‘Anna-Karin!’ Mom calls from the bathroom. ‘That dreadful water is back! It’s driving me crazy!’
Anna-Karin hurries to her. Mom is bending over the handbasin. Brownish-red water is bubbling up into the basin and then draining away. It leaves a reddish film where it has been. Rust, the local radio station has informed the town.
Almost exactly twenty-four hours have passed since the water supply in Engelsfors was wrecked. Rumor has it that a minor earthquake has disrupted deep aquifers.
‘Maybe it’s because of some aftershock,’ Anna-Karin says.
Mom looks up and meets her eyes in the mirror.
‘Yes, that might be it,’ she says. ‘Are you going out at this hour?’
This is the first time they have talked to each other since the visit to the Positive Engelsfors Center.
‘I’m sleeping over at Minoo’s,’ Anna-Karin says. She is pleased that it wasn’t her, just for once, who was the first to break the silence.
Mom raises her eyebrows.
‘Erik Falk’s daughter? Well, well. I didn’t know that you were friends with her.’
‘It’s quite a new thing.’
Mom looks down at the sink again.
‘Remember now, you mustn’t drink the water,’ she says. ‘It’s easy to forget.’
Her concern unsettles Anna-Karin and she hovers in the doorway, very nearly saying that she’s sorry for what she said last week.
But she knows the kind of thing Mom would say. A sharply accusing Of course I understand why you said what you said, it can’t be easy to have a mother as useless as me. Or a bitter I already know I’m a bad mother so there was no need to tell me.
‘I’ll remember, promise,’ she says.
Pepper meows and rubs against her pant leg on his way towards the litter box.
‘Bye then, Mom.’
‘Bye-bye, Anna-Karin,’ she says without looking up.
Vanessa weighs the silver crucifix in her hand. It is surprisingly heavy. And warm. As if it’s been left in the sun.
She can sense the power it emits. Like very, very small but intense vibrations in the air. Like electricity. Or a magnetic field. That kind of thing but still not the same.
She hangs the crucifix on the nail that Linnéa hammered into the wall next to the wooden cross from Mexico. The cross was a gift from Elias. According to Mexican folk beliefs it would protect you against evil. And it’s only too likely that they’ll need all the protection they can get.
Vanessa helped Linnéa to carry all her furniture into the bedroom to give them enough space to conduct the ritual in the living room. Nicolaus’s apartment is no longer safe. Maybe Linnéa’s isn’t either, but at least there are no parents or siblings around to disturb them.
The rectangular sheet of mirror glass, just removed from the inside of Linnéa’s wardrobe door, is waiting on the floor. Using black markers, they have drawn circles all over its surface, one for every number between one and ten, one for every letter in the alphabet and two more circles, one for YES and one for NO.
‘I hope they’ll give us twice as much protection,’ Linnéa says as she comes into the room.
She nods at the crosses.
‘I’m guessing we’ll need it.’
Vanessa looks at her.
‘I thought exactly that, just now. It isn’t as if you were … did you? I mean, I know you’re not always aware of reading my thoughts but you do admit it just happens now and then?’
‘Not this time.’
‘I believe you. We must be thinking along the same lines then,’ Vanessa smiles.
Linnéa glances at her, a strange look.
‘Could be,’ she says.
Vanessa is suddenly very aware of how close Linnéa is to her. The scooped-out neckline of Linnéa’s T-shirt has slipped, leaving her shoulder and collarbone bare. Her skin seems so soft.
Vanessa wonders what it would be like to touch it.
She looks away, afraid that Linnéa will misunderstand the way she is being gazed at. That she’ll think …
Think what? She can’t put this into words and lets the thought go. It makes her nervous.
‘But you will tell me?’ she says instead.
Linnéa looks confused.
‘If you happen to hear what I think,’ Vanessa explains. ‘I’d rather know than not.’
Linnéa nods.
‘I promise.’
The doorbell rings.
‘Honestly, I so don’t want Ida to be in my home,’ Linnéa says.
‘If it’s any comfort to you, I don’t think she wants to be here either.’
Linnéa goes to the door. Inside, she is trembling. She came very close to telling Vanessa how she feels about her.
Far too close.
She takes a deep breath and unlocks the door, hoping that the first arrival won’t be Ida. Her being in the apartment will somehow foul it. Linnéa doesn’t even want to think about what Elias would say about Ida being here.
Elias.
For the thousandth time, she wonders how things would have worked out if he were still alive. If he had been at her side this last year, if they had been through everything together. But thinking like that gets you nowhere.
She opens the door.
Minoo and Anna-Karin.
Linnéa asks them in, feeling odd and uncomfortable. She doesn’t like having anyone in her place. The one exception was on the night of the blood-red moon, when Vanessa came here for the first time. She’d felt so sorry for Vanessa, who’d appeared wearing nothing but a blanket and whose boyfriend was a loser. It’s weird to remember that Vanessa was almost a stranger back then. Wille’s new chick. That was all.
Minoo puts her backpack down on the floor and starts rooting around inside it. Anna-Karin stands still, her eyes sliding along the walls. Her jaw drops.
‘Pretty,’ Anna-Karin mumbles, unable to take her eyes off a depiction of hell by Hieronymus Bosch.
‘Where are the rest of the ingredients?’ Minoo asks and pulls a folded piece of checked notepaper from her bag.
‘In the kitchen,’ Linnéa says and shows the way.
‘Your apartment’s really nice,’ Minoo says.
‘It isn’t my apartment, it belongs to Social Services.’
Off and on, she can’t resist pushing the buttons that make Minoo so ill at ease, reminding her of how different their lives are. Linnéa can’t quite work out why she does this. There is no special satisfaction in seeing Minoo’s ears go bright red.
‘The rest of the stuff is here,’ Linnéa says and points at the counter by the sink, where the saucer with the dug-up nail clippings has been lined up next to the salt cellar, the iron filings, a bowl full of ashes and the ectoplasm jar.
Minoo adds her folded piece of paper.
‘Rebecka and I used to scribble messages to each other during lessons,’ she explains with a glance at Linnéa.
‘I picked one of the postcards Elias sent to me when he was on vacation in Mexico. He hated every second of it. They were staying in one of those all-inclusive hotels where you don’t even leave the grounds. He wrote to me every day.’
They are silent for a while.
‘I’m so nervous,’ Minoo says.
‘I know. I thought I’d pee myself when we made the truth serum.’
‘But this is something else. Not that what you did wasn’t hard, but what scares me now is that I’m supposed to help draw the circles …’ She stops speaking for a bit and then carries on. ‘Because I don’t know anything about my powers. I could hurt somebody.’
‘I trust you. And the others do, too,’ Linnéa says and hands her a lighter.
Minoo sighs.
‘Do you have two bowls?’ she says. And the doorbell rings.
They exchange a glance.
‘Would you go, please?’ Linnéa asks.
‘Of course,’ says Minoo.
Linnéa gets two pottery bowls from a cupboard. She tries not to panic at the thought of Ida Holmström in her hall and about to enter the living room at any moment.
‘What a cozy place,’ she hears Ida say. ‘If you’re a serial killer, that is.’
Linnéa realizes she is grinning broadly. Because it was almost a funny thing to say. Almost.