The Shattering (18 page)

Sione was starting to feel weird about the whole thing. He was still fairly sure Rafferty was the killer, but
fairly
wasn't
absolutely
, which was why he'd wanted proof in the first place. Going through his stuff without finding any made Sione feel like he was doing something wrong.

It must have been even worse for Keri, who had known the sergeant all her life. Not that it showed on her face. ‘The stuff Janna told us to look for isn't here, either,' she said. ‘No daggers or chalices or anything. Or even a copy of
How to Hypnotise People and Make Enemies.
' She put a cushion back on the couch and glared at the room, like she was trying to force it to give up its secrets.

‘Mmmr?' something said behind them, and even Keri yelped a bit as she spun around.

It was a grey, tiger-striped cat, gangly and half-grown, blinking yellow eyes at them. Sione tried to get his heart back under control. It must have been in the front garden and come inside — there was a cat flap in the back door, now that he thought about it. It hadn't just
appeared
.

And anyway, witches have black cats
, Sione thought. ‘Mrowr,' the cat said, and twined through his legs, begging shamelessly for food.

‘Funny,' he said, bending to scratch it behind the ears. The fur felt weird against his latex-covered fingers, but the cat shivered and pressed into his hand for more. ‘I don't think of murderers having pets.'

‘Yeah, well. Hitler liked dogs,' Keri said, and then froze, her eyes going huge.

‘What —' Sione began and then he heard it, too, the
chutter-chug
of a parking car.

Keri was already moving before he could make his brain work again, tugging him into the bedroom and dropping to her belly. ‘Under,' she said, and wriggled. Sione went down on the other side, holding his breath against the dust and dragging his bag behind him. There was just enough room for both of them, beside the crumpled
N Z Listener
copies and a couple of dog-eared paperbacks.

The front door opened, and he realised that up until then he'd still been hoping it was the neighbour's car.

The cat went into a frenzy of meows, indicating that it hadn't been fed in a year and was going to die on the spot.

‘Hey, Sam,' the deep voice said, wearily affectionate. ‘Yeah, yeah, you're starving. You little scavenger.'

Floorboards creaked.

Sione looked at Keri. ‘Kitchen,' she mouthed. She was sliding her baton out of her pocket, a move he thought was pretty smart right up until she put it into his hand. ‘Need my good hand free to get out,' she whispered in explanation, her breath hot against his ear. ‘But don't move unless we have to. Then hit him and run.'

Sione nodded and adjusted his fingers, sweaty in the gloves. The rubber grip squeaked against the latex — a tiny noise, but he froze, hand stuck in a rigid claw.

There was the clatter of small things falling into a bowl, and the meowing was replaced with ecstatic purrs. It was so ordinary that Sione couldn't stand it, not with his heart pounding so hard that he thought blood was going to explode out of his nose. This was the part of the horror movie where the stupid teenagers got caught. They'd be in danger, then think they were safe and exhale, and then the music would swell as they turned around and screamed . . .

Keri touched his leg. ‘Don't worry,' she mouthed, and he nodded, pushing the fear back down. Had Matthew been scared? Or had he been hypnotised —
or enchanted
, a voice inside his head insisted, in Janna's tone — and thought it was all his idea to sit in the car and wait for the fumes to put him to sleep?

That might even have been better.

Sione stopped thinking abut Matthew when Rafferty walked into the bedroom, instead becoming completely
here
,
now
, with Keri's hand resting on his thigh and his breath quiet and hot against the carpet. The wardrobe opened, and he caught a flash of blue as Rafferty threw something into the laundry basket in there — his uniform shirt, the thinking part of Sione supplied after a moment. Had Keri put everything back right in the wardrobe? Would he notice something out of place? They'd been fast, they'd had to be, but they'd tried to be careful, too, working according to the grid pattern Keri had devised.

Did Rafferty already know they were there? Was he playing with them?

There was the
hiss-hiss
of an aerosol and a sharp, spicy scent. Deodorant.

He's just changing his shirt
, Sione thought, and relief rolled up from his toes. Of course he was — a hot summer's day, a long shift — why not go home and change on your break? Keri hadn't relaxed, though, and he tried to remember the lesson of the horror movie kids. Don't think you're safe, not yet.

Someone's mobile phone rang.

For a heart-clutching moment, Sione was sure it was his.

But no, he'd left it in the hotel room, and the noise was coming from above.

Rafferty muttered something, and then spoke more clearly, presumably into the phone. ‘Yeah?'

A pause, then, ‘No, I can't ask Frank where he takes his passengers! . . . Because he'll bloody wonder why, that's why. The kid's probably just visiting the Pedersen girl.'

That's me
, Sione thought.
I'm the kid. They're talking about my
going to see Keri in that taxi
. The shivers had turned into a tight tingling all over his body.

There was a tense silence. The person on the other end was apparently long-winded, and Rafferty broke in again.

‘No! Look, no, you listen to
me
. It's got to stop, you understand? They're just kids. What can they d— . . . I fucking
know
they've all been kids. But we've never tried to
hurt
them. Just . . . we don't need to . . .' There was a heavy note in his voice. ‘That's not the idea, that's all. Okay. Okay.
Fine
.'

That was good-bye.

‘Damn it,' the sergeant said into the silence, soft and heartfelt. ‘The fucking
witch
.'

He stamped out of the bedroom and down the hall with a speed that made the floorboards triple their creaking,
ratchet-ratchet-ratchet
. The door slammed, and the car started.

‘So much for magic,' Keri whispered.

But in the echoes Sione felt his brain fall apart and put itself together around a new and very different world.

Witch.

‘It doesn't mean anything,' Keri whispered, as if she were reading his remade mind. ‘He could have meant it like, you know, you bitch. We definitely know he's involved.'

Sione didn't really feel up to having an argument under a bed. ‘And he has an accomplice,' he said, whispering, too, because he was still tight all over. ‘They know I left the hotel in a taxi. So they know we know something. And we know they know that.'

‘And he doesn't think we can do anything,' Keri said in a voice like a clenched fist. Sione gave her back the baton and wriggled out. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and winced. His curls were fuzzing and tinged with grey, dust motes sparkling a halo around his round face.

‘Can I head back to your place to clean up?' he asked, brushing as much of the dust out of his hair as he could and frowning at his stained jeans. ‘If someone's watching the hotel, I don't want to go back looking like I broke into someone's house.'

‘Good thinking,' Keri acknowledged, and patted at her own head. Then she carefully picked up every one of their loose hairs, the curly black and the straight, and stowed them in one of the plastic bags. ‘dna,' she said in response to his look. ‘Let's go.'

They left through the back door, and retraced their steps through the school playground, which was full of different noisy kids. Sione felt different, too.

They started back toward Keri's place, walking in silence.

‘Hey,' he heard behind them. ‘Hey, potato.'

He should have expected it, he thought, as he spun around and wondered how badly this was going to hurt. It always hit the horror movie teenagers when they thought they were safe.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

KERI

Even if the big guy hadn't said what he had, I figured I could
have picked Sione's ex-friend Luke out in a crowd.
It was the way he looked at Sione — raw hatred, the kind where you wanted to know what someone had done to deserve it, because that kind of hate shouldn't just come out of nowhere.

But I knew Sione hadn't done anything. If anything, he was too nice, too easy.

I did a quick risk assessment, working out our available resources and going through a few strategies. There weren't many pluses for our side. There were two of us, and we had home-ground advantage — or at least, I did — and my baton.

And Luke was much bigger than us, I had my stupid broken arm, and I was betting that Sione wasn't much of a fighter.

‘Hi, Luke,' Sione said. His voice was tight, and I wanted to shake him. Didn't he know not to show fear?

‘Let's go,' I said.

‘Got another girl to bodyguard you, Sione?' Luke asked. ‘You a real player, man. Or are you just putting in a little girl time?'

‘Where's Mark?'

‘Not here to save you this time, runt.'

‘I don't want to fight,' Sione said.

It was a dumb thing to say. Luke strolled closer — loose steps, hands swinging, he knew exactly how to be threatening — and stared down at him. ‘Yeah? I don't reckon that's your choice.'

It was clear that the situation was going to get physical; all of this was just to gear up to the battle. Luke was unbelievably stupid to pick a fight with a local, in the middle of the street, in the middle of the afternoon, but I reckoned he was going to do it.

Plans whirled through my head. If we gave him time to make the first move, we could get hurt too badly to back him off. But if we started it, and Rafferty turned up, he might take Luke's side. It might be convenient for him to get us watched, turf Sione out of town . . . I slid the baton out of my pocket and gripped it unex-tended, hesitating.

‘Yeah, I want a word with you, faggot,' Luke said, and I moved.

The baton hissed out and clicked into place, and I struck — not with much style, but I was very, very angry, and I put all my rage into the hit, reaching around Sione's recoiling body to thrust straight into the other guy's stomach.

Luke folded, gagging, and I whipped my arm back. He straightened and started forward, fury in his eyes, but he was lunging for Sione, not me, even though I was clearly the bigger threat. What a dumbshit. I crouched and swung the baton at his legs. It didn't quite trip him, but I managed to tap at his ankle, and what would have been a punch at Sione's face turned into a grab at Sione's shoulder for balance, ripping the strap of his messenger bag.

The bag thumped to the pavement, contents scattering everywhere. Plastic bags started fluttering away, and my fingerprint kit split open, dust spilling onto the street. But there was something that I hadn't seen before — a little clay figurine that bounced, end over end, to land at my feet.

Without thinking, I stamped on it, hard.

As it shattered, I
felt
the hostility
t
evaporate, like a summer storm on hot bitumen. Luke straightened, tension draining out of his big body. He looked at me and then at Sione, face blank with confusion.

‘What the
hell
?' Luke said. He moved toward me, hand outstretched. I raised the baton in warning, and he stopped, letting his hand fall to his side. ‘Are you all right? I' — he looked at Sione, who was looking nearly as shaky — ‘I'm sorry, man. Hell!'

‘Go away!' I snapped.

‘What was that?' he said. ‘What was I
doing
? Jesus! I'm really sorry, Sione.'

‘Sure,' Sione said.

‘I wouldn't . . . Those things I said. I mean, I don't know, man, there was something . . .You're all right, man.' He was shifting from foot to foot, wanting to apologise better, but uncertain of his reception.

‘It's okay,' Sione said automatically, but he was looking at me. ‘I think you'd better leave.'

‘Yeah,' Luke said, and took a step away, then another. ‘Yeah. Sorry!'

I thought it was probably safe to put the baton away, so I did that and grabbed one of the plastic bags to scoop up the shattered clay pieces as best I could with my free hand.

Sione bent and grabbed his messenger bag, shovelling everything back into it. I didn't really care about the bag of loose hairs at this stage, and the fingerprint kit was already ruined. But it meant he could be doing something while Luke walked away, so I didn't argue.

The pause was enough space to poke at the bigger figurine pieces. It had definitely been a person, and pretty well-made, even from unfired clay. I could see a leg there, and a shoe, and something that looked a bit like a messenger bag. And that bit there was half a head, the curls drawn in little lines, and the slant of the eyebrow above the remaining eye somehow conveying the expression that meant Sione was doing numbers in his head. Sione's face, on that little clay man.

Every hair on my arm stood up.

‘You didn't put this in your bag,' I said in a voice that I could hardly recognise as my own.

Sione didn't look up. ‘No.' His breath caught and he straightened. ‘What is it?'

‘It's you,' I said in the same flat voice. I shoved the plastic bag into his hands and started marching. By the end of the block, I was at a flat run, ignoring the ache as my cast jerked up and down. Sione was keeping pace with me, begging for an explanation.

‘Janna's right,' I said, and tried to ignore the way my breath hiccupped. She couldn't be. Not about
magic
. Still, I went on: ‘I think I can prove it.'