Fire (44 page)

‘Has Mia come with you today?’

‘She’ll be here soon. She just went off for a smoke.’

‘Good. I must speak to you now,’ he says and takes her hand. His fingers are cold as ice. ‘Something is about to happen here in Engelsfors. Something that’s not right. I’ve felt bad about it for a long time now and it’s getting worse.’

She puts her other hand over his to try to warm it.

‘And you know it, too, don’t you? You know more than you want to tell me,’ Grandpa says. ‘Someone wants to harm you.’

Anna-Karin looks away. Grandpa’s grip on her hand grows firmer.

‘I would like nothing better than for you to speak to me about it, but I understand. There are things you have to bear alone. But listen to me …’

His tongue runs over his dry lips.

‘Would you like a drink of water?’ Anna-Karin asks, but he shakes his head impatiently.

‘My father, he had dreams that came true,’ he continues. ‘Me, I’ve only had two of them. The first one was the night before you were born.’

Grandpa glances towards the open door. Then he lowers his voice until he is almost whispering.

‘I dreamed of a moon that rose above Engelsfors. Red, it was, coloured by the blood of a boy with black hair. And I dreamed of a fox and a girl with green eyes. A girl who would have to endure much. But she was strong. Stronger and braver than she herself realised. And she was not alone. She had friends. Do you know who I’m talking about, Anna-Karin?’

Anna-Karin’s eyes are brimming with tears. All she can do is nod.

‘Last night I dreamed again … a dream
that was not a dream
. I was in the no-man’s-land between the living and the dead. I met a girl with a freckled face. She was alive many hundreds of years ago, but is held back in that boundary zone. She wanted to tell me many things, but couldn’t. All she said was that you must be at peace with yourselves and each other, once and for all. You must all do it. The road you are following is dark and dangerous and you must be able to trust each other, know each other’s secrets, if you are to face the one who has been blessed by the demons.’

‘The demons?’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Grandpa, do you know anything about them?’

He glances at the door again.

‘No, it was she who said this.’

‘Did she say who that was? The one blessed by demons?’

‘I don’t know if she knew. Or maybe it was that she couldn’t tell me.’

Anna-Karin recognises her mother’s heavy footsteps in the corridor.

‘Thank you for telling me this, Grandpa,’ she says quietly.

Ida knows that she shouldn’t.

But she has been for supper with Erik and his family. And then he asked her once more if she wouldn’t let him take her to the centre.

There was something about the way he said it that made her realise this was more than the usual question. If she said no again, it would have been one
no
too many. And then everything would’ve been over between them.

When she said yes, Erik suddenly looked happy and hugged her.

And now they are walking through Engelsfors towards the centre. Hand in hand. Girlfriend and boyfriend.

Making him happy made her feel good. And it felt liberating to go ‘sod you’ to the other Chosen Ones and chuck away the book’s warnings, and Matilda’s, too. Decide what to do on your own, just for a change.

‘Watch that,’ Erik whispers, when they reach the centre.

Ida looks where he is looking. Anna-Karin and her mother are about to go inside the house just opposite the centre. The mother looks like a dead typical case of the kind of Engelsforser who has given up long ago. Characters who potter around town in sagging tracksuit bottoms, wearing socks with sandals and fuzz-covered old sweaters. Like, they have nil self-respect.

‘How the hell can they allow themselves to look like that?’ Erik says. ‘They could at least have
tried
.’

‘I guess there’s a lot of in-breeding among the rustics,’ Ida says.

Erik laughs and gives her hand a squeeze. It feels good to be on his side, on the side of the strong, the winners. People who aren’t always worrying, fearful of spooky mind invasions and the end of the world as we know it.

Tonight, Ida wants to pretend that she is her real, old self. It might soon be too late. Tomorrow might be too late. She has not the slightest confidence in the mysterious ritual that’s supposed to be such a great idea.

The Positive Engelsfors Centre is almost empty. Posters
advertising the Spring Revel beam at her from every wall. Erik lets go of her hand, kisses her cheek and wanders away to talk to Robin, who is hammering the game controls.

Ida catches sight of Julia. She’s sitting on a sofa, doing something on her mobile. When she sees Ida advancing, Julia stares wide-eyed at her and smiles nervously.

‘Gosh, that’s simply terrific!’ the little traitor says. ‘So, you’ve joined, too?’

‘
Too
?’

‘Yes, the thing is, my mum really wanted me to become a member, she was going on at me all the time. And then Felicia said she’d be here tonight and you were with Erik …’

‘Sure. I get it.’

And Ida means it. Given the choice, she too would have joined Positive Engelsfors.

‘Is Felicia here?’ she asks. Julia’s eyes look unsure.

‘I don’t see a lot of her, of course, only sometimes when you aren’t around …’

By now, the lovely feeling of being on top of things has leached out of Ida. Left behind is only a great big hollow. And, echoing inside it, a small still voice that has grown more and more familiar recently.

is it worth it is it worth it is it worth it is it worth it is it worth it

It feels as if she has been playing a role all her life only to find that the play isn’t right for her any more. The other actors have changed and don’t behave the way they used to.

Or else, it’s just about me, Ida thinks. I’m the one who’s changed. I’m becoming a freak, like the other Chosen Ones.

‘No problem,’ she says. ‘You and Felicia are free to hang
out. Comb each other’s hair all day long, or whatever. It’s fine by me.’

‘You’re cross now, I can see it,’ Julia says uncertainly.

‘No, honestly. I mean it. I can hardly remember why Felicia and I fell out.’

Julia watches her anxiously, as if she’s standing on a trapdoor, trying to work out whether Ida is going to press the button.

‘Great,’ she says and tests a cautious smile. ‘Then all three of us can become mates again, at last. And now we’re all PE members, too.’

Ida coolly returns the smile.

‘I’ll go and find Felicia, have a word so she knows you’re here and that you’d like to be friends again and that,’ Julia says and hurries off.

Ida sighs and begins a tour of the room. An entire wall is covered with a display of drawings made by the kids in the Play’n’Learn group. Large, happy suns, smiling families of heads-on-feet people holding hands in front of their houses. Laughing bumblebees, cats and puppies. Rasmus has signed several of them, in proud crayon capitals.

A door is thrown wide open somewhere in the building. Ida turns to look and sees Gustaf crossing the room, striding angrily towards the exit. He doesn’t even notice her.

G! she wants to cry out, but she chokes it back.

G! G! Please, G, look at meee! May I lick your shoes, pleease, G!

He sees her and stops.

‘What next? Have you joined this outfit, too?’

He seems disgusted. Ida is at a loss for words. She has never seen him so furious.

‘No, I … I just kept Erik company.’

Her voice sounds small and feeble. She hates it, clears her
throat and rather pointedly slaps her chest, as if to suggest that she has caught a cold.

‘What’s happened?’ she asks.

Gustaf glances in the direction he just came from. Rickard is standing in the doorway. He waves to Erik and Robin to get them to come along. Before Rickard shuts the door behind them, he smiles at Gustaf, then gives him a thumbs-up.

‘Fucking bastard,’ Gustaf mutters.

‘What’s going on?’

‘He said something about Rebecka …’ Gustaf stops, shakes his head. ‘I can’t talk to you about this.’

‘Why can’t you?’

He looks at her with a tired expression on his face.

‘Because you’re you,’ he says before disappearing out into the street.

Ida looks after him. She must not run after him, must not cling to his leg, must not allow herself to be dragged along the streets of Engelsfors until he answers the question that has now taken over all of her being.

And what is wrong with me?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

Erik calls her name. She blinks the tears away before she turns to face him.

‘Look, we’re going to do some stuff,’ Erik says. ‘We’ll be a bit late. You’d probably better go home now.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Just go home. We’ll meet up tomorrow.’

She doesn’t want to go home. Just the thought of being alone makes her panic. She doesn’t know how to cope. Rejected twice, first by the love of her life, now by her boyfriend. Ida has never felt less like a winner.

‘Can’t I come along, too?’

‘Only specially selected members are allowed.’

Ida recognises the look on Erik’s face. That is exactly how he looked that time in junior school when she handed him the scissors and he cut off Elias’s hair. And later, when she gave him the password to Anna-Karin’s social media account and they wrote together all sorts of things on her wall. She has observed Erik in this mood many times. It has always filled her with expectation, with the irresistible excitement of watching someone who is about to go too far.

Now for the first time his expression frightens her.

And, then, suddenly, she senses it.

The magic.

It wasn’t here a moment ago, but now it sweeps around the room, rippling back and forth between the walls.

There is a witch somewhere in the building. A powerful witch.

Ida looks around. ‘Who’s here?’ she asks.

‘Rickard, Robin, Julia, Felicia … Helena and Krister are supposed to be upstairs, I think. I don’t know of anybody else. Why do you ask?’

Ida feels the hairs on her arms stand on end, shivers run down her back and her chest, up across her neck and face. As if a fever has rushed into every part of her body in a few seconds. Around her, the air starts to sparkle.

‘What’s the matter?’ Erik asks and reaches out for her.

Even before he touches her jacket, a small white flash of lightning shoots through the air. He nearly screams.

‘Ouch, shit! You gave me a shock.’

The ceiling lights start going on and off, then the electricity supply fails altogether. The room goes completely dark and, outside, the street lights go off.

‘Bloody hell, not again,’ Erik groans.

The magic in the room has vanished as suddenly as it arrived.

‘Erik!’ Rickard calls from the room next door.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Erik says.

‘Hang on.’

Ida wants to beg him not to do whatever it is they’re planning.

‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,’ she says, trying to sound light-hearted.

Erik laughs a little.

‘I promise,’ he says and leaves her alone in the dark.

Minoo strikes a match and lights the array of tea lights on her desk. The power cuts have come and gone since the autumn and she has become used to them, almost grown fond of the sudden dark. She likes the stillness. The silence. But this time, the thought of the phone call she has to make kills any cosiness stone dead.

Tonight, she’s got to speak to Linnéa about Vanessa. This is the best opportunity, before the ritual, which must be before the trial.

Or does she really have to make the call?

I can give it a miss, she thinks and blows out the match. Not my problem, really.

But every individual problem in the group could become the problem of the entire group, she answers herself. And, if I were Linnéa …wouldn’t I want to know? After all,
I
was angry when
she
didn’t tell me that she could read
my
thoughts.

Minoo picks up her phone. And hesitates again. How is she supposed to know what Linnéa wants? Would it be better not to? Maybe this call will just make things worse?

No. This is her cowardly self talking. Also, there is another good reason for phoning. The most important one. Linnéa sounded desperate. And Minoo cares about her.

Her mobile rings as she holds it. Ida’s name glows on the screen and she feels relieved, as if given a brief respite.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me,’ Ida says breathlessly. ‘I was in the centre just minutes ago and this thing happened.’

‘Why were you—’ Minoo begins, but Ida interrupts her.

‘Yes, I know, but listen, don’t tell me off now. It was the first time and the last. I’ll never go there again.’

Ida is panting as she speaks. It sounds as if she’s running.

‘What happened?’

‘Magic. Strong magic. The ceiling lights went on the blink and then there was another bloody power cut and now I have to walk home alone in the bloody fucking awful dark.’

‘Do you know who—’

‘No. Don’t you think I’d say if I did?’ Ida snaps.

A witch in the Positive Engelsfors Centre. Are they right in their suspicions? Have they been right all along? Is Helena the one the demons have blessed, the human being charged with helping to bring on the apocalypse? Or is it Krister? Or maybe someone else?

It could of course have been an ordinary witch, Minoo thinks. The species seems pretty overrepresented in this town.

‘Hello?’ Ida says shrilly. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, yes. I’m here. But listen, we need to concentrate on the trial now,’ Minoo says. ‘We can’t fight two enemies at the same time.’

A sound in the phone, almost a sob.

‘Is everything all right, Ida?’ Minoo asks.

‘What a fucking marvellous life!’ Ida says. ‘How I simply adore my wonderful rich life! My family, my boyfriend and all my friends have joined a demonic sect!’

Minoo almost corrected Ida, by telling her it might not be a demonic sect, just an ordinary one. But she suspects it would hardly make Ida feel any happier.