The Shattering (29 page)

‘I doubt she's a problem, either,' Daisy said patiently. ‘But we should get started.' She glanced at her watch, her rings cutting the candlelight into coloured pieces.

‘Look, the Felise kid?' Rafferty said suddenly. ‘There's no need for him to be here. I'll take him to the hospital and say I found him on the street; even if he wakes up and starts talking, no one's going to listen to a kid with head trauma.'

‘Mmm,' Daisy said, and then lifted her head. Her shadow on the wall looked sharp-edged and hungry. ‘No. We're running out of time; they'll ask you questions. You can take him after. Have you got the sand, Emily? Good. Draw the circle, just as I showed you.'

Where
is
Sione?
Janna strained, trying to make him out in the candlelight. The office door was open, and there was a shadow in there, too irregular to be a piece of furniture.

It wasn't moving.

Keri was tugging on her arm, pulling her back down, and she joined the others at the landing halfway down the stairs, where they couldn't make out what the people above were saying.

‘Did you see Sione?' Aroha hissed, and Janna nodded.

‘He's unconscious, I think. They argued about taking him to the hospital.'

Aroha looked as if someone had punched her in the stomach.

‘Didn't you say they'd have to bring Takeshi here?' Keri whispered. ‘Is this something they can work on him from a distance, like those statues?'

‘I guess so,' Janna breathed. That didn't feel right, somehow, but unless there were more conspirators out there, scouring the beach for Takeshi, it looked like Keri was correct.

‘How good is the protection?' Keri asked. ‘Will your spell work?'

‘It should,' Janna said, too worried to be offended. ‘I felt it work when I finished, like it sort of settled into place.' She tugged on Takeshi's arm. ‘Do up your jacket.'

He cocked an eyebrow at her but obeyed. The quick slither of the zip sounded too noisy in the sudden silence from upstairs, and they all froze, looking up.

But the music from the beach was still loud, and no one came down.

‘Too many,' Keri muttered, looking grim. ‘There're just too many. If Takeshi's protected anyway. . . let them try their stupid spell. Let them think it worked. We'll wait and watch. When Rafferty takes Sione to the hospital, we can follow, and you can say what you saw, Aroha. At least we can get Mr Davidson into some trouble.'

‘He hit him
really
hard,'
y
Aroha said. ‘He smashed his head onto a
desk
.'

Janna wanted to tear Kirk Davidson's head off with her bare hands. Sweet Sione, who wouldn't hurt anyone — that was
disgusting
. She must have made some motion because Keri grabbed her arm.

‘We can't help him if we join him,' she hissed, and wriggled up the stairs before anyone could protest.

‘I thought you were the fighter,' Janna muttered, and then went up after her, motioning Aroha and Takeshi to stay on the landing as backup. She was
almost
sure that the protection spell would work. She was very nearly positive.

But keeping some distance between Takeshi and the ritual was probably a good idea.

For about the zillionth time that week, Janna wished she'd studied witchcraft more. She was confident — mostly — about her own spell, and some of the things they were doing seemed familiar, but it was hard to tell. Especially lying on her belly over three stairs, with the corners jabbing her in the ribs.

Emily Rackard had produced a bag of sand, the same grey-white of the beach, and dropped it in a big circle around the seven of them. Inside the circle, they formed a square, with Emily, her mother, Mr Davidson, and Rafferty taking a corner each, and Daisy and the Maukises making a triangle inside. The shadows from Rafferty and the Maukises, who were closest, spread over the top of the stairs. That gave Janna and Keri more concealment, but it also blocked off part of their view; Janna squinted past the three men at the far side of the circle, where Emily was raising her arms.

‘We call the spirits of the East,' Emily said, her voice rapturous, and Janna recognised that from her research. ‘We bind the spirits of the air to our service on this night.'

‘They're closing the circle, making it safe,' she whispered to Keri, and watched as Mr Davidson, Mrs Rackard, and Rafferty called for and bound the spirits of each direction and element. Rafferty didn't sound very enthusiastic about it; the words were rote, like the way people mumbled ‘ourfatherwhoartinheaven.' The binding part was freaking her out, though — newer rituals
asked
spirits for protection, not bound them to give it.

With the circle closed, they looked calmer, although Rafferty's eyes kept going to the crumpled shadow in the office. Daisy opened her big straw handbag and drew out something wrapped in black velvet.

Janna knew what it was well before the glass was exposed, to shimmer in the candlelight.

‘Come, Summer King,' Daisy said, holding The Pride of Summerton in her hands. ‘Crowned and celebrated, protected and praised, come Summer King.'

‘Come, Summer King,' the others repeated.

And on the landing below them, Takeshi stood.

Janna never knew how she'd moved so fast and so quietly, to press her body against his and clamp her hand over his mouth. Aroha was holding on to him from behind, her arms tight around his waist.

Only Keri stayed at the top of the stairs, ready to spring into action. Delay the coven, probably, even if they hurt her getting past; Keri was probably that crazy-brave when it came down to it. But Janna didn't have more than half a thought to spare for Keri with Takeshi a stiff stranger against her body.

‘Come, Summer King,' Daisy said again, and again the others repeated it. Takeshi twitched in Janna's arms. Janna looked over his shoulder and saw her own panic in Aroha's eyes.

‘No,' Janna whispered in his ear.

What had she been thinking? Her stupid protection spell, a vague instruction to no one to ‘keep him safe,' matched against strong magic that had already been moving in him days before she'd knelt on her bedroom floor with dusty old candles.

For a second, she lost hope. What was she going to do against that? Stupid, dyslexic Janna, a dumb drama queen. Stardust would laugh in their faces and defy them. But Janna wasn't really stardust, never integral to the workings of the universe; just a small-town girl with big city dreams that would never come true.

It tangled in her head, as black and rotten as the voice that had told her to hate her friends, only this was coming from inside her. But under the self-doubt, right down at the bottom of herself, where the bass line made the song like a heartbeat made a life, Janna knew who she was.

They'd killed her brother, and now they wanted her lover.
Screw them
. She was Janna van der Zaag, and she was going to
fight
.

Janna thrust her hand up under Takeshi's shirt, and stroked the bare skin at the base of his spine. ‘Listen to me,' she whispered, hand still firm over his mouth. He stared down at her, unblinking and unaware, his body straining against hers. Okay, she could use that. She thrust herself against him deliberately and grabbed the lining of his jacket, through the shirt. She could feel the flax figure there; her hand tingled as it closed around the spell, warmer than it should have been.

‘They crowned you, remember? They crowned you, and now they're calling you. Don't go. You have friends and a family and a life. You're not the Summer King; you don't have to be their sacrifice. You can be yourself. You're Takeshi Hoshino, Takeshi of the stars.' There were tears prickling at her eyes. ‘You're going into space.'

‘Come, Summer King!' Daisy called a third time, her voice cracking like thunder, and the others, catching her urgency, shouted in response.

‘You're
mine
,' Janna said out loud, under the cover of their shouting. She clutched the spell she'd made with her own blood and, taking her other hand from his mouth, crushed her lips against his.

He was unresponsive and cold, but she pushed doubt and fear away and poured everything she was into that kiss — all her passion and ambition and appetite for life. Aroha was still gripping him from behind, and that had to help, too, sister-friend and lover both holding him back from horror and death. It
had
to help.

Tears spilled down Janna's cheeks when his mouth softened against hers, falling open. His arms went around her, and when she dared to open her eyes, he was staring into them, knowing her.

‘Okay,' he whispered against her lips. ‘It's me.'

‘It's me, too,' Janna said, and kissed him again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

KERI

I did not think that the middle of a black magic ceremony
was an appropriate time to be pashing your boyfriend.

On the other hand, when Janna managed to tear herself away from Takeshi and give me the thumbs-up, her smile trembling with relief, I figured there must have been more happening than that.

Magic
. As soon as this was done and Sione safe, I was going to — what? Set Inner Light on fire?

I was going to do
something
. This was no way for sensible people to go about their lives. I had no idea how to act here; all my years of planning out situations and possible reactions to them were useless now. That way of life had died the second they'd made Jake put the shotgun in his mouth, but I'd kept trying anyway, like a train stuck on the same tracks, even with a tree fallen across them. Magic made everything uncertain, unpredictable, impossible to plan for. I went back to watching and listening, my body straining with the effort.

‘What's going on?' Tiberius demanded.

‘He's
protected
,' Daisy snarled, putting the glass crown on the stone pillar. Even in her rage, she was careful with it, and I noted that. ‘He's not coming. I can't even feel him out there. It must be the van der Zaag girl.'

Ten points to Janna
, I decided, and grinned into the darkness.

‘What does that mean?' Mrs Rackard asked. ‘We can't do it?' She almost sounded relieved, and I felt a moment's hope.

Daisy spared her a scornful look. ‘We have to do it, Gloria. The spell has to be maintained yearly, or it's broken for good. That's the nature of sacrifice. I told you this!'

‘after the first time, you told us,' Mrs Rackard said.

‘It's not my fault you didn't really believe it would work,' Daisy said, shrugging impatiently. ‘Hasn't Summerton been successful and safe ever since? Haven't you all done well?'

‘We didn't do it for that,' Rafferty said.

‘Of course not,' Daisy said. ‘You did it for the town. We all knew something needed to be done, and you agreed to try. And it demands maintenance.'

‘But if he won't come —' Mrs Rackard said.

Daisy smiled. ‘We have a substitute,' she said, and pointed at the open office door.

A fist clenched around my heart.

There was a shuffle-bump behind me, and suddenly Aroha was at my shoulder.

‘Now hang on,' Rafferty said. ‘Sione Felise hasn't been crowned —'

‘We can do that now, do it all together —'

‘And you haven't done the divination,' he said, raising his voice. ‘We ask around among the tourists to see which boys are right, we bring you the names, you do the divination to see which ones are going to kill themselves in the coming year, and you pick from
them
for crowning.
That's
the deal, Daisy! He wasn't on the list! For God's sake, on top of everything else, he's an only child now! We don't even consider boys without siblings.'

What?

Could it be true? Could they have just taken the energy to protect Summerton from boys who were already planning to die?

But Daisy hesitated, her face sly in the candlelight for just a moment. I thought of Sione's careful spreadsheets, the charts he'd spent so many hours on. That many older brothers, one for every year, who were already thinking of suicide? Spread so evenly over the country, killing themselves at around the same time every year?