Every Never After (14 page)

Clare frowned, but did as Piper asked. She looked at the box. At the lid. She looked at it for a long time. And then she said, in a quiet voice, “Let her go, Milo.”

A prickly sense of foreboding settled over her like an unpleasant acquaintance throwing his arm over your shoulder at a party and settling in for a good, long, excruciating chat. Clare’s name— her
actual
name—was scratched on the lid of Piper Gimble’s precious little box. In fact, it wasn’t just her name, but a set of instructions that included her name. Mostly, it seemed, because they were directed at her:

The instructions even included an exact date—that
very day
, in fact—when the box opening was to take place. All of which was disconcerting enough. But then, on the back side of the tin:

Beneath
that
were initials:

S. M.

Clare put the box down on the counter as if it contained a nest of vipers. And, really, she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had. By the time she’d gotten to the initials, Clare had recognized the handwriting. Stuart Morholt had once left another set of instructions for Milo, warning him not to call the police after Morholt had abducted Clare and Al in an attempt to send Clare on a spatio-temporal treasure hunt for him. Clare would recognize it anywhere— even Morholt’s penmanship was snotty and self-important.

She dragged her gaze away from the scratched letters and examined the container itself. The tin was sealed by a thick bronze band that ran all the way around the seam like a collar. It was decorated with a swirling, elegant pattern remarkably similar to a couple of other significant artifacts Clare had come across in her travels. Llassar’s distinctive handiwork.

“Hand me the circular saw, please,” Piper said quietly. “And the box.”

Clare picked up the little motorized blade and handed it over along with the tin, too flummoxed to ask why. And too curious to argue. In a few moments, Piper had carefully sawed through the bronze seal. She removed the band gently and set it down on the worktable.

“So … what is it?” Clare asked.

“It’s an heirloom of sorts, I suppose,” Piper said. “A legacy. Passed down through two thousand years’ worth of my family’s generations.”

“Two thou— The thing in the tin is
that
old?”

Piper rolled an eye at her. “The tin itself is that old, Miss Reid.”

Sure it was. Except for the fact that it looked more like a mini survival kit that Clare could have bought at a Mountain Equipment Co-op in Toronto, or at any other high-end outdoor lifestyle store—
an emergency camping/road kit that had probably once held candles, matches, and a granola bar.

Inside it now was only a yellowed and slightly brittle heavyduty waterproof zip-lock baggie. Piper pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves—like the kind coroners in cop shows wore—over her stripy knit fingerless ones and reached into the box, delicately removing the bundled object. She opened the plastic baggie with the care of a surgeon, prying the zipper lock open with needlenose tweezers. Whatever was inside was wrapped in a strip of what looked like faded black canvas … with a zipper sort of randomly attached to one end.

Clare stared at it uncomprehendingly, even as something in the back of her mind already recognized the fabric for what it was. A piece of Stuart Morholt’s high-tech jumpsuit. The one he’d been wearing at the museum. When Clare had let go of the Snettisham Torc … stranding Morholt in the far distant past with absolutely no way to get home. She remembered the ridiculous apparel and all the supplies Morholt had packed in its various pockets and pouches—supplies like the mini emergency tin. Clare held her breath as Piper peeled back the jumpsuit fabric to reveal … a book.

Well. That was a bit of a letdown.

“What is it?” Clare asked, picking it up carefully. It was definitely old, with a slightly musty odour, like a second-hand bookshop find.

“It’s a priceless ancient artifact from the first century,” Piper said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, it is
not
! It’s a notebook from the stationery department at Harrods. Look, you can still just make out the price tag. Try explaining
that
to a museum curator.” Clare held it up and pointed to the lower right corner of the back cover. “See? Forty pounds. What the hell kind of joke are you trying to pull? … Wait.” She blinked and peered again at the little tag. “That’s, like,
eighty
dollars or something. Who pays that for a notebook?”

“It’s a limited-edition Moleskine. They’re a venerable company. Archival paper only,” Piper pointed out. “Acid-free. Guaranteed to last for hundreds, if not—as is apparently the case here—thousands of years. Under ideal conditions, that is.”

Of course. It
was
a priceless—or rather, pric
ey
—artifact from the first century. It had to be. And it had to have belonged to Stuart Morholt. Only an über-status-conscious wanker like Stu would shell out that kind of cash for a freaking notebook. Clare wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Stu was the type to go “glamping,” He’d probably used one of those silly super-expensive space-age high-tech gel pens to write in the diary, too. The ones advertised as being able to write upside down and under water and in zero-g. Just in case he ever found himself in the Lost City of Atlantis or abducted by aliens.

“Paper is, in fact, a remarkably durable substance under most conditions that don’t include moisture,” Piper was saying. “That’s why people still find perfectly legible centuries-old newspapers stuffed between the walls of old houses. And then there’s the Dead Sea Scrolls, of course. And, as you can see, my, er, ancestor went to rather great lengths to ensure the preservation of this particular artifact.”

“Yeah.” Clare turned the book over and over in her hands, only half listening. “That. Plus it’s probably got a spell cast on it.”

Piper actually went a wee bit pale. “Do you really think so?”

“If he thought it would help, Morholt wouldn’t hesitate to curse the thing.” She waved at the broken bronze seal that Milo had picked up and was examining minutely. “I recognize the designs on the band. It was made by another guy—a metalsmith and a Druid—who could do just that. That is, if Stu could somehow con someone like Llassar into working the magic for him.”

“Right,” Milo murmured. “And he’d do that because the inane ramblings of Stuart Morholt are considered worthy of posterity and preservation down through the ages.”

“Sure,” Clare agreed. “By Stuart Morholt.”

Milo turned to Piper. “The instructions on the tin expressly say that Clare is the one who’s supposed to open this. Clare only.” He held up the bronze band. “The seal on this band has been broken. And then re-soldered.”

Clare recalled their first encounter with Piper, when she’d sat, hunched over and hoodied, fixing that antique musical instrument—with a soldering iron.

“Of course I opened it,” Piper said, huffing defensively. “The minute the thing passed on from my grandmother into my hands. And, yes, I read the diary. And after I was done? I assumed it was a grand, ridiculous hoax. I didn’t
really
think you existed.”

“Until the day I just happened to walk into your shop.”

“Indeed. Just before the very day inscribed on the box. And then you presented me with a passport that had your full name on it.” Piper shook her head. “I mean, I’d been keeping an eye on your excavation blog, but you call yourself Clare on the site bio, and there are bound to be more than one or two Clare Reids out there in the world.
Clarinet
Reids on the other hand—as specified on the tin—well, come on now.” She snorted. “I mean, I’m descended from a long and well-documented line of complete bloody lunatics, and I don’t think anyone in
my
family ever sported a moniker quite that ridiculous.”

Milo raised an eyebrow at her.

“What?” Piper protested. “The poor girl’s parents named her after the mouthpiece on a musical instrument that sounds like a duck.”

“Oh … shut up,” Clare said sourly.
“Piper.”

“Right. Anyway.” Piper rolled her eyes. “I suppose I should have known you’d find your way to my shop.”

“Only because you made that stupid comment on the blog,” Clare said.

“How do you know I didn’t do it on purpose?” Piper cocked her head and glared at Clare. “How do you know I haven’t lured you into a clever trap?”

“Uh huh. Have you?”

“Er … no. Not really. Actually, I completely forgot to deadbolt the front door yesterday in all the excitement. Frankly,” she said, waving at the diary, “after everything I’ve read, I’m rather terrified of you.” She looked at Milo. “And
you
.”

Milo shifted uncomfortably as Clare looked between him and Piper, wondering what on earth
that
crack meant. What exactly did Goggles have to fear from Milo? It occurred to Clare that maybe Piper was actually flirting with Milo in a weird way, and she surprised herself with a sudden urge to tear the girl’s ponytails off. She had to struggle not to let the emotion show on her face. To distract herself, she opened the book and started to read.

The plastic baggie—which Morholt had likely used to keep his strike-anywhere matches from getting damp—had kept the book dry and legible inside the protective tin. Clare had to grudgingly give Morholt credit. Even as the very thought of the guy made her want to punch a wall. Especially once she started reading what he’d written. To wit:

“Wow,” Clare muttered acidly. “Way to butter me up there, Stu.
Gawd
… What an ass-hat.”

Piper had been watching her intently. Now she sat back in her chair and groped blindly for the cup of brandy-spiked tea. “So it’s true,” she said. “The things he writes. I always thought my old gran had dreamed it up as some kind of elaborate practical joke. She used to own this place and willed it to me when she passed on. She was an absolute nutter. Still … it’s always been in the back of my mind that she might
not
have been having me on, you know?” Piper shook her head and her pale ponytails waggled.
“But then I’d tell myself I was being daft. Only … I can see now. Watching you read those words. Stuart Morholt is real. And you … You really are a time traveller.”

“Yeah, well. It’s kinda less grandly romantic than it sounds,” Clare muttered, not really paying one hundred percent attention to what Piper was saying. “How’d you wind up with this again, exactly?”

“I just told you. My gran passed it on to me along with this shop. She was … oh, how shall I describe the dear old bat?” Piper gazed up at the ceiling. “Ah yes. Barmy. I’m sure it’s just the genetics coming out to play every several generations, but she was quite over the rainbow if you know what I mean. Toys in the attic. Gone right round the twist. Kookookajoob—”

“Yeah, okay! I get it.”

“No, I don’t think you do
get
it, Clare.” Piper shook her head in frustration. “What I’ve been trying to tell you is that I, Piper M. Gimble, am the last in a long line of Stuart Morholt’s descendants.
Direct
descendants.”

Clare’s brain made a noise like a phone that hadn’t been hung up properly. If what Piper said was true, that meant Stu had …

“Yes!” Piper nodded, reading Clare’s expression. “That’s it exactly. According to his diary, he had a grand old time getting it o— Er, getting romantic, that is—with a Druid high priestess by the name of Mallora. Mostly, as far as I can tell, because she’d foreseen the very moment wherein I was to pass along the notebook to you.”

And so it finally sank in. The thought Clare had been actively avoiding.

She and Milo shared a glance.

“Okay.” Clare held up a hand. “May I just express—for the record—the unknowably deep depths of my horrification at the very
concept
of Stuart Morholt getting jiggy with a Druid priestess way back in the day, just so he could leave me his diary to read?”

“No need.” Milo’s expression twisted with distaste. “Right there with you.”

“Gech!” Clare shuddered. “Can you imagine? He’d be all like … first-century lounge lizard and stuff.”

“Please.” Milo squeezed his eyes shut. “Stop.”

The two of them cringed in tandem.

“Well, yes,” Piper said. “But there’s rather more to it than that.”

“Is it gonna make me wanna barf?” Clare asked.

“Possibly.” Piper tapped the cover of the book. “You see, according to
this
… Stuart Morholt’s Druidess lover, Mallora, was an older sister to Boudicca, the Queen of the Iceni. And she was far more powerful to boot.”

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