towards the emergency exit. She emerges on to the street through a side entrance.
Minoo casts a quick glance towards the windows but can’t see her father. He’ll worry once he realises she’s disappeared, but that can’t be helped.
She starts to run.
She crosses Storvall Square and turns down Gnejsgatan. Her heart is pounding. She runs faster and almost passes number seven, a three-storey building with a green stucco façade. The door swings open at a gentle shove.
It says ‘Elingius’ beside the only door on the ground floor.
She rings the bell and hears shuffling footsteps inside. The security chain is unfastened. The door opens and Nicolaus appears in a black bathrobe. He’s so pale that his skin seems almost transparent and his ice-blue eyes seem to have faded a little. He looks like a nocturnal animal that has never seen daylight.
‘I have to talk to you,’ Minoo says, and walks in without waiting for an answer.
The apartment is simply furnished. It has only been fitted out with the bare essentials. No carpets, no curtains. The living-room walls are light brown; a beautiful silver cross hangs beside an old framed map of Engelsfors, just like the one in Minoo’s bathroom.
‘Minoo?’ Nicolaus says in surprise.
She turns to meet his questioning look. ‘Rebecka is dead,’ she says. She has no time to dress it up.
Nicolaus is rooted to the spot. He blinks once. Minoo is about to explode with impatience. She has to make Nicolaus understand at once so they can decide what has to be done. ‘They’re saying she committed suicide,’ she says, ‘but, of course, we know that wasn’t the case.’
Nicolaus sinks down on to a spindle-back chair. ‘Another one,’ he says.
‘What are we going to do?’ Minoo asks.
‘The fault is mine,’ Nicolaus mumbles. ‘I should have protected her.’
Minoo is about to fall apart. The only way she can hold herself together is to keep moving forward. She can’t think about what has happened to Rebecka, no matter what. ‘You know as little as we do about whatever is hunting us down,’ she says, and forces herself to sound calm. ‘You can’t blame yourself.’
‘I’ve failed’
‘Stop it!’ Minoo shouts. ‘I came here because I need your help.’
‘How can I help when I don’t—’
‘I know,’ Minoo cuts in. ‘You don’t know who you are. But who does when it comes down to it?’
Nicolaus stares at her.
‘You can’t run away from this,’ she says. ‘None of us can.’
He blinks again suddenly, as if he has just woken from a deep sleep. ‘You’re right. I’ve allowed myself to be consumed by self-pity. I’ve allowed my heart to become filled with black bile—’
‘Precisely,’ Minoo says quickly, to shut him up. ‘We have to gather the others together and draw up a strategy. But I can’t do it alone. I need you. We need you.’
19
‘HELLO?’ ANNA-KARIN STEPS into the hall. She can hear a faint humming coming from the kitchen. Her mother is singing some golden oldie about catchy melodies and rockin’ rhythms.
Anna-Karin’s cheeks flush, but Julia and Felicia smile as ingratiatingly as ever.
‘What a beautiful place you’ve got here,’ says Julia.
‘It’s soooo cool that you live in the countryside,’ Felicia adds. ‘And I love your cows. They’ve got, like, such intelligent eyes. As if they knew all sorts of things.’
Anna-Karin has thought the same thing so many times, but when Felicia says it, it sounds moronic.
Not once since she’s been at school has Anna-Karin ever brought a friend home. Even though she knows she’s in full control of the situation, her heart is pounding and when her mother steps out of the kitchen, her heart thuds even harder.
‘Hello, girls! Is this Julia and Felicia?’
Julia and Felicia greet Anna-Karin’s mother, smiling and sucking up to her.
‘I’ve baked cinnamon buns,’ her mother says. ‘Come into the kitchen.’
They sit around the table and her mother puts out a plate of buns straight from the oven, with a jug of blackcurrant squash. ‘I’ll leave you girls to it,’ her mother chirps. ‘The cows need feeding, too.’
When she leaves the kitchen the singing picks up again.
‘Help yourselves,’ says Anna-Karin, and slides the buns towards Julia and Felicia.
They each take one and bite into it obediently.
‘You know, I think Jari’s in love with you, Anna-Karin,’ Julia says, when the front door slams behind her mother.
Anna-Karin smiles. ‘I think so, too,’ she says, and they giggle with their mouths full of half-chewed bun.
Until today she hadn’t dared to use her power on Jari. She’d watched him for so many years from such a great distance.