The Key (21 page)

She looks at her face in the mirror. Tries to see herself as Gustaf saw her this morning, standing in the schoolyard. Tries, as she has so many times in the past, to decide what she truly looks like.

Once, Anna-Karin told her she was beautiful. But that is the only time anyone, apart from her mum and dad, has ever complimented her on her looks. Parents don’t count. As for Max, he was obsessed with her because she reminded him of his first murder victim. Which doesn’t count either.

If Minoo looked like someone who was right for a guy like Gustaf, surely she’d know it? She is convinced that he would never be interested in a girl just because of her looks. But there are lots of good-looking girls around who are also fun to be with – and smart, and generally great.

Everyone says that it’s what’s beneath the surface that matters, but then Minoo isn’t particularly impressed by her own personality either. Especially now, when she hangs out in the bathroom and ruminates about her looks instead of being with other people.

Minoo hears voices from the hall. New guests. She ought to join them, but she’s pretty certain she doesn’t know anyone apart from Gustaf and his parents, and they are bound to be too busy to look after her. She will just end up in some corner, feeling like an imposter.

I should go home, Minoo thinks as she unlocks the bathroom door. I’ll leave my present on the gift table and slip away before anybody notices. I can always claim I got sunstroke or something after waiting in the schoolyard.

She walks downstairs and into the hall, smiling politely at some people she’s never seen before. Through a doorway, she glimpses people filling their plates at the buffet in the kitchen. The room shimmers with green light because the sun’s rays are filtered through the fresh birch leaves in the garlands that frame the open veranda door. Lage smiles broadly towards her and raises his glass in a toast.

It would be very rude to leave now. She simply can’t.

Minoo takes the present from her bag and walks along to the sitting room. It is immaculately tidy and quiet. Not a soul is inside; everyone is in the garden.

She goes over to the gift table. She has been pondering what to give Gustaf for weeks but now her choice feels so utterly wrong. Sure, Gustaf reads quite a lot, but
The Master and Margarita
? Perhaps he’ll think that she is trying to impress him. Or that it is the most boring book in the world and, if she likes it, she must be the most boring person in the world.

Minoo places her parcel among the other ones, then glances into the garden. Anita has just greeted Rebecka’s mother with a hug before taking her to join the others.

Rebecka ought to have been here, Minoo thinks. Gustaf ought to have kissed her in the schoolyard. None of what has happened between Gustaf and me would have happened if Rebecka had been alive.

Someone gives her a sharp tap on the shoulder and Minoo turns around.

Rickard. He is wearing a suit and, round his neck, a blue-and-yellow ribbon with a miniature white cap as a pendant. But he doesn’t exactly seem to be enjoying his Graduation Day.

‘I want a word with you,’ he says.

‘Now?’

He nods.

‘But … there are so many people here,’ Minoo stutters. ‘Someone might hear us.’

As if to back her up, Lage pops his head round the door.

‘Glad you could make it, Rickard! Great! Both of you, come and get something to eat!’

‘We’ll be there in a moment,’ Minoo replies in a far too jolly tone.

Then she looks at Rickard again.

‘Come with me,’ he says.

They go into the empty kitchen and he walks over to the basement door and opens it.

‘You first,’ he says.

The basement air is cool. Cross-country skis are neatly lined up in a rack. Next to them, a set of wall-mounted tools are all in their correct place on the board and Minoo feels certain that the contents of the white cupboards are just as well organised.

The enormous table supporting Lage’s model railway occupies the centre of the room. He is building a miniature Engelsfors. Everything is there, but it is a nostalgic version of the town, harking back to a time when Engelsfors was at its most successful. Many of the railway tracks are no longer in use. Minoo didn’t even know they existed until she inspected Lage’s impressive reconstruction.

She looks at the model of the senior school. The site of evil seems very small from her giant’s perspective.

‘Don’t you have a graduation reception of your own?’ she asks, and looks at Rickard, who has remained near the stairs.

‘Sure do,’ he says, sounding weary. ‘My relatives are out in force. Ready with the gravadlax. But I felt I had to come here first. I knew you would be here.’

He looks steadily at her.

‘At first, my memories were a mess. I thought you and your friends and Gustaf were in with Olivia in some way. Today, everything sort of fell into place and I remembered everything. You stopped Olivia from killing the lot of us, didn’t you?’

Minoo realises that Rickard remembers far too much.

‘Who are you, really?’ he continues. ‘You and your friends …
What
are you? Or is the whole thing a hallucination? Am I completely unhinged?’

He looks desperate. And utterly alone.

Minoo makes up her mind.

‘We are witches.’

Her mind is reeling with the fact that she has admitted the most forbidden thing of all to an outsider.

She had no idea what kind of reaction to expect. But Rickard actually looks relieved.

‘I’m not mad then?’ he says.

‘No, you’re not.’

Rickard sits down heavily on the stairs.

‘Witches,’ he says, and seems to taste the word. ‘Olivia, was she a witch, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘But she was … an evil witch. But you are … good witches?’

‘Well, sort of. I don’t know if Olivia was truly evil. But she did evil things … Are you all right?’ Minoo asks, and instantly hears how silly it sounds. ‘I realise it’s a lot to take in.’

‘It was much worse worrying that I was going nuts. I knew, of course, what I had seen, but it all seemed so impossible.’

Minoo nods. She understands perfectly. In the beginning, it had been hard for her to believe in everything they were taught. And she had, after all, been able to share the knowledge with Rebecka and the other Chosen Ones, and with Nicolaus. Without them, she would definitely have worried about her sanity.

‘At first I didn’t remember anything,’ Rickard says. ‘I woke up in hospital. They said I had been picked up unconscious and that it was because an electrical fault had caused a lot of accidents in the school. I couldn’t answer a single question about what had happened. I didn’t remember much from my entire third year. But later on, I started dreaming about it … Then I saw snapshots when I was awake as well. Like flashbacks in a film.’

There is a large thump in the kitchen. Minoo and Rickard look towards the door at the top of the stairs, but it stays closed.

‘I’ve done so many horrible things,’ he says.

‘No, it wasn’t you. It was Olivia. She used your amulet to control you.’

Rickard nods.

‘Sometimes she was only a small voice whispering somewhere in the background. But at other times she would take me over. Only, I would still be present, but couldn’t do a thing. Like, when you know it’s a nightmare and are aware that you’re dreaming but it doesn’t help because you can’t wake up and can’t do anything about what’s going on in the dream.’

Minoo shudders. She knows way too much about nightmares.

‘Why did Olivia choose you? Do you know?’

Rickard looks troubled.

‘We had a thing going.’

‘A thing? Did you go out together?’

‘Not exactly,’ he says, still avoiding her eyes. ‘It started at the Spring Ball, when she was in her last year of junior school. I went along because I hoped she would be there. She seemed so self-assured and cool. Different. Earlier, I had wanted to talk to her but didn’t dare. Girls like her think boys like me are hopeless saddos. At the ball, we were both drunk. Afterwards, we got together now and then, but she insisted on keeping it secret.’

He takes his glasses off and polishes them slowly with a corner of his shirt.

‘I understood from the start that she didn’t really want me. She was after Elias. But I kept hoping that she might change her mind. Even if it was humiliating, it was better than nothing. I loved her. But, after Elias’s funeral, she told me that … that she didn’t want to go out with me any more.’

He puts his glasses back on and Minoo waits, lets him tell the story at his own pace.

‘Last summer, she asked me to come and see her at home. She said it had dawned on her that I was the right one for her after all and that she wanted to be my girlfriend. For real. I was pathetic enough to say yes immediately. And then she gave me this gift. A token to show we belonged together.’

‘The necklace with the amulet,’ Minoo says.

Rickard nods.

‘That same evening, she took me along to be introduced to Helena and Krister. I heard her say to them that I was a perfect choice for persuading people at school to join Positive Engelsfors. Popular, but not too popular. Of course, her control over me was especially strong because I was in love with her.’

Minoo had known all along that Olivia killed the innocent. Still, it had been easier to think of her as a victim of the demons and their lies, blinded by her longing for Elias.

What Minoo hadn’t realised was how cynical and calculating she actually was. How deliberately she exploited people around her.

‘It was the worst part of it,’ Rickard continues. ‘Whatever she did, I couldn’t stop loving her. Not until Ida stopped her. I got the message then. Saw her for who she truly was.’

He looks straight at Minoo.

‘Minoo, what happened to her? Do you know where she is? Is she alive?’

‘She is alive, but I don’t know where she is.’

Rickard says nothing. Two children run shouting through the kitchen above them and disappear outside.

‘Why doesn’t anyone else remember what went on in the gym?’ he asks eventually.

‘Because they were all wearing Olivia’s amulets. What I don’t understand is how you can remember anything.’

‘To what extent is Gustaf mixed up in this?’

‘Not at all. He didn’t wear an amulet. But I took away his memories of what happened in the gym. I had to.’

All the colour drains from Rickard’s face.

‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’

She believes him. She doesn’t even have to scare him with the Council, because he is scared enough already. Everything in her shies away at the thought of manipulating his memories. She can’t bring herself to put him through that. Not after all he had to endure from Olivia.

‘I trust you,’ she says. ‘But I shall have to talk to the others about this.’

‘The others?’ Rickard asks. ‘Linnéa? And Vanessa? And that big girl who usually goes around with you? Are there more?’

‘There were more of us,’ Minoo explains. ‘In the beginning, we were seven, with Ida, Elias and Rebecka.’

‘Elias? And
Rebecka?
’

‘That’s right.’

Telling the truth, just for once, is irresistible.

‘But they were murdered,’ Minoo adds.

She and Rickard jump when they hear glass breaking. Minoo looks around and realises for the first time that the basement is divided into two rooms.

The door between the two rooms is too near one of the white cupboards to be easily seen. She notices it now, as Gustaf comes through it. He is holding a champagne bottle and his light trousers are splashed.

He looks straight at her.

He has heard them. He has heard everything.

Behind her, Rickard gets up.

It is so silent down here, it is difficult to imagine that a noisy reception is going on outside the house. That guests in bright clothes are mingling and chatting about their plans for the summer, and probably wondering where the man of the moment has disappeared to. The man who is looking at Minoo as if she were a stranger. Somebody
alien
. A creature from space who has just ripped off her human disguise.

‘I’ve wanted to tell you for so long …’ Minoo says.

‘Go right ahead,’ Gustaf says evenly. ‘Do tell me everything.’

She is dying inside now, when he looks at her like that. She fights to stay detached, to keep a cool head. Of course Gustaf is upset. She must take her chance and explain. If only she can put it clearly, he will understand. She
mus
t make him understand.

‘There is a war going on,’ she begins. ‘Demons are trying to enter our world here, in Engelsfors. If they succeed, it means our world is finished. We, who are called the Chosen Ones, can stop this from happening. Nobody else can.’

She stops talking and looks at Gustaf.

‘Go on.’

‘It all began with Elias.’

She tries to explain without getting bogged down in details. It is surprisingly easy. Even when she describes their suspicions of Gustaf and how they pursued him and made him take truth serum, she talks on. She can’t stop now until she has confessed everything. Even how much she loved Max.

The words are flowing, even though a part of her tells her to stop. This is too big. Too much. And much too dangerous for them to know. What will the Council do if they find out?

But another part of her drives her to reveal all, and that part is the stronger. She
must
. Lies are unsustainable: that has been proven to her again and again.

Gustaf and Rickard listen intently while she talks. She loses all concept of time. Then, suddenly, she has reached the part about Matilda and the dream. And, after that, there are no more words.

Somewhere in the house, one of Gustaf’s sisters calls his name. He doesn’t seem to have heard.

‘You said to Rickard that you removed my memories of what happened in the gym.’

‘I’m sorry. But it was the only thing I could do to protect you from the Council.’

‘I want them back,’ Gustaf says.

‘I don’t know if it’s possible. I’ve never—’

Gustaf interrupts. ‘Now.’

The look in his blue eyes is steely.