Fire by Sara B. Elfgren & Mats Strandberg Page A

pulls the spade up, drives it in, heaves at the dried-out, lumpy soil and throws it to the side.
    The deeper they dig, the moister and heavier the soil becomes. Earthworms and insects try to crawl and creep away, but they haven’t a hope against Ida’s spade. She crushes each one if she can reach, pretending they are her enemies whom she exterminates, one after the other.
    Felicia. Robin.
    Linnéa. All the Chosen Ones get a taste of her spade.
    Erik, too. And Julia, because she’s such a nuisance.
    As the hole grows deeper, they have to take turns, two at a time. Naturally fatso Anna-Karin is panting and wheezing. Minoo presumably never exercises except for lifting books.
    In the end, only Ida and Vanessa carry on digging. It has turned into a competition. The only sounds are their heavy breathing and the rasping of metal against grit.
    Ida homes in on an unusually fat earthworm and drives the edge of the spade down to chop it up. The spade hits a hard surface. Both Ida and Vanessa stiffen.
    ‘The coffin,’ Minoo whispers.
    Ida panics. She has to get out of the grave. Now, now, now! She jettisons the spade, holds up her hands.
    ‘Help me up!’ she hisses.
    Minoo and Anna-Karin hesitate. They exchange a glance, then Minoo kneels and lets Ida grip her hands. She clings to them, scrabbles for footholds on the walls of the hole while clods of earth loosen and fall to the bottom. Finally, she is on firm ground, feeling the rough grass against her bare knees. Her heart is galloping.
    Vanessa carries on clearing the lid of the coffin, cool as anything; must be violating graves on a weekly basis at least.
    ‘Take care, you might break through it,’ Minoo says. ‘Old wood can be brittle.’
    ‘It doesn’t look that old,’ Vanessa replies.
    She is right. The dark wood of the coffin lid gleams in the moonlight. It looks as good as new, as if the coffin was buried only a few hours earlier.
    Vanessa throws her spade up on the grass and bends over the coffin, letting her hands slide over the smooth surface.
    ‘There’s magic here. I sense it,’ she says as her fingers fumble along the edges. ‘How are we supposed to open this sodding thing?’
    ‘Can’t you see how sick all this is?’ Ida says. ‘We can’t open a coffin just like that! I don’t fancy checking out some rotting corpse!’
    When she gets to the bit about the corpse, her voice cracks. It always gives her away when she is upset.
    ‘What did you think you’d find in a grave, really? An Easter egg?’ Vanessa snaps.
    Her legs and arms are streaked with soil. There is a grimy line across her forehead, where she has wiped sweat off with a dirty hand.
    Minoo extracts a crowbar from her bag and hands it to Vanessa.
    ‘We don’t know what’s in that coffin. Maybe it isn’t a corpse,’ Minoo says.
    But Ida hears the dread under Minoo’s preachy tones.
    Vanessa takes the crowbar and tries to lever the lid open.
    ‘It’s stuck!’
    Suddenly Ida feels something soft against her leg. She can’t hold back her scream. It echoes across the cemetery. She tramps wildly up and down with her feet and stares at the ground. The green eye of Cat stares back at her. It is grinning. Cats normally don’t grin, but Ida is positive this bloody awful animal is doing exactly that.
    ‘What’s your problem?’ Vanessa asks, as she throws the crowbar out of the grave before clambering up.
    Ida feels her rage coming to the boil. Most of all she would like to kick Cat, it’s so revolting. But it is an animal after all, though a shabby, ugly one.
    Anna-Karin picks up Cat and holds it in her arms. Her fingers stroke the tufty fur and bare patches of skin. Ida simply can’t bear to watch.
    ‘What are you up to, pussy cat?’ Anna-Karin coos.
    Then she suddenly stops talking.
    Something has caught her eye. Ida turns to look and immediately feels enormously relieved.
    Nicolaus.
    He will put a stop to all this.
    Cat begins to twist in Anna-Karin’s arms and she lets it down at