The Shattering (21 page)

His face stayed confused.

‘Look at me!' I tugged a lock of my hair. ‘I keep my hair short because I swim a lot and it dries faster, but people will say, of course, it's because lesbians aren't real women, whatever that means. I play rugby because I love rugby. I
love
it, but people are going to say it's because I want to be in the girls' changing rooms, that I want to be in the scrum, pressed up against them. I don't even
join
the scrum.' I made myself take a deep breath, but my voice came out too high and wavering anyway. ‘Horrible things, they'll say shitty, shitty things about me, Sione! I know what happens. I could be bullied, or get the silent treatment, or find all my books tossed into the toilet.' I'd read about this happening to other kids, imagined everything that could happen to me, late at night, preparing for the worst. ‘It could be my friends doing it, it could be my teachers, it could be the team. And I won't be able to get away!

‘The plan was to leave town, get to the city, come out then. It wouldn't matter so much if I was only home for holidays. But Daisy'— my voice cracked — ‘They'll make me come back for good, and everyone will know
.
I hate her and Rafferty and those slimy Maukis guys! I hate them so much! They killed my brother to keep me here, keep me safe, and never thought about what that meant.'

Sione rubbed my shoulder, hesitant at first, and then with more assurance when I didn't shrug him off. ‘Well . . . if I were a chick, I'd be honoured to go out with you,' he said. ‘And I'm really honoured you trust me enough to tell me.' It was such a weird mix of old-fashioned and sweet that I nearly started crying again. But really, how many emotional outbreaks was I entitled to in one short day?

And besides, he spoiled it by adding, ‘I should have figured. Everyone has a good excuse for not liking me.'

‘Oh, please,' I said. ‘Stop it. That's not true.'

‘What?'

I rolled my eyes. ‘Aroha really likes you, you dick. Anyone can see that. And you don't have to like her back, but it is just
stupid
to go around claiming no one likes you in the face of the evidence. What you mean is that Janna doesn't like you that way. It's not about excuses.'

He looked thunderstruck. ‘Aroha likes me?'

‘Obviously.' I stared at him. ‘You really didn't know?'

‘She said something. I thought she was just . . . you know, making fun of me.'

‘No way. I mean, you're this super-smart, shop-wrecking bad-ass. She'd be lucky.'

He still looked shocked, but he managed a small smile at that. ‘That was pretty sweet, wasn't it?'

‘Sweet as,' I said. ‘Sione Felise, crime-fighting vigilante.' I grabbed my mobile phone while he was still smiling and scrolled through the list to Stardust. ‘Okay, let's try this again.'

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JANNA

Kissing Takeshi was the
best ever
.
He didn't grope her or try to slide his hands up her shirt or down her pants, and in fact, when she got to the stage where she wanted him to touch her, she had to actually put his hands on her before he got the idea. But then he stroked her back with strong, sure hands, and she melted against him and off ered him her mouth again, sinking into all that good heat and soft moisture until he drew back, breathing fast and shallow, and kissed the corners of her eyes.

It was so sweet a gesture that Janna felt her heart do the weird li-lo-expansion thing again, and she grabbed his arm to try and slow down.

‘I'll miss you,' she said. What was
wrong
with her?

‘I'll miss you, also,' Takeshi said, and kissed the corner of her mouth. ‘Don't forget me, okay?'

‘No,' she said, and tipped her face up to his again.

‘Janna!' Mariel yelled, and pushed the woodshed door open. ‘Are you here? Keri's on the phone for — oops.'

Takeshi blinked at her in the sudden wash of light.

Janna jumped off the workbench and tugged her shirt back into order, glaring at Mariel through the cloud of sparkling dust motes. ‘Don't you know how to knock?'

‘I didn't know your new
boyfriend
was here,' Mariel protested, which would have been fair enough if Janna had been in any mood to be fair. ‘I didn't even know you
had
a new boyfriend, and you're not supposed to be in the woodshed with boys
anyway
.' ‘You're not supposed to just barge in on me!'

Mariel gave her a scornful look and marched away without closing the door. ‘Don't have sex in the
woodshed
,' she shouted over her shoulder.

Janna flushed all the way up to her hairline and hoped that Takeshi's English hadn't been good enough to catch that. But no luck. He was blushing, too, though on his darker skin it wasn't quite as obvious as her own red face.

‘Well, I wouldn't anyway,' she said. ‘It's not very comfortable. There's no bed.'

Takeshi's laugh was sudden. ‘A bed is good,' he agreed shyly, and that probably answered a question that had been bugging her. She felt envious of whatever girl had first shared a bed with Takeshi's quick smiles and careful hands, and then pushed the feeling away. It wasn't like she would let him get weird over
her
history.

‘Come inside, I'll just talk to Keri,' she said, hoping it wasn't very important so they could get back to kissing.

Ten minutes later she stood in the hallway sick and shaking while Takeshi held her hand and waited for her to tell him what was wrong. But she couldn't do that, because then he would think she was crazy, and he'd start avoiding her and she wouldn't be able to protect him from the Maukises and Kirk Davidson. And from Sergeant Rafferty and Daisy Hepwood, whom she'd really, really
liked.
Whom everyone liked. It had been so much easier to hate the Maukises.

‘My friend Keri is in trouble,' she said, which was true. They were all in trouble, oh
God.
She'd almost gone to Daisy for help with that protection spell. Thank goodness she'd decided to make up — and then make out — with Takeshi instead.

‘You have to go?' he asked, looking troubled but not grumpy. Another point for him. Patrick would have grumped. She probably wasn't supposed to compare new boys with old boys, but she couldn't help it, even at a time like this, when it should have been the last thing on her mind.

‘I do,' Janna said. ‘Sorry.'

‘I hope Keri is okay.' He pressed his lips together. ‘Can I help you?'

Grumpiness she could have dealt with. Concern made her weak in the knees.
Oh, girl
, she thought.
This is really
not
a good time to go all gooey.

So she plastered on her flirtiest smile and kissed Takeshi and tried to be brazen badass Stardust, who wasn't scared of anything and didn't worry about broken hearts
or
curses.

‘I'll see you later tonight?' she suggested, and straightened to whisper in his ear. ‘Maybe we can find a bed?'

He jerked, and she was scared she'd gone too far, but then she saw the pleasure in his eyes. He squeezed her hands. ‘Maybe,' he whispered back.

She let him out the front door, trying to look less worried than she felt as he walked away. She was pretty sure that New Year's Eve was the danger zone, but right now she didn't want him more than a metre from her at all times.

‘I'm telling Mum about the woodshed,' Mariel announced from the living room door. ‘Unless you give me your mascara. The good one, not the clumper.'

Janna threw a cushion into her youngest sister's face and stalked outside to steal her bike.

She hadn't remembered until she was almost at the garage that it was Boxing Day, and most service places were closed. But Mr Mangakahia was there, wiry body swimming in his grease-stained overalls, and he let her in to take a look at her car.

The Corolla was retrievable.

‘She'll be right,' said Mr Mangakahia, and slapped the dented bonnet. ‘Bit of panel-beating will see her through.'

It was the best news Janna had heard all week, and she could feel joy trying to bubble out of her, but there was so much fear crushing it down. ‘Can I grab my stuff?'

‘Was gonna ask,' Mr Mangakahia said. ‘Lots of junk in there.'

Normally, Janna would have swept everything into the plastic bags he gave her, but she went really slow, putting each item in one at a time. Even so, she almost missed it. She'd been looking for a detailed clay figurine like the ones Sione and Keri had described, but there was nothing like that in there. Instead, she found a little ghost figure clumsily made out of paper, like someone had taken a square of paper and drawn down the four corners, twisting the middle a couple of times and tying it with a bit of string to make the head. Only the straight lines for hair, drawn with black Sharpie, and the big, blue ink eyes, gave any indication that it was anything but a piece of rubbish.

No wonder Aroha's dad hadn't seen the Corolla.

Janna couldn't feel any of the tingling the others had described, no bad luck clinging to the car. Maybe the paper doll's power had died after the car crash, or maybe it needed to be recharged with closeness to her, and she'd been too long away. Or maybe dying her hair had changed her appearance enough that the doll couldn't find her. She didn't know enough of what Daisy had done to be sure.
Voodoo doll
, Keri had said, but Keri didn't know anything about magic, and Janna knew at least a little bit. Nearly every tradition used human figures of some kind. Daisy wasn't a
bokor
; she was a witch.

A witch who'd well and truly taken the left -hand path. A
wicked
witch.

She ripped the doll in half just to be sure it was safe, the soft paper shredding at the tear. It was a napkin, she realised, and she turned it inside out, blinking at the restaurant logo.

The Kahawai.
But the last time I went there was when Sione
came to meet us
, she thought, and then froze, because it wasn't until now that she'd put it together.

They knew from then,
she thought. All her wide-eyed smiling at Octavian had been a waste; probably from the second they'd all met for that first dinner, the siblings of three dead boys, their enemies had guessed that they were on the right track, and had tried to put them off it. That car crash could have killed both her and Sione — maybe the Fisher family and Takeshi, too.

Mr Davidson. He must have been curious when Sione came back to town alone and followed him to the restaurant.

‘Janna.'

‘Mmmm?' Janna said, and came back to herself. The napkin was nothing but shreds now, white confetti that drift ed from her hands as she started. She shoved the bits in her pocket and tried to smile. ‘Sorry, I . . . you said something?'

‘I'm heading home, love,' Mr Mangakahia said, wiping grease from his hands onto a rag.

‘Oh,' Janna said weakly. ‘Okay, coming.'

She was beginning to understand the full scope of the spell. Just protecting Takeshi wasn't going to be enough. Even if they succeeded, there would be a next year, and a next year, and one after that, and she and Keri would still be stuck in this town, trying to watch the tourist boys and hoping that ‘bad luck' wouldn't kill them.

They had to stop the whole spell. Somehow persuade Daisy and her allies to never do it again. Or break it themselves, with stronger magic, and how could she possibly do that? It had to be a pretty powerful spell. Maybe the deaths of the boys just renewed it, like some spells needed to be repeated every full moon to stay strong. Maybe interrupting this one sacrifice would ruin the whole thing.

The truth was, she just didn't know enough. Daisy hadn't let her join her coven, and now she knew why. Stupid, stupid Janna.

She wheeled Mariel's clunker out to the street and hesitated. The Chancellor was uphill, the main street down.

The others were waiting for her, and Keri would be mad, but she
had
to find out mo
d
re about this if they were going to win. And even if Daisy was evil, and most other adults potentially untrustworthy, there was one person who knew about magic that she thought she could safely ask. Someone young enough to not be involved, someone who'd known and loved a victim too much to harm him, someone who'd sat alone in the dark in the middle of the beach party, drinking to ease her pain.

Keri
really
wasn't going to like this.

Janna turned downhill, coasting all the way to Inner Light.