The Shattering (23 page)

‘I know, it twists everything,' Janna said. ‘Look, they've been ahead of us all the way! Let's get ahead of
them
for once. Let's stay away from each other. I'll stick with Takeshi and do the protection spell —'

‘You're an amateur —' Keri protested, and then bit the rest of it back.

Janna talked over her. ‘And we'll all protect him at the Bash, so they can't come for him. They won't be expecting it.'

‘You still want to do the Bash?' Sione asked.

She flushed. ‘I have to!'

‘She's right,' Keri said reluctantly. ‘Let them think it's worked. Daisy thinks she scared us.'

‘She
did
scare you,' Sione s
d
narled. ‘You could hardly talk.'

‘You should know what that's like,' Keri shot back, and then took a deep breath and knocked her cast again. She gasped. ‘Oh, fuck, I can't keep doing this. Okay, we keep in touch by phone, all right? In private. And as far as anyone else knows, we had a fight and hate each other.' She glared at both of them. ‘Don't tell anyone otherwise.'

It was almost true anyway, Sione thought. The things they'd said to him curdled in his stomach, but worse were the things he'd said to them. He couldn't believe he'd outed Keri, couldn't believe he'd called Janna a whore. Exactly as if he were like those people who thought being gay or having sex was
bad
, when he knew much better.

The rotten little voice was getting louder again. Knowing they weren't really his own thoughts only helped a little; he suddenly had a lot of sympathy for some of Mum's clients. They
knew
the bad feelings were all coming from inside their heads, but relying on logic didn't make it stop.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘You guys, I am so, so sorry.'

‘Me too,' Keri said.

‘Me three,' Janna said. She was looking at Keri, though, her face wrinkled. ‘Are you really gay?'

Keri flinched. ‘Yes.'

‘That's okay! I mean, it's okay to be gay. I — look, I won't tell anyone.'

Keri looked at the clock. ‘I have to go. I don't hate you,' she added, all in a rush. ‘Not really
.
I know it's not real. But I have to go.'

‘Me too,' Janna said. The girls nearly brushed together in their haste to get out the door and then recoiled from the other's closeness.

For the first time, Sione was happy they were leaving him alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

KERI

I took the stairs, since Janna was moving toward the lift.
Halfway down, and breathing hard, I noticed water dripping off my nose onto my shirt. That was how I knew I was crying.

Of course Mum was in the staff room, along with a couple of the housekeepers. And Kirk Davidson. It was that kind of day.

‘Keri!' she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. ‘Oh my lord, what happened?'

‘They're
awful
,' I said. ‘Sione and Janna — what they said to me, Mum.'

‘What did they say?'

I flinched. ‘It doesn't matter, it doesn't —' I was sobbing almost too hard to speak now, and it wasn't entirely to sell the story we'd agreed on. It wasn't all Sione's fault he'd outed me, but he had, and that meant the secret was already out of my control.

Mum gathered me into her arms and rocked, as if I were seven, not seventeen. I thought of what the others had said and shuddered. Would she love me this much if she knew I liked girls? Or would she look at me and wonder,
where did I go wrong?

Mr Davidson got me a glass of water, and I pretended I didn't mind his big fingers uncurling my hand to put the glass in there. I gulped down the water. The housekeepers weren't even pretending to mind their own business, and one of them was Hemi Koroheke's big sister. Great. This was going to be all over town.

Well, at least Daisy and Company would believe their plan had worked. I hoped they choked on their own smugness.

‘Come on,' Mr Davidson said, and hustled everyone out of the break room, closing the door quietly behind him.

As I calmed down, breath by breath, I was able to stop crying and clean my face, but the hate wasn't gone. A real emotion that strong should have been leeched out with the tears, but this one thrummed inside me like an engine choking out greasy smoke, making my fingers itch with the urge to be away from them.
They are disgusting
, the voice whispered.

You're not real
, I thought fiercely, and the voice went softer.

But it didn't disappear. I looked at the yellowing walls and tattered bits of paper on the noticeboard, so different from the glossy lobby and luxurious rooms. It was all an illusion, the beautiful hotel. All the work that went into it was planned in these grubby rooms.

Dirt under beauty. Just like Summerton.

‘Oh, Mum,' I said. ‘Can we go home? I want to go home.'

She was looking at me, her sympathy swallowed up in careful appraisal. ‘Your father called, Keri. He said you were supposed to be home at five. It's well past six. You missed the phone call from your grandmother.'

‘It's their fault!' I said. It was, wasn't it? That was fair. ‘Janna and Sione, they made me late.'

‘Stop it,' Mum said, her voice slicing through my protests. ‘Stop it, Keri, right now. I have had it with your excuses. I know you're having a hard time — we are
all
having a hard time — and one of the ways I am coping with it is that I need to know where you are and that you will keep your promises. You said you understood.'

I couldn't remember saying anything of the sort.

‘You are grounded,' she said. ‘You are to stay home until New Year's Day unless you are accompanied by me, or your father if he's home.'

‘But the Beach Bash!' I said.

‘No buts, no Beach Bash,' she hissed. ‘So help me God
,
Keri, do you want me to have a nervous breakdown? I am trying to hold this family together!'

‘You cancelled Christmas!'

She stood up, every line in her body vibrating with tension, like a tree in a gale. ‘Yes,' she said quietly. ‘I shouldn't have done that without talking to you. But you are grounded, Keri, because you promised one thing and did another. Am I understood?'

She was scaring me, with her intensity, with her tension. If I said no, would she just fall apart? And I was tired, so tired I could barely think, all my energy gone into the fight, and my grief, and the effort to keep the hatred at bay. My arm ached. ‘Yes,' I whispered.

‘Good. Because I swear to God, if you put one foot out of line, I will drive you down to your grandmother myself. She won't put up with your nonsense, and you won't have friends there to make you late, and me out of my mind with worry.'

And I wouldn't be here to save Takeshi. ‘I understand,' I said. ‘I'll be good.'

She breathed out, a long sigh. ‘All right then. Let's go home.'

Dad didn't yell at me; instead he listened to Mum explaining why I was grounded until New Year's Day and nodded, looking at me with disappointed eyes.

That was much worse.

I didn't complain. I ate my dinner and helped load the dishwasher and went to bed.

And lay awake for most of the night, planning.

I could stay home for the next six days, being as good as gold, but on New Year's Eve, Takeshi was going to be sacrificed. I had to get to the Beach Bash, whatever happened to me, and whatever punishment came after that.

But there was time to be good before I disappointed them again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

JANNA

Janna held it together in the lift, all the way up to the suite
Takeshi and Aroha shared, but when Takeshi opened the door
and said her name, she stepped into his arms, trusting him to
hold her until the shaking stopped.

‘What happened?' he said, careful hands gentle on her back and hair. ‘Janna, is something gone wrong?'

‘Yes,' she managed, and clutched him tighter. ‘Sione and Keri — a fight. We had a fight. They called me —' She stopped. She couldn't tell Takeshi the things they'd said. He would hate them, when it wasn't really their fault. Or worse, he might wonder if they were right. What if he thought she was
bad
? They'd taken all the words she was most afraid of right out of her nightmares and thrown them into her face.

‘Come . . .' Takeshi was saying. ‘Come in. It's only me here.' He was stepping backward, drawing her in, and sitting her down on the plush couch. He took her hand in his and patted it, which was so sweet she could cry, if she hadn't been crying already.

She gave up on that as pointless and looked around as she blew her nose on a tissue, ignoring Takeshi's polite turn-away.

She'd never been in here before. The suite was a lot nicer than Sione's room downstairs. Takeshi and Aroha had their own bedrooms and a lounge furnished in fancy red furniture on soft cream carpet, and some sort of modern-art glass vase on the coffee table. She didn't think she liked the vase much — it was shiny, gold-veined black, too smooth and perfect — but she could tell it was expensive. Aroha's parents must be so, so rich.

What would it be like, to never have to worry about money? Not that anyone in Summerton was
really
poor, like homeless poor, or even on-the-dole poor —
and now you know why that is,
she reminded herself— but this kind of rich was something else, something she wanted almost as much as she wanted to make music. The freedom to go almost anywhere, do almost anything, and never have to worry about not having enough; that's what this kind of money meant.

‘Where's Aroha?' she asked, and then, because she didn't really care, ‘Thank you. For this. Sorry that I'm a big mess.'

Takeshi stroked her cheekbone and showed her the black smudge on his fingers. ‘The same when we met, beautiful Janna,' he said, and smiled. ‘This fight?'

‘I don't want to talk about it,' she said. She could feel her face twisting and even knowing she must look ugly couldn't make her smooth it out again.

Takeshi took her hand. ‘It was a wrong fight?'

‘Bad. Bad fight, yes, I don't
want
to —' He was going to make her talk about it, he was going to be understanding and persistent and gentle, and she didn't want gentle right then. And she'd have to lie, and she didn't want to lie to him anymore. Janna wanted to stop thinking.

She reached up and drew Takeshi's mouth down to hers, fierce and raw and
wanting.
It took only a few seconds before she wasn't faking it anymore; she was burning up with him, the fight forgotten. She took his shirt off, laughing as it mussed the careful spikes in his hair, and kissed her way down his chest to pry, teasing, at his belt buckle. She grinned at the noises she was drawing out of his throat and the little shudders that rippled down his smooth body, hummed as she pressed her mouth against his skin.

Sometime after that, she took his hand and led him to his bedroom, and the bed, and the joyful, tender space they made together there.

Janna went home that evening, warm and thoughtful, with Takeshi's soft black jacket draped over her shoulders. She'd asked to borrow it, and he'd given it to her with no hesitation. A thing worn oft en, freely given. That should help what she meant to do.

Nobody seemed to be home, which was just as well. She'd showered afterward, but Mum had a sixth sense about these things, like just before she'd decided to do it for the first time with Patrick. She'd sat Janna down for a ‘little chat,' and Janna had expected a long lecture on the importance of saving herself for marriage (which would have been
totally
hypocritical). Instead she'd got Mum-the-nurse, not Mum-the-Catholic, and an in-depth review of contraception and sexual health. In some ways, that had been worse. There was nothing quite like your own mother carefully explaining the symptoms of herpes to make you want to die.

Okay, then. A house to herself and time to make the spell work right.

Sandra-Claire had been firm that, while she
could
sell Janna all the herbs she needed for any of the spells, it would be better to work fresh, with what she had on hand. So they'd gone with the simplest spell they could find.

There was flax in the overgrown back garden. Mum would probably make her and her sisters weed again pretty soon. Janna made a mental note to learn something her sisters didn't want Mum to know so that she could make them do her share. Of course, they'd try to do the same to her; it was only fair.

She sliced off some of the flax with the silver athame she'd bought last year to show Daisy she was serious. If she'd known nothing could get her into that coven, she would have saved the money, but it was probably just as well she had it now.

What was she doing, playing around with homemade spells in the backyard? She'd never been initiated; she knew what she knew from books she struggled through and what she'd picked up from conversations at Inner Light, and here she was trying to fight Daisy Hepwood, who'd been a practising witch long before Janna was born.