Every Never After (12 page)

“I don’t
need
help for that.” Milo’s mouth bent up at one corner in a devastatingly sexy mastermind kind of smirk. He cracked his knuckles, unslung his computer bag from his shoulder, and flipped open his laptop. “That’s kiddie play. Here … let me see the tablet and give me a few minutes.”

Clare handed over the tablet and sat impatiently as Milo tapped away on his laptop, downloading dodgy software and trading chatter on dodgy sites. Seven minutes later he leaned back on one elbow in the grass, and with an only slightly smug grin, turned the screen toward Clare. She watched in fascination as a Google map zoomed in on the GPS coordinates of … someplace just down the road?

Clare blinked and looked closer. “Can you do a street view?” Milo tapped at the keyboard and made a surprised noise when the street view popped up, showing the front of a building they both recognized instantly.

“Well, whaddya know,” Clare said grimly. “Looks like we get to pay another visit to Goggles McFish’n’Chips and the Old Curiosity Shop.”

THE BLINDS WERE ALL DRAWN
and the
CLOSED
sign was hung up. But one stiff push and the door opened wide. Goggles must have forgotten to lock it.

“That was careless,” Clare said as they stepped into the dim, dusty confines of the cluttered shop. She glanced around at the shadowy rows of curio cases and shelves jammed with a funhouse assortment of oddities and unidentifiables, from tacky souvenirs to legitimate-seeming antiques and collectibles. Miniature glow-in-the-dark
Stonehenges shared space with fully articulated bat skeletons hanging from the ceiling and a suit of armour that looked as though it might come to life and start wreaking havoc with the mace in its iron fist.

The place was deserted. And super creepy.

Clare barely noticed. She was on a mission. She had an overwhelming hunch to play out and she wasn’t about to let the heebiejeebies get in the way. In a half-dozen purposeful strides, she’d travelled the length of the long, narrow space toward the beaded curtain covering the door to the back room that Goggles had disappeared through in such a hurry the last time they’d paid the shop a visit. She was pretty certain now that funky seafood had had nothing to do with that hasty exit.

She was right.

As Clare was walking in, Goggles was walking out, wearing entirely different safety eyewear. The girl must have had a cabinet full of the things. These had magnifying lenses that gave her a clownishly startled air as—head down, hoodie up—she almost plowed right into Clare. But she stopped just short and the two girls faced off like a pair of wary gunslingers in the Old West.

Then Goggles made a break for it.

She got about three feet before Clare had her pinned up against a shelf, held there by the threat of a rhinestone-handled Charles and Diana commemorative letter opener she’d snagged off a nearby table. Behind her magnifying safety glasses, the girl’s eyes were pie-sized and darted back and forth between Clare, Milo, and the letter opener.

“You,”
Clare said in her most threatening voice.

All things considered, it wasn’t half bad on a one-to-ten menace scale. She hadn’t exactly been taking notes the last time she’d been threatened with a sharp object (and, really, it had happened more times in recent weeks than she cared to think about), but she’d obviously picked up a few “pointers.”

Heh …

Out of the corner of her eye, Clare saw Milo do a double take at her. She ignored him to maintain the effect and jabbed the air with the opener.

“You know me, don’t you?” Clare said in a low, growly tone.

“I … um …”

“
Don’t
you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about— OW!”

Another threatening jab, but this time Clare accidentally caught the fleshy bit of the girl’s shoulder and freaked herself out enough to almost drop the little blade.

“How?” she asked. “How do you know about me?”

Goggles twisted away from the opener, a mutinous gleam in her magnified brown eyes. Her lips disappeared in a thin line as she rubbed the spot where Clare had poked her.

“Oh, come on!” Clare snorted. “That totally didn’t even hurt.” Still, she backed off—not much, but enough to give the girl a bit of room. “That wasn’t a food poisoning episode this afternoon. You recognized me. How? I’ve never been here before.”

“I swear I don’t— GAH! Stop that!”

Okay. So much for backing off and non-threatening.

This time Clare didn’t pull the letter opener away. Its point made a divot in the material of the girl’s sweatshirt.

“You’re TardyTardis404.” Clare applied a bit more pressure. “And you used the word ‘shimmer’ in your comment on Al-Mac’s video blog. I want to know why you used
that
specific word and I want to know what you know about what happened to Al.”

A long pause. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“I’m listening,” Clare said.

“Not now.” Goggles’s eyes narrowed behind the lenses and she lifted her chin in a defiant gesture. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so. That’s why.”

“Seriously.” Milo shook his head in weary annoyance. “You know you’re just quoting
Raiders of the Lost Ark
now, right?”

The girl looked over at Milo, and Clare thought she saw a spark of interest flare in those comically distorted eyes.

“Of course I know,” she said with an air of huffy superiority.

Clare was about to lose it, but Goggles seemed to sense she was on the verge of getting stabbed with the letter opener again. For realsies.

“Look. You
really
do have to come back tomorrow,” she said.

“And you
really
do have to tell me why,” Clare said.

Goggles huffed in frustration. “Because the bank is closed and
that’s
where my safe deposit box is. Trust me,” she added, her big brown blinky eyes gleaming with a strange, fervent light. “I’ll be here tomorrow morning. And I’ll have something that you’re very much going to want to see. I promise you.”

Something in the way the girl said it made Clare think she’d actually keep her word. It seemed that, whatever was going on, it was just as important to Goggles as it was to Clare and Milo. And Al.

And so, while it wasn’t much to go on, it seemed clear that Goggles’s promise was all they’d get. Clare didn’t know what else to do, short of actually stabbing her, and she really wasn’t prepared to cross that line. They’d just have to wait until morning.
First
thing in the morning, she made the other girl promise—and took the Chuck and Di letter opener as insurance (there was a tag on the handle that priced the gaudy thing at £150).

As the door to the shop closed behind them, Clare heard Goggles say, “See you tomorrow, Clarinet Reid …”

Milo just sighed, muttered “Movie geek,” and led Clare down the street and back toward the Avalon Mists B&B. All she wanted now was a shower.

Later, she sat down slowly on Al’s bed. It took every ounce of strength she had to keep from weeping at the thought that she very well might be spending the night alone in the room, staring over at Al’s empty pillow. In all honesty, Clare wondered if she’d ever see her best friend again. And that was messed up.

Seriously.

SERIOUSLY?

Allie never thought she’d ever see Stuart Morholt again.

The museum thief/kidnapper/all-round overachiever in the ass-hat department had been trapped for good—for
ever
—in the first century. Of course, Allie hadn’t counted on travelling back to that very same century herself.

Because, really? What were the odds?

“I beat the odds!” squawked that all-too-familiar voice.

That set Allie’s teeth on edge like fingernails down a chalkboard—it was almost enough to stop being terrified.

“I can’t believe it worked!” Morholt crowed to the big bearded man, receiving a stony stare in return. “Em … what I mean is—see
that
, you great lout?” He pointed an outstretched finger at Allie. “What did I tell you? My powers are mighty! For here is the one—or at least the annoying know-it-all Bentley-wrecker
sidekick
of the one—that your high priestess, the Druidess Mallora, has foreseen. I have brought this thing to pass. Me.” He waved a hand airily toward the legionnaire standing guard outside the tent flap. “And my magic will save us from the clutches of those wretched imperial drones.”

“What
is
that?” Allie asked, incredulous. “Like, a top-ten-rejected
Star Wars
line? Do you even
listen
to yourself?”

When Morholt blinked at her in confusion, Allie realized that the pop-culture reference hadn’t been deliberate. He really was
just
that obtuse. In that moment she desperately missed her cousin Milo, who would have totally gotten where she was coming from.

And yet, strangely enough, Allie was almost relieved to find Stuart Morholt there in the prisoners’ tent. At the very least, he was something—some
one
—familiar. She wasn’t as completely alone as she’d thought. She had company in her misery, no matter how miserable the company might be.

Morholt turned back to the Celtic prisoners, most of whom were either staring at him uncomprehendingly or ignoring him altogether. “She’ll get us—and by ‘us’ I mean ‘me’—out of here,” he said. “That is, if she knows what’s good for her.”

Allie just snorted and shook her head. “I can’t. I’m stuck here.”

“What?
What?
” Morholt’s eyes narrowed and he glared at her in disbelief. “What do you mean you’re stuck here?”

“See, that’s the funny thing.” She grinned at him bitterly. “I thought I was speaking English. And even if I wasn’t, apparently that’s not a requirement.” Allie turned her gaze to the bearlike man who’d punched Stuart Morholt in the arm. She wished it had been his head. “I mean, I could understand you perfectly a few seconds ago, and I don’t know … um … that was Iceni, wasn’t it?”

The man’s eyebrows raised a little, and Allie could see he’d understood her. Just as she had understood the Roman soldiers— and just as Clare’s physical contact with a Druid blacksmith had transferred a comprehension of each other’s language between them. Yay magic.

“You’re
him
, aren’t you?” Allie asked. “Llassar? Boudicca’s smith?”

He nodded once. “I am he,” he said in Iceni. “And
you
… I think we have a friend in common.”

Allie smiled wanly. She liked Llassar already and could see why Clare had trusted him. “Yeah,” she said. “Clare described you pretty well.”

Right down to the burn scars on the man’s huge knuckles and the singed patches in his hair and beard. And the keenly perceptive gaze—which was now fixed unblinkingly on Allie.

“You and she are bound by blood,” Llassar continued. It sounded more like a statement than a question.

“Well … yeah.” Allie shrugged, not bothering to ask how he knew that. He was a Druid mystic after all, a sorceror, and it was a theory she and Clare had come to on their own anyway. “But only, like, a drop.”

She stared down at the little black dot in the centre of her thumb pad that she’d acquired when, as kids, she and Clare had pricked their thumbs with a safety pin and tied them together until they turned blue, thereby signifying that they were blood sisters. Inseparable. (Really, really
dumb
, sure, and lucky that neither
of them wound up with an infection, but inseparable.) One teeny, tiny drop—Allie supposed that, where magic was concerned, it was more a quality than a quantity kind of thing—but it was why Allie had been Clare’s homing beacon, calling to her from her own time and place with the voice of a raven whenever Clare needed to find her way back from the past.

Allie—now stuck in that very same past—could understand Llassar because
Clare
had been able to understand him. At least that part of the equation worked. So why hadn’t Clare called her back home? Did she even know Allie was missing? Did she care?

Oh, stop it. You’re being ridiculous. Of course she cares.
Although it
was
possible that Clare hadn’t yet noticed. Or figured out that Allie had travelled into the past. Clare had been a mite preoccupied with Milo, after all …

“Welcome to Ynys Wyddryn, Lady,” Llassar rumbled at her. “The Isle of Glass. I apologize for not being able to greet you properly, as a host and a free man, but …” He held up his manacled wrists and shrugged his bulky shoulders.

“Um. Yeah.” Allie frowned down at her own wrists, which were beginning to ache from the tug of heavy iron. “I’m not really sure what I’m doing here. Or how I got here … but thanks.”

“I do not know, either,” Llassar said. “But I can tell you that this place—the Tor—is the heart of Prydain.”

Allie understood that
Prydain
was his word—the ancient Iceni word—for “Britain.”

He lifted his chin and his eyes shone fiercely. “Nowhere is the magic of my people stronger.”

“Great,” Allie muttered, thinking that if the magic Llassar was so proud of was really all that and a bag of chips, then what was he doing chained, a prisoner in a Roman camp? “I just hope it’s strong enough to get me the hell home,” she murmured.

“Us! Get
us
the hell home, you rotten little auto wrecker!” Morholt interjected. “I didn’t bring you here for a vacation, you know! You owe me.”

“
Owe
you?”

“Do you have any idea how much it’s going to cost to have my Bentley repaired? A new fender—those things are customproduced and worth a pretty penny, I can tell you—and a new paint job? You’ve seen to it my mechanic will retire a rich man!”

Okay,
Allie thought,
Stu has clearly lost his marbles.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “You’ve been stuck back here for who knows how long and all you’ve done is obsess about your— admittedly choice—ride?” She
had
thought the Bentley was pretty stylish …

“I want my car back!” Morholt screeched. “I want my life back! Oh, what I wouldn’t give to return to the land of gentlemen’s clubs and saunas and proper barbers.” His black eyes glinted maniacally. “Well, actually, what I
would
give, Ms. McAllister, is
you
. To whatever misbegotten, bloodthirsty, ancient Celtic deity can transport me out of this wretched era and back into my own. And I’ll cheerfully throw Clarinet Reid into the bargain if I can get my hands on her as well. Which, in fact, was rather the plan in the first place. I’m not sure why she countermanded my instructions and sent you in her stead.” He sniffed in annoyance.