The Circle (36 page)

She hears footsteps approaching from the open door behind her.

Rebecka and Anna-Karin turn together, in a single movement, a single body.

And there he is. Anna-Karin feels Rebecka’s confusion.

‘Hello,’ she says. ‘How did you know I was here?’

Gustaf doesn’t answer. He approaches her but doesn’t look her in the eyes.

Rebecka barely recognises him. She doesn’t understand. ‘What is it?’ she asks.

The next moment, Gustaf bends forward and helps her to her feet. But he doesn’t let go of her. Instead he pulls her across the roof.

‘Stop it, Gustaf … What are you doing? Let go of me …’

Her voice is weak. She has no strength left to scream and the pain that’s throbbing in her head makes it even more impossible. Gustaf’s face shows no emotion as he pulls her towards the edge –it’s as if he just wants to get it over with. Rebecka tries to brace her feet against the roof, but they keep slipping.

‘Gustaf, stop it! Please, stop!’

Gustaf turns her so that she’s standing with her back to the playground below. The wind tugs at her clothes. Terror takes hold of Rebecka and paralyses Anna-Karin.

Anna-Karin tries to shut her eyes, but she can’t. Not while Rebecka is unable to take her eyes off her boyfriend. She still can’t believe what’s happening.

‘Look at me,’ Rebecka begs.

Gustaf meets her gaze. For a few silent seconds, Anna-Karin stares straight into those cold blue eyes. The sudden shove against her chest takes her by surprise and she falls. Her arms fly out, her fingers claw at the empty air and then—

Anna-Karin hears the excruciating thud as Rebecka’s
body
hits the ground. But she feels nothing. Her head is lying so strangely, flat against the ground. She doesn’t understand how she can still be alive. She tries to take a breath, but her lungs produce only a wet bubbling sound as her mouth fills with blood.

Suddenly something unknown intrudes into her consciousness. Rebecka recognises the presence.

It’s almost over
, a strange voice says.

And then comes the pain, which can’t be compared to anything Anna-Karin has ever known in her entire pain-filled existence. It’s like a blinding radioactive light that incinerates every thought, every feeling, every memory that is Rebecka – anything she’s ever been.

And then: ashes. Emptiness. A piece of blue sky way up there. A piece of blue sky that slowly gives way to darkness. Black ink slowly bleeds out and covers everything until the only thing left is that voice.

Forgive me
.

Anna-Karin opens her eyes and looks straight into Ida’s. She sees her own panic reflected back at her. She realises they have just had the same experience. Ida lets go of Anna-Karin’s hand and backs away from her.

Anna-Karin looks around. Hundreds of pairs of eyes are staring at her. One of the extinguished candles from her crown is still rolling across the floor. Tommy Ekberg is still on his way over with the fire extinguisher.

Here, in reality, no time has passed at all.

37

THE STARS GLISTEN
in the black sky. The fir trees are weighed down with snow.

Everything looks peaceful, like a scene from a Christmas poem, Minoo thinks. If it weren’t for the blue flame casting an eerie, flickering glow over their faces. If it weren’t for what Anna-Karin and Ida have just told them.

Gustaf murdered Rebecka and therefore he must have murdered Elias. Gustaf is the evil they have to put a stop to.

‘But I don’t get it,’ Vanessa says. ‘How could you see all this?’

Anna-Karin, who has been sitting on the floor trying to pick clumps of candle wax from her hair, looks up at the principal at the same time as Ida. They are waiting for an answer. The bully and the bullying victim have been sitting next to each other ever since they got here.

‘We often talk about past, present and future,’ the principal says, ‘but the notion of time as being linear, with a start and a finish, is false. The truth is that time is cyclical, a circle without beginning or end.’

Minoo glances at the others, strangely thrilled to be back.
Vanessa
is listening with her mouth half open as the principal speaks.

‘Sensitive witches with metal as their element can pick up on events from other points along the time circle, events that, according to the normal human understanding of time, have either taken place or haven’t happened yet.’

‘I don’t care.’ Ida glares at her. ‘How do I stop it happening again? There’s no way I want to have, like, another epileptic fit in front of the whole school.’

‘There’s nothing you can do to stop it,’ the principal says, ‘but you can learn to recognise the signs so that you know when you’re about to have a vision. Try to find a calm, secluded place if your mouth starts to feel very dry, for example, or you get a powerful sense of unreality, dizziness or—’

‘It won’t happen again,’ Ida says, mostly to herself. ‘I’m not going to let it.’

‘Your visions seem to be empathetic,’ the principal says.

Linnéa snorts and Minoo has to suppress a smile. She never imagined that ‘Ida’ and ‘empathetic’ would ever be used in the same sentence, at least not without ‘is not remotely’ appearing in between.

‘You see the visions through another person’s eyes and feel what she or he feels,’ the principal says, glaring reproachfully at Linnéa.

‘But how could I experience everything, too, if Ida was the one having the vision?’ Anna-Karin asks, plucking out a lump of wax. Several strands of hair come with it and she winces.

‘You’re connected together,’ the principal says.

Minoo thinks she sounds like a lame self-help guru.

‘I don’t think it was Gustaf,’ Ida says suddenly.

Everyone stares at her.

‘What do you mean?’ the principal asks.

‘He wouldn’t murder anyone. Why would he do such a terrible thing?’

‘There could be all sorts of reasons—’ the principal begins.

‘You don’t know G as well as I do,’ Ida cuts in.

‘You’re not best friends just because you gave him a silly nickname,’ Vanessa says.

‘You seriously believe that G would kill Rebecka? His own girlfriend?’ Ida exclaims.

‘Men kill their girlfriends all the time,’ Linnéa says coldly.

‘I’m not so sure it was Gustaf either,’ says Anna-Karin. ‘It’s hard to explain. It was him. And yet it wasn’t.’

For Ida and Anna-Karin to be in agreement about anything is so shocking to the others that they’re all silent for a long moment.

‘I think we should get rid of him straight away,’ Linnéa says. The blue flame lights her pale face, making her eyes glitter darkly.

‘What do you mean “get rid of him”?’ Minoo asks.

Of course she knows, but she can’t believe Linnéa’s serious.

‘What do you think I mean? What else are we supposed to do? Two of us are already dead.’

‘You mean we should kill G?’ Ida cries out. ‘You’re out of your mind!’

Minoo looks at the principal, but she’s simply watching them. It’s as if she wants to see what they make of this situation. As if it’s some kind of test.

‘We can’t kill Gustaf,’ Minoo says. ‘I don’t believe you’d even consider it.’

Linnéa looks at Minoo harshly. ‘I suppose you and Rebecka weren’t such good friends after all.’

Linnéa looks like a stranger. Her eyes are filled with hatred. And Minoo understands. She, too, has thought of revenge, fantasised about it, but now, when she sees the same feelings in Linnéa’s face, she realises how wrong it is to choose that path. How dangerous.

‘I mean, you don’t seem to care about punishing the person who did it,’ Linnéa continues.

Anger flares in Minoo, like a rabid dog pulling at its leash, but she keeps it in check. ‘We can’t just murder him,’ she says.

‘He murdered Elias.’

‘I don’t think Elias would have wanted you to kill someone in revenge.’

For a moment she thinks Linnéa is going to hurl herself at her. But Linnéa stays where she is. ‘First, you don’t know a fucking thing about Elias. Second, Gustaf isn’t “people”. He’s not even a human being. He’s a demon!’

‘He certainly isn’t.’

Everyone turns to the principal. She’s staring into the
blue
flame. ‘At least, I’d say that’s highly unlikely. Demons seldom take on physical form in our world.’

‘I don’t give a shit about your statistics. Now that we know who the murderer is, we can stop him,’ Linnéa says.

‘
You
are not doing anything,’ the principal answers harshly. ‘Keep away from Gustaf. The Council will deal with this.’

‘Because it’s done such a fucking great job so far?’ Linnéa shouts. Everyone stares at her. She stares back. ‘How the hell can you just accept this? She refuses to tell us how we can defend ourselves!’

‘I can’t let you take action,’ the principal says sternly. ‘The Council has expressly forbidden me—’

‘What exactly have they forbidden?’ Minoo asks. ‘That we defend ourselves? That we find out what we’re fighting against?’

The principal meets her gaze. Minoo’s heart is pounding: she isn’t used to questioning authority, especially not the school’s principal.

‘You’re right,’ Adriana Lopez says finally. ‘I’ll tell you what we know about your enemies.’

‘Did you say “enemies”?’ Vanessa asks, ‘Plural?’

‘I’ll explain
if you stop interrupting me
,’ the principal says.

Vanessa rolls her eyes.

‘As I said before, battles take place across dimensional boundaries,’ the principal begins. ‘That is what is about to take place here. The demons are trying to break into our world, and you are standing in the way.’

‘And what is a demon? Some kind of devil, or what?’ Vanessa says. ‘Someone who possesses people? Could Gustaf be possessed?’

‘Demons can influence people,’ the principal says, ‘but not against their will. They can, however, grant powers to those who agree to collaborate with them. Demons refer to it as “blessing” someone. Someone who has been blessed can do great damage. If Gustaf has been blessed, he’s very dangerous. He’s in direct contact with demons. They’re his power source. You mustn’t go after him under any circumstances.’

‘So you think that whoever killed Rebecka and Elias is a normal human being, who works for the demons?’ Minoo asks.

‘That’s the Council’s theory,’ the principal says. ‘They’re working on your case night and day. But you have to help us. It’s more important than ever that you study the
Book of Patterns
.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ Vanessa says. ‘What’s a demon?’

‘Demon
s
is the more correct term. They don’t see themselves as individuals but as parts of a greater whole. They’re a kind of borderline creature that lives between our world and the other. We don’t know where they come from. We don’t know very much about them at all.’

‘What do they want?’ Linnéa asks, and walks slowly towards the principal.

‘It’s all in the
Book of Patterns
,’ she says, and takes what seems to be an unconscious step back. ‘When the time is right, you’ll find out.’

Linnéa stops so close to her that they’re almost touching. At that moment the principal looks away. Linnéa gasps. ‘You don’t know. You and the Council – you don’t know anything.’

Briefly, the principal’s mask seems about to crack. But she quickly regains control of her features. ‘That’s not true,’ she says.

‘That’s why you keep going on about the
Book of Patterns
,’ Linnéa continues. ‘You barely know how to use it yourselves. And you’re hoping we’ll be able to do it.’

‘Your chances of being able to do it are much greater since you were born with your—’

‘Exactly,’ Linnéa interrupts. ‘We’re stronger than you are. You’re afraid of us.’

‘You’ve misunderstood everything,’ the principal says, clearly trying to sound authoritative.

‘No,’ Linnéa says calmly. ‘I’ve finally understood it.’ She smiles triumphantly.

‘The principal is not our enemy,’ Minoo says.

‘Oh, shut up,’ Linnéa says. ‘She wants us to stare at a book to find out what’s going to kill us. Well, I intend to stop it instead.’

‘You mean shoot first and ask questions later?’ Minoo says.

‘That’s right,’ Linnéa says. ‘And I’m not going to let myself be stopped by someone who shouldn’t even be here.’

Those words hit Minoo like a hard blow to the stomach. She can’t look the others in the eye. She’s afraid of seeing either pity or agreement.

‘Stop that now,’ Vanessa says.

‘What the fuck’s your problem?’ Linnéa snaps.

‘Well, let me see,’ Vanessa says. ‘Perhaps I’m having a hard time forgetting what you said about killing Gustaf Åhlander. How are we going to do it? Stab him on the way home from football practice? Set fire to his house? Buy a gun from Jonte and shoot him?’

‘They saw it was him!’ Linnéa says, pointing at Anna-Karin and Ida.