The Key (90 page)

‘Yes, the next day,’ Evelina says. ‘She said she couldn’t miss a golden opportunity like this.’

‘What opportunity?’ Linnéa asks.

‘Engelsfors will become like, world famous, when everything goes magical,’ Evelina says.

They already know. And when Evelina says it, it seems real for the first time. Real and mind-boggling.

‘Nessa, I need to tell you something,’ Evelina says. ‘When we drove round to the nursery to check on Melvin, he was the only one who wasn’t asleep.’

It takes Vanessa a moment to understand what that means. Melvin is a natural witch.

‘Shit,’ she says. ‘Has he developed any power yet?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Evelina says. ‘I’ve tried to keep an eye. You know, done babysitting and helped Jannike pick him up from nursery and things …’

Now, Vanessa can’t stop the tears.

‘You’re the best friend in the whole world, you know that, don’t you?’

‘I so wish I could have told your mum everything,’ Evelina says. ‘But I thought of the Council and simply didn’t dare.’

Linnéa and Vanessa look at each other again and sense that neither of them can bear to think about the Council just now.

‘Good that you didn’t,’ Vanessa says.

She realises that she is looking forward to telling their story. To stopping lying to Mum at last. Besides, if Melvin is going to develop magic powers any time soon, Mum had better be prepared.

‘Nessa, look,’ Evelina says.

Vanessa looks in the same direction and sees a taxi stop just in front of them. Mum is sitting in the back.

Vanessa opens the car door and runs.

* * *

Linnéa looks at the two of them. Jannike, still in her care assistant’s blue overalls, leaps out of the car. She screams when she sees Vanessa and it hardly sounds human. They fall into each other’s arms in the middle of the street.

Linnéa starts fiddling with her cuticles. Her nails are varnished green and look just as freshly painted as they did when she entered the Borderland eight months ago. It’s past all understanding.

She probably doesn’t have anywhere to live any more. She hasn’t paid any bills for more than half a year. Or met up with the social services.

Still, the thought leaves her strangely unmoved. Perhaps that’s what happens when you’ve stopped the apocalypse and met your dead best friend and learnt that the world will soon be flooded with magic.

The pain of losing Elias is still with her, but it is different now. It is as if he had left a piece of himself in her heart. Something she can keep with her, always. Something that might make her braver. Brave enough to get Vanessa back.

Vanessa is still hugging her mother. And Minoo is with her parents. She ought to phone Dad. And she ought to phone Diana.

‘Thanks,’ Evelina says.

Linnéa looks up. ‘For what?’

‘For, like, us still existing.’

‘Yes,’ Rickard says. ‘Thank you. You saved the world.’

‘It’s huge,’ Evelina says.

‘It is,’ Linnéa agrees, wondering if she will ever grasp quite how huge it is.

Evelina takes Linnéa’s hand between both hers and looks seriously at her.

‘Maybe you’ll think that I should mind my own business, but I don’t give a shit. Now you’ve another chance. And I know you love her.’

Linnéa stares at Evelina. Can’t come up with an answer. Rickard rather transparently pretends that he hasn’t heard.

‘I must go to my reception,’ Evelina says. ‘Mum and Dad will have strangled each other with streamers by now.’

Rickard smiles at Linnéa in the mirror. ‘Talk to you later,’ he says. ‘You must tell us everything.’

‘We will,’ Linnéa says. She climbs out of the car with the feeling that everyone can see right through her – and it’s kind of a relief.

* * *

Minoo looks around the sitting room. Everything looks so familiar and, at the same time, alien. The bright summer sun shines through the windows. She sees the well-filled bookshelves, one with a built-in TV cupboard. The large armchair, where Vanessa’s mother sits with her daughter on her lap. Another chair, where Linnéa sits with one leg folded under her.

Mum sits next to Minoo and holds on to her as if she will never let go again. She has stopped crying now, but she doesn’t seem able to stop stroking Minoo’s hair, and kissing her cheek.

As far as Minoo is concerned, she and Mum spoke on the phone just a few weeks ago. But to Mum, eight months have gone by. Eight months of nightmares and self-reproach.

Minoo wishes Anna-Karin’s hold on her parents’ minds had lasted for longer so that Mum and Dad could have carried on believing that Minoo was nicely looked after in the manor house.

But when Anna-Karin, Vanessa and Linnéa disappeared, they finally came to the conclusion that something was very wrong. The police arrived and wanted to speak to Minoo, and, when they looked for her in the manor house, they found it had been abandoned.

Mum moved back to Engelsfors. Since then, she and Dad have been waiting. And their hopes have faded with every new day of waiting.

Minoo glances towards the kitchen, where Dad is pacing up and down on the dark wooden floorboards. He is on the phone to the police, informing them that the girls are back, in good condition, and have not been victims of any kind of crime.

‘Linnéa,’ Mum says. ‘You should know that we have contacted your father.’

Linnéa’s focus is on the side table.

‘We’ve been in touch since you disappeared,’ Mum continues. ‘And I called him as soon as we heard from Minoo.’

‘Thank you,’ Linnéa says quietly.

‘And your furniture and other things are stored in our cellar,’ Mum adds cautiously. ‘You see, your flat …’

‘Thank you,’ Linnéa whispers again.

Minoo can see that she is close to tears. She wishes that Linnéa had someone to hold her, too.

A bird is chirping just outside the sitting-room window. Minoo catches a glimpse of a blue tit flitting past. What if Viktor is still alive? If it was only her imagination that …?

No, she tells herself, cutting the line of thought. Viktor is dead. She knows it.

The chirping goes on happily. What happens to a familiar when the witch dies? Perhaps it was Viktor’s blue tit she saw, after all? Perhaps it is searching for him? Where is Sigrid’s mink now? Does Walter’s lynx haunt the forests around Engelsfors? Have they become ordinary animals again?

And what happened to Clara? And Adriana? Felix? Nejla? Will Minoo ever find out?

Dad finishes the phone call to the police but the phone immediately starts ringing.

‘No comment,’ he says, turning it off.

‘I so hope the hacks won’t trace Anna-Karin to the Sunny Side home,’ Dad says when he comes back into the sitting room.

‘Her grandpa is in very poor shape,’ Mum says. ‘We’ve visited him a couple of times but … you know, I’m not even sure he understood that Anna-Karin was missing. He was strangely calm.’

We must go and see her later
.

Minoo hears Linnéa’s thought in her head. She looks up, meets her eyes and nods.

Dad sits down on Minoo’s other side and takes her hand.

‘Minoo,’ he begins. It’s obvious he is trying hard to restrain his feelings. ‘None of us are accusing you. But you turn up from nowhere after eight months and insist that you’ve stayed away willingly …’

‘
Man nemifahmam
,’ Mum says. ‘Couldn’t you have phoned us just once and told us you were alive?’

She sounds angry now and Minoo sympathises.

‘Has anybody harmed you in any way, or threatened you?’ Dad asks.

‘You know, don’t you, that you can tell us everything?’ Jannike adds.

Minoo glances at Vanessa. Jannike has no idea how hard she’ll be tested.

Let’s do it
, Linnéa thinks.

Minoo feels a little queasy now that the moment has come.

‘We will tell you,’ she says.

The silence in the room is broken only by the bird song and music blasting out from a graduate’s carriage somewhere far away.

‘It’s a very long story,’ Minoo says.

‘For us, it began in our first year,’ Vanessa says. ‘Though the real beginning was much earlier.’

‘You already know that a lot of weird things happen in Engelsfors,’ Linnéa says. ‘What we’re going to tell you will sound much weirder but, in fact, it will explain everything.’

Mum has stopped holding on to Minoo now. She, Dad and Jannike look, if anything, even more concerned. It strikes Minoo that there’s only one way to make them understand.

‘We have to show them,’ she says. ‘Vanessa, could you …?’

Vanessa understands at once, gets up and looks at her mother.

‘Don’t be scared now,’ she says. ‘It’s not dangerous, I promise.’

Dad and Jannike scream in unison when Vanessa becomes invisible. Jannike lifts her feet off the floor.

Vanessa becomes visible again.

Minoo gives her mum a sidelong glance. Mum has put her hands against her temples, as if she is trying to stop her brain from exploding. She has just watched scientific laws being broken right in front of her medically trained eyes.

‘I can fly as well,’ Vanessa says with a hesitant smile.

‘What … what is this?’ Mum looks at Minoo.

Minoo meets her eyes and gives her the only possible answer.

‘It’s magic, Mum.’

* * *

Anna-Karin sits on a chair next to her grandpa’s bed. Members of staff have told her that his health has declined a great deal during the last few months. He sleeps almost all the time and seems confused when he is awake.

But they assure her that he hasn’t been suffering in any way, that he doesn’t seem to understand how poorly he is. He is not at all anxious.

Grandpa has been sleeping ever since she arrived and Anna-Karin is grateful for that.

Because she hasn’t been able to stop crying for a single minute.

She cries because she hasn’t been with him for Christmas and New Year and Easter. Without her, he has been completely alone. Grandma dead; Mia dead.

She cries because she has lost so much time with him.

She cries for Nicolaus who sacrificed himself for them. She feels she can forgive him now because she can truly understand why he acted as he did.

She cries for Matilda who was alone for so long. If it hadn’t been for her, the world would have fallen into the guardians’ possession. Her only reward was death.

She cries for Rebecka and Elias.

She cries for Ida.

She cries for the stranger in the Canaries.

And, finally, she cries for Mum.

She cries for the woman she saw in Kärrgruvan. And she cries for the woman Mum became. She can see her more clearly now. She can see that she tried, and that she knew that it wasn’t enough.

Anna-Karin cries because she has finally realised that she must not hate herself for not missing her mother more. Mum was never a mother to her. To take that on board is a relief in a way but, in another, the saddest thing of all.

Anna-Karin has no idea how long she has been sitting there when she senses the energies of the others in the corridor. She doesn’t turn around when they enter the room.

We didn’t want you to be alone
, Linnéa thinks.

‘Are we disturbing you?’ Minoo asks.

‘No,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘I’m glad you came.’

Minoo stands behind her and puts her hand on Anna-Karin’s shoulder. Vanessa and Linnéa stand at the far end of the bed.

‘My dear child,’ Grandpa mumbles.

Anna-Karin takes his hand. He sounds as if his mouth is dry.

‘I’m here, Grandpa.’ She quickly wipes her tears away with her free hand.

‘I knew you’d come back,’ he mutters, opening his eyes. ‘I knew it all along.’

He gives the others a curious look.

‘This is Minoo, Linnéa and Vanessa, who I’ve told you about,’ Anna-Karin says.

She notices that he has problems focusing his eyes, but he nods as if he could see perfectly well.

‘I would have smartened myself up a bit if I’d known I’d get such grand visitors,’ he says with a little smile.

Then he turns his head to Anna-Karin again.

‘It’s very nice to meet your second family.’

All Anna-Karin can do is nod, because she has started to cry again. She tries to do it quietly so he won’t notice.

‘Run along now,’ he says. ‘There are other people waiting to meet you.’

‘I don’t want to go now that you’ve just woken up,’ Anna-Karin says.

‘I promise I won’t disappear,’ he tells her. He closes his eyes.

Anna-Karin gets up, though she doesn’t want to. Takes a tissue from the bedside table and wipes her eyes and cheeks.

‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ she says.

‘You do that,
lapsikulta
.’

Grandpa goes back to sleep and they tiptoe out of the room and then walk to the lifts.

We have told Minoo’s parents and Jannike now
, Linnéa thinks as they reach the ground floor.

How did it go?
Anna-Karin asks.

Linnéa smiles faintly.

It was mad
.

They walk towards the exit. When the automatic doors slide open, Anna-Karin picks up a waft of incense.

Someone is waiting just outside the door. Someone who stands with her hands on her hips.

‘Took your effing time, didn’t you?’ Mona Moonbeam says.

Vanessa looks wearily at her. She is dressed in a white denim skirt and a white tank top decorated on the chest with a crocodile sitting in a beach chair drinking a cocktail with an umbrella in it. Her hair is bigger and blonder than ever and she is chewing gum with her mouth open.

‘Nice to see you too, Mona,’ Vanessa says.

But she can’t quite manage to sound sarcastic, because she actually means what she says. Mona almost smiles.

‘Good thing you got rid of that crap,’ she says to Minoo.

‘Do you mean the guardians?’ Minoo asks.

‘Whatever you want to call it,’ Mona says. ‘Come on, we can’t hang around this place. The hacks are sniffing around for you.’

She walks across the car park towards a flash 1950s American car, all white leather seats and shiny pale blue paint.

‘Have you even got a licence?’ Vanessa asks her.

‘Listen, baby face, I was burning the tarmac when your mum was still in nappies,’ Mona snaps, climbing into the car and slamming the driver’s door.