But Devon’s room was empty.
Not just vacant. Unoccupied. Her bed was stripped, her walls naked. Her closet and bookshelves, bare. The seaside mural was the only evidence that she’d ever been there at all.
I stood in the doorway and cursed—mostly myself, for not coming back last night. Then I turned to go, and found
Kirby standing in the hall behind me. “Looking for Devon?” she asked, arms folded. “Yes.” I kept my hands at my sides and my cloaking de
vice set on harmless. “I was worried about her.” “Don’t be.” She reached around me and pulled the door
shut. “She decided to go home.” “But there are only two weeks left in the semester.” “She’s devastated, as you can imagine, and she wanted to
be with her family.” Kirby looked me in the eye, and I felt a
Juliana-esque chill, slight but distinct. That was new. “Was there anything else you wanted to know, Maggie?” The way she phrased the question said I’d reached the
bounds of justifiable curiosity, at least in the Kirby camp. “No, ma’am. Thank you.” I left the house and headed for the Jeep, unsure what to
do next. Journalism class was one option, but Hardcastle was hard to listen to even when I wasn’t distracted by life-and-death matters.
Journalism made me think of the Report, which reminded me of another inspired guy I’d talked to yesterday. It was a long shot, but I felt better about those since de-spelling myself. Grabbing my cell phone, I scrolled through my recent calls and found the number I wanted.
He picked up on the fourth ring. “Mmph.” “Troy Davis? This is Maggie Quinn from the Ranger
Report.” “Wha?” A fumbling clatter. “What time is it?” “I have one quick question. Do you know any Sigma
Alpha Xis?”
“Whaaa?” Still barely coherent. “None of them would have anything to do with me.”
“What about a blond girl. Short hair, pointed chin. Bossy.”
“Oh, her. Legally Blonde Girl. Yeah.” He sounded more sleepy than lascivious. “We just, like, hooked up last Thursday at a club, you know?”
“Thanks.” I hung up and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Cole had writer’s block when he and Devon were on a break. Troy the trainer had a great idea after hooking up with Brittany—who had said she liked football guys.
I was just closing my mental fingers around the next variable of that equation when the phone rang.
Justin spoke as soon as I answered. “I think I’ve found something.” His voice rang with excitement, and my heart sank.
“Are you okay?” I asked. We’d only made out. How badly could he be affected?
He kind of laughed at the question, which was both reassuring and not. “Where are you? Do you have class?”
“Why?”
“Let’s meet at your gran’s place. I think she can help.”
“Gran?”
“Wake up, Maggie. Let’s get to work.”
He hung up without once saying the word careful. Now I was really worried.
FFF
Gran was not only up and finished with her treadmill time, but she also had a pot of tea steeping, with three cups set out, when Justin and I arrived.
She poured as she listened to Justin’s question, then sat back and looked at us. Him. Then me. Then back to him. I could feel myself blushing all the way to the tips of my ears.
It didn’t help that he looked as though he hadn’t slept at all. Not scary bad—who hadn’t pulled an all-nighter once or twice? But still.
Finally, Gran took the spiral notebook he’d brought and peered at the handwritten entry. “Liannan Sidhe.” Then she studied us again, her eyes narrowing. “How did this come up in conversation, then?”
“Hypothetically,” I assured her. “We just need to know more about it.”
She made a doubtful face. “I never told you about the Liannan Sidhe?”
“No.” She’d told me the Sidhe—“shee,” she said, slurring the sh—were Irish fairies who lived under hills and danced in fairy circles that trapped the unwary. There were the Dannan Sidhe, the bright folk, and the Bain Sidhe, who, if you saw one, you were basically screwed. But I’d never heard of this variety.
She poured a mug of tea, added sugar, stirred it. Obviously trying to kill me with impatience.
“Liannan Sidhe are female fairies who inspire creativity in human men who they . . . Well, let’s say love.”
Granspeak for hooking up, I guess.
“So, it’s like a muse,” I said, remembering Devon’s word.
“To a fearsome degree.” She sipped her tea. “The inspiration of genius, but it burns the man out like a candle while the Sidhe feeds on that creative energy.”
“Why couldn’t you have told me about that when I was a kid?”
“Well, I didn’t want to scare you out of being creative. Besides.” She cleared her throat delicately and glanced at Justin. “There’s the sexual component.”
He blushed, and discovered something very interesting on the ceiling. I tried to keep my own mind on the line of inquiry. “So these fairies sleep with men, feed off the creative energy, and then . . .”
“The man usually dies.”
“Dies?” asked Justin, not blushing now.
Gran nodded, and I narrowed my eyes at her. “Are you sure this isn’t a cautionary tale? Don’t go into the woods or the big bad wolf will eat you?”
“I’m only telling you what I heard as a girl.”
“How come all these things that lead men to their deaths are always female? Mermaids drowning sailors, the banshee, this Liannan thing . . .”
Gran took a rather coy sip of her tea. “We are the deadlier of the species, darling.”
Justin laughed, and I gave him the hairy eyeball. “More like the stories were written down by men. When you write your book, you’d better dig up some male tempter to balance things out.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised, still smiling as his eyes met mine.
More blushing, this time from me. Not that it mattered. If the Sigmas really had transformed me somehow, I wasn’t going to be able to get near Justin. Maybe ever. The Sigmas had screwed me over big-time. So to speak.
“Why do you need to know this?” Gran had gone back to staring, now with twenty percent more suspicion.
“Research project.” Justin lied without a blink. It
seemed I’d contaminated him. Gran knew whom to blame. “Magdalena Quinn . . .” I decided it was time to get out of there. “Gotta run.
Journalism class. Hardcastle would love an excuse to throw
me off the paper.” Justin grabbed his notebook. “Thanks, Granny Quinn.” She caught his hand before he could go. “You, go home
and sleep at least four hours. And no more fooling around
with Maggie until she fixes whatever is wrong with her.” “Gran!” “Yes, ma’am,” he said without hesitation. She let him go, and we headed out to the driveway. I
couldn’t look at him; I might combust with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” I said when we reached the Jeep. “I’m not.” “You would have been if I’d killed you.” “Maybe.” I shot a look up at him; he was smiling slightly, in a way
that nearly had me blushing again. “It’s not funny.”
“No. It’s really not.” He opened the Jeep’s door for me, but his grasp on it was tight, as if he was holding on as much for support as for courtesy.
I stared at his white knuckles, and let the thought catch up with me, the personal repercussions of all this. The Sigmas had done something to me. And I had done something to Justin.
“Hey.” His voice drew my eyes up to meet his reassuring gaze. “I’m all right, Maggie. A nap between classes, and I’ll be good as new.”
My mouth curved in a rueful smile. “How can you always tell what I’m thinking?”
He shrugged. “I’ve always been good at reading people. Especially when I . . . know them pretty well.”
That was interesting for two reasons: (a) “know” had more than one connotation, and (b) he definitely changed the direction of that sentence.
We exchanged good-byes and I started the car, flexing my hands on the steering wheel the same way I gripped my renewed determination. I had to figure this out. There was no other option. Forget the long-term adverse effects of a karmic imbalance on the space-time continuum. Forget that my budding romance was now on ice. If I didn’t fix this, I was going to end my days a dried-up, lovelorn virgin with a houseful of cats.
FFF
“It’s all about sex.”
I’d gone to Dad’s office to confer with Lisa long-distance; it had been the only private place on campus I could think of. Dad was in class, the door was locked, but I still expected lightning to strike me for saying s-e-x while at his desk.
“It’s
Rosemary Clement-Moore - Maggie Quinn 02 - Hell Week Page 20
