The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,130
hurries into the library and looks around furtively. The librarian doesn’t look up when the ghost girl mumbles, ‘Hello.’
She slips into the little niche where she usually sits. It’s hidden behind a bookshelf and most people don’t realise it’s there. She holes up there with a physics book in a well-worn black armchair. The last few weeks she’s spent every free moment filling her head with facts to stop herself thinking.
‘Hi,’ she hears Linnéa say.
Anna-Karin doesn’t look up. Instead she lowers her head and hides behind her hair. She’s already said she doesn’t want to speak to them. At least a hundred times.
‘I’m not leaving here until you speak to me,’ Linnéa says.
Then you’ll have a long wait, Anna-Karin thinks. I’ve practised being silent for nine years.
‘What’s the matter with you? You can’t do this. We need you. And I think you need us, too.’
Anna-Karin remains stubbornly silent. But she’s surprised. Linnéa doesn’t sound like she usually does. She actually sounds as if she cares. She’s usually so impatient, as if she’s pissed off with the whole world.
‘What?’ Anna-Karin mumbles, with reluctant curiosity.
Linnéa leans forward and lowers her voice.
‘The book has shown us how to make a truth serum that we’ll give to Gustaf. Then we’ll get him to tell us about his doppelganger. But to make the serum we have to perform a ritual. It’s a much more powerful kind of magic than we’ve ever done before. And you have to be there. It’s all up to you and me. Earth and water.’
She might have known, Anna-Karin thinks. Linnéa wants something, which was why she pretended to care about her.
‘No,’ she answers. ‘You’ll have to do it without me.’
‘Anna-Karin …’
‘There’s no point in pestering me. Go away.’
Linnéa is rummaging in her bag. ‘Not until you’ve helped us.’ She takes out a needle and a lighter.
Anna-Karin shrinks in her chair. Linnéa holds the needle in the lighter’s flame. Then takes out a Kleenex and a little test tube. ‘If you’re not going to help us, then we need your blood. According to the book, the ritual is a lot more dangerous if you’re not there when we lay down the circles, but if we put some of your blood into the power symbol, it’ll make it a little easier for me to control the energy. “Little” being the operative word here.’
Anna-Karin understands only about half of what Linnéa just said. The others must have made huge strides without her.
‘I only need a few drops,’ Linnéa says.
‘Okay,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Just so long as you leave afterwards.’ She holds out her left hand. It doesn’t hurt when Linnéa pushes the point of the needle into her index finger. But it does when she squeezes out a few drops of blood and lets them drip into the test tube. Anna-Karin has to look away. Linnéa squeezes harder, pressing out more drops.
Eventually she wipes Anna-Karin’s finger. She throws the needle and the bloody Kleenex into a wastepaper basket, presses the bung into the test tube, and puts it into her bag with the lighter.
‘I know the accident must have been very difficult for you,’ she says, handing Anna-Karin a Band Aid, ‘but you really can’t just think about yourself.’
‘You don’t understand anything.’
‘You’re right. What do I know about having a hard time?’ Linnéa says, her voice dripping with irony. ‘Thanks for your help.’
She disappears behind the bookshelves. Anna-Karin’s finger is throbbing gently as she puts on the Band Aid. She opens her physics book again and tries to read, but she can’t absorb a single line. She gives up and curses Linnéa. Now she has to find another hiding place.
‘Anna-Karin is really starting to piss me off,’ Vanessa says.
Minoo is sitting at Nicolaus’s kitchen table. He and Cat have left them alone in the apartment. Minoo feels a little sorry for him, having to spend the whole evening at Sture & Co. waiting for them to finish. The Book of Patterns was very clear that only the Chosen Ones could be present during the ritual.
Minoo is stirring a plastic bowl with a wooden spoon, watching as Anna-Karin’s blood dissolves into the gloop they’re going to use for the power symbol in the inner circle. She’s been mixing it for fifteen minutes and now she’s getting cramp in her arm.
‘Stir into a smooth paste,’ Ida read from the book, as if it were a cake recipe.
In addition to Anna-Karin’s and Linnéa’s blood, the mixture consists of ectoplasm, earth