The Key (4 page)

Levan
. So she is not invited even when one of the other nerds in the class is throwing the party. It hurts more than she’s prepared to admit.

‘Well, are you?’ Viktor asks.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m just trying to keep our conversation going.’

‘Find someone who’s interested.’

‘Ouch.’ Viktor puts his hand to his chest in a theatrical gesture.

They are in the entrance hall by now and Minoo catches sight of one of the posters with Olivia’s photograph.

Underneath the picture it says: HAVE YOU SEEN OLIVIA HENRIKSSON? in big letters, and gives a contact number for the police.

Olivia’s face is covered in whitish foundation and framed by a cloud of blue hair. Her big brown eyes are shining. Her cheeks are full. This Olivia is someone very different from the ruined figure that Alexander picked up from the floor of the gym.

‘Minoo,’ Viktor says. ‘I realise that you and I disagree about a lot of things, but surely we can still talk to each other?’

Near the front door, Minoo stops suddenly and looks straight at him.

‘Of course we can,’ she says quietly. ‘Actually, there are quite a few things on my mind. Things I’d like answers to. Like, where is Olivia? Is she alive? Why are you and Alexander still in Engelsfors? You don’t even believe in the apocalypse, or that we are the Chosen Ones. You must have better things to do than staying here?’

‘You know that I can’t answer your questions,’ Viktor tells her.

‘Then we have nothing to talk about.’

He places his hand on her shoulder to stop her from leaving.

‘Do you truly believe that I’m your enemy?’

‘You are certainly not my friend.’

Viktor takes his hand away.

‘I see,’ he says. ‘You do mean it.’

It seems that his lie-detector magic has revealed to him just
how much
she means it, because he looks quite hurt. For a fleeting second, Minoo feels bad. Then she reminds herself that this is probably what he intended. She has no idea who Viktor really is, which part of him is truthful and which is manipulative. All she knows is that she has promised herself never to trust him again.

‘Just leave me alone.’ She walks outside and he doesn’t follow her.

The schoolyard is bathed in a pale, grey light that is bright enough to make her squint. Gustaf, wearing his green army jacket, is standing by the football goal. The wind ruffles his blond hair as he smiles and waves at her.

Minoo’s body goes on high alert. Her ears go hot again. As she walks towards him, her wrists seem to buzz with electricity. She tries to stay calm; she must not let him see how she feels.

‘Hi there.’ Gustaf hugs her.

‘Hi, Gustaf,’ she says, and forces herself to let him go; otherwise she’ll start clinging to him like a koala bear on a eucalyptus.

‘You wanna go for a walk?’ Gustaf asks.

The clouds form a lid over Engelsfors. They walk past Lilla Lugnet. Coltsfoot and crocus glow along the verges. They walk past the lovely white wooden house with its decorative carved details where Adriana Lopez lived until only a few weeks ago. It looks deserted; Adriana stays at the manor house now. Minoo wonders what it is like for her. How she feels. She hasn’t seen her since she concealed all Adriana’s memories of what’s happened since she arrived in Engelsfors. Concealed them to protect Adriana from the Council.

They carry on southwards, in the direction of the canal. Gustaf talks about which universities he’d like to go to this autumn. He has applied for lots, but would prefer law school in Uppsala. Minoo tries to sound encouraging and to ignore her pain.

Uppsala. Stockholm. Lund. Linköping. Umeå. Göteborg. Every university on his list feels like another knife-cut. A few months from now, Gustaf will be off to one of these cities and no longer be part of life here. It will probably be just as well, of course. It’ll be best to let their relationship, whatever it amounts to, fade anyway.

As they pass Olsson’s Hill, Minoo’s eyes wander to the top, where there is a huge pile of firewood. People have dragged branches and boards and things up there to be burnt.

‘Are you coming along to watch the May Day Eve bonfire?’ Gustaf asks.

‘No …’ she begins, but is interrupted by a small, sharp explosion that makes her jump. She turns around and spots a group of middle-school kids just down the road, laughing loudly.

‘I thought kids of that age weren’t even allowed to mess around with bangers,’ she says, realising she sounds like a grumpy old man.

Gustaf is smiling.

‘Did you get scared?’

‘I simply don’t see the point.’

‘But didn’t you used to think blowing things up with bangers and crackers was the best thing ever. Like sandpit explosions. We did.’

Minoo shakes her head. Of course Gustaf had played with bangers. And of course she hadn’t.

She thinks back to the Gustaf she used to watch at a distance when they were in middle school. During lunch break, he would always be outside, usually on the football pitch, and surrounded by his mates and fans. Minoo used to hide in the school library to escape having to go outside.

It makes her uneasy to think about Gustaf and herself as children and how totally unlike each other they had been. Because it reminds her that they are fundamentally different.

What do they truly have in common? Why be friends now? And that other feeling – what is it? Something she had better not think about. Whatever it is, it made Gustaf take her hand when they were sitting side-by-side on his bed, that evening before the Spring Equinox.

‘Are you coming to the party?’ Gustaf asks.

New bangs echo behind them.

‘Oh, do you mean Levan’s party?’ Minoo says, and realises that it might come across as though she is pretending she has at least two tempting parties to choose between.

‘Yes.’

‘I have to work. And besides, I’m not invited,’ she replies, hoping that she doesn’t sound like a martyr.

‘Nobody will give a damn if you’re invited or not. I don’t think Levan has got a clue about what’s going to hit him. Perhaps we ought to go just to stop it getting out of control.’

He rounds this off with a little laugh that sounds almost nervous. Minoo glances at him and realises that he is looking at her sidelong.

Does he really, truly, want us to go there together? she wonders. Why would he? Is it a sudden inspiration that I’d be a fun person to go partying with? Or does he pity me because I’m about to be home alone on May Day Eve? Or, maybe he means exactly what he says. I’d be just right for a little party policing?

Or is it because anything might happen at a party?

Her ears are on fire.

‘Why do you think it’s going to get out of control?’ she asks.

‘Because it’s May Day Eve. Because hardly anyone knows Levan, or cares. And because it’s the first big party since the gym hall business.’

The gym hall business.

Olivia had joined in with Helena and Krister Malmgren and together they had planned to sacrifice the entire school membership of Positive Engelsfors. The idea was to use the collective life-force of hundreds of people to resurrect Elias from the dead. But what Helena and Krister didn’t know was that Olivia wanted to sacrifice them as well. As for Olivia, she didn’t know that the demons had deceived her completely. If she had succeeded with her mass murder, it wouldn’t have brought Elias back. It would have triggered the apocalypse.

But Gustaf is unaware of all that. He remembers as little of that night as all the Positives, who were wearing Olivia’s amulets. Minoo has seen to it that Gustaf’s memories are hidden deep inside him.

How she wishes that someone could make
her
forget.

She has seen Ida die, both through her own eyes and through Gustaf’s. She has seen far too much through the eyes of others. Through Adriana’s. And through Max’s.

When he pointed his gun at Linnéa in the dining hall. When he made Anna-Karin pick up the carving knife and press its edge to her. When he pushed Rebecka off the roof of the school. When he forced Elias to slash his wrist with the shard of mirror glass. When he made Alice, his girlfriend, leap from the window to be crushed against the rocks below because she no longer wanted to be with him.

Gustaf lightly touches her shoulder. His touch wakes her, allows the maelstrom of Max’s memories to disperse.

‘Hey, where did you go?’ he asks.

She would so much like to answer him honestly. She would like to tell him everything.

But the laws laid down by the Council forbid her to reveal to the general public that she is a witch, and Gustaf belongs to that general public. At this stage, the Chosen Ones must keep a low profile so they don’t attract more unwanted attention from the Council. Above all, Minoo worries about what the Council might do to Gustaf if he were to know.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just that there’s so much on my mind right now.’

‘Listen, maybe I didn’t sell the idea too well, but seriously, what do you think? What about the two of us crashing Levan’s party?’

Suddenly, Minoo really wants to go. Just for one evening, she would like not to be good and thoughtful and do the right thing.

She turns to Gustaf, but he has seen somebody and waves. Minoo looks in the same direction.

Isabelle Mohlin, Rebecka’s mother, comes walking towards them. Two little girls, Rebecka’s little sisters, hold on to her hands. She has cut her strawberry-blonde hair a little shorter, but she still looks so much like Rebecka. She smiles happily at Gustaf and, when she reaches him, gives him a big, warm hug.

‘Really nice to see you!’ she says as she lets go of him.

‘And you,’ Gustaf says. Then he bends down to say hello to Alma and Moa.

‘Hi,’ Isabelle smiles at Minoo.

‘Hi,’ she replies.

Is Isabelle taking note and recalling that Minoo and Gustaf were two of the people who were closest to Rebecka? Is she asking herself if they might not have noticed signs she herself had failed to pick up? Non-existent signs, in fact, since Rebecka did not kill herself.

‘Mummy,’ Moa says in the slightly croaky voice of a small child. ‘Mummy, please, let’s go. I need a wee.’

‘Yes, we’ll go home in a minute,’ Isabelle tells her, and then turns to Gustaf. ‘I’ve got to feed everyone before going off to work. Thank God I’m not in A&E now, what with the May Day Eve fun and games tonight.’

‘Mummeee,’ Moa hisses, using her body weight to pull at her mother’s arm.

‘Yes, sweetie.’ Isabelle doesn’t take her eyes off Gustaf. ‘You know, don’t you, that you’re welcome to come round any time? Though I understand that you’ve got a lot to deal with now, in the run-up to the final exams.’

‘Only a few more tests to go, and afterwards things calm down,’ Gustaf tells her. ‘When it’s over, you’ll all be invited to my reception.’

‘Sounds great!’ Isabelle says. ‘We’ll try to come – well, one of us at least. Bye for now. Bye, Minoo.’

Minoo and Gustaf watch as they walk away.

‘Gustaf, I can’t go out tonight,’ Minoo tells him. ‘I really must work.’

She notices how Gustaf’s gaze flickers. ‘If you’re sure.’

When they part, he doesn’t hug her. She wonders if that means anything. And hates herself for wondering and for wishing that he had.

Minoo unlocks the front door, kicks off her shoes, runs upstairs to her room and throws herself on the bed. Her thoughts feel like a thousand little hooks buried in her mind, tearing at it in all directions.

She holds her hands out in front of her. Releases her magic.

The black smoke starts winding itself around her fingers. It moves slowly; the trails of smoke merge, thicken and spread until darkness floats above her like black water.

There’s something wrong with you. But you know that already, don’t you?

You positively stink of magic, but it’s unlike any I’ve ever come across. Can’t fucking identify it at all. And I don’t like it
.

The week after Ida’s funeral, Minoo went back to the Crystal Cave to ask Mona Moonbeam what she actually meant by all that.

‘I knew there was something weird about you even before we met,’ Mona told her while she applied another layer of frosted pink lipstick. ‘But I only grasped quite how peculiar the first time you turned up in the shop. Magic shows itself this way and that, but the foundation stones are always the same.’

‘You mean the elements?’ Minoo asked.

‘Yeah, I mean the elements,’ Mona said impatiently. ‘Thing is, you haven’t got an element, have you?’

No, Minoo thinks, as she follows the pleasing tracery of the smoke. Loses herself in it. No, I haven’t. I’ve got something much better.

Her mind goes silent. Her emotions quieten down. She feels as if she is dissolving.

She is no longer afraid of anything. Nothing can harm her now, not inside the smoke. Nothing hurts. No matter if the pain is outside or inside her, it cannot get at her for as long as the guardians’ magic pulses in her body and fills the space around her.

She had felt like this for the first time after she defeated Max. She had felt it when she hid Adriana’s memories. But it was after Ida’s funeral that she began to escape into the smoke. And perhaps this is the guardians’ greatest gift to her: a way to set her free from herself.

Minoo sits up, opens the drawer in her bedside table and takes out the
Book of Patterns
. The smoke twists lazily around her hands as she puts the book on the bed in front of her and starts turning the pages.

Every day since Ida’s death, Minoo has spoken with the guardians through the book. They rarely answer her questions, but it is a comfort that they are there.

Minoo watches as the elemental signs float across the pages, fusing and separating again to form new patterns.

We must show you something
.

Minoo’s hands slide over the signs.

‘What?’ she asks.

Suddenly she feels dizzy.

The room rotates and her head feels light, as if filled with helium.

She is floating now, first just above her own body, then rising up and up towards the ceiling. She sees herself sitting on the bed, still with the book on her lap.