Fire Read online
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part II
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Part III
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Part IV
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Authors’ Acknowledgements
Quotes
Copyright
About the Book
SOMETHING IS COMING
THE CHOSEN ONES are about to start their second year in senior high school. All summer they have been waiting for the demons’ next move. But the threat comes from another direction, somewhere they could never have foreseen.
It becomes more and more obvious that something is very wrong in Engelsfors. The past is woven together with the present. The living meet the dead. THE CHOSEN ONES are tied even closer together and are once again reminded that magic cannot make you happy or mend broken hearts...
About the Author
Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg first met in 2008. They quickly realised that they shared a passion for stories with young adults in the lead roles, and soon the idea to write a book together was born. The story took shape and when the idea came up to make the main characters young girls who also are witches, everything fell into place. The Circle, the first part in The Engelsfors Trilogy, was released in the UK in April 2011. Part three, The Key, will be published in 2014.
Abba musician Benny Andersson has launched a new production company with his son to adapt The Circle into a film.
Sara B. Elfgren started her career in the film industry as a screenwriter. As a script doctor, she has been involved in several Swedish film and TV-productions such as Arn, Selma and Lasse-Maja’s Detective Bureau. She has a Degree in Film Studies.
Mats Strandberg is an author and a journalist. He is a regular columnist for Sweden’s biggest evening newspaper Aftonbladet and in 2004 the organization Sveriges Tidskrifter (Sweden’s Newspapers and Magazines) awarded him the title Columnist of the Year. Mats has previously released three books, of which the third one, Half Lifes, was awarded Book of the Year 2009 by QX.
PART I
1
Sunlight floods in through the tall windows and picks out every dirty old stain on the white textured wallpaper. A fan on the floor is slowly turning from side to side. The room is still unbearably hot.
‘How did your summer go?’
Jakob, the shrink, is wearing shorts, and sitting back in the brown leather armchair.
Linnéa can’t resist a little probe into his thoughts. She registers his discomfort at the leather of the chair seat sticking to the backs of his thighs and then his genuine pleasure at seeing her again. She backs off instantly. Feels a bit ashamed.
‘Fine, thank you,’ she replies. It’s been horrible, she thinks.
She focuses on the framed poster behind Jakob. All pastelly geometric shapes. She can’t imagine anything blander and wonders what point Jakob wanted to make by hanging it just there.
‘Has anything special happened that you would like to talk about?’ he asks.
Define ‘special’, Linnéa thinks and glares at the blue triangle that hovers above his shaved skull.
‘Not really.’
Jakob nods and doesn’t say anything more. Ever since she realised that she is a mind-reader, Linnéa has now and then asked herself if he might not have a milder variant of her power, if he isn’t somehow able to sense what is going on in her head. He always seems to know when to be silent in a way that makes her want to talk. Mostly, she resists, but this time the words bubble up.
‘I’ve had a fight with one of my friends. Several of them, actually.’
Linnéa lets one of her flip-flops dangle. She hates sandals. But when it’s this bloody hot you have no choice.
‘So, what happened?’ Jakob’s tone is neutral.
‘I was keeping something secret. Something the others should have known, but I kept it to myself. And then, when I finally told them they got furious with me because I hadn’t let them in on it earlier. And now they don’t trust me.’
‘Can you tell me the secret?’
‘No.’
Jakob just nods. She wonders what would happen to his professional composure if she told him the truth. He wouldn’t believe her at first, obviously. But she could go on to describe how, before she learned to control her ability better, she sometimes, against her will, picked up what he was thinking. Which is how she knows that he was unfaithful to his wife last autumn. He was sleeping with a colleague. His darkest secret.
Jakob would become anxious. Always ill at ease whenever she was around. Just like the Chosen Ones.
A few days after the end-of-term assembly, they finally revealed their secrets to each other. Minoo told them the whole truth about what happened that night in the school dining area, about the black smoke that no one else could see and that came pouring out of her and Max, who had been blessed by the demons. Anna-Karin described how she had cast a spell over her mother that lasted all of the autumn term, and admitted how far she had gone with Jari. Heavy secrets, but nothing in comparison with what Linnéa had to confess. That she could read their minds. And that she had been doing it for almost a year. Without saying anything.
Since then, nothing has been the same. They have been meeting regularly all summer to practise their magic skills and, each time, Linnéa has been aware of the others avoiding her eyes. Throughout the summer holidays, Vanessa has hardly said a word to her. When Linnéa thinks about that, she feels as if a super-sharp electric whisk has been thrust through her chest, churning her heart to mush.
‘How did you react when they turned on you?’ Jakob asks.
‘I tried to defend myself. But I understood why they did, of course. I mean … like, if I had been one of them,
I would’ve been so fucking angry.’
‘Why didn’t you tell them the truth before?’
‘I knew they’d freak out.’
Once more, that psychologist-style silence. Linnéa stares hard at her feet. The varnish on her toenails is black.
‘Anyway, it felt kind of good, too,’ she went on.
‘What felt good?’
‘It felt like having the upper hand.’
‘It can be tough to let other people come close, truly close to you. There are times when being alone gives one a sense of security.’
Linnéa can’t stop the laughter. It erupts with a snort.
‘What’s so funny?’ Jakob asks.
She looks up and sees his gentle smile. What does he know about being alone? Not alone, as in everyone else is busy tonight, or alone, as in your wife is away at a conference. But utterly, painfully alone, so lonely it’s as if the atoms in your body are pulling away from each other and you’re about to dissolve into one great Nothing. So lonely you have to scream just to hear that you still exist. Alone, as in nobody would care if you disappeared.
Inside Linnéa’s head, the list pops up. It has been there for as long as she can remember. It’s the list headed Who Would Care if I Died? Since Elias’s murder, there have been no obvious names left.
Jakob clearly realises that she isn’t going to reply, because he changes the subject.
‘Before the summer holidays, you told me that you had met someone you felt fond of.’
That murderously sharp, fast whisk starts up again.
‘I’m over it,’ she lies. ‘It got too complicated.’
Flipping, flopping, her sandal keeps dangling. She avoids looking at Jakob.
He asks more questions and she answers mechanically, feeding him a small truth here, a large lie there.
There’s so much she can’t tell him. Like: ‘The world is not the way you think it is. It’s full of magic. Engelsfors will be the centre of a battle that’s going to cross the boundaries between the dimensions. Good pitted against evil. I and a handful of other high-school girls are up against the demons. And another thing: I’m a witch. You see, I am chosen to vanquish evil and prevent the apocalypse. Any more questions?’
Besides, there are just as many not-magical secrets that Jakob will never hear about: ‘After Elias’s death, I started sleeping with Jonte. Sure, the same old Jonte, my ex-dealing mate. And, yes, we smoked together, but I’ve stopped now. I won’t ever do it again, promise. I’m responsible enough to have a flat of my own. You and Diana believe me, don’t you?’
Any of that stuff would be a one-way ticket to another institution. Or to new foster parents. Foster parents who wouldn’t be like Ulf and Tina. Those two never tried moulding her into somebody she was not, never tried to play at being a perfect family. They understood that she hadn’t been a child for many, many years – perhaps never. If they hadn’t got it into their heads to go to Botswana and start a school, she would’ve liked to stay on with them.
‘How do you feel about starting school again?’ Jakob says and Linnéa realises that she has been silent for a long while.
‘No problem.’
‘Do you think a lot about Elias?’
It surprises her sometimes how much it still hurts to hear his name mentioned.
‘Of course I do,’ she snaps, even though she knows that Jakob didn’t intend to get at her. ‘I think of him every day. Especially today.’
‘Why just today?’
Inside Linnéa, the sense of loss beats like a pulse and she has to concentrate on not bursting into tears.
‘It’s his birthday today.’
Jakob nods and looks compassionately at her. Linnéa hates him. She doesn’t want to be one of the saddos who everyone feels sorry for. She’s damaged goods, she knows that, but detests seeing it reflected in other people’s eyes, resents the way they can’t wait to try fitting the broken bits together, get out the superglue and start mending until they think she looks whole.
She probes again and notices that Jakob feels hopeful, believes that he has connected with her and that she is about to open up, tell him more about Elias.
She takes revenge by keeping her mouth shut for the last ten minutes of their session.
I miss you so. It doesn’t pass. The pain feels less bad sometimes, that’s all.
I hate remembering the last time we met, the fight we had. The real reason was simply that I was worried about what was happening to you. Now, I understand what you were going through. I think so, anyway. You had begun to discover new, inexplicable changes in yourself, just like I had.
I thought I was losing my mind and you must have been afraid of that, too. You must have been so frightened.
If only we’d talked, told each other our secrets. Perhaps everything would have been different then. If only you’d been born anywhere except in this fucking hole. Perhaps you would still have been alive.
I know it’s pointless to think these things, but I can’t stop myself.
I draw up lists of all the tiny details that were part of you.
Like the way you always picked the pickled gherkin out of the veggie burger. I never figured out why you didn’t ask them not to add it. And your favourite authors were Poppy Z. Brite and Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde. I’ve underlined the passages you read aloud to me when you phoned me at night. You promised to take me on a journey to Japan before our thirtieth birthdays. Once, you said that if you were a girl you would’ve liked to be called Lucretia. Wherever did you get that from? You never had crushes on real-life celebs, only on fantasy people like Misa Amane, even though she’s so bugging, and Edward Scissorhands.
And you asked me not to forget you if you died before I did. Such a truly typically fucking stupid thing to say. As if I could ever forget you.
You are my brother in everything except the blood. I love you and will love you for ever.
Linnéa carefully rips out the diary page and folds it. She digs a small, deep hollow in the light soil by the rose bush next to the stone on Elias’s grave. The white shrub roses are faded already and the leaves have ugly, dried-out edges. She pushes the folded paper into the hole. Buries it. Wipes her hands on her black skirt and sits back.
She can see the rectory between the old lime trees on the far side of the churchyard. Linnéa observes the window of the room that used to be Elias’s. The panes reflect the bright blue sky. Elias loved the view over the churchyard. Imagine if he had realised that he was looking at the plot of his own grave.
The air is very still. Within the walled cemetery, the baking sun heats the gravestones. The grass is yellowing and the parched ground criss-crossed with cracks. In June, the Engelsfors Herald ran euphoric headlines about the record-breaking summer. Now, in August, the record figures are the numbers of old folk dying of dehydration and of farmers having their finances ruined.
Linnéa’s mobile pings, but she can’t even be bothered checking. Olivia, the only one in the old gang who’s still her friend, has been texting like crazy all morning. The summer holiday has passed without a sign of life from Olivia, but now that it suits her, she expects Linnéa to jump. No such luck.
She unscrews the top of the water bottle in her fabric carrier. It makes no difference how much she drinks, she’s still thirsty afterwards. All the same, the rose bush gets the last few drops.
She puts the bottle back and pulls out the three red roses from the flower bed in Storvall Park. Their heads are drooping already. She puts one rose on Elias’s grave. Then she goes along to place another one on the nearby grave, where the stone bears Rebecka’s name.
Linnéa looks back at Elias’s grave. In the beginning she had hoped to be able to pick up the thoughts of the dead. To contact them. But she hasn’t succeeded in even sensing whether they are there at all, let alone what might be going on in their minds.
Linnéa used to believe that when a person died, that was it. End of story. Now, she knows that at least souls exist.
&n
bsp; They’re where they should be, Minoo had said when, after the end-of-term assembly, they had met up here, by the graves.
Linnéa hopes that it is true, that Elias exists somewhere else, in a better place.
She remembers meeting Max in the dining area and what he said when he was trying to make her reveal who the other Chosen Ones were.
Elias is waiting for you, Linnéa.
A tiny part of her is tempted to find out if Max, ally of the demons, is telling the truth.
You can be together again.
Now she can no longer hold back the tears. She lets them run down her cheeks as she walks away. So fucking what? Since when aren’t you allowed to cry in a churchyard?
One red rose is left in her carrier bag. It is for her mum.
Linnéa is just about to take the path leading to the Memorial Wood when she catches sight of a black shadow moving close to the ground between the gravestones.
She stops.
With a plaintive meow, Nicolaus’s familiar slips on to the path ahead of her. Cat, who has no other name, seems to have lost even more fur during the summer. Its single, green eye is fixed on her.
Linnéa has never managed to read the mind of an animal, but it is easy to grasp that Cat wants something from her. It stretches itself and meows, then pads along a narrow path leading to the oldest part of the churchyard. Now and then, it stops to make sure that Linnéa is following.
The cemetery is surrounded by a low stone wall. Cat stops in its shadow, next to a tall headstone almost a metre high and covered with mosses and pale grey lichens.
Cat meows shrilly, noisily, and gently butts its head against the stone.
‘Yes, yes,’ Linnéa says and kneels.
The ground feels surprisingly cool against her bare legs. She leans forward, scrapes some of the moss off the stone and tries to make out the crumbling letters.
NICOLAUS ELINGIUS
MEMENTO MORI
A chill makes Linnéa’s whole body shiver, as if the souls of the dead were present here after all and reaching for her through the soil.
2
Minoo has made one corner of the garden into her own, where she can sit with her books. She has placed a deckchair in the shade of a sycamore at the back of the house and as far away from it as you can get. Too bad that it isn’t far enough for her to ignore what is going on inside it.