Fire (67 page)

‘We are many. And we will grow bigger and bigger,’ he is saying. ‘Our journey has only just begun!’

Noisy applause bursts out again. Incredibly, Erik seems to be finished. He steps aside for Helena, who is also clapping. To prolong the moment, she steps forward to the edge of the stage and puts her hands together above her head.

Vanessa observes Rickard.

He looks so ordinary. So
normal
. But isn’t that precisely what the serial killer’s neighbours always say, once the psycho has been caught and the police have excavated fourteen carved-up bodies from his garden?

The guys near Rickard drift closer to the stage and suddenly he is on his own. She goes to him. Stops.

The amulet chain looks thick. She doesn’t dare pull at it.

The clasp has slipped down on to his chest. Vanessa curses. It’s going to be much trickier to undo it from that position. She has only one option. She takes another step, wipes her sweating hands on her jeans, raises them and moves them closer, ready to grasp the amulet. She is so close she can smell
vinegary crisps and disappointment on his breath. Her fingers almost touch the chain.

Rickard starts. And looks at her.

No, it’s impossible, Vanessa thinks. I’m imagining things. Before she can get her head around what is happening, Rickard has grabbed her wrists and is holding them in a vice-like grip.

Vanessa kicks him on the shin as hard as she can, but he doesn’t even twitch. His knee hits her stomach like a sledgehammer.

Pain makes Vanessa black out. She can’t breathe. When she flops to the floor, Rickard is still holding on to her wrists.

She feels herself becoming visible again and, in confirmation, hundreds of pairs of eyes turn to look at her.

The shock ejects Anna-Karin from the fox’s consciousness.

‘He’s caught her!’ she whispers and opens her eyes.

Next to her, she sees the shadow that is Ida stand up.

‘He’s caught Vanessa,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘He …’

She falls silent.

Steps approaching from the gym. Ida has heard them, too. She is already on her way out of the shower-room.

‘Wait!’ Anna-Karin hisses and tries to catch up with her.

But Ida is so much faster than her and disappears through the doors on the opposite side of the changing room, out into the dark corridor.

Anna-Karin realises she oughtn’t to be surprised, but is all the same. She had really believed that Ida had changed.

The door behind Anna-Karin is pulled open. The door to the gym.

She turns around.

Julia and Felicia step inside. After them many more PE members pour in, like a bulky yellow mass.

Anna-Karin backs away. The look in their eyes shows that each one of them shares in a single consciousness, has one uniform intent. To capture her.

She releases her power at full strength.

STOP.

Julia and Felicia carry on walking towards her and Anna-Karin backs into one of the low benches that line the room, then almost bumps the back of her head into a metal clothes hook.

STOP!

The mass flows on towards her.

STOP!

The problem isn’t that there are too many of them. Anna-Karin has controlled bigger crowds than this. It is that they are interconnected. Her power is diluted inside the huge communal conscience. It is like filling a bathtub a teaspoonful at a time.

Julia and Felicia go to each side of her and take hold of her arms. Anna-Karin doesn’t even try to struggle and allows herself to be led out and into the gym. If the other Chosen Ones have also been caught, maybe they’ll have a chance if they act together.

The beat of the pulse booms in Linnéa’s ears, rising and falling.

It is like being in one of her recurring nightmares. She is walking along the dark corridor leading to the attic stairs. She knows that something terrible is about to happen, that she must not let it, but she doesn’t know how and fears that it is already too late.

Linnéa stops outside the graffiti-covered toilet door.

Go inside
, the voice commands.

She pushes the handle down and opens the door.

The strip lighting is switched on and she has to blink before her eyes can tolerate the strong fluorescent light.

She cannot quite take in the woman who is confronting her. Her face is one Linnéa knows well and yet it is not. It has aged so much. As if many years have passed since they last spoke, rather than just a few months.

But the expression in the dark-brown eyes is recognisable. And a few fading blue strands are still visible in her hair, which hangs limply around the emaciated face.

‘Olivia,’ Linnéa says.

Olivia laughs abruptly. There is a dark gap where one of her teeth should have been.

‘Whatever, it’s not Rickard Johnsson,’ Olivia says. ‘Honestly now, did you lot really believe that?’

Under the white powder, her skin is grey. Linnéa looks at the amulet that gleams against Olivia’s black camisole top.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Olivia says and pulls the zip of her hoody up all the way to her throat. ‘You surely realise what will happen to the others if you try anything on.’

‘Do what you like with me but let the others go,’ Linnéa says.

Olivia sighs.

‘Oh my God, how paranoid you’ve become. I won’t hurt you. I’ve brought you here to tell you about what’s going to happen next.’

‘Great, so I’m here now. Go ahead, tell me.’

‘Elias is going to come back.’

Linnéa stares at her. Any other answer was imaginable. But not this.

‘Impossible,’ she says.

‘No, it isn’t,’ Olivia says. ‘He’s coming back soon. Tonight.’

Linnéa glances at the toilet cubicle where she found Elias’s dead body. The blood. The shard of glass. His beautiful eyes that would never again see anything.

‘It’s impossible,’ she says again.

‘Not for me,’ Olivia says, solemnly meeting Linnéa’s eyes. ‘I am the Chosen One.’

‘Who are you?’

Minoo opens her eyes and sees Adriana looking at her. Without a trace of recognition. Minoo has succeeded in what she set out to do and it is an uncomfortable feeling.

‘Do you really not recognise me?’ Minoo asks.

Slowly, Adriana sits up in bed.

‘I don’t know … I’m not … No. I don’t recognise you at all. I’m so sorry but …’

She looks both embarrassed and alarmed.

Minoo gets up from the bed. Her mind spins when Adriana’s memories come back to her. Simon. Max. Rebecka.

The sensation of being in control, being invulnerable, has definitely gone.

‘I feel so peculiar …’ Adriana says. ‘Have I been asleep?’

She looks down at her clothes, pats with her hands to try and smooth her crinkly skirt.

Minoo looks anxiously at her. She has to hurry on to the school, but can she simply leave Adriana like this? Is there anything she can say to calm her down? Advise her that she has amnesia? Perhaps not such a reassuring thing to be told, but at least an explanation.

‘Adriana …’ she begins, but is interrupted when the door opens.

She turns around. Alexander stands in the doorway.

‘I was instructed about this last summer,’ Olivia says. ‘I’m the only one who can stop the apocalypse.’

Linnéa feels she’s watching herself in a fun house distorting mirror. But it’s not a funny sight.

‘Who told you that?’ she asks.

Olivia smiles even more broadly now and Linnéa notes two more missing teeth.

‘Elias.’

Linnéa almost wants to believe her. But only for a moment. She understands of course who has been parading as Elias.

‘He spoke to me in my dreams,’ Olivia continues. ‘At first, I didn’t believe it was him. But then he told me things that only Elias could have known.’

Linnéa remembers when Max stood in front of her in the dining area, pretending to be Elias. He had known all about the boy he was impersonating. Details that no one else could have known.

‘It wasn’t Elias,’ Linnéa says. ‘It is the demons—’

‘You don’t get anything! We’re to
stop
the demons. Elias and I. And you, if you care to join us.’

‘You don’t understand—’

‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand! When Elias told me that I was the Chosen One … it was as if I had known all along. I always felt I was different. As if I was stuck in the wrong life.’

‘Everyone feels like that at times,’ Linnéa says. ‘That doesn’t make it true.’

‘What is it with you, can’t you just trust me?’ Olivia shrieks and her voice echoes in the tiled space. ‘You’ve never trusted me! You’ve never taken me seriously!’

Linnéa can’t argue. What Olivia says is true.

‘I’m telling you, there were times when I almost envied you,’ Olivia continues. ‘Because of what happened to your mother and then what with your father …’

‘Envied me?’ Linnéa exclaims.

‘Yes! You never had to prove anything. You never had to explain. But I could never get anyone to understand why I felt bad at times. I didn’t even know myself. All I knew was that I always felt lonely, regardless of how many people there were around. But then I realised that I was the Chosen One. It made sense, the Chosen One is always alone. Like, your fate is incomprehensible to everyone else—’

‘I am the Chosen One,’ Linnéa interrupts. ‘
One
of them. We are a group.’

Olivia sighs impatiently.

‘I know that you and your new mates are witches,’ she says. ‘But there’s only
one
Chosen One. And that is me.’

This is the second time in two days someone has claimed that Linnéa is not a Chosen One. And for a moment, doubt flutters through her mind. But only for a moment.

‘You’re wrong,’ Linnéa says. ‘In the beginning, we were seven. Elias was one of us. That was before the demons killed him. The same demons who have been lying to you.’

‘Lay off!’ Olivia screams. ‘Why can’t you accept just for once that it’s
me
who’s special!’

‘And how did you get your powers, Olivia? Did you allow the demons to bless you?’

‘It was Elias who gave me my powers!’

‘Did he tell you that you would have to kill?’

Olivia thumps her fist against one of the washbasins.

‘Yes, he did! He told me to take revenge for his death. Every time I kill someone who has hurt him, my powers grow stronger. Elias knows I love him and he loves me back. And you’re simply jealous!’

Linnéa stares at her. What is she to do? What can she say to reach her? Vanessa’s life and the lives of the others are in Olivia’s hands.

‘It doesn’t matter why you think you do it. It
cannot
be right,’ she says slowly. ‘You have killed innocent people.’

‘They weren’t innocent,’ Olivia says. ‘Besides, it wasn’t just me. Helena and Krister have been in on it all the time. Elias started to talk to them a year ago. And then they got in touch with me. Elias told them that I was the Chosen One and that I could help them.’

‘So, this is your joint plan?’

‘To get Elias back, yes, that’s right. Though I haven’t told them about the apocalypse that Elias and I are going to stop together. He said not to tell because they wouldn’t understand. He said you wouldn’t understand either, but
I
trusted in you.’

She tries to touch Linnéa who backs away.

‘Linnéa …’ Olivia says. ‘We’ve known each other for, like, ages and ages.’

‘Just about as long as you’ve known Jonte,’ Linnéa says. ‘How did you feel about murdering him? What was it like to hear his screams?’

Olivia stiffens. Looks defensive.

‘As a matter of fact, it wasn’t me who picked the people we should take revenge for Elias on. It was Helena and Krister. They wanted me to kill you, too, but I said no.’

‘Thanks,’ Linnéa says ironically. ‘I’m so grateful that you only had me almost kicked out of my flat.’

‘Look, I had to do
something
to satisfy them,’ Olivia says. ‘And it would’ve been so much better if you’d been locked up in some home by now. Then you wouldn’t have had to get involved in what’s going to happen here tonight. You would’ve been safe, and then Elias and I could have come to take you with us.’

‘What about Canal Bridge? I didn’t feel too fucking safe there.’

‘That wasn’t my fault! Erik and Robin simply lost it that night. If I had had it my way, I would’ve killed them already last autumn. But you know how things stand with Helena and Krister. They refuse to believe that Elias was bullied. And Elias said to me that it was preferable to use Erik and Robin. If they joined PE, lots more people would join, too. Besides, they will be punished. And so will Helena and Krister, only they don’t know it yet.’

Somehow, she seems to be looking forward to all this.

‘I see, you’re going to kill them as well?’

‘Everyone we’ve taken revenge on has been guilty, but Helena and Krister are guiltiest of all. They never understood Elias. Only you and I did. We were the only ones who cared for him.’

She smiles at Linnéa.

‘It’s really been so hard not to talk to you about everything.
I would so much like us to do this together.’

‘What exactly are you planning to do?’

Olivia’s smile widens again.

‘Carry out perfect justice,’ she says. ‘You know yourself who is in Positive Engelsfors. Everyone who bullied Elias. And the rest of them are people who stood by and let it happen. They all deserve to die. And they will. Tonight. When they’re all dead, Elias will come back.’

Linnéa shakes her head.

‘Elias would never have taken part in all this. He would never have—’

‘That’s what you think,’ Olivia snaps. ‘Maybe you didn’t ever know him as well as you thought. But of course you’ve always been like that about Elias. You always wanted to keep him to yourself.’

Linnéa looks at Olivia. Tries to work out what is happening with the Olivia she used to know. The old Olivia, who was forever looking for someone who would listen to her, take her seriously, love her. She was always trying too hard which made people feel uneasy. And she couldn’t understand why.

She was a perfect prey for the demons and their lies.

But then, what would I have done? Linnéa thinks. If I hadn’t known what I know, if I’d lost Elias and he had started to talk to me in my dreams, if he had asked me to take revenge for him and given me the powers to carry it out … would I have been able to resist the temptation?