The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,148
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Anna-Karin is so relieved that she starts crying again. Maybe there’s hope that they’ll forgive her. ‘If only I hadn’t used my powers at school. Everyone told me not to,’ she chokes out.
Minoo furrows her brow. ‘What does that have to do with the attack?’
‘Whoever attacked me must have noticed I was using magic, like you warned me might happen. It fits with what we know about protective magic, too. Nicolaus told me about it. If you’re the one who’s visible now, I must still be protected. But maybe the one who attacked me realised I was Chosen anyway—’ Anna-Karin breaks off. Catches her breath. ‘I’ve been thinking about something,’ she says. ‘The one who’s trying to kill us is the same element as me. An earth witch. Maybe that’s why I could put up such resistance. And maybe that’s why he hasn’t tried again. Because I was too strong.’
‘The voice,’ Minoo muses. ‘Is that how you get people to do what you want?’
Anna-Karin flushes. ‘More or less. Although I’ve never taken over someone’s body like that.’
Minoo nods slowly. ‘Do you think you could make a person think they saw someone who wasn’t there?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know,’ Anna-Karin answers. ‘Maybe. I’ve never tried.’
‘If an earth witch can do that, it might explain why Rebecka saw Gustaf on the roof. If Gustaf was an illusion, and someone else was actually there … But that doesn’t make sense …’ She looks straight at Anna-Karin. ‘Are you sure the fire was caused by magic?’
‘It started so suddenly and came from several different directions at the same time. And then I had this feeling …’
‘But earth witches shouldn’t be able to perform fire magic.’
‘No,’ Anna-Karin answers.
Minoo’s expression is blank, yet intently focused. ‘But Rebecka could,’ she says, almost to herself. ‘And she would have been able to get the barn door to slam shut again.’
‘Rebecka?’
Minoo opens the drawer of her bedside table. She pulls out the notepad she always seems to have with her and flips through it. ‘When you and Ida experienced Rebecka’s death, you said something happened just before she died. As if she was incinerated from within.’
Anna-Karin nods. It’s not a memory she enjoys revisiting.
‘What if the murderer took her power?’ Minoo continues.
‘Yes,’ Anna-Karin says breathlessly. ‘It was as if he took everything that was her.’
‘Her soul?’
Anna-Karin nods again. She doesn’t know if she believes in souls, but that’s the best word to describe it.
Minoo is absorbed in her notes. Anna-Karin doesn’t want to disturb her. She looks around the room. Fingers the red bedspread. Notices the big book on the bedside table again. The front cover shows a painting of a couple who are about to kiss. Anna-Karin wipes her hands on her jeans before she dares touch it.
The book is heavy. It falls open automatically to a page in the middle, as if Minoo often looks at it. There are a few books like that in Anna-Karin’s house, too. Thick paperback novels about people from the Stone Age that always open where they’re having sex with each other on animal skins in caves.
Anna-Karin looks at the image printed on the thick, glossy paper: a portrait of a dark-haired woman in a blue dress. She’s holding a pomegranate in one hand and looks sad. She’s somehow familiar too.
‘I think I get it now,’ Minoo says.
Anna-Karin looks up.
Minoo lowers the notepad. ‘If the murderer is an earth witch, he may have used his power to force Elias to commit suicide. When Elias died, he took his power, too. The principal said that wood witches can “shape and control different kinds of living material”. That might mean that wood witches can change their appearance, like a magic disguise.’
‘So after Elias was murdered … the killer could make himself look like anyone?’
‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Minoo says, ‘but he could at least have looked like Gustaf.’
‘And then he got Rebecka’s powers …’
‘Telekinesis and fire. Those were the powers he used in the barn.’
Minoo gets up and starts pacing back and forth. She reminds Anna-Karin of the principal.
‘We have to sum up what we know,’ Minoo says. She lets down her hair and slides the rubber band on to her wrist. ‘The murderer is an earth witch. When he kills us, he can take our souls and our magic. Now he has wood and fire. He didn’t manage to kill you or me. Why not?’
‘Because I’m an earth witch,’ Anna-Karin suggests again, ‘and maybe because he’s weaker outside the school.’