Fire (33 page)

Robin shifts a little to get even closer to Felicia and tries to look protective, even though he’s quite cross-eyed.

‘Oh, come on,’ Ida says. ‘What have I done now?’

‘You
knew
,’ Felicia says and snivels. ‘You
knew
I was in love with Robin and you knew he was in love with me. And you didn’t say. So fuuuuck you.’

‘Erik said that he’d told you that I’d told him that I fancied Felicia,’ Robin gabbles and looks accusingly at her.

Ida twists the silver heart until it becomes warm from her touch. It’s a catastrophe that she should have seen coming and prevented. Stupid sodding Erik.

‘You’re totally false,’ Felicia says. ‘You didn’t want me to go out with Robin, admit it!’

‘Why shouldn’t I want that?’

‘Because you don’t want anyone else to be happy, of course,’ Felicia mumbles and tries to hide a belch behind her hand. ‘Just because you’re engaged to a guy you don’t love.’

Ida feels all the blood rush to her face.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she says. ‘And neither do you, it seems.’

‘Erik has got to be the only one in town who doesn’t know that you’re crazy about Gustaf Åhlander!’

It is as if Felicia has ripped all Ida’s clothes off and left her naked for all the guests to see.

‘Where the fuck have you got that idea from?’ Ida says sharply.

‘As if it wasn’t totally obvious,’ Felicia says and makes her voice sound artificial and squeaky. ‘“Oh, G! G! Please, G, look at meee! May I lick your shoes, pleease G!”’

Ida draws a deep breath. She must not show any emotion. She must not allow herself to be provoked. That would seem to admit that Felicia is right.

‘You’re drunk,’ she says.

‘Piss off, Ida! Go away! Just go away!’

‘You seem to have forgotten that you’re at my home.’

Felicia stares at her with bloodshot eyes.

‘Come on, Robin,’ she says. She tries to stand upright and reaches for the wall of the den. ‘Let’s go to your place.’ She leans against the wall and fixes her eyes on Ida again. ‘Just wait until I tell Julia about this.’

‘You’ve simply misunderstood everything,’ Ida says. ‘We’ll talk about it when you’re sober. I haven’t got the slightest wish to stand here and explain myself to someone as out of it as you are now. Tomorrow you wouldn’t remember a thing I had said anyway.’

Robin and Felicia start staggering across the garden and almost bump into Erik. His eyes look piercingly into Ida’s.

‘What the bloody hell was all that about?’ he hisses and comes closer.

‘Don’t ask me, she’s totally off her head—’

‘I mean, what she said about Gustaf Åhlander,’ Erik interrupts. ‘Are you
in love
with him?’

Ida opens her mouth to reassure Erik that she loves him, only him in the whole world.

But, suddenly, all her energy is gone. She can’t think what to say and can’t think why she should try.

Is it worth trying?

The thought buzzes around in her head like a captive fly against a windowpane.

Is it worth it? Is it worth it? Is it worth it?

‘Are you?’ Erik asks again. ‘Are you in love with him?’

There is a gurgling sound from somewhere in the garden.

Everyone stops what they are doing and listens.

Another gurgling sound, then a drawn-out slurping noise.

The air fills with moisture. It is raining blood.

The drops hit Ida’s hot face, fall on Rasmus and his mates, speckle the guests’ best clothes with red.

The lawn sprinkler is bouncing across the grass, spitting long, fine streams of red fluid. The hose jumps and curls along after it.

The guests scream and run for shelter. Lotta stands stockstill with her eyes tightly shut and howls like a foghorn.

‘Anders! Ida!’ Mum shouts from inside the house.

Ida runs. She flies across the lawn, past the little kids, up the steps to the terrace.

‘Excuse me!’ Ida shouts as she pushes through the crowd that is trying to get into the house. ‘
Excuse me!
’

Mum stands bent over the kitchen sink with her hands clutching the spurting, spitting tap. Strong jets of fluid are spouting between her fingers and shooting into space as large sheets of liquid. In the overhead light Ida sees that the colour isn’t like blood, but a dirty, brownish red.

‘What are we to do?’ a woman screams and Mum starts sobbing.

‘Fuck! The toilet has flooded!’ Dad shouts from somewhere inside the house.

A huge puddle is forming under the dishwasher. From inside the walls, the pipework makes mysterious coughing noises.

Ida takes in the chaotic scene.

Mum’s panic-stricken face. Her fouled dress. The rusty-looking water that is spattered and dribbling down her perfect white walls, ceiling, kitchen cabinets. Dad’s helpless calls from the bathroom.

Ida turns round and sees Åsa. She stands a bit away from everyone else and has pressed herself up against a wall. A big, happy grin lights up her whole face.

And, at that very moment, Ida understands exactly how she feels.

‘Anna-Karin!’ Mum calls from the bathroom. ‘That dreadful water is back! It’s driving me crazy!’

Anna-Karin hurries to her. Mum is bending over the handbasin. Brownish-red water is bubbling up into the basin and then draining away. It leaves a reddish film where it has been. Rust, the local radio station has informed the town.

Almost exactly twenty-four hours have passed since the water supply in Engelsfors was wrecked. Rumour has it that a minor earthquake has disrupted deep aquifers.

‘Maybe it’s because of some aftershock,’ Anna-Karin says.

Mum looks up and meets her eyes in the mirror.

‘Yes, that might be it,’ she says. ‘Are you going out at this hour?’

This is the first time they have talked to each other since the visit to the Positive Engelsfors Centre.

‘I’m sleeping over at Minoo’s,’ Anna-Karin says. She is pleased that it wasn’t her, just for once, who was the first to break the silence.

Mum raises her eyebrows.

‘Erik Falk’s daughter? Well, well. I didn’t know that you were friends with her.’

‘It’s quite a new thing.’

Mum looks down at the handbasin again.

‘Remember now, you mustn’t drink the water,’ she says. ‘It’s easy to forget.’

Her concern unsettles Anna-Karin and she hovers in the doorway, very nearly saying that she’s sorry for what she said last week.

But she knows the kind of thing Mum would say. A sharply accusing
Of course I understand why you said what you said, it can’t be easy to have a mother as useless as me
. Or a bitter
I already know I’m a bad mother so there was no need to tell me
.

‘I’ll remember, promise,’ she says.

Pepper meows and rubs against her trouser-leg on his way towards the litter tray.

‘Bye then, Mum.’

‘Bye-bye, Anna-Karin,’ she says without looking up.

Vanessa weighs the silver crucifix in her hand. It is surprisingly heavy. And
warm
. As if it has been left in the sun.

She can sense the power it emits. Like very, very small but intense vibrations in the air. Like electricity. Or a magnetic field. That kind of thing but still not the same.

She hangs the crucifix on the nail that Linnéa hammered into the wall next to the wooden cross from Mexico. The cross was a gift from Elias. According to Mexican folk beliefs it would protect you against evil. And it’s only too likely that they’ll need all the protection they can get.

Vanessa helped Linnéa to carry all her furniture into the bedroom to give them enough space to conduct the ritual in the living room. Nicolaus’s flat is no longer safe. Maybe Linnéa’s isn’t either, but at least there are no parents or siblings around to disturb them.

The rectangular sheet of mirror glass, just removed from the inside of Linnéa’s wardrobe door, is waiting on the floor. Using black marker-pens, they have drawn circles all over its surface, one for every number between one and ten, one for
every letter in the alphabet and two more circles, one for YES and one for NO.

‘I hope they’ll give us twice as much protection,’ Linnéa says as she comes into the room.

She nods at the crosses.

‘I guess we’ll need it.’

Vanessa looks at her.

‘I thought exactly that, just now. It isn’t as if you were … did you? I mean, I know you’re not always aware of reading my thoughts but you do admit it just happens now and then?’

‘Not this time.’

‘I believe you. We must be thinking along the same lines then,’ Vanessa smiles.

Linnéa glances at her, a strange look.

‘Could be,’ she says.

Vanessa is suddenly very aware of how close Linnéa is to her. The scooped-out neckline of Linnéa’s T-shirt has slipped, leaving her shoulder and collarbone bare. Her skin seems so soft.

Vanessa wonders what it would be like to touch it.

She looks away, afraid that Linnéa will misunderstand the way she is being gazed at. That she’ll think …

Think what? She can’t put this into words and lets the thought go. It makes her nervous.

‘But you will tell me?’ she says instead.

Linnéa looks confused.

‘If you happen to hear what I think,’ Vanessa explains. ‘I’d rather know than not.’

Linnéa nods.

‘I promise.’

The doorbell rings.

‘Honestly, I so don’t want Ida to be in my home,’ Linnéa says.

‘If it’s any comfort to you, I don’t think she wants to be here either.’

Linnéa goes to the door. Inside, she is trembling. She came very close to telling Vanessa how she feels about her.

Far too close.

She takes a deep breath and unlocks the door, hoping that the first arrival won’t be Ida. Her being in the flat will somehow foul it. Linnéa doesn’t even want to think about what Elias would say about Ida being here.

Elias
.

For the thousandth time, she wonders how things would have worked out if he was still alive. If he had been at her side this last year, if they had been through everything together. But thinking like that gets you nowhere.

She opens the door.

Minoo and Anna-Karin.

Linnéa asks them in, feeling odd and uncomfortable. She doesn’t like having anyone in her place. The one exception was on the night of the blood-red moon, when Vanessa came here for the first time. She’d felt so sorry for Vanessa, who’d appeared wearing nothing but a blanket and whose boyfriend was a loser. It’s weird to remember that Vanessa was almost a stranger back then. Wille’s new chick. That was all.

Minoo puts her rucksack down on the floor and starts rooting around inside it. Anna-Karin stands still, her eyes sliding along the walls. Her jaw drops.

‘Pretty,’ Anna-Karin mumbles, unable to take her eyes off a depiction of hell by Hieronymus Bosch.

‘Where are the rest of the ingredients?’ Minoo asks and pulls a folded piece of checked notepaper from her bag.

‘In the kitchen,’ Linnéa says and shows the way.

‘Your flat is really nice,’ Minoo says.

‘It isn’t my flat, it belongs to the social.’

Off and on, she can’t resist pushing the buttons that make Minoo so ill at ease, reminding her of how different their lives are. Linnéa can’t quite work out why she does this. There is no special satisfaction in seeing Minoo’s ears go bright red.

‘The rest of the stuff is here,’ Linnéa says and points at the worktop by the sink, where the saucer with the dug-up nail clippings has been lined up next to the salt cellar, the iron filings, a bowl full of ashes and the ectoplasm jar.

Minoo adds her folded piece of paper.

‘Rebecka and I used to scribble messages to each other during lessons,’ she explains with a glance at Linnéa.

‘I picked one of the postcards Elias sent to me when he was on holiday in Mexico. He hated every second of it. They were staying in one of those all-inclusive hotels where you don’t even leave the grounds. He wrote to me every day.’

They are silent for a while.

‘I’m quite nervous,’ Minoo says.

‘I know. I thought I’d pee myself when we made the truth serum.’

‘But this is something else. Not that what you did wasn’t hard, but what scares me now is that I’m supposed to help draw the circles …’ She stops speaking for a bit and then carries on. ‘Because I don’t know anything about my powers. I could hurt somebody.’

‘I trust you. And the others do, too,’ Linnéa says and hands her a lighter.

Minoo sighs.

‘Do you have two bowls?’ she says. And the doorbell rings.

They exchange a glance.

‘Please, would you go?’ Linnéa asks.

‘Of course,’ says Minoo.

Linnéa gets two pottery bowls from a cupboard. She tries
not to panic at the thought of Ida Holmström in her hall and about to enter the living room at any moment.

‘What a cosy place,’ she hears Ida say. ‘If you’re a serial killer, that is.’

Linnéa realises she is grinning broadly. Because it was almost a funny thing to say. Almost.

Ida holds the pottery bowl containing half of the revolting grey sludge. It looks like mud, stodgy and gooey. Minoo stands next to her, holding an identical bowl.

Mona Moonbeam instructed them to clear all electrical fittings out of the room before beginning the ritual. Vanessa and Anna-Karin have lit thick red candles and their flickering light makes shadows dance along the walls. The doorways gape like open mouths.

Minoo has brought an old-fashioned alarm clock and it is ticking loudly in the silence. Nearly midnight now.

‘One minute to go,’ Vanessa says in a low voice.

Vanessa, Anna-Karin and Linnéa sit cross-legged close to the mirror, ready to take each other’s hands.

This ritual does not entail drawing an inner circle. The witches themselves form it. The outer circle, which will be drawn by Ida and Minoo, is there to protect outsiders, in case uninvited guests happen to turn up. But there is nothing to protect Ida.

Stories come back to her mind, all she has heard about what can happen to people who experiment with spirit-in-the-glass sessions. The stories invariably end with madness, spirit possession or death.