Fire (17 page)

Dad moves around on his dark blue leather armchair. It creaks and moans. Mum hates that chair because it looks like an ugly bruise on the smooth white surface of their home.

Rasmus and Lotta are sitting on the sofa next to Ida. Off and on, one of them mechanically gropes around for another handful of popcorn from the bowl that says
POPCORN
on its side.

As usual, Mum is up and about, doing. She can’t bear to stay still and watch.

‘Carina, come back!’ Dad calls after her. ‘You’re missing the whole film!’

‘Coming!’ she shouts from the kitchen.

Rasmus gobbles a handful of popcorn, licks his hand thoroughly and reaches for the bowl again.

‘That’s repulsive,’ Ida says. ‘Dad, did you see what Rasmus did?’

‘Come on, folks. Quiet. Just watch the film.’

Rasmus sticks his tongue out at Ida. It is coated with tiny, sticky popcorn crumbs.

‘I think it’s boring,’ Lotta whines. ‘Nothing is happening.’

‘You only think that because you’re too small to understand,’ Ida sneers.

‘I’m not too small!’

‘No? Then you must be retarded, obviously.’

‘Will you put a lid on it!’ Dad says. ‘For God’s sake, it’s hopeless watching a film with females around. Won’t stop chattering, will they, eh, Rasmus?’

Rasmus looks pleased with himself, smiles and then licks his hand again with his eyes fixed on Ida. Dad doesn’t pay attention, of course.

Mum comes back and sits down. She places an accounts folder on her lap.

‘What’s going on?’ she asks. ‘Have they left Sweden yet?’

‘God, not again,’ Dad groans. ‘Either stay and keep your mind on the film, or stop asking questions about it.’

‘Sorry to trouble you, I’m sure,’ Mum says sourly.

She exchanges a look with Ida and both of them roll their eyes heavenwards.

‘Anyway, nothing’s happened,’ Lotta tells her. ‘The film is crap. They just talk and talk and ride and ride.’

‘You’re not to use that word,’ Mum says and starts leafing through the folder.

Ida suddenly realises that her mouth is dry. The room begins to revolve around her. She feels giddy.

Abruptly, she gets up and hurries to the bathroom.

‘Ida, what’s wrong? Are you unwell?’ Mum calls.

‘Do you have the grotty trots?’ Rasmus shouts and Dad laughs.

Mum protests. Ida barely has time to hear Dad explain that the lad made it sound quite comical, the way he said it.

She closes the door, locks it. Then sinks on to the floor.

The bathroom walls are rotating around her. This is beyond dizziness. It is like being in free fall. Ida presses the palms of her hands against the tiled floor in an attempt to hold on to the real world. But the other one, Matilda, will not leave her in peace.

Ida fights her.

I don’t want to be part of this. I don’t want to be part of this. I don’t want to be part of this.

She tries to draw strength from her anger and her hatred of what is being done to her.

Why should she always be the one who draws the short straw? Always! She was made to tell the truth, first by Anna-Karin in the fairground, and then again, with the truth serum. She was forced to wait alone in the dark when they broke into the principal’s house. And she collapsed in the Lucia procession, in front of the entire school. And she wasn’t allowed to join the others at their secret meetings. Rotten bullies, the lot of them. And why did she have to cope with the toughest, most humiliating of magic powers?

Leave me alone!!!

Glowing fragments dance in front of her eyes. Like sparklers.

Ida has lost. The uninvited guest, the familiar stranger, is forcing entry into her body.

A knock on the door. Dad’s voice speaks to her.

‘Ida, you’re not dying in there, are you? Your mother seems to think so.’

Ida shuts her lips tightly. Will not utter the words of the other.

Then the floor disappears underneath her.

She falls through chaos, hurtling towards a distant surface. She might be crushed against it or it might not exist at all. Her speed is too high. She smells smoke from a fire, feels the grief of the betrayed, feels love turn into hatred and, then, confronted by an inescapable fate, senses the panic of the hunted turn into resignation. And then the scorching heat comes at her, a sea of flames engulfs her and for a brief moment she feels the fire burn off her skin, crack it open and make the flesh beneath sear and bubble.

Ida tries to scream but her open mouth fills with fire.

The last thing she sees is the
Book of Patterns
surrounded by flames.

She smells peppermint quite strongly.

Ida opens her eyes. Her left hand holds a tube of toothpaste and the fingers of her right hand are sticky.

She is standing in front of the bathroom mirror.

Six letters are written on the mirror glass with neon-blue toothpaste.

DANGER.

‘Ida!’ Dad’s voice again and now he sounds anxious. ‘What are you doing in there?’

‘Go to hell!’ she screams.

Ida screams at her father, at the Circle, at Matilda who dragged her into the darkness and the fire, at her entire shitty, awful life.

The morning light filters through the lowered venetian blinds in Nicolaus’s living room. As Ida changes position on her wooden chair, one of the lines of light makes her blue eyes flash. Minoo wonders, not for the first time, and hardly the last, what goes on behind those eyes. Who is Ida really?

‘“Danger”? She couldn’t have been a little bit less
precise
, could she?’ Linnéa says.

‘Are you sure it was Matilda?’ Minoo asks.

Ida nods.

‘I hate that bloody bitch. Why can’t she go for one of you, just for a change?’

‘Come off it,’ Vanessa says. ‘I think she’s more to be pitied than you are.’

Ida snorts.

‘What do you think she tried to tell you?’ Minoo asks.

‘Search me! I know no more than you do. Of course I realise that she had a hard time while she was alive but, honestly, it doesn’t give her the right to invade me all the time! She had another go at me in the dining area, not too long ago but I managed to block her.’

‘You did
what
?’ Linnéa asks.

‘Excuse me, but I didn’t want to go ape in front of the entire school – not again!’

Linnéa groans.

‘All right,’ Minoo interrupts. ‘We know that Nicolaus warned us of “difficult times”. It seems Matilda is fearful, too. But we have no idea where the threat is coming from.’

‘Anyone else who guesses the demons have something to do with it?’ Linnéa says.

‘Perhaps we’d better ask her,’ Vanessa suggests.

‘Who?’ Minoo asks.

‘Matilda. Perhaps we should have a seance.’

Minoo stares at her.

They know already that the dead can contact the living. But the other way round, is it possible? And if it can be done, what will it entail?

Despite the heat, Minoo’s arms are covered in goose pimples.

Rebecka
.

At the start of the summer, she had been convinced that Rebecka and Elias had left this world for good, that they were in the right place, wherever that might be. But what if it were possible to get in touch with them again? Perhaps talk with Rebecka? Just one last time?

It feels like a forbidden thought. But one she can’t leave alone.

‘A seance!’ Ida says. Her voice is shrill. ‘And of course you’ll expect me to volunteer as your ghost magnet?’

‘We haven’t decided anything,’ Minoo says. ‘We don’t even know how to.’

‘And the
Book of Patterns
is no help, as far as we know,’ Anna-Karin points out.

‘But there’s Mona Moonbeam as well,’ Vanessa says. ‘She’ll help, at least for as long as she gets paid.’

‘All right,’ Minoo says again. ‘Ida and Linnéa, you check the book just to make sure. Vanessa, you go to the Crystal Cave.’

‘Why do I have to …?’ Vanessa begins, but falls silent and sighs. ‘Yes, yes. All right.’

‘Anyway, we’re sure about one thing – that we can’t trust the Council,’ Linnéa says. ‘So not one word to the principal about any of this or about what Nicolaus told us.’

‘But Adriana is on our side,’ Vanessa says. ‘Well, sort of.’

‘If there’s one thing that Nicolaus’s story confirms, it’s that we can’t trust any member of the Council.’

Minoo glances at her mobile.

‘We’ve got to go,’ she says.

‘True,’ Vanessa says. ‘We mustn’t miss the autumn term’s first lesson in magic.’

Minoo walks beside Linnéa on the way to Kärrgruvan. The others follow, each on her own.

Since they left Nicolaus’s flat, Linnéa hasn’t said a word. Every so often, Minoo sneaks a look at her profile, with the black fringe, the shoulder-length black hair pulled up in two bunches. Her heavily made-up eyes are hidden behind large sunglasses.

Minoo is often troubled by Linnéa’s harshness and aggression, but she admires her, too. She is the kind of person Minoo would like to count as a friend. Only, their lives are so desperately different. Their talk never flows easily; there is always a watchful undertone.

‘Do you think it can be done?’ Linnéa asks suddenly. ‘Contacting the dead?’

‘I hope so. What I mean is, Matilda is obviously trying to contact us.’

‘What about someone dead who isn’t trying?’

She says this quickly, as if to conceal her feelings.

Minoo understands that she is thinking of Elias. Perhaps of her mother, too? Minoo wonders if Linnéa can even
remember what her mother looked like. How old was Linnéa when her mother died?

‘Don’t know,’ Minoo replies cautiously. ‘Maybe you could ask the book?’

Linnéa doesn’t answer.

They have almost reached Kärrgruvan. Minoo hasn’t been to the fairground since the end of last term. Everything looks the same. The broken fence. The ticket booth, with two planks nailed across the opening. The overgrown hedges. The dance pavilion under its pointy roof, which they can glimpse between the trees.

As they walk through the gate, the sense of an unchanging past grows even stronger. It is almost
too
unchanged. It is as if the abandoned fairground has been preserved in its state of decay. As if the whole place is holding its breath.

The principal waits, standing on the dance floor.

Adriana Lopez is wearing a tight skirt that ends above the knee and a creamy-white silk blouse, as ever buttoned up all the way. There is a patch of sweat on her chest. Minoo can’t think why Adriana doesn’t undo a few buttons. No need for her to hide anything now. They have already seen her scarred skin.

The raven, Adriana’s familiar, caws loudly from its perch up on the roof.

Adriana looks up and waves to them. Her body language is stiffer than usual and her back even straighter.

Minoo and Linnéa step up on to the dance floor and the others join them, one by one.

He buried her somewhere here, Minoo thinks. Her eyes search the grounds. She wishes that they had asked Nicolaus exactly where Matilda’s body has its resting place so that they could mark it out in some way only they would understand. In her honour.

‘Girls, welcome back,’ the principal says when they are all gathered around her.

Her smile is forced.

Minoo and Linnéa exchange glances. Both have observed it. Adriana is nervous.

‘There is something I must tell you,’ she continues, but falls silent when the sound of a car engine comes closer. Heavy tyres crunch over the gravel on the roadway.

A dark green car pulls up just outside the gates.

The engine noise is cut and the driver, a tall man in a suit, climbs out. Then the passenger door opens. Viktor climbs out and slams the car door shut.

Kärrgruvan has been wiped from the collective consciousness in Engelsfors. People can’t find their way here any longer. No one even remembers that it exists.

But now this stranger walks straight in, with Viktor in his wake.

Minoo observes the principal. Her face is blank, like a mask. She is transformed into the Adriana Lopez whom Minoo met a year ago. Back then, Minoo had found it impossible to imagine that Adriana had any emotional life whatsoever.

Adriana watches Viktor and the unknown man as they reach the pavilion.

The stranger is at least forty, Minoo guesses. Could he be Viktor’s father? Only if some kind of genetic miracle had taken place. The man’s skin has an olive tone, his hair is dark and his eyes are brown. Definitely different from pale, ash-blonde, blue-eyed Viktor.

And still they belong together. It shows, somehow.

Minoo tries to catch Viktor’s eye, but he ignores her.

‘Girls,’ Adriana speaks loudly. ‘Let me introduce Alexander and Viktor Ehrenskiöld. They are sent here to represent the Council.’

She steps aside. Minoo notes that Anna-Karin’s face has turned green. She looks as if she is about to faint any minute, or throw up. Or both.

The Council. The authority whose rules Anna-Karin disobeyed throughout last year’s autumn term, despite warnings.

The authority that ordered the sign of Fire to be burned into the principal’s skin to punish her defiance. That allowed the earlier Chosen One to be burned at the stake.

Minoo takes Anna-Karin’s hand. She shudders at the touch at first, then returns it and squeezes Minoo’s hand hard.

Alexander’s gaze slides across their faces. Halts when it reaches Anna-Karin.

‘Anna-Karin Nieminen?’ Alexander Ehrenskiöld asks.

Anna-Karin is past speaking. It is as if she has forgotten how to. Mute, she nods instead.

‘You will be tried in court for your crimes. As of now, and until further notice, you are not allowed to leave Engelsfors and must be available for interrogation. We would have preferred to keep you in custody, but Adriana has persuaded us that you will cooperate.’

His gaze leaves Anna-Karin and she at least dares to breathe again.

‘Until the trial ends, your lessons in magic will be cancelled. The rest of you must also be ready to be interrogated. I will prosecute. Viktor is my assistant—’

‘Excuse me,’ Vanessa interrupts, without a trace of apology in her voice. ‘But this is so out of order. When somebody was trying to murder us, you lot didn’t do anything at all. And now you’re coming up here to take Anna-Karin to court?’