The Key (77 page)

She pauses. The only sound is the hissing in the ventilation system.

‘Power,’ she continues. ‘It is his only motivation. Power over others. He will use any means to control other people. If necessary, he works them over until they break down. His type is dangerous, even without magic powers. As it happens, he is one of the strongest natural witches in the world. You shouldn’t have left her there. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.’

Vanessa
is
ashamed. They have abandoned Minoo.

‘You, in particular,’ Mona says, pointing at Nicolaus. ‘You, if anyone, should have known what the leaders of the Council are capable of.’

‘Yes, I should have,’ Nicolaus agrees. He has turned deathly pale.

‘We must get her out,’ Anna-Karin says. Her voice is filled with panic.

Mona stubs her cigarette out on the floor.

‘You must,’ she says. ‘But, first you must chat with your dead mates. I’ll pack a few things and see you in a couple of hours.’

‘So we don’t have to wait until midnight?’ Anna-Karin asks.

‘Not when the levels of magic are this high. We could have done it straightaway, but you lot have got to go to the school first.’

It can hardly be concern about truancy that is motivating Mona, Vanessa thinks. And the sinking feeling returns.

‘Why?’ Anna-Karin asks.

‘You’ll find out,’ Mona says.

Linnéa roots around in a pocket and then throws her keyring to Nicolaus.

‘You and Mona can go to my flat and prepare everything,’ she says. ‘But make sure she doesn’t vanish again.’

Nicolaus weighs the keys in his hand. He looks profoundly unhappy.

‘Sorry,’ Vanessa says, turning to go. ‘But Mona is usually right.’

‘Exactly!’ Mona calls after her. ‘And take your time. Nicolaus and I will entertain each other.’

Anna-Karin walks into the entrance lobby of the school and looks around while she catches her breath. The place is empty. Distant voices from the classrooms reach her.

They ran all the way to the school. Only two elements left: earth and water. Anna-Karin imagined a hundred different scenarios, all devastating. But somehow, this silence is worse still. It is as if the school is brooding. Waiting.

She looks at the others. Vanessa wipes a dribble from her nose with her glove. Linnéa’s eyes dart everywhere.

Do you sense any magic here?
she thinks.
I don’t
.

Both Anna-Karin and Vanessa shake their heads. Linnéa closes her eyes and looks focused.

Evelina hasn’t noticed anything either
, she thinks next. The small crease between her eyebrows deepens.

And I can’t pick up anything odd from other people’s thoughts. At least, no odder than usual
.

She opens her eyes again.

If Mona sent us off here so she could have a sexy afternoon with Nicolaus, she’ll be in trouble
.

‘Oh
please
,’ Anna-Karin says. She doesn’t want to think about Nicolaus like that, and definitely not with
Mona
. ‘What do you think we should do?’

‘Let’s keep an eye on things,’ Vanessa says. ‘Go to our classes and see if something happens.’

Linnéa nods.

I’ll get in touch now and then
, she thinks.

Anna-Karin walks up the stairs and remembers all the times she and Minoo have walked here together. Minoo, who is in the manor house. With Walter.

He will use any means to control other people. If necessary, he works them over until they break down
.

How could they have left her there?

* * *

When Vanessa enters her classroom, it is silent apart from the rasping sound of pens on paper. Everyone sits bent over their desks. It must be a surprise test.

Or … not. When Patrick, her English teacher, puts his book down and looks wearily at her from behind the teacher’s desk, she remembers. They had been told about the test. Evelina mentioned something about it more than a week ago.

Vanessa collects a set of stapled sheets from Patrick and goes to sit down between Evelina and Michelle.

Evelina grabs hold of her hand under the desk and gives it a quick squeeze. They walked home together with Rickard last night. He and Evelina made an effort not to show how relieved they were that they weren’t going to have to help with the closing of the portal. Although both kept saying how keen they were to stay around and do what they could to help the Chosen Ones. Vanessa doesn’t doubt it.

Michelle stretches and yawns. Her test sheets are decorated all over the margins with flower garlands drawn lovingly in pencil. The pre-printed lines for writing on are almost completely empty. She nods to Vanessa and adds a few buds to a garland.

Vanessa looks around. Liam’s breathing is strained and he snivels now and then. Patrick has picked up his book again and licks a finger to turn the page. Someone titters at the other end of the room. A gust of wind blows snow at the windows. The only thing Vanessa can do is wait, without knowing for what.

* * *

‘I thought you were off sick today,’ Petter Backman says when Linnéa comes into the art class.

‘I got better,’ she tells him, and sits down at the back of the room.

Restlessness is crawling inside her. She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be in her flat preparing for the séance.

E-L-I-A-S
.

She looks around the classroom. Petter leans against his desk and stares at Tindra, who is bending over her sketchbook. Linnéa knows that little smile of his only too well.

Just to have something to do, she takes out her sketchbook and puts pen to paper.

‘Bet she lets guys do what they like with her.’

Linnéa’s pen jerks across the paper and she looks up at Petter. He is still ogling Tindra. His thought was so clear it was almost as if he had said it aloud.

‘Wonder if she’d fancy doing some webcam scenes. She needn’t know it was me watching.’

It takes Linnéa a moment to realise that Petter didn’t think it. That his lips had been moving. He has said it out loud, but he doesn’t seem to have understood that himself.

‘What the fuck did you say?’ Tindra asks, getting up from her seat.

Petter blinks.

‘You’re
so
repulsive,’ she goes on. ‘Last autumn, when I was pregnant, I had this nightmare where you were the father. And I puked extra when I got up that morning.’

The rest of the class is alert now. And Linnéa senses the water magic coming towards her. She instinctively sets up her defences.

The fifth portent. This is what Mona warned them about.

‘I bloody knew it,’ Petter says. ‘I knew this would happen sooner or later. Sometimes it feels like you can read my mind.’

He glances at Linnéa.

‘I’m so fucking lucky that I’m not a chick so I can’t get knocked up,’ Pascal says loudly. He usually doesn’t speak at all and he always wants to make collages. ‘It must be disgusting, I mean they look like sows.’

He fingers the waistband of his jeans.

‘I’d like to have proper anorexia,’ he goes on. ‘I don’t care that it’s dangerous. It’s worth it. I need to have more self-discipline.’

The disgust in his voice is so intense it sounds almost as if he found it pleasurable.

Linnéa has heard the disgust before, but in Pascal’s thoughts. She picked it up in the beginning, when she had just got her powers but didn’t know how to control them.

Anna-Karin
, Linnéa thinks.
Is this happening in your class, too?

But her thought won’t transmit now. The air is too thick with magic. She gets up to go to Anna-Karin. She is the only one who can put a stop to this.

* * *

Anna-Karin sits in the front row in her classroom. She feels tense and looks around from time to time. Everyone is working at their maths problems. Everyone except her. The book is still in her locker.

Ylva glances irritably at her. ‘You might at least pretend you’re interested.’

‘I’m actually busy saving the world,’ Anna-Karin says.

The words just slip out. She tries to understand how it happened. Why did she say what she thought? And then she senses the magic. It is welling into the classroom and she sets up her defence quickly.

‘God, I’ve had it with you, Anna-Karin,’ Ylva says. ‘I’ve had it with all of you. I keep trying and trying. What’s in it for me?’

‘Shit, I hope she goes mental again,’ a boy’s voice says somewhere behind Anna-Karin. ‘It’s so much fun.’

Water, Anna-Karin thinks. This is the next portent. The water element.

‘I am so sick of the others in the guild,’ Levan says. ‘And this doesn’t work for me any more. I must go to bed earlier at night. I must prioritise school.’

Anna-Karin turns to look at Levan, who is now drinking from a can of Coke and seems unaware that he has said anything out loud.

‘What if I’ve caught AIDS,’ Lina says from the other end of the room. ‘His stubble scratched my cheek. What if he has AIDS and I got his saliva into my blood.’

‘He could easily be infected,’ Anchalee says. ‘He’s a bouncer at Götis and bound to have had sex with loads of people. I don’t get how you could sleep with him.’

‘She’s so repulsive,’ Hanna H says.

Anna-Karin turns to look. Notices Hanna H glaring at Hanna A who has the desk next to hers.

‘Who?’ Hanna A asks.

‘Who do you think?’ Hanna H says. ‘You, of course. If you would only wash your hair sometimes, you wouldn’t smell of
scalp
all the time. Soaking yourself in perfume doesn’t exactly help.’

Hanna A begins to cry quietly.

‘I know we’ll stop being friends after the finals,’ she says. ‘You’ll leave town. And I won’t go anywhere. I’m terrified of leaving Engelsfors because if I move to a new place I’ll never get to know anyone and I’ll be completely alone. I wish I could spend my whole life living with Mum and Dad. At least, until I move in with a boyfriend. If I ever find a boyfriend. Maybe I’ll be one of those people who ends up on their own.’

‘Shut up,’ Hanna H says, giving her a shove. ‘I’m so fucking tired of your whining. And your perfume.’

Someone starts to sing very badly, repeating the chorus of a song over and over, getting only half of the lyrics right.

‘God I’m hungry,’ Anchalee says to no one in particular, while Lina stares fixedly at a point in front of her and mutters
AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS
, non-stop.

Anna-Karin senses the magic growing in strength continuously. By now, everyone is speaking out loud. There are no barriers left between what they think and what they say. Some people respond to what is being said, but others seem absorbed in what is going on inside their heads.

‘I must get up earlier so I’ve time to have a shit at home, I hate the school toilets.’

‘She’ll dump me. She always adds a smiley. Why didn’t she add a smiley?’

‘My name is so weird. August. August. August. What kind of name is that? It doesn’t sound like me. August? August … August!’

Anna-Karin tries to listen for Linnéa’s thoughts but the magic is too strong. She gets up from her seat.

‘I hate you,’ Ylva says. ‘I’d like to kill every one of you.’

Anna-Karin sees how the teacher’s thin blonde hair has gone moist at her temples and her salmon-pink blouse has developed damp patches under her armpits.

‘It’s all a waste of time. You’re as thick as two short planks, all of you. The only ones I cared for were Minoo and Viktor. And you, Anna-Karin, once. But not any longer.’

Ylva looks miserable.

‘I have to stay up all night to correct tests, compile new tests, prepare lessons. In the breaks, I sit in the common room with colleagues who are as stupid as you lot. The only time I enjoy their company is when we talk about how awful you are. But I can’t tell them that I fantasise about killing all of you. It would be so easy. Just to lock the classroom door and hack everyone to death with an axe.’

‘Ylva,’ Anna-Karin says, ‘you must calm down a bit.’

‘Some people count sheep, I count heads rolling on the floor,’ Ylva continues. ‘Shame Kevin is locked up. Beheading him is always the best bit of my dream.’

She sighs.

‘I wonder what Ylva looks like naked,’ Levan says.

‘Adults’ bodies are disgusting,’ August says. ‘They’re so flabby. Bet you Ylva is a virgin and lives with four cats.’

‘I can’t take it any more,’ Ylva says.

She walks along to one of the windows. When she pulls it open, a blast of cold wind tears through the classroom. For a little while, everyone falls silent.

‘She’s going to jump,’ Hanna A says, pulling at Hanna H’s hair. ‘She’s going to kill herself.’

‘Like Rebecka,’ Hanna H says.

Ylva tries to clamber up onto the windowsill. Everyone is talking louder now.

Anna-Karin struggles to release her power while at the same time defend herself against the water magic.

CLIMB DOWN AND SHUT THE WINDOW

Ylva holds still in the middle of her efforts.

‘I must climb down and shut the window,’ she says.

Anna-Karin watches with relief as Ylva slams the window shut so vigorously that the panes rattle.

LEAVE SCHOOL NOW. GO HOME. HURRY UP
.

‘I must leave school now,’ Ylva says, straightening her blouse, which has escaped from the waistband of her skirt. ‘I will go home. I must hurry.’

She walks obediently to the door.

PUT YOUR JACKET ON BEFORE YOU LEAVE
, Anna-Karin orders. She reckons Ylva would freeze to death otherwise.
AND DON’T FORGET YOUR KEYS
.

‘I’ll kill you!’ Hanna H screams, grabbing Hanna A’s neck.

GO HOME!
Anna-Karin thinks, and turns around, allowing her power to sweep across the classroom.
TAKE YOUR JACKETS AND BAGS AND GO HOME
.

Hanna H relaxes her grip on Hanna A’s neck.

‘I am to go home,’ the class choruses. ‘I am to take my jacket and my bag and go home.’

Everyone begins to move towards the door. Linnéa forces her way in against the flow.

‘Help me,’ Anna-Karin says. She holds out her hand to Linnéa.

* * *

Vanessa and Evelina look at each other when a piercing scream echoes in the corridor outside their classroom.