The Key (43 page)

‘But they do become more common during magic epochs, and especially near portals,’ Linnéa goes on stubbornly. ‘Mona is probably a metal witch, right? What with her fortune-telling and things? Maybe she’s a natural witch? If the whole world is at stake, perhaps she’ll join us when she comes back?’

Vanessa laughs a little.

‘Can you imagine what it would be like, having Mona in our circle?’

‘Sorry I spoke,’ Linnéa says. ‘I’m obviously thick.’

Vanessa’s smile fades.

‘At present, this discussion isn’t taking us anywhere useful,’ Nicolaus puts in. ‘We do not have any replacements.’

Minoo can’t understand how they can even consider it. Even if the guardians don’t always tell the whole truth, they have access to so much more information than Nicolaus and the Chosen Ones. Nicolaus and Linnéa are just speculating.

‘But, for me, it goes against the grain to hand over the silver cross and the skull to the Council,’ Nicolaus says. ‘For one thing, I would like to find out more about the third object first.’

Minoo looks closely at the image of the man with his eyes closed. She realises that it is familiar. But why?

‘What’s the matter?’ Anna-Karin asks.

‘I’m trying to think. Something tells me I’ve seen this image somewhere.’

Her voice is angry, and it makes her feel guilty, because it is Anna-Karin she is talking to. Minoo tries to give her an apologetic look, but Anna-Karin is scrutinising the image.

‘Any idea where?’ Vanessa asks.

‘Don’t know. I can’t remember.’

‘Can’t you have a look?’ Nicolaus asks. ‘I mean, into your own memories?’

The idea is so obvious that she becomes irritated again. She should have thought of it herself.

‘What if it’s dangerous?’ Anna-Karin says.

‘Yeah, what if Minoo gets stuck inside her own head?’ Vanessa says.

Minoo thinks that it wouldn’t be the first time.

‘I’m not even sure it can be done.’ But she closes her eyes and allows the black smoke to pour out, while she puts her hand against her own forehead. It makes her feel awkward but soon the feeling is lost in the smoke.

Minoo enters her own mind from outside. Memories are rushing towards her now. It is like seeing her own life through the eyes of a stranger.

She looks for the image, tries to find the right thread in the enormous weave. Suddenly, she has the torch in her hand, hears the creaking floor under her feet. She picks up a smell of paper and old leather, then of something burning and also an odd, stinging smell. Then, in the light of the torch, she sees a small table and an old, worn leather armchair. On the table is a dark red, round wooden box.

Minoo pulls the smoke back and opens her eyes. The others are looking at her tensely.

‘It was when we broke into Adriana’s house,’ she says, pointing at the table. ‘That image was carved into a box in the locked room.’

‘Wow,’ Vanessa says. ‘That break-in was
two years
ago. What if you could do that in exams?’

‘Why does Adriana have it?’ Anna-Karin asks.

‘Because she is an Ehrenskiöld,’ Nicolaus says grimly. ‘Everything begins and ends with that family. Or, so it would seem. I followed the clues all across Europe, Asia and North Africa. I wasted an entire month in Liechtenstein. All that time, the skull was in the south of Sweden in an Ehrenskiöld-owned stately home in Skåne.’ He looks at the images on the table.

‘Now I’m beginning to see how it all fits together. When the stolen items disappeared, the Council kept searching for them for hundreds of years. One of my friends from my years of study was looking for them, too. I didn’t know that he had located them, but he must have. Because he was the one who brought the silver cross to Engelsfors. He was the judge I told you about, the man who said Matilda would live if only she confessed. Baron Henrik Ehrenskiöld.’

Henrik Ehrenskiöld. The same Henrik Ehrenskiöld whose portrait Minoo had seen in the manor house? Was the man with kind eyes also the man who betrayed Nicolaus?

‘If Adriana has the box, it should be easy to get hold of.’ Linnéa looks at Minoo. ‘Adriana lives in the manor house and you’re meant to be there every day. You can nick the box in the lunch break.’

‘I can’t steal the box,’ Minoo says.

One of Linnéa’s eyebrows is raised. ‘Think of it as “borrow” if that makes you feel better.’

‘You need only find out where it is and investigate it a little more,’ Nicolaus tells her. ‘We can start with that.’

Minoo stares at him.
We
? In this situation there’s no
we
. She has to do it. Alone. By now she’s furious. Tears of anger sting her eyes. She blinks them away, telling herself that she mustn’t come across as emotional when her aim is to be perfectly rational.

‘This discussion is pointless,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter what we tell or don’t tell Walter. Matilda knows that Nicolaus has found the skull. It follows that the guardians will know, too. And that they’ll tell Walter.’

‘The guardians don’t know that we’ve got these objects,’ Nicolaus replies. ‘I told Matilda that I didn’t find them – for safety’s sake, in case my suspicions about her should turn out to be true.’

‘But she’ll surely know that you’re lying!’ Minoo says.

‘She might,’ Linnéa says. ‘But remember what she has told us more than once. That the guardians do not know everything, nor do they see everything.’

Her voice and manner are so self-congratulatory that Minoo has to clench her jaws not to scream at her.

‘As far as I could interpret her reaction, I think she believed me,’ Nicolaus says. ‘She seemed very disappointed.’

‘Then we have the upper hand, for once,’ Linnéa asserts. ‘We know something the guardians don’t.’

Minoo feels trapped, as if the others are pushing the walls in on her.

‘Well, I suppose I shall have to investigate this. To keep you all happy.’ As she speaks, she hears just how martyred she sounds. She’s disgusted at her tone, but she hopes the others feel bad now.

‘But it’s a waste of time,’ she continues. ‘The Council’s circle needs these objects to close the portal. We must hand them over, sooner or later.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Linnéa says.

‘You don’t even know what to do to close it!’ Minoo tells her. ‘You haven’t a clue how to use these things!’

‘I guess you’d better get the info from inside Walter’s head, then.’

Minoo is fed up. She wishes Linnéa would read her mind so she could see just how fed up Minoo is right now.

‘No need to decide that yet,’ Nicolaus says. ‘We’ll postpone any further decisions until we know more about that box.’

Minoo can’t decide if she’s angrier with herself or the others. All she knows is that she can’t stay here. If she does she’ll explode with fury and self-pity.

‘I have to go.’ She gets up.

‘Would you like me to come?’ Anna-Karin asks. She starts to get up too.

‘No, I’m fine.’ Minoo tries to sound calm.

She feels Linnéa’s eyes scrutinising her and knows she sees straight through her.

‘Minoo, I do realise that you are in a difficult situation,’ Nicolaus says. ‘You are very strong to take this on.’

‘It seems I don’t have much of a choice,’ Minoo says, and looks at Linnéa. ‘I’m clearly outvoted.’

‘Stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself,’ Linnéa snaps.

Minoo grabs her rucksack and leaves without a word, even though she knows her behaviour confirms what Linnéa has said.

She has reached the next block when she hears Anna-Karin call her name. Reluctantly, Minoo slows down and waits.

‘Minoo, please don’t feel like we’re getting at you,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘You know how Linnéa—’

‘Why didn’t you support me then?’

Anna-Karin looks shocked.

‘I’m sorry …’

Minoo feels awful, and now her anger has nowhere to go. She has to swallow it instead. It tastes bitter.

Vanessa waits on the pavement outside Nicolaus’s block of flats and watches Linnéa light her cigarette.

Vanessa hates the side of Linnéa that has been on display just now, in Nicolaus’s flat. She truly hates it when Linnéa uses words as if they’re hand grenades. She can cause maximum damage in a minimum amount of time. Her words wound and crush, and cause more pain than most because there’s always some truth in what she says. Linnéa has a sharp eye for other people’s weaknesses. So she draws attention to what they would most like to hide. Reveals what they had hoped was concealed.

‘What the fuck were you trying to do in there?’ Vanessa asks.

Without saying a word, Linnéa starts walking towards Storvall Square. For a moment, Vanessa can’t move at all, her fury is so strong it paralyses her. Then she takes off and runs until she is at Linnéa’s side.

‘So you’re just going to leave?’

‘I thought you were coming. And here you are, aren’t you?’

Vanessa takes a deep breath and tries to calm down enough not to explode on the spot, but her anger is too strong.

‘Did you have to treat Minoo like that?’

‘She’s wrong!’ Linnéa says. ‘Or do you think she’s right?’

‘I don’t give a shit who’s right or wrong! Not now. What I want to know is, did you have to be such a bitch to her?’

‘I wasn’t a bitch – just told her the truth as I see it.’

‘That’s more or less exactly what Ida used to say when she was at her worst.’

Linnéa stares into the distance in silence for a few seconds.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘Next time I’ll shut up. If Minoo is so keen to become the Council’s new pet, I won’t try to stop her.’

‘Just as well, because after this she’ll love Walter more than ever!’

‘She’s free to fucking marry him if that’s what she wants.’

‘You’re behaving like a spoilt baby,’ Vanessa tells her.

‘I see. So that’s why you told me off in front of everyone?’

‘What are you on about?’

‘Oh, Linnéa, do stop saying wicked things to Nicolaus. Now we must all be nice because he’s
soo
kind and has brought us things to play with,’ Linnéa says in a squeaky voice.

‘Oh, wow, you’re really being mature now,’ Vanessa says. ‘Fuck’s sake … how can you stand yourself?’

Linnéa stops at the edge of the square. Her face is an ice-cold mask.

‘Maybe we had better call this the end, then,’ she says in a voice that is completely empty of feeling.

Vanessa feels a horrible, sinking sensation.

‘You can’t just say things like that unless you mean it.’

Linnéa opens her mouth to reply just as a couple comes round the corner.

Shit
, she thinks.

The first thing Vanessa notices is that the woman is pregnant. And clearly she wants people to notice it. She wears a tight black top in a stretchy material, so nobody can miss her belly swelling out from her slender body. It looks as if she’s swallowed the entire planet.

Wille walks by her side. The woman is Elin, his new, very pregnant girlfriend.

Wille has a crew-cut and Vanessa can’t help noticing that he looks very fit.

They stop and look at Vanessa and Linnéa.

‘Hi there,’ Wille says.

Vanessa wonders if they have heard her and Linnéa fight. She hopes desperately that they haven’t. She wants Wille to think they are happy together. Really fucking happy. Why couldn’t he see them when they were making out and as happy as fucking larks?

Elin holds out her hand and introduces herself. Her nails gleam, her cuticles are perfect.

‘Good to meet you.’ Her voice is as soft and cool as her handshake, as if Vanessa and Linnéa were nothing more than a couple of customers in the bank where she works.

‘Congratulations,’ Vanessa says to both of them. ‘I didn’t know that you were expecting a baby. That’s great.’

‘Yes … right. Thanks.’ Wille looks alarmed.

Elin places her hand on her huge belly. Vanessa has to force herself not to stare at it.

Wille’s child is in there.

The idea is so sick that Vanessa can hardly stop herself from laughing. She has a vision of a baby Wille – like he looks now, but in mini-format and sucking his thumb.

‘When is it due?’ Vanessa asks, wondering at the same time why she keeps conversing with these people.

‘At the beginning of November,’ Elin replies with her professional smile.

Vanessa notes that Elin doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest about standing on a street corner and chatting with two of Wille’s exes. Most likely she doesn’t regard either of them as real girlfriends. In her mind, Vanessa and Linnéa belong to another phase in Wille’s life – just a couple of girls he partied with until he was ready to turn serious and settle down.

Due in November. The baby must have been conceived … when? In February? Elin will have known that she was pregnant by Easter. At Easter in the playground. Wille had wanted to know if Vanessa would take him back if he left Elin. Did he know then that Elin was expecting his baby? Could even Wille be such a swine?

‘How are you two getting on?’ Wille asks, glancing at Vanessa and Linnéa while he puts his arm around Elin.

His two former girlfriends. And his new one.

Vanessa has to swallow another laugh. All three of them know what he looks like naked. All three have slept with him. She wonders if he, too, is thinking along these lines. And is he trying to imagine her and Linnéa together?

‘We’re fine,’ Linnéa says briskly.

Wille looks nervously at her.

‘Yes, Lucky said that … you’re an item?’

Vanessa nods, but the bad feeling inside her has returned, because right now it’s hard to feel that she and Linnéa belong together.

Come to think of it, they haven’t felt this far apart since that terrible summer last year.

‘Great,’ Wille says.

‘It is,’ Linnéa says. ‘One grows up. Fortunately.’

Wille looks even more nervous now. Elin strokes her belly slowly.

‘I had better go home and rest now.’ She looks at Wille.

‘Of course, darling,’ Wille says.

Vanessa gets the impression he will do whatever Elin tells him to. He says an awkward goodbye while Elin waves and smiles politely before taking his arm. Looking at her from behind, one would never guess that she was pregnant.