The Shattering (7 page)

I pulled out a book called
The Green Man and the Great Lady
and flipped through it. Janna had scribbled things in the margins — some badly spelled notes on magic, but mostly song lyrics or phone numbers or random doodles. A big black heart in one corner went around patrick + janna: 2getha 4eva.

Well, they hadn't been together forever. But even just wanting to be was a sign: I could eventually get over this raw aching. Claim a life without Jake in it.

I didn't want to right now, but it was reassuring that it was an option.

‘You should be a spy,' Janna said, banging back into the room, skirt skimming her thighs. She brushed past me to stand in front of the dresser.

‘Spies don't get caught red-handed,' I said, watching her pull her hair into two braided pigtails and make pouty faces in the mirror. ‘Do you believe this stuff ?'

‘Wicca?' She leaned over and brushed a plum-coloured mouth over her natural pinkish one.

‘Magic.'

‘Yeah, I do. It works.'

She really seemed to believe it, and it was hard not to be mean about it. Witchcraft. Like having a birthday in early September meant that I could predict my future by reading what the daily horoscopes had to say about Virgo.

Even though I managed to keep my mouth shut, she must have seen my scepticism in the mirror, because she turned around, lip brush poised in her sturdy fingers. ‘
You
don't have to believe it,' she said. ‘I'm just saying. It worked for me.'

‘Willpower and symbols,' I said, putting the book back. ‘It makes as much sense as anything.'

I meant that nothing seemed to make much sense, but Janna took it as a peace offering and gave me one of those shiny smiles she did so well. ‘I stopped, though.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, if you want to get serious, you have to study, which' — she floated her hand in the air and scrunched up her nose — ‘not really my thing. I couldn't do it by myself. It was even worse than learning stuff for my confirmation. So I talked to Daisy at Inner Light, but she said I was much too young to join her coven, especially without Mum's permission. I tried a few spells on my own before I stopped.' She looked self-satisfied for a moment. ‘Like a love spell.'

‘And it definitely worked?'

‘Depends on what you mean by
worked
.' She swept mascara over her lashes. ‘I wasn't trying to make anyone in particular like me; that's left -hand path. Black magic. You don't want to get started down that road; it's really hard to stop yourself from doing worse and worse things. So it was only a spell to open my eyes to love. But before the spell, Patrick was just this guy in the band, and the day after, I couldn't stop looking at him. He's a very good kisser, by the way. Highly recommended.'

‘I'll keep that in mind,' I said. The chances of my kissing Patrick Tan approached nil, but Janna didn't need to know that. ‘But how oft en do guys say no to you, anyway?'

‘Oh, you'd be surprised,' she said, and put the mascara down, looking at my reflection in her mirror. ‘Matthew did.'

‘Sione's brother?' I said.

‘Yeah. I made kind of a dick of myself, actually. But he said no, girlfriend at home.'

Aha. That explained something I'd been wondering about. ‘And
then
you hooked up with Sione.'

‘Yeah. Just once. I'm not proud of myself.'

‘Because substitute kissing is gross, or because it was Sione?'

Janna spun around. ‘Sione's a good guy!'

‘I know.'

‘I mean . . . I don't want to go out with him, but he's a really good guy. He's nice. I don't want to be mean to him, either.'

‘That's always hard for me,' I said mournfully, and surprised a tiny smile out of her. But a change of subject was probably best. ‘So, this witchcraft thing, I guess it wasn't your typical teenage rebellion?'

‘Hah, maybe. I think it was the only way I could leave the Church. Do something really spectacular, you know, so Mum knew I was serious.' She shrugged. ‘But I do believe. I'll do more with Wicca later, when I get out of here. Right now I go to Mass at Christmas and Easter because it makes Mum and Dad happy, and sleep in every ordinary Sunday morning.'

The mention of Christmas made me stagger. It was so weird, how stuff could slam me out of nowhere. ‘Mum's cancelling Christmas,' I blurted out. ‘Jake and me went through the present-hiding place in her wardrobe six weeks ago. He was getting a Wii. But now she's working Christmas Day, and she lied and said she hadn't bought any presents.'

‘Oh, shit,' Janna said. ‘That's messed up. I'm sorry.'

Once again, her matter-of-fact approach made me feel better. She didn't make any fuss, just laced up knee-high black leather boots — in
this
weather — and grabbed a yellow backpack covered in appliqué butterflies (probably ironic butterflies). Whatever was in the bag looked heavy, but I didn't off er to carry it, concentrating instead on pushing the hurt back down to something I could manage.

‘Good to go?'

I nodded, and she led the way back through the hall, the dusty light gleaming on her tiny blonde roots.

She took one of the two bikes in the garage, slinging the helmet over the handlebars, and began pushing it up the drive. It was a sleek, slim-wheeled thing in dark blue. I'd seen Petra riding it home after practise sessions. Janna didn't handle it with the same grace, cursing as the spinning pedal caught her booted calf. When we reached the end of the driveway, I grabbed my own bike.

But Janna had stopped. ‘Mariel! Stop digging around that damn tree! You'll kill it.'

Mariel's cheeks blew out in annoyance.

‘Mum didn't say anything.' ‘Mum won't have to live in a world where vast deforestation has further devastated oxygen levels and reduced the planet's capacity to handle carbon dioxide, will she?'

Petra shook her hair out of her eyes. ‘It's just one tree, Janna,' she said.

‘They're
all
just one tree,' Janna muttered, but her heart didn't seem to be in it. Then, getting permission clearly as an after-thought: ‘Can I take your bike?'

Petra thought about this. ‘Get it back by four. I'm going to the pool before tea.'

‘You're my favourite little sister —' ‘Hey!'

‘Who isn't my
youngest
sister, okay?
t
Jesus, Mariel, you're such a drama queen.'

‘Takes one to know one, blasphemer.'

‘Brat.'

‘Heathen.'

‘Can we get going?' I said. ‘You guys are making me feel better about being an only child.'

Petra's jaw dropped. Mariel looked intrigued.

‘
Nice
,' Janna said, grinning, and flung her leg over the seat.

‘Helmet,' I reminded her, doing up my own.

‘Ugh,' she said, but obeyed. ‘God, I miss the Corolla. That was some
terrible
luck.'

‘Bad things come in threes,' I said, and then shook my head at my own automatic superstition. ‘But not that bad. I hope.'

‘That's why I like you, Keri,' Janna said, standing on her pedals to throw more weight into her cycling. Her pleated skirt blew up with the motion, showing glimpses of the red knickers. She didn't seem to mind. ‘You're always so
optimistic
.'

CHAPTER FIVE

SIONE

After the crash, Sione couldn't stop shaking.
Even in the lift back to his room, he could feel his hands trembling.

Matthew had died in a car.

Not the way Sione almost had, all fast tearing and blood. Matthew had just sat there, vomiting and turning bright red while his body tried to breathe the stinking exhaust fumes.

He'd been in his old car, the clunker he was so proud of because he'd earned every cent of it himself, with no help from Dad. Dad had offered — nearly insisted:
No son of mine needs to
— but Mum had said,
He needs to establish his independence, Elijah
. And when Mum decided something was going to happen, especially when she decided it in Samoan, it happened. After a while, Dad had decided it was his own idea, teaching Matthew the value of a dollar.

Newer cars had catalytic converters that reduced the carbon monoxide output. It would have taken Matthew much longer to die in a newer car.

Sione might have even made it home in time.

After dinner with the girls, he'd planned to spend the evening unpacking and organising his clothes — really exciting plans, a typical Sione Saturday night — but the shaking moved down his body, and he couldn't make it stop. Knees wobbling, he staggered down the blue-carpeted hall to his room, peeled off his shirt, shoes, and pants, and fell facedown into the pillows.

He meant to only rest for a while.

When someone knocked on the door, Sione woke up some of the way and groaned. Light was pouring in through the windows. He hadn't even closed the curtains last night.

The knocking came again.
It must be housekeeping
, he thought
.
Staggering out of bed, he tried to think about throwing on more clothes, but his brain was too foggy. He'd just poke his head out and tell them not to worry about cleaning this morning.

It wasn't housekeeping. It was the girls. And Janna had sweated a deep vee into her white T-shirt with a unicorn on it. The fabric clung to her breasts and was nearly transparent over her cleavage, just above the unicorn's glittery horn.

Sione woke the rest of the way up.

‘Rise and shine,' Janna said, and pushed the door wider. The hem of her skirt brushed his thighs as she breezed past him, and he had a balls-clenching vision of what would happen if he let himself think about that in nothing but his boxers.

‘I'll just get dressed,' he said, and grabbed clothes from the suitcase at random, clutched them at waist level, and crab-walked to the bathroom.

Ten minutes later he was in dark jeans and a pale yellow polo shirt, so at least he'd lucked out on the clothes. His hair gel was still in the suitcase, and he tried to slick back his springy curls with water. Wisps flew out immediately. He gave up and went back to join the girls.

Janna had pulled a pile of papers with close rows of small type from her backpack — which was
amazing
and completely her, all yellow silky stuff and huge butterflies — and was dividing it into thirds. Keri was pulling hotel stationery out of the big wooden desk.

Neither of them, he was relieved to see, had touched the laptop. They still needed him for something, then. They both turned around when he came out.

‘We have a name for the possibles list,' Keri said. She wrote the name in graceful, loopy handwriting under the Chancellor letterhead. ‘Sergeant Rafferty.'

‘He was there last night,' Sione said slowly.

‘Yep. Did you notice how he asked Takeshi all those questions?' Not exactly. He'd been busy trying to convince himself that Janna wasn't staring at the Japanese bloke the way she'd once stared at Matthew. The way she'd never looked at Sione. She'd kissed him, but she'd never looked.

‘There were a lot of questions,' he said.

‘Exactly.' Janna slapped the mattress. ‘He asked whether Takeshi had brothers or sisters and whether they were older or younger.'

‘Oh.'

‘And I checked the dates,' she said, and waved her pile of papers at him. ‘Raf erty moved here three years before Schuyler died.'

‘What's that?'

‘The electoral roll. I photocopied it at the library last week.'

Sione stared at her. ‘You can't photocopy the electoral roll!'

Janna rolled her eyes and shook the sheaf of papers. ‘Oh yeah?'

‘A good argument,' Keri said. She winked at Sione. He decided she could be really pretty if she tried. ‘So we should keep an eye on Rafferty. But we shouldn't concentrate on him exclusively. Okay. Let's get on with the plan.'

The plan was to go through the roll. Janna had already put a pink highlighter through everyone who'd had a Summerton address before Schuyler's death and had been old enough to kill him. The girls had to go through that list and work out who they were sure had been in town on the dates of the more recent deaths and so could be crossed off. Sione thought he wouldn't be able to help, but Keri put him on computer correlation duty, putting all the possibles into a spreadsheet.

Considering what they were doing, it should have been creepy, or even boring, but it wasn't. The girls talked as they worked, comparing notes about whether their English teacher had been in Summerton when Matthew died (she had) and what the minimum age limit for the murderer had to be at the time the murders started (they decided on fift een because the killer probably needed a driver's licence for the second murder, which was in a little town near Wanaka). As long as Sione didn't think about what the list was for, it was calm and cosy, sitting there while the air-conditioning hummed, listening to the girls talk, and inputting name after name.

There were way too many names, way too many possibilities.
We're working the problem
, he thought, and tried not to worry about it too much.

Every now and then he lost himself, looking out over the beautiful bay, but the girls made allowances for his being a tourist and didn't give him too much shit for it.

It was getting pretty close to eleven, and Sione was wondering how to bring up the subject of the breakfast he hadn't had, when Keri sat straight up and said, ‘Wait. This is weird.'

Janna drew a line through each of the Maukis brothers — ‘We were playing at an art show opening that day, and they were both there, the slimes' — and then looked up.

Keri was frowning at the roll, as if she couldn't quite believe whatever it was she'd found. ‘No one's moved here after Schuyler died.'

‘Sure they have. There was that Ekaterin Ivanova girl in our class in Year Nine, and the Afghan family who lived down the street from us —'