Linnéa hands Viktor his phone and walks ahead of him into her apartment.
First, the hall, where broken glass crunches under her feet, then the living room. She looks around.
The torn-down images rustle in the draught from the broken windows. The cross that Elias gave her is broken in two and the black china panther has ended up on the floor with its head cracked. She walks into the bedroom. The mattress has been tipped on to the floor, her clothes have been torn out of the wardrobe and scattered everywhere. Someone must have stomped on the laptop that was a gift from Ulf and Tina. The sewing machine has been opened up and systematically dismantled. And the contents of her memory boxes are spread all over the floor. Pictures, letters, mementos. Her entire past has been turned inside out. Rummaged in. Torn. Ruined.
But she is alive.
As she was sinking through the black water, something happened.
At first, with spasms in arms and legs, she was swept along by the currents below the surface. Her body struggled to survive and the breathing reflex grew so strong that it would soon open her mouth and pull water into her lungs.
But instead something new awoke inside her.
Linnéa had tried to influence water before, to make it freeze or evaporate. It never worked. But down there in the canal, the energy started to stream out from her body and form a protective, warming shell around her. Like a kind of magic wetsuit. Suddenly, she was able to kick out with her legs. Her arms made breaststrokes, she seemed to be sucked upwards, as if she were buoyant like a cork, made not to sink.
When she broke through the surface and inhaled the cold night air, endorphins poured into her circulation. Then the cold settled over her face like a mask of ice.
Somehow, she got up on the bank. Coughed until she threw up. Every breath felt like icy needles piercing her lungs.
She crawled up the steep slope, her water-filled, heavy boots slipping on the wet mud and her stiff, cold fingers clawing to find purchase. And then, finally, she collapsed in a heap on the asphalt footpath.
It was Viktor’s thought that returned her to consciousness.
Linnéa? What happened?
Linnéa opened her eyes and couldn’t make sense of the world as she saw it. She was lying on her side and her field of vision included only asphalt and a pair of legs in dark slacks, seen from a completely wrong angle.
Viktor bent over her, wrapped her in his coat and took her ice-cold hands in his. She could feel his magic streaming into her. It turned the water in her clothes and hair into vapor that rose around them. She was drying so fast she could watch it happen.
Come along.
He helped her up and half dragged, half carried her to his car which was parked in front of the manor house. She sank into the passenger seat, he shut the doors and turned the heater setting into the widest red band on the scale.
Linnéa pulled his coat closer around her. Slowly, her body relaxed and with relaxation came a deeply soothing tiredness.
What happened? Viktor asked inside her head.
They forced me to jump in, she replied, amazed at how easy it was to communicate like this.
Forced you? Who were they?
‘Erik Forslund. Robin Zetterqvist.’
She almost slurred. Watched as Viktor pulled out his phone. Then she sat up and made herself come awake.
‘Don’t call the police,’ she said.
‘Of course we must.’
‘I can promise you, here and now, these guys will have alibis. I heard their thoughts. Erik would never have risked doing it if he hadn’t made sure that he wouldn’t get caught. In the end, it will be my word against theirs.’
Viktor looked thoughtfully at her.
‘You must know who the police tend to believe,’ Linnéa went on. ‘Hardly ever people like me, not in this town anyway.’
He put his phone away.
‘Why did they do it?’
‘They’ve hated me forever,’ Linnéa said. ‘They hate everyone who’s different. Only, now they have a whole organization supporting them. I’m quite certain they did what they did because someone had told them to. But the plan probably wasn’t meant to go this far.’
‘Whose idea do you think it was?’
‘I don’t want to discuss that.’
Viktor was drumming with his fingers against the steering wheel.
‘I’ll have to ask Alexander if I really can omit calling the police,’ he said. ‘Still, I have a feeling he won’t object. The Council’s official position is, whenever possible, to avoid confrontations with the non-magic community.’
‘So you usually don’t intervene when someone tries to murder a witch?’ Linnéa asked and managed to stop herself from going on to ask if perhaps it was just the Chosen Ones who didn’t matter one way or the other.
Viktor glanced at her.
‘Wait here while I get you some dry things to wear. Then I’ll drive you back.’
Now, Linnéa stands here, in rolled-up sweatpants, a much-too-large woolly sweater and a pair of too-tight sneakers that belongs to someone she doesn’t know.
Linnéa shuts her eyes. Doesn’t want to see any more of the chaos that surrounds her.
The police are due any minute and Diana will hear all about it tomorrow morning. And Linnéa will be evicted and lose her independence. Has Helena intended this all along? Because it must be her who is behind this.
But Linnéa has no intention of giving in that easily. She opens her eyes again and begins to pick up the empty beer cans that have been thrown about in the room. Her thigh hurts where Erik hit her with the baseball bat. When she changed in the car, she saw the large purplish area spreading.
Erik. Robin.
In the car, she was curiously calm and collected. Now she feels the terror crawling all over her again, tightening her throat with its strong, slippery fingers.
She slowly sinks to the floor. The panic attack is advancing on her, booming in her head, making the room revolve, making her relive the fall. Erik wanted to break her and he succeeded.
‘Linnéa?’ Viktor says.
She wants to get away from herself, turn herself inside out and crawl out of her skin.
Breathe in … Breathe out … Breathe in …
‘Linnéa?’
Viktor is crouching next to her, his hands are gripping her shoulders. She concentrates on him and the panic slowly ebbs from her body. She doesn’t want to lose it while he’s watching.
They mustn’t break me, they mustn’t break me …
She observes Viktor, who looks troubled. Then she realizes that her thought must have been projected straight into his head.
‘How are you feeling now?’ he asks.
‘Just, you know … a fit of post-traumatic stress, that’s all.’
Viktor straightens up, takes her hand and helps her up.
‘Is there anything I can do for you now?’
‘No, I’ll fix all this.’
He looks searchingly at her.
‘I trust you’re not planning any kind of vendetta,’ he says.
It hasn’t even occurred to her. Her efforts not to crack up have consumed all her energy. That, and trying to work out how to keep her apartment. Now, Linnéa realizes that she wants Erik and Robin to pay for what they’ve done, but how to go about it defeats her.
‘That is something the Council cannot sanction,’ Viktor continues. ‘The exact opposite, in fact. Alexander asked me to stress that.’
Linnéa remembers what Minoo told them about the chemistry lesson in the fall. What Viktor did to Kevin. He took revenge for a trifling annoyance.
‘Of course, you always live as you preach, Viktor. Or do you?’
Viktor avoids her eyes. Prods a broken pottery bowl with the tip of his shoe.
‘Alexander said that the Council will examine the events carefully. And we will not accuse you of using magic, despite the prohibition. After all, you weren’t aware of what you were doing, just driven by the need to survive.’
Linnéa can only look at him.
Viktor bends and picks up the broken bowl. It had fallen on top of a sheet of paper and now Linnéa sees what it is. One of her many drawings of Vanessa. Viktor looks at it for a long while.
‘You’ve really managed to capture something about her,’ he says.
‘You’d better go now,’ Linnéa says as she takes the drawing from him and puts it in her pocket.
She follows him into the hall, unlocks and opens the door. The elevator is slowly coming up.
‘Take care,’ Viktor says.
‘Thanks for all your help.’
Viktor nods and starts walking downstairs.
Linnéa senses Vanessa’s energy vibrating in the air. It is coming closer and closer as the elevator creaks upwards. More faintly, in the background, she registers Anna-Karin and Minoo.
The elevator door opens.
Vanessa runs to Linnéa, throws her arms around her and hugs her suffocatingly tight. Not that it matters, Linnéa doesn’t ever want to be set free. The coconut scent of Vanessa’s hair is so familiar it makes her heart ache.
If she had drowned, she would never have experienced this moment. If her element hadn’t been activated down there in the water. If Viktor hadn’t found her. All her thoughts beginning with ‘If’ seem totally incomprehensible.
She ought not to be here. From now on, everything that happens is a bonus.
‘I thought you’d died,’ Vanessa whispers.
‘So did I.’
When they see the living room, Vanessa squeezes Linnéa’s hand.
‘How awful. How simply fucking awful,’ she says.
‘Would you like to sleep at my place tonight?’ Minoo asks.
‘That would be great,’ Linnéa replies.
‘I can’t get my head around all this,’ Minoo says as she scans the room.
‘I can,’ Anna-Karin says.
Linnéa turns to her.
‘I feel almost the opposite,’ Anna-Karin continues. ‘To me, the odd thing is that this kind of thing hasn’t happened before. Erik has always been so close to crossing some boundary … He has always been the one who went the furthest. Don’t you agree?’
Linnéa nods and tries to suppress another welling-up of the dread and anguish that lurks so close under her skin.
They step into the bedroom. Linnéa lets go of Vanessa’s hand and picks up the photo of her mother in the park. It is crumpled but not torn.
All four jump at the hard knock on the front door. A male voice echoes in the stairwell.
‘Police.’
‘Damn, it’s Nicke,’ Vanessa says.
‘Don’t say a thing about the anonymous tip-off,’ Linnéa says quickly. ‘We have no idea. And I haven’t been doing any swimming tonight.’
‘What are you saying?’ Vanessa asks. ‘That they’ll get away with it?’
Linnéa has no time to explain. She can hear the front door open.
‘We’re in here,’ she calls, all the while looking from one to the other.
Let me do the talking. I can read his mind.
Surprised, the others stare at her when they hear her thought.
Yes, I know. Seems to be something you learn to do when you’re just about to be murdered.
They troop back into the living room. Nicke enters and stares at the room with a look of distaste on his face.
Linnéa remembers when she faced him in the principal’s office. She and Minoo had just found Elias’s dead body. As Nicke went through his routine questions, she heard his thoughts, sensed his contempt. Like father, like daughter. So this is the new hooligans generation in Engelsfors.
He turns to Linnéa.
‘Right, now. You seem to be alive and kicking. And you’ve thrown one hell of a party by the looks of it. Obviously following in your daddy’s footsteps.’
He looks the rest of them over. Stops when he sees Vanessa.
‘I should’ve guessed. You would hang out in this place.’
‘There’s been a break-in,’ Linnéa says. ‘I was just about to call the police.’
‘No worries, we’ve been called in already. By your neighbors, for one thing. Even people in the other blocks around here.’
‘I haven’t been here all evening,’ Linnéa says. ‘I was at Minoo’s house.’
Nicke produces a pad and chewed stump of a pencil.
‘And when did you leave?’
‘I couldn’t tell you exactly. A couple of hours ago.’
‘I can confirm that,’ Minoo says and Nicke looks dissatisfied.
So much harder to dismiss statements made by the daughter of the editor of the Engelsfors Herald.
‘Then what did you get up to?’ he asks Linnéa.
‘I was with Viktor Ehrenskiöld. He’s a … friend from school. We went for a drive in his car and then he took me home.’
It is very easy to read Nicke’s thoughts. He might as well have shouted them out loud. He is recalling what was said in the talk he’s just had with Erik’s parents, how they confirmed that their son slept over in the Positive Engelsfors Center.
Then his thoughts shift to his visit to the center. Erik, Robin, Kevin and Rickard were there. Put up a show of innocence. Not that Nicke was looking for any kind of proof against them. On the contrary. All he wanted was to confirm that this was nothing worse than a wild bit of fun and games. And then Helena joined them and she said, sure enough, these guys had been there all night. They had been planning for the spring party and she had been sitting up late, working. If one’s a night person, well, that’s what one does.
‘Half the neighborhood is complaining about your bingeing,’ Nicke says. ‘And soon after the complaints stop flooding in, we have an anonymous tip-off that you’re being pushed off Canal Bridge by a couple of guys. Guys you dislike heartily, that’s well enough known. You have to agree it’s a pretty peculiar story?’
‘So true,’ Linnéa says. ‘Very peculiar.’
‘This is how my thinking goes. You and your friends threw a party. It runs out of control. At some point, you decide now is the time to make life a misery for a group of poor lads you happen to hate.’
She can hear Erik’s voice like an echo inside Nicke’s head.
She’s mentally unstable. In school, she attacked me and Robin, totally unprovoked. She is deranged and trying to pin something on us.
‘It doesn’t make sense, does it?’ Linnéa says. ‘Why should I spread the rumor that someone pushed me into the canal? It’s totally easy to check, after all. What would be in it for me? And there’s been no party here. I’m completely sober. Why don’t you check that?’
‘Which is what I’ll do next. There’s a breathalyzer in the car,’ Nicke says.
Linnéa doesn’t need mind-reading powers to notice his growing frustration.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Minoo says. ‘Is Linnéa being charged for something?’
Nicke makes an annoyed face.
‘How come you lot are here anyway?’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘So I went out for a walk. When I was near the canal I heard someone say that Linnéa Wallin had been pushed in. I called Vanessa and Minoo. They came along straight away. We all wanted to help with the search.’
‘Obviously, we tried to call Linnéa but we got no answer,’ Minoo says.
‘I’d left my phone at home and now it’s lost,’ Linnéa adds.
It’s almost true. Her bag wasn’t in the stairwell when she and Viktor arrived.
‘Then Linnéa phoned us, using Viktor’s phone,’ Vanessa says. ‘They’d just discovered the break-in.’
‘So why didn’t you inform the police immediately, if you were still hanging around near the canal?’ Nicke asks.
He is looking at Vanessa, who meets his eyes unblinkingly.
I know you’re lying, he thinks. And I’ll do all I can to show you up.
‘You must realize that Linnéa was, like, in shock. Everything in her apartment has been bashed to pieces,’ Vanessa says. ‘We just wanted to make sure she was all right before we called.’
‘Neither here nor there. You should have contacted the police before we wasted any more resources on—’
‘We were just about to call you,’ Minoo says.
‘Despite Linnéa’s past experience of the local force, which hasn’t been too great,’ Vanessa says.
Nicke’s eyes slide from one of them to the next. He’s at a dead end.
They’ve caught him. It couldn’t have worked out more neatly if they had spent their entire lives practicing to lie in harmony.
Linnéa smiles at him, a completely genuine smile that she can’t hold back, because it feels so good to win, just for once.
‘I’d like to report a break-in. Would that be in order, officer?’