The Key (92 page)

She stops and Minoo understands why. Alexander chose Walter’s side, even in death.

‘We haven’t heard much from them since,’ Adriana continues. ‘But we know they have spies around town.’ She looks at Minoo. ‘I’m especially worried about you. The Council doesn’t know for certain that you killed Walter, but they suspect it. And they know of course that you have taken the oath. Like me, you’re a defector.’

There is a sadness in her eyes when she looks at Minoo. Minoo suddenly feels as though there is not enough air in the room. She has no powers and the Council will be hunting her for the rest of her life.

‘It seems you’ll have to take on being my bodyguards.’ She tries to smile.

No one else even tries.

‘We will be,’ Anna-Karin says gravely. ‘They won’t get anywhere near you.’

A mobile phone pings and Minoo has time to think that it’s hers and that it might be a text from Gustaf. But Felix is checking his; he frowns before turning to Minoo.

‘Clara would like to talk to you,’ he says, and Minoo gets up at once.

* * *

Linnéa looks at Minoo as she leaves to follow Felix upstairs.

She knows that she had better speak to her soon about everything that happened in the Borderland and before. She will not allow Minoo to withdraw into herself as she had done after breaking Max’s blessing.

Adriana carries on talking about the new witches in Engelsfors and Linnéa notes a new self-assurance in her. Perhaps it is as Adriana said to Minoo, that she is truly free, not only from the Council, but from the image of herself that the Council had forced her to accept. The organisation that despises weakness more than anything else had made Adriana believe that her lack of magical ability meant she was worthless.

In the end, there will be some kind of organisation opposing the Council, and Adriana for sure will be one of its leaders. She will be good at it. A worthy opponent to her brother.

But what will become of me? Linnéa thinks.

Being one of the Chosen Ones was all very well. She didn’t have a choice. But now there will be others to take the fight further.

Vanessa will, for one. She, if anyone can, will be able to inspire others.

‘I’m going out for a smoke,’ Linnéa announces.

‘You do that,’ Mona says. She chews gum ostentatiously and looks unbearably smug.

And now, for the first time, it dawns on Linnéa that she hasn’t seen Mona have a single fag since they met at Sunny Side.

‘What, have
you
stopped smoking?’ Vanessa asks.

Linnéa feels Vanessa’s shock.

‘You bet,’ Mona says. ‘I wasn’t going to survive the end of the world just to die of lung cancer. Besides, it’s so bloody passé.’

She pulls up her top to show off her midriff. It glows with a rich tanning-salon brown where it isn’t covered in nicotine plasters.

‘These cutie-pies and plenty of chewing gum make all the difference.’

If even Mona can stop, I’ve got no excuses left, Linnéa thinks.

She pulls her packet of fags and her lighter from the top of one of her boots and sets out for the front door.

‘If I said it has been all fun and games I’d be lying,’ Mona says. ‘But, you know, people do change sometimes. Right, Linnéa?’

Linnéa stops in mid-step.

‘We’ve all got bad habits we’re fed up with,’ Mona says behind her.

Linnéa’s hands are shaking so much when she finally lights up in the garden, she almost drops the cigarette. She tries to think straight, but this seems too much. Too big for her. But, at the same time, so simple.

She must get Vanessa back.

Felix stops outside one of the doors on the upstairs landing. His face is lit from a skylight as he turns to Minoo.

‘Would you care to come with me to Viktor’s grave later on?’

He sounds formal but Minoo realises what a huge deal it is for him to ask this.

‘Yes, I would, very much,’ she says.

Felix nods, opens the door and closes it behind her when she has stepped inside.

At first, Minoo thinks Viktor is sitting on the bed.

Clara has cut her ash-blonde hair short and is wearing one of Viktor’s pale blue shirts with her jeans. Minoo wonders what it does to her to look at herself in the mirror; if it is like glimpsing Viktor again.

‘Hi,’ Minoo says gently.

Clara doesn’t reply.

An ugly scar runs from the base of her throat and down across her chest. It disappears under the tank top she’s wearing underneath the unbuttoned shirt.

In the garden outside the open widow, Nejla is laughing.

‘Could you close the window?’ Clara says. ‘Felix keeps opening it all the time.’

Minoo goes up to the window. She sees Vanessa, Anna-Karin and Adriana come out into the garden and walk along to join Nejla and the two guys.

Minoo closes the window and turns to Clara. She tries to avoid staring at her scar, but it is hard not to.

‘Nejla saved my life,’ Clara says. ‘She stopped the blood flow using fire. I had thought that the pain couldn’t get any worse. I was wrong.’ Her smile is bitter.

‘Do sit down,’ she says next.

Minoo sits down next to her on the bed. Clara’s room in the manor house had always been wildly untidy, but in this room everything is compulsively neat. Perhaps that’s another way in which Clara has taken after her brother.

‘Mona told us that you killed Walter,’ Clara says.

Minoo looks at her hands. They rest, lightly clasped, on her lap. Harmless. She will never again release her black smoke. This world no longer contains the potential.

‘I did,’ she says.

‘Good,’ Clara says.

Minoo looks up and almost backs away from the hatred in Clara’s eyes.

‘I murdered him,’ Minoo says. ‘I
obliterated
him.’

The memory is so vivid. If she closed her eyes now, she could relive the moment she burnt his soul.

‘Better still,’ Clara says.

‘No,’ Minoo says, shaking her head.

‘Did it feel wrong at the time?’

‘No,’ Minoo says once more. ‘But that was because the guardians wanted it. They controlled me. I would never have done it as myself.’

She wishes Clara had Viktor’s powers so she could determine if Minoo was telling the truth, because she isn’t quite sure herself.

She hears steps on the ground floor and a door closing.

‘The guardians could see the future,’ Clara says. ‘Did you know that Viktor would die?’

The direct question shocks Minoo. She wonders for how long Clara has pondered on this and how long it took her to understand it all.

‘Did you?’ Clara asks.

Once again, Minoo wants to say that she had lost her own self. That she couldn’t fight the guardians. But is that really true? And, even if it were so, would she not sound as if she was making excuses for herself?

‘Yes,’ she says.

She can’t find the courage to look Clara in the eyes. Clara’s eyes, which are cornflower blue, just like Viktor’s. Minoo had done nothing to save him. As she had done nothing to protect Clara from near-fatal injury. She allowed these things to happen because the guardians had wanted it, so that their plans would not be upset.

‘Thanks for being honest,’ Clara says. Her thumb is sliding up and down the scar on her wrist.

‘I hated you for a while,’ she continues. ‘But I know that you would have saved us if you could. I don’t blame you any more.’

Minoo notices that, on the bookshelf, on top of a row of books,
The Secret History
has been jammed in. She can almost hear Viktor’s voice say:
I only ever read books in the original language
.

‘The only one I blame is myself,’ Clara says. ‘I should have persuaded Viktor not to take the oath to the Council. We should’ve got the hell out. I knew we weren’t in the circle that was meant to save the world. I felt it all along.’

She stops touching her scar and clenches her fists.

‘I keep going over what happened again and again in my head, thinking of all the things I could have done differently … It should have been me.’

‘You mustn’t even think that,’ Minoo says. ‘Viktor wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.’

Clara looks at Minoo and her eyes are shiny with tears.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘Tell me, then, how I’m supposed to stop.’

Minoo can’t. They sit in silence for a while.

‘I think I’m broken,’ Clara finally says. ‘All I can think about is revenge.’

‘But Walter is dead.’

‘The Council is still there. And so is Alexander.’

The hatred returns to Clara’s eyes. She has not only lost her brother, she has lost her father, too. Lost yet another part of her childhood.

‘There are other ways of fighting the Council,’ Minoo says.

‘You mean Adriana’s idea?’ Clara asks contemptuously.

‘Viktor believed in an organisation that could help people—’

‘I loved my brother more than anything,’ Clara interrupts. ‘But he was naïve.’

Her eyes pierce Minoo’s. ‘There is going to be a war. More will die. As for the survivors, how much is left of them? How much do you reckon is left of me?’

‘Clara …’

‘And, even when the war ends, the problems won’t be solved. Power corrupts. You, if anyone, should know that.’

‘I know that very well,’ Minoo says. ‘Which is precisely why I think we have a chance. Just because we are so aware of the dangers.’

She is not at all sure that she believes all this, but she can’t let Clara disappear.

‘Don’t give up. We need you.’

‘I’m not going to help anyone else ever again,’ Clara says. ‘I am my own person and no one else’s.’

She gives Minoo another piercing look.

‘And I have not given up. Alexander got away after his last visit in town. He won’t next time. And don’t preach about how Viktor wouldn’t have wanted me to avenge him. He would have done the same for me.’

‘And you would have tried to persuade him not to,’ Minoo says.

Clara looks at her with a sardonic little smile. Viktor’s smile. Clara’s smile.

‘I’m glad you’re back.’

She leans towards Minoo and places a light kiss on her cheek. And then she lies down on the bed, with her back turned.

Minoo stays for a moment before leaving the room.

* * *

Linnéa sits with her legs crossed on the lawn outside Adriana’s house, leaning against the trunk of one of the birches. She has smoked her last cigarette and is collecting the ends in her empty packet.

She hears the voices of the others from the back garden. Laughter is rising towards the cloudless sky. One of the voices is Vanessa’s.

Then Minoo comes outside. She stops when she catches sight of Linnéa.

‘The others are in the back garden,’ Linnéa says.

‘I know.’

Minoo walks along to sit next to Linnéa. She takes care when she settles down to avoid grass stains on her clothes. Careful Minoo, who almost laid waste to the entire world.

How was Clara?
Linnéa thinks.

Not well
, Minoo thinks.
She’s completely set on taking revenge. And she doesn’t think much of Adriana’s organisation
.

‘Do you?’ Linnéa asks.

Minoo tugs at a few grass stems.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t either,’ Linnéa says. ‘I want to believe in it … only, it seems so fucking complicated. I keep thinking about how hard it was to get the Circle to agree and act together. There were only six of us, but now we’re talking about billions of individuals who suddenly have to start handling magic powers …’

She looks at Minoo.

‘It frightens me,’ she admits.

‘Me, too,’ Minoo says. ‘I’m scared about what will happen. And how we will change. What kind of people we will become.’

She sits quietly and concentrates on pulling up long blades of grass that she divides lengthwise.

‘Remember when we all went to the cemetery after the end-of-term assembly in our first year? What I said then, when we stood near Elias’s and Rebecka’s graves?’

‘You said, “They’re where they should be”,’ Linnéa remembers.

Minoo pulls up more grass.

‘I felt so sure,’ she says. ‘I knew it with my whole being. And, it was true. Elias and Rebecka were where they should be. Where
the guardians
thought they should be.’

Linnéa shudders. She hasn’t thought about it like that. She can’t imagine how it feels for Minoo.

‘Before, I didn’t feel that my power was part of me,’ Minoo continues. ‘The reverse was true. It has been a much larger part of me than I ever understood. And now it’s gone.’

She pulls up an entire fistful of grass and tears the blades into tiny pieces.

‘When was it me? When was it the guardians? Which of my instincts were my own and which were theirs? For how long have they been influencing me? I allowed people to die, and I’ve killed someone. And, I don’t even know if I did those things to save the world or to save the guardians. And I don’t know—’

‘Stop it,’ Linnéa interrupts.

She takes Minoo’s hands in hers. The torn grass falls to the ground.

‘If you carry on like this, you’ll go out of your mind,’ Linnéa says. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

Minoo meets her eyes.

‘If only I had fought back …’

‘It wasn’t
you
who was at fault,’ Linnéa insists. ‘The guardians
possessed
you. They took you over.’

‘But I let them in,’ Minoo says stubbornly.

‘What else could you do? You trusted them.’

Tears are flowing down Minoo’s cheeks now.

‘But I loved it,’ she mumbles. ‘I had absolute power and I loved it.’

‘Who wouldn’t have? Why should just you be some fucking saint?’

Minoo sobs.

‘The guardians knew just how to manipulate you, Minoo. Don’t be ashamed of falling for it. We all fell for it. Me too. None of what happened was your fault.’

Minoo smiles at her through tears.

‘It would’ve been so much easier to believe if it hadn’t been about me.’

Linnéa laughs a little. The voices of the others are coming closer.

‘I’m sorry I was such an asshole to you,’ Linnéa says.

‘I wasn’t much better.’

They look at each other.

‘And I’m so sorry for what happened to Viktor,’ Linnéa says.