The Shattering (20 page)

So she kissed him, in the middle of the street, and didn't care that this news would reach her mother's ears at the speed of sound. His lips were soft and warm, and his hands were steady and strong on her back, and whatever happened next, this moment was music; the perfect chord, one Janna could hear again and again in the echoing sound chamber of her heart.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KERI

In the cities, there were huge Boxing Day sales that took over
TV
advertising for three days, right before the New Year sales
hit.
In Summerton, the few chain stores in town — and now that was feeling like something else I should have noticed — put up the signs, but the homegrown shops would advertise a few specials and leave it there. No storewide blitzes or lines outside the doors. And the locals tended to stay away; it was just dozy visitors and their yappy kids.

Inner Light had a good location on the main street, the windows full of posters for the Beach Bash, with that ugly Pride of Summerton crown in the corners. I scowled at it. There were a few tourists poking around the store, all of them with the same post-Christmas stunned look. I felt the baton swing against my calf and took a deep breath, stepping into the scented store with the little plastic bag clenched in my fist. Fortunately, Sandra-Claire was nowhere in sight, so I lurked by the book section, waiting for Daisy Hepwood to finish selling a dreamcatcher and four scented candles, then went up to the counter, Sione bobbing in my wake like a duckling.

‘Is Sandra-Claire here?' I asked, hoping that the answer was,
No, she's caught the plague and had to go home to vomit out her lungs
. I had my suspicions about that female voice on the phone with Rafferty. Though it was hard to believe that even Sandra-Claire could kill Jake, whom she'd really seemed to love.

‘She's on break, dear,' Daisy said, and then she saw the plastic bags in my hand and her eyes narrowed behind her pink-rimmed glasses. ‘Why don't you two come into the back?'

I followed, relieved. If she'd recognised the broken figurines as some kind of black magic it would cut out a lot of the explanation I'd rehearsed on the way here.

But as we entered the storeroom, she smiled sweetly. ‘So what did you want to ask me?'

I held up the bags. ‘We think this is some kind of voodoo,' I said. ‘This one made a guy attack Sione.'

‘I don't know very much about voudoun,' Daisy said. ‘That's quite a different area from mine.'

‘But it's black magic?' I pressed.

‘Oh, Keri. Black magic and white magic are systems imposed upon magic by the superstitious. It's a matter of perspective.'

That hadn't been what Janna had said, with that stuff about the left -hand path and the Rule of Three. But she'd said not everyone believed it, either.

‘I felt it,' I insisted. ‘I felt something stop when I smashed it.'

Daisy
hmm
ed thoughtfully. ‘Putting it in your friend's bag was certainly a nasty trick. But most things of this type only have the power we give them. That's probably what you felt when you smashed it — the resolution of your fear.'

I frowned. I hadn't imagined Luke being so aggressive and then stopping. And what about my broken arm? I held up the other figurine. ‘Well, in my room —'

‘In my bag,' Sione said, and I was pissed at him for the interruption. But his pupils were blown, his brown eyes nearly completely black, and he was staring at Daisy in horror. ‘We never said we found it in my bag.'

I might not have understood, even then.

But Daisy flinched.

‘Oh no,' I whispered, as it all came together in my head. ‘I'm so stupid. It's you.'

I was hoping for denial, for puzzlement, even for outrage at the mere suggestion. But Daisy whirled in her crochet cardigan and pinned me with her eyes, and I felt the world implode. ‘Drop it, Keri,' she said. ‘Or things will get much, much worse for you.'

‘You . . .' I said, and couldn't make my mouth go further.

‘This has nothing to do with you,' she said, her eyes boring into me. ‘Leave it alone.'

‘You?' Sione said.
‘Why?'

She made a flapping gesture at him with her hands, and focused on me again. ‘Summerton's a great place, Keri. Successful, beautiful. No crime, no drugs, no untimely deaths. Do you really want to destroy all that?'

‘No untime — You kill people,' I said, my tongue thick and heavy.

She didn't look evil. She looked sad. A hard, distant kind of sadness, removed from the flinching agony that hit me every time I remembered Jake was dead. ‘Young people die every day,' she said. ‘For foolish, wasteful reasons. Or to defend their country and people, to make them safe. Just leave it alone. I don't
want
to hurt you. But this is important.'

‘This is
wrong
,'
g
I said. There were arguments I could make, good ones, about choice and freedom, and murder instead of war, but I couldn't seem to manufacture any of them.

‘You sick old bitch,' Sione said, the last word sitting awkwardly in his mouth. It was the first time I'd ever heard him swear. He meant it, though, and I was, in spite of everything, a little bit shocked to hear that word applied to Daisy — good Daisy, caring Daisy.

She'd come to help Sandra-Claire collect Jake's T-shirts, and she'd been nice to me. She must have put the clay figure in my desk that very afternoon, but all I could remember was the way she had been sympathetic while Sandra-Claire was her usual awful self.

But the swearing made Daisy look at Sione properly for the first time, before her face took on the same dismissive expression. He was just a tourist to her, I saw. Not a real person; maybe that's how she explained it to herself. All those deaths, all those families and friends; maybe that's why it had been so long between when Schuyler was killed and Jake; maybe that's why Mr Davidson had been sorry for my loss. They cared about the Summerton boys, but not the rest.

‘Watch your tongue, young man,' she said, not even using his name. ‘You think a broken arm or a car crash is the worst thing that could happen?'

My skin crawled all along my spine, broken arm tingling. The car crash had been her, too? Janna and Sione could have been killed. And I didn't want to die, not like Jake had, in an explosion of blood and noise. She saw the fear in my face and stepped forward. ‘How would your parents cope with that?' she said soft ly.

‘I thought you would help us catch the killer,' I said, and something quivered in her face before she shut it down again. ‘I never thought it could be you.'

‘I'm
trying
to help,' she said. ‘The best way I can, Keri. You know what it's like out there.'

Outside perfect Summerton, she meant. In the big, bad world.

‘You leave her alone,' Sione said. His voice was shaky but loud, and I could feel the tension in him. He didn't know Daisy. He'd attack her, maybe, but only if I gave him the cue. And even though she'd admitted it herself, I couldn't. I just couldn't make it across the distance between us, from my fist to her face.

The bell sounded in the shop's main room. ‘You can leave by the back door,' she said, and returned to the shop, cheerily greeting her customers.

That was all she was going to give us.

‘Did she put a spell on you?' Sione asked, his voice thick and low.

‘I don't know.' Without her staring at me, it was easier to think, but I had the shameful sensation that I hadn't been unbalanced by anything more supernatural than my own fear and confusion. ‘I don't know what to do.'

‘We will,' Sione said, sounding a lot more confident than I did. ‘We'll work something out. Let's get out of here.'

I moved toward the door, but he hesitated, glancing at all the pretty glass bottles and the jars of herbs and containers of crystals. ‘Give me your baton,' he said.

I fished it out and handed it to him. He extended it — he had to flick his wrist twice before he got it right — and stood there for a long moment that made me itch all over with anticipation.

Then he screamed.

It was a war cry, a ragged howling noise I'd never have thought Sione could make. He took two fast steps toward the shelves and swung, smashing the contents to the floor, glass shattering as bits of dried herbs flew and danced in the air. He cleared the first three shelves in quick back and forth motions, still making that terrible, hurting sound, then grabbed the side of the shelf unit itself and yanked.

But it was too heavy, and he couldn't shift it by himself. I joined him and wrapped my good hand around the same strut.

‘Now,' he panted, and we yanked, dodging back as the whole thing crashed down, hurling books and incense burners and things I couldn't guess at to the floor.

I was laughing, tears streaming down my cheeks, and Sione grabbed my hand, grinning as he raced me to the door.

The whole thing had happened so fast that Daisy couldn't even get back into the storeroom before we escaped. I heard her shout once behind us as we ran down the alley and cut toward the esplanade.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped laughing and crying at the same time and just cried. Not for Jake, or Schuyler, or Sione's brother, not really, but for Daisy, who had been nice and had somehow become someone who could kill teenage boys because she was so afraid of losing the place she loved best. We had to call Janna again and let her know what had happened; we had to think of a way to protect Takeshi and get revenge; we had to do a lot of things, but all I could manage right then was sitting on one of the benches looking over the sea and sniffing furiously, trying to make as little noise as possible as I mourned my brother's murderer.

Sione didn't fuss, which was good. He just put his arm over my shoulder, letting me know he was there without trying to pull me toward him. Then he stared at the sea, falling under the sway of the Summerton Effect every now and then, until my breathing got somewhere back to normal.

He turned and looked down at me, at the same time I looked up, meaning to thank him.

It was just a coincidence, that mutual turning toward each other, but his eyes darkened with an expression I thought I recognised, and his mouth dipped toward mine, his arm suddenly tight around me.

I could have let him do it, just for a little human affection, but after everything he'd done, Sione deserved more from me than lies.

And besides, my body decided for me, stiff ening in unmistakable rejection. Sione jerked back as if I'd bitten him, and his arm fell away. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Sorry. I got it wrong.'

‘It's not you,' I said.

‘Right,' he said, and he sounded so defeated I sort of wanted to kick him.

‘No, you dick,' I said, and punched him in the shoulder instead. I couldn't quite believe I was going to do this, say out loud what I didn't even usually put into words in the privacy of my own head. Something that no one living knew. My voice lowered, so soft only he could possibly hear. ‘I'm gay. I like girls.'

There. Said.

As coming-out reactions go, it probably wasn't that bad. Sione just opened his mouth and closed it and looked puzzled. ‘Oh,' he said at last. ‘Really?'

‘Really. Is it a problem?'

‘No! No, no, I just . . .' He lapsed into silence again. ‘I mean . . . it's okay with me. Not that you need anyone's permission or anything. I mean —'

‘I get it,' I said. ‘Thanks.' And I was grateful, though God knows it's sort of pathetic when you're grateful for people treating you the way decent human beings should treat each other. Sione seemed pretty decent to me. But you never knew. He was Catholic, after all, and he hadn't liked being called a faggot, which could have been because he thought it was a word that guy shouldn't have been using, or because he thought being gay was a bad thing.

And something seemed to be bothering him. ‘Do you. . .' he said. ‘I mean, you and Janna. Do you like her?'

‘Oh, God no,' I said, and tried not to think of how she'd looked the other day, lying facedown on her bed, naked, edged in light. You could like girls without
liking
them. ‘Yeah, I don't know if you've noticed this, but Janna's straight. And high maintenance. And hates sport.'

He laughed. ‘I just wondered, you know. after you got married behind the bike sheds, aged seven.'

‘Heh,' I said. ‘I don't think it counts if you eat the rings. But you can't tell her, Sione. You can't tell anyone. No one knows.'

‘No one?'

‘Just you, now.' I felt tears gather. ‘Jake knew; he'd known for months. The only one. I planned to tell Mum and Dad after the holidays. I didn't know how well they'd take it, and I didn't want to spoil Christmas.' Another thing Daisy had robbed me of, without even knowing; the support to take that next step. Jake had been so good; he hadn't cared at all.

You're my girl, K. Anyone hassles you, let me know.

‘I'm so sorry. But Janna's your friend. She won't —'

‘You don't know,' I said. ‘You don't know how it is.'

‘Yeah, 'cause no Samoan kids get hell for coming out.'

‘I didn't mean — okay, for one, you're not gay, and for two, you live in Auckland. I know it's got to be tough there, too, but
this
is a small town, and everyone knows everything. I can hope that a lot of people won't care, but a lot of them will, and I can't get away from them. Dr Ryan's a lesbian. Someone found out ten years ago and spread it, and everyone thought she'd leave, but she didn't. And now I know why; it's Daisy's awful magic keeping us all here. Some people are horrible; they won't get checked out by her, they wait for the other doctors, and they say things. And she's an adult, and like a girlie woman, you know? Makeup and skirts and that stuff.'