The Shattering (13 page)

For a moment, panic rose up my throat as I thought about what could happen if I'd done real damage, what a serious injury could do while I was still growing, what it could mean for rugby. I pushed it down to a hard lump in my stomach. Panic wasn't part of the plan. Go with the plan.

‘Good girl,' I repeated. ‘Phone now, then wait.'

Summerton had one ambulance year-round and an extra for the holidays, to handle the bonus incidents of drunk people falling down and cutting themselves or walking into the bush and scratching themselves up. One came and whisked me away: sirens and lights, the full deal.

I would have been embarrassed by all the fuss, except by that stage I was feeling even more sick and sore, despite the splint that cushioned my arm against the bumps. I insisted on walking into the hospital, though, and the ambulance woman let me do it. Another positive was that I was still wearing yesterday's clothes; turning up at the hospital in pyjamas would have been the worst.

‘There's going to be a wee wait for Dr Ryan. Is there anyone we can call for you?' the admitting nurse asked — not Janna's mum, but a young man I didn't know.

It was getting hard to remember the positives. My tongue felt thick and swollen, and I had to concentrate hard on not cutting myself with my own teeth. ‘My mum,' I told him. ‘Call Lillian Pedersen-Doherty, at the Chancellor Hotel. You have to tell her I'm alive first.'

Then I started falling forward, head heavy on my neck. The nurse caught me by the shoulders before I could face-plant into the desk, and the ambulance woman grabbed me around the waist. The nurse was shouting something, but his hands shoving into my shoulders had set off another massive cataclysm of pain, and his voice buzzed dark explosions into my mind.

For the first time in my life, I fainted.

It wasn't the best morning ever.

When Sione opened the door to his room, he looked worse than I felt. But his eyes went immediately to the cast.

‘Yeah, don't ask,' I said.

‘What
happened
?' he said anyway.

I rolled my eyes. ‘I fell down,' I said. ‘It was really unlucky and stupid, and I'm pissed at myself. But the good part is I'm not dead, although it'd be great if you could tell that to my mother, because now I'm under house arrest so she can be sure I don't fall into the ocean and drown.'

‘But you're here,' Sione pointed out. ‘Uh, are you sure you should be?'

‘I'm fine,' I said, in the face of all the evidence. ‘Anyway, I convinced Mum to bring me here instead of home, but when she finishes her shift, I have to go home with her, which is dumb, because I hurt myself
at
home. It was so weird. I couldn't get my balance. I felt like the house had tricked me. Like it had turned my body against me.' I sighed. ‘I'm sorry about last night. I had a fight with my brother's evil ex and just went to sleep, I guess. Where's Janna?'

‘Coming. It's okay about last night.'

‘No, I completely screwed up. How'd it go?'

Sione stared at his shoes. ‘Not . . . great.'

I sat on the bed, pulled momentarily off balance by the cast. Six weeks of this. Maybe eight. I was going to go out of my mind. ‘How do you mean?'

In the end, I had to drag what had happened out of him word by word, and I was pretty sure he was still holding back. I decided to get the rest off Janna later, but I had enough information to work out that Sione's friends were dicks and that if I ever caught up with them, they'd be sorry.

Sione looked uncomfortable, too. ‘I had a thought,' he said, ‘about what happened, after the fight. I don't know if it's important but —'

‘Out with it,' I said.

‘Luke knocked me and Janna down. And Aroha was there with me. But when Sergeant Rafferty turned up, he was only really interested in if Takeshi was okay, and Takeshi hadn't been touched. I mean,' he said, sounding as if he were trying to be fair, ‘Takeshi was
ready
to fight. He just didn't have to, because Rafferty turned up then, and he asked if Takeshi wanted an ambulance. He seemed . . . concerned.'

‘So it was Takeshi he was really worried about?'

‘That's what I think.'

‘You worked this out last night?' I said, really impressed. I could never think in the middle of a fight or remember it properly later — it was all adrenaline and speed to me, the same as flying down the field with the ball tucked under my arm. When my body worked that smoothly, my brain didn't need to record what was happening.

‘I think a lot,' he said bitterly.

My skin was prickling, like it had when my wrist snapped. ‘I think it's him,' I said. My voice was weak. I made it louder. ‘It's him, and he's probably going to try and kill Takeshi next year.'

‘We don't have any proof,' Sione said, but I could tell he believed it, too. There was something that looked a lot like hate at the bottom of his eyes. ‘And the problem is, we were going to go to the police when we'd worked out who. We didn't think it
was
the police.'

I hadn't ever planned to go to the police. ‘I know where Dad keeps the keys to the gun safe and ammo locker,' I said. I knew how to use the rifle, too, even if I wasn't a hunter like Dad or Jake.

Jake, who'd been shot in the head by Sergeant Rafferty. My mouth tasted strange and metallic, like the memory of blood.

Sione didn't look horrified; I'd expected him to freak out. Instead, he frowned, like I'd handed him an interesting logical puzzle. ‘You'd get caught,' he said.

‘I don't care.'

‘I think you would, later. And even if you didn't, your parents would. I mean, they'd be able to visit you and everything, but you'd be in jail. In some ways, they'd have lost both their kids. Not to mention that a story like “Maori girl kills white cop” would be all over the news. The media and radio talk shows and all that would be hassling your parents for months, maybe years. And we still don't have definite proof. Wouldn't you always wonder if you'd killed the wrong guy?'

He sounded so reasonable, so smart and perfect and right, and I really hated him.

I got up and walked over to the table, then back again, energy leaping under my skin with nowhere to go. ‘Fuck you,' I said, kicking the bed and making it jump under him. ‘Fuck you, Sione Felise. Just because you're a wimp.'

‘Yeah,' he said, sounding defeated. ‘Yeah, I know.'

It wasn't worth trying to fight someone who wouldn't fight back. I slumped back onto the bed and stared at the tourists in the picture on Sione's wall dancing under the thunderclouds.

It was okay for
them
. They weren't real, and they didn't have to worry about real consequences.

We needed proof. I needed a new plan.

‘Okay,' I said at last. ‘Here's what we do.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JANNA

Janna really had meant to go straight up to Sione's room to
make her case, but Aroha and her family were coming out of
the restaurant as she entered the lobby.
Takeshi smiled straight across the long, light-filled room, and her heart expanded in her chest like an inflatable air bed.

Which was bad. The whole point of summer romances, for the three years she'd been having them, was that they should be hot and heavy and
fast
. She liked them the same way she liked playing gigs, at parties or Smokefreerockquest: slick skin and heart-pounding rhythm and the certain knowledge of what move came next and where her fingers should be — and then the song was done and she moved on to the next one, which could be just as good, or even
better.
There was no time to think and no need to; she just threw herself in and made everything happen.

But she and Takeshi were playing something slower. They hadn't even
kissed
yet.

‘Hi,' Takeshi said. ‘You look very pretty.'

‘We're off to the beach,' Aroha said. ‘Want to come?'

‘No, I'm visiting Sione,' Janna said, leaning into Takeshi's side. He slipped an arm around her waist — not grabby, just solid. ‘Are you looking forward to Christmas?' she asked him. ‘Is it different from in Japan?'

Takeshi blinked. ‘Japan is not a Christian country.'

Janna was tempted to say ‘Neither is New Zealand,' but tomorrow was a public holiday for a Christian celebration, so she wasn't sure how well that argument would go.

‘So you don't have Christmas,' she said instead.

He shrugged. ‘Well, a little Christmas. Christmas is for boyfriends and girlfriends. It's a love holiday. New Year's Day is our holiday for family. It's a religious day, too.' He thought for a second, and Janna, recognising the pause that meant he was putting a sentence together, waited instead of speaking. ‘It's strange here,' he said finally. ‘No winter for Christmas and New Year's Day. No snow.'

‘Do you think you'll miss it?'

‘Yes, my family, and the food. At my . . . uh, my community, a little after New Year, we write on paper. Our dreams for the year, we write them. And we burn them in a fire outside. A fire in the snow. I will miss it.'

‘I've been telling him we could do that here,' Aroha said.

Takeshi looked politely blank.

‘We have fires around New Year, too,' she persisted. ‘You saw them on the beach. They aren't religious, though.'

‘They used to be,' Janna said. She didn't know why she wanted to argue with Aroha all the time; she liked her fine, and Aroha wasn't even interested in Takeshi. Maybe it was because Aroha was a year younger and still thought she knew best about everything. And this once, Janna knew better. ‘It was a pagan tradition, lighting bonfires for a good year. But that was a winter thing, in the Northern Hemisphere.'

‘Oh, yeah,' Aroha said. ‘And the druids burned people, right?'

Takeshi's eyes widened.

‘No, that was probably made up,' Janna said. ‘By the Romans.'

‘But I saw this documentary where they'd nominate a guy to be the king, and he'd have a great time, and then they sacrificed him in winter. To make the next year good.'

‘Nah, that was based on some stuff that was probably made up —' Janna said, and then horror rushed over her like a dump wave. The pagan Summer King myth was just that, some old guy taking old stories and spinning them into a book where ancient societies all over the world had sacrificed kings to make the land fruitful and the kingdom strong. But it was a really attractive idea. People liked to believe in it. And when it came right down to it, all neo-pagan rituals were made up — that's why they were
neo
. Ritual worked, if you did it right; putting will into the world, calling on deities or just the energy of the universe got results. And if you wanted a lot of energy, for a spell big enough for a whole town . . .

Summer Kings, sacrificed for prosperity and luck.

And Tiberius Maukis had picked up The Pride of Summerton and crowned Takeshi with it, right in front of her.

‘No!' she said, her voice harsh.

‘Janna! What's the matter? Are you sick?'

She looked up at Takeshi, gripping his muscular forearm. He was supporting her with his other arm. She hadn't felt her knees give way. ‘No,' she said, and let him help her up. ‘No, I just . . . I have to talk to Sione. Right now.'

‘You went completely white!' Aroha said.

‘Food poisoning,' Janna said. It was totally unsexy, but it was the first thing she could think of. ‘I've really . . . I'm going.' She stumbled into the lift and pushed the button for the sixth floor three times until the door closed and she was free to slump against the wall, fighting back the desire to scream.

Bursting into the room and snarling ‘It's
magic
!' didn't quite have the effect she'd expected.

Sione just pulled the door shut behind her, and Keri didn't even pause as she scribbled something on a piece of paper. It looked like a map.