserve entered his expression. “It’s a long story.”

I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I hear the service here is slow.”

He seemed to be considering things on some deep level, and I realized this was not something I could tease him about. But before he could tell me—or not—I heard my name.

“Maggie?” Instinctively, I turned.

“Oh hi, Jennifer.” Great. The town crier, here at my table. “What are you doing here?” Besides spying on people.

“Eating, same as you.” She addressed me, but her avidly curious gaze was on my tablemate. “Having a nice time?”

“Yes.” I gave in to the inevitable. “Jennifer, this is Justin. Jennifer and I work on the school paper together.”

“Nice to meet you.” He smiled amiably.

“Same here.” She beamed back, her shining brown curls falling over her shoulder as she turned her head. I couldn’t decide if she had assumed he was my date, or assumed he wasn’t, or which notion annoyed me more.

I shoved an unruly chunk of my own hair behind my ear. “So what’s up?” I intended only distraction. I didn’t expect her to pull up a chair and make herself comfortable, but that’s what she did.

“I had to come tell you what I just heard, since we were talking about her the other day.”

“Who?” A lot had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

“Jess Michaels. She was arrested for shoplifting a D&B bag.”

Justin glanced at me curiously, and I mouthed “Minor” to clarify. I couldn’t help him out with “D and B” though. I assumed it was a designer, and expensive. “But I thought she had money.”

“
Everyone
thought so. As it turns out, her mother has the moolah, and she buys Jess stuff on her custody visits. But her dad can’t afford the newest Prada, I guess, so she took a five-finger discount.”

My mind circled back to the day I’d played tabloid reporter in the bathroom. “With Jessica Prime telling everyone her clothes were fakes, maybe she felt she had to have something new to save face.”

“I know. But here’s the thing.” Jennifer leaned in close, as if revealing a secret. “I saw her wearing that blue Ralph Lauren sweater in September, and I swear it was the real label. But when I saw her yesterday, it was such an obvious copy I couldn’t believe I’d ever been fooled.”

“How strange.” I spoke noncommittally, disinterested.

“Maybe Jess had to sell her good clothes,” she mused, “and bought cheap replacements so no one would know.”

“That’s one explanation.” A perfectly
un
natural alternative occurred to me, but why would a phantom care about fashion? “But that’s just speculation, Jennifer,” I cautioned. “I wouldn’t spread it around.”

She pantomimed locking her lips, but I didn’t feel reassured. “I’ll get back to my friends. Just had to say hi! Nice to meet you, Justin.”

She fluttered off while the server put our lunch on the table. I sagged back in the booth, smacking the lump on my head on the wall behind me. “Ow. What just happened?”

“You were hypothesizing.” Justin kept his voice neutral. “In unwise company.”

“Just say it.” I sat up and began to take the lettuce, tomato, and onion off my burger. “I was gossiping.”

“I didn’t know you were interested in fashion.” He tested a poultry digit and found it too hot to handle.

“I’m not.” I picked at my burger a moment longer. “It occurred to me this morning that all these people are losing what’s most important to them. Image is extremely important to Jess Minor. She’s always trying to keep up with the others. Losing status is the worst thing that could happen to her. Maybe there’s some kind of illusion on her stuff.”

He chewed a french fry thoughtfully. “That’s why you suggested the chemistry experiment might be a curse.”

I nodded. “I think that’s why the Shadow leaves behind that stuff. If the—recipe, spell, whatever—creates it…”

“Or summons it,” he said, ignoring his food now.

I didn’t much like where that thought was headed, but a good journalist stays open-minded. “Or summons it,” I allowed.

“So the question remains, what
is
the Shadow.”

“Some kind of agent,” I hypothesized, “fulfilling the curse. Like a messenger spirit.”

Justin caught my gaze. “Like a demon, you mean.”

“Well, I was trying to avoid that word.” Especially in a crowded restaurant.

“Why can you say ‘ghost’ or ‘spirit’ without flinching, but not ‘demon’?”

Good question. I tucked my hair behind my ears. “I don’t know. Too many of those melodramatic connotations. Horns and pitchforks and things.”

Leaning his elbows on the table, he gave me a long look. “That’s a relatively modern, Western caricature, and not what I’m talking about at all.”

“I know.” I shook my head. “But I have to wrap my brain around this in stages.”

The one thing I knew was this: If I was right, and someone had summoned some
thing
to bring down the Jocks and Jessicas, then regardless of the source, of the justness of the targets, the intent was Evil. With a capital E.

Justin looked like he might press the issue, but after a moment he let out his breath and reached for a chicken finger. “All right. Let’s get back to Jessica Minor’s shoplifting arrest. Do you think she might still be overshadowed?”

“No. I think that, robbed of what she valued, she’d do anything to try and recapture it.” I picked up my burger. “Besides, I broke the connection, remember.”

“You didn’t finish telling me. How’d you do that?” he asked the instant my mouth was crammed with food. I tried to chew with undignified haste, then just picked up the saltshaker and mimed throwing it on him. He fell back against the bench, staring at me in surprised joy. “You mean it actually worked?”

My eyes bugged out of my head. I swallowed the much-too-big mouthful of burger and choked out, “What do you mean ‘it actually worked’? You didn’t
know
it was going to work?”

“Well, on paper, sure. But…” My outrage popped his bubble of satisfaction. “What? Everything I’d read said it should work as well as anything I could have given you.”

“Everything you’ve
read
?” The sorority girls at the next table turned to see what I was squawking about. I lowered my voice, leaning against the table. “You mean you’ve never actually dealt with anything like this before?”

“Not personally, no.”

“I trusted you!” My throat squeezed out the words, trying to be quiet. “I thought you knew what you were doing.”

He threw the chicken finger into the basket. “It isn’t as if I made this stuff up. It may be secondhand knowledge, but at least I’m not basing it on Bill Murray movies.”

“That was just a starting place!” Indignant, I forgot about whispering. “I have been as logical and methodical as I can, under some pretty extraordinary circumstances.”

He waved a hand in frustration. “You’re trying to force this thing to fit in a real-world box, but you won’t even fully admit it exists.”

The truth that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. “At least I admit I don’t know what I’m dealing with.”

His eyes hardened to chips of stone. “At least I’m willing to commit to my hypothesis without closing my mind to the more unpleasant possibilities.”

That stung. “Closed” and “minded” were fighting words for me, and I struck back below the belt. “Yeah, but you tested your hypothesis on me. Some paladin you are.”

The angry color ran out of his face. I felt a prick of guilt for smacking him right in the self-image, for knowing how to hurt him and using it. But I was still too mad to take it back, even if I knew how. So I dropped my gaze and climbed out of the booth, digging into my pocket to pay for my burger. “I told you when we met, I didn’t want to be your research project.”

“Maggie, sit down.”

“No. I’m too angry to eat.”

“Then put your money away.” He leaned on one hip to pull out his wallet. The waitress appeared as if conjured, like a pert blond genie from the lamp.

“Is there a problem?”

“We’re going to need some to-go boxes.” He handed her a twenty and she vanished before I could give her the wadded up bills for my half of the meal. Furious at being treated like an invisible child, I shoved them in Justin’s direction. “Here. This should cover me.”

“Stop being such a brat, and sit down.”

That was the final straw. My face flamed with hurt anger, and rather than prove him right by bursting into a tantrum, or tears, or both, I turned and left.

“Have a nice day!” said the poodle-skirted hostess as I made a beeline for the door. I knew they made her say that, so I didn’t tell her
exactly
what kind of day I was having.

Justin caught up with me in the parking lot. He didn’t have the to-go boxes. “Don’t even think about walking home.”

How had I ever thought he was Mr. Nice Guy? “It’s not that far.”

“With everything that’s happened around you? Across the street is too far.”

“That’s not your problem.” I waved him off. “I absolve you of responsibility.”

He clenched his jaw and ground out between his teeth, “I’ll see you back safely.” End of discussion. I ached to tell him he wasn’t the boss of me, but didn’t want to be called a brat again.

I stomped to the car instead, fumed while he unlocked the door, then huffed into the bucket seat. Justin went to his side, but paused for several calming breaths before he climbed behind the wheel.

He drove with tense deliberation while I sulked. The urge to scream or explode had evaporated; that only left the threat of tears. “Why don’t you just say it?”

He kept his eyes on the road. “Say what?”

“Whatever is making that muscle in your jaw twitch.”

“Because I’m focusing my anger on getting to your house in one piece so I can dump your ungrateful”—He struggled a moment, then settled on—“backside, and be done.”

I folded my arms. “Oh, just say ‘ass.’ The world won’t end if you’re rude. My universe would have imploded a long time ago if rudeness were fatal.”

He turned off of Beltline and onto a smaller, safer street. “Really? I thought you were making an exception for me.”

I twisted to face him. “I thought you had experience with this stuff. I trusted you.”

“I never said that, Maggie. Sure I have a broader base of knowledge than you—though that’s not saying much. I’ve done research and interviews and studies. But it’s not like there’s some kind of paranormal lab practical.”

Unreasonably I clung to the idea that it
was
his fault for projecting such confidence that, desperate to believe someone was equipped to deal with the supernatural, I’d given him more credit than he claimed.

He turned onto the residential road that led to my house. “Why are we even arguing about this? It worked, didn’t it?”

“It might not have.” Now I was just being stubborn.

“But it did!” Finally he was raising his voice.

“But you should have
told
me it might not work.”

Another turn, onto my street. “Half of the power of a talisman is the belief that it will work.”

“Like Dumbo and his stupid magic feather?”

“Yeah.” He pulled into the driveway and stopped so abruptly that my seatbelt jerked me backward. “Exactly like Dumbo.”

He unbuckled and got out of the car. I scrambled out after him. What kind of guy walks a girl to the door even in the middle of an argument? “What does
that
mean?”

“That for a smart girl you’re acting pretty dumb, fighting over technicalities.” He faced me, arms folded across his chest. “You need me. Who else is going to believe you, let alone help you?”