The Shattering (30 page)

I had faith in Sione's maths; the pattern was too deliberate to be accidental. She'd lied to them.

The only mystery was that they'd been stupid enough to believe her.

They'd been scared
, I thought. Scared to lose Summerton. So when she came to them, they'd wanted so badly for it to be true. Or maybe she'd used magic to blind them.

And now, far too late, Rafferty saw through it. His face went grey and old, and I could have felt sorry for him, if I hadn't hated him so much. ‘You never did the damn divinations, did you?' he asked, voice flat.

‘Does it matter?' Daisy asked.

‘Does it
matter
?' Mrs Rackard repeated. ‘Daisy! It can't be true. You said the boys were going to die already.'

‘Lots of boys die,' Daisy said. ‘These ones died for something important.'

Sergeant Rafferty's hands moved toward his belt. ‘Daisy Hepwood, I'm arresting you for murder.'

My heart leaped, but Daisy's contempt was clear. ‘Don't be an idiot.'

He was reaching for his police baton, but she tilted her head, and the Maukis brothers jumped him from both sides. Strong sculptors' hands forced his arms up behind his back. Tiberius kicked him in the gut, and the struggle was over. Rafferty wheezed and sputtered as they bound him with his own handcuffs.

Mrs Rackard squeaked, ‘Daisy!' But Daisy ignored her, stalking forward to stare down at Rafferty like a queen inspecting barbarian tribute.

‘Arrest me?' she hissed. ‘For what? Where's your proof? Can you accuse me of
anythingg
without implicating yourself?' She turned and stared at the rest of them. ‘Can any of you? I kept this town safe and clean, and you
helped.
Don't pretend you didn't know; don't pretend you don't know what will happen if it all falls apart! Summerton will be a ghost town — all the young people leaving, all the business gone. All the drugs and unemployment and crime! We have to do this now, while they sing and dance on the beach. This is a
necessary
sacrifice.'

Her face was all lit up with her belief. She could do anything like this, sure of her righteousness. I remembered what Janna had said about how once you started down the left -hand path, it was easier and easier to keep going. I'd scoffed at her then. I wasn't laughing now.

‘Mum, this is important,' Emily said, eyeing Mrs Rackard.

Daisy pointed at Mr Davidson, who was closest to the office. ‘Kirk! Bring me the boy!'

Mr Davidson hesitated, and Daisy tossed her long, curly hair and moved past him. She stopped to brush aside some of the sand with her foot, and then went out of the circle.

When she came back, she was hauling Sione with her.

Aroha made a sharp, pained sound in my ear.

He was walking, feet scraping against the floor, but he didn't seem to know where he was, stumbling along beside her with a look of huge concentration dedicated to just making his legs move. The right side of his face was swollen almost beyond recognition, and his nose was a huge lump on his battered face. There was something dark and sticky matting down his hair, and bloodstains all down the front of his yellow shirt.

Daisy walked him past The Pride of Summerton and let him go. He sagged to the floor, looking toward us. Only I wasn't sure he was really seeing anything.

Concussion
, I thought. I had several medical manuals, and they were clear on how dangerous concussions could be. I'd suffered one once after being tackled too hard by an enormous player from Nelson Girls' High. It had taken a week for the dizzy spells to go away, and mine was a mild case.

At least Sione was close to the edge nearest us. With Rafferty out of the picture and the Maukises guarding him on the other side of the circle, there might be a chance to grab Sione and run.

It was past time to put a last-minute plan together, only I couldn't seem to make one. The situation was too unpredictable, with too many variables, and I wasn't any good at improvising. Working the way Janna did, all instinct and reaction, was nothing but a disaster for me. I'd walked out of the house in my old jeans because it had seemed right at the time, and that had cost me my best weapon, lying discarded in my cargo pants on the laundry floor.

Without moving, I watched Daisy close the circle with sand and pick the glass crown up again. Scraps of plans whirled through my head like litter in a gusty wind, none of them settling into anything I could use to make me move. I knew, as she came closer to us, closer to Sione, that this would destroy his parents. Both of their children dead in a year? They'd just fall apart.

And if I got myself killed trying to help, that would destroy mine.

The coloured glass of the crown cut the light into little patterns, just like Daisy's rings, and she lowered it slowly, so slowly against the quick voice in my head chanting,
Go, Keri, go, Keri, go!

It was my own voice, and it was furious with me, but I couldn't obey. I was stupid and neurotic, just as Hemi Koroheke had said, and the proof of it was that now, without my careful plans, I couldn't move.

But Aroha could. With a cry like an angry seabird, she jumped to her feet and ran, shoulder lowered as she charged.

There was a rush past me as Takeshi and Janna joined her. I stayed where I was, crouched on the stairs and trembling. All my brave words, cut down to this cowardice.

Aroha hit the edge of the circle and bounced back as though she'd run into a steel wall.

Mrs Rackard screamed.

‘Let them in,' Rafferty shouted. ‘Gloria, let them in!'

Mrs Rackard froze, but Daisy looked straight into Aroha's furious face.

‘I crown the Summer King,' she announced, and, smiling, lowered
The Pride of Summerton
onto Sione's dark curls.

Aroha was crying and screaming at the same time, yelling a string of curses before she lost the ability to make the words, and just went for short, loud shrieks. Janna was pleading with Mrs Rackard, trying to get her to interfere, but she had hunched her shoulders and turned away. And Takeshi stalked silently around the circle, hands opening and closing into fists, fury clear on his candlelit face.

All this time, the music from the beach played, and Daisy chanted.

Janna gave up on Mrs Rackard and turned to her daughter. ‘Emily, Emily, help us!'

‘Why should I?' Emily asked. ‘You were all horrible to me, all of you! All the popular kids, kids like you and Matthew Felise. You never cared about me.'

‘What about Jake?' Janna asked, glancing at the dark stairwell where I crouched, petrified in the shadows. ‘Jake liked
everyone
. He was always nice to you. Come on, Emily, what about Jake?'

Emily's face creased. ‘What about him?'

There was a pressure building up in the room, singing through my head, like the feeling of diving into deep water. I swallowed, but my ears wouldn't pop. Something very wrong was happening in that circle.

The chanting stopped.

And the dead boys began to appear.

The first drift ed out of the crown in a wisp of mist that flat-tened out and grew, glowing from within, until a boy stood there, tall and blond, frozen at the same age his sister was now.

‘Schuyler,' Janna said, her voice unstrung with pain, and pressed her hand flat against the invisible barrier of the circle. He looked at her and bowed his head. Then, face solemn and reluctant, he put his hand on Sione's battered head for a brief moment and moved away.

Janna moaned.

The next boy came, and the next — tall, short, dark, fair. I didn't recognise any of them, but they had the same misty appearance, and when they touched Sione, they did it with the same unwilling jerkiness.

I was counting them, and when number ten came, I braced myself. Matthew looked very much like Sione, built on a slightly larger scale, and Janna gasped for him, too. When he saw his brother crumpled on the floor, his face contracted with rage. Daisy was sweating, I saw, her lanky body stiff with the effort of making the dead boys obey. Matthew held out for a long time, maybe as many as ten seconds, before he laid his hand on his brother's head.

Something in that ghostly touch must have been familiar, because Sione's eyes opened again. He was staring directly at me.

Matthew was forced away, back to the edge of the circle nearest the office, where the Maukis brothers stared intently at Sione, and Rafferty flinched from the ghosts surrounding him, face twisted in guilt at the murders he'd helped commit.

Again, I nearly felt pity for him. But he must have suspected something was wrong, and he hadn't done anything until it was too late.

I waited. From the moment Schuyler had appeared I had known it — all the dead boys were trapped in the crown. I was going to see Jake again, one more time.

Daisy grunted in satisfaction, and lifted the crown from Sione's head. I gasped and reached out to — I didn't know. Stop her. Make her keep going. But she was finished, and the dead boys had all come. All but one.

There, my hand stretching to grasp the untouchable, the realisation washed over me. In the still space between two heartbeats, I understood.

Jake wasn't in the crown.

Jake was not a Summer King.

Jake had not been murdered.

It hurt so much that I thought I was going to die, and, at last, I didn't care if I did. Jake had really done it; he'd left us, for reasons I would never understand, or for no reason at all.

What about him? ?
Emily had asked, and she'd been honestly confused.

This has nothing to do with you
, Daisy had told me in the shop, and for once, she'd been telling the truth.

If you want to find out who murdered your brother, come with me
, Janna had said in the alley, and I had found out.

Jake had murdered himself.

I had all the facts at last, and I could finally move. I stood up on the top step in the half-dark, no longer paralysed by indecision, no longer afraid of what unpredictable magic could do. I wasn't afraid of anything anymore; how could I be, when the worst thing had already happened?

And Sione, staring dreamily at me through the candlelight, reached out his hand and dragged it through the sand of the circle.

No one saw but me.

Without a plan, without any contemplation of all the untraceable variables, I started running.

I hit the gap as easily as I'd ever twisted between two oncoming opponents on the rugby field, good arm swinging wide as I tackled Daisy. I took her high in the chest, crashing down on top of her as she fell,
The Pride of Summerton
tumbling from her grip.

For a moment I hoped it was all over, but the crown hit the wooden floor with a solid clunk, refusing to shatter.

I kicked with my legs and wriggled out of her grip, reaching.

The killers were all coming at me now, angry hands trying to hold me down, frantic voices yelling at one another and Daisy's over all of them, screaming, ‘The crown, get the crown!' Someone heavy landed on me, and I lost sight of my goal.

Then I heard Janna join the battle with a snarl, Takeshi and Aroha right behind her into the broken circle. Someone tore at the weight on top of me, pulling it away; someone knocked a candle over as he or she tried to hit someone else. Only the dead boys were still, caught in place and staring at me as I scrabbled on the floor. They were all different — different sizes, skin colours, features. But all the faces were luminous with fierce hope as they watched me reach
The Pride of Summerton
.

There was no time to get up, even if I could have found my feet in all that frenzied action. But I had finally remembered that I had a weapon after all, and Daisy had been the one to give it to me, all her terrible choices spinning back to undo her at last.

I raised my broken arm, heavy in the stained grey cast, and brought it down upon the crown of glass.

CHAPTER THIRTY

SIONE

There was sand in his hand, and it felt good against his skin,
like a reminder that he was real.

‘Sione,' Matthew said. ‘Sione, get up.'

Sione rolled over and tried to pull his sheets up to his chin. Matthew was going to try to take him jogging again, or make him cover for another night out with the palagi girlfriend he didn't want Mum and Dad to know about.

But there were no sheets, and he wasn't in bed. And Matthew couldn't be talking to him.

Matthew was dead.

Sione forced his eyes open. There were flickering lights and loud voices, and a lot of pain. It was so much trouble that he nearly closed his eyes again, but Matthew was standing over him. That wasn't right. He could see through him.

‘You're dead,' Sione said, trying to sit up properly.

Matthew's mouth twisted. ‘Too right, little bro. But I'm free.'

‘Free?' Sione wondered, and looked around. The room was full of shift ing shapes, some solid and some misty, all struggling in the shadows and smoke. Keri was curled on her side next to him, eyes closed and forehead creased as if she were thinking really hard about something. One arm, pale and bruised, was cradled against her chest, bits of plaster sticking to it. Her face and arm were bleeding from a dozen small cuts; there were pieces of coloured glass all over her and all over the floor.