Once Every Never (13 page)

“Well, there’ll be no help from that high-priced security firm we hired!” she squawked at Maggie in the other room. “They can’t even contact the guard. Gone on vacation, he has. To the Turks and Caicos—some bloody beach resort with no bloody phones—won’t be back for three bloody weeks! I
thought
he looked like the surf-bum type …”

The girls moved back toward the inner office so they could hear what was going on. Clare peered around the half-open door.

“What about the cameras?” Maggie dodged a bit to the side to avoid the curator’s flailing arms.

“They show nothing. Nothing!”

“How can that be?”

“They’ve been rigged—the digital files and their backups of that day are both gone—replaced with a repeating loop of an empty restoration room. The night guardsman never suspected a thing.” Dr. Jenkins rubbed her temples feverishly. Strands of reddish-brown hair had escaped her tight bun and were sticking out comically around her ears. “I really wish thieves would stop watching caper films. They get far too many ideas.”

“Not ‘they’ …” Clare watched as her aunt’s expression darkened.
“Him.”

“Him, who?”

“Morholt.” Maggie almost spat the word.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dr. Jenkins said sharply. “He’s dead.” “I beg to differ. He’s very much alive.”

“Oh Magda, really! Those rumours are just that. Rumours.”

“No, Ceciley, they’re not. I know Stuart Morholt.”

“
Knew
him. In university, Magda. So did I—in case you’ve forgotten—but that was a very long time ago and every insane whisper you’ve heard about him since is just mad storytelling. Bunk. He was a liar and a fraud and a two-penny con artist and mischief-maker. You
know
he drank himself unconscious and burned to death in a fire on one of his silly ‘spiritual retreats’ over four and a half years ago.”

“What if he didn’t?” Clare’s aunt sank wearily into a chair, her hands still twisting the sheet of paper. “I never believed that. I think he’s been lying low and biding his time until he could steal something like the torc to use in one of his arcane rites.”

“Oh now, really!” Dr. Jenkins scoffed. “Surely you don’t truly believe all that Druid nonsense. For heaven’s sake, Magda—”

Clare went cold at the mention of the word “Druid.” Al leaned forward, straining to catch every word.

“—It’s farcical, I tell you. All that posturing of his back in the day. Claiming to be some sort of Celtic mystic, for heaven’s sake! It was all just to get the skirts to swoon over him. I’m sorry to say, he was girl-mad. And I think that you—”

“He wasn’t girl-mad. He was power-mad.”

Dr. Jenkins just shook her head. “Professor Wallace, honestly. I’m surprised at you.”

Maggie shot to her feet, eyes blazing. “Really, Ceciley! Are you? You may have chosen to forget that night in the Midlands but I never have. I remember it as if it were yesterday and I remember the look in that poor young man’s eyes. We made a terrible mistake and we all share the blame, but Stuart Morholt—”

“I don’t care to discuss the distant past,” Dr. Jenkins said stiffly.

“You’re a fool if you think to underestimate Morholt. A
bloody
fool!”

“Magda!”

“You didn’t really know him, Ceciley,” Maggie continued. “You didn’t know him the way I did. And you didn’t get
this
in your email inbox today!” She slapped the paper down on the tabletop.

Dr. Jenkins blinked, picked up the crumpled sheet, and began to read. Her eyes grew wide behind her glasses. “This … this can’t be real.”

“You’d better just hope not.”

Suddenly, from behind Clare and Al a pair of uniformed policemen appeared and stalked past them into the inner office and closed the door behind them, effectively shutting the girls out from what was becoming a truly gripping conversation.

“Who the hell is Stuart Morholt?” Al murmured.

“I have
no
idea,” Clare said. “But I think we should find out.”

“Oh yeah.”

“D’you think this theft thing is a coincidence?” Al asked quietly as they walked through the Eastern Gallery on their way down to the Great Court.

Clare rolled an eye at her.

“Yeah. Me neither.”

Clare’s initial relief at not being the actual target of Maggie’s wrath was fading and she was beginning to feel a gnawing anxiety. The whole thing had started out as some kind of crazy adventure, but it was as if she’d gone from playing with matches to lighting a raging bonfire: just what she’d promised Mags she wouldn’t let happen.

10

M
ilo pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed the bridge of his nose, gears evidently whirring away in the vault of his skull. They’d talked the matter half to death the night before after leaving the museum, but apparently Milo was still running his cerebral analysis programs. Clare wondered if he’d slept much. And then blushed furiously at the thought of him lying in his bed not sleeping. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice the sudden rush of colour to her cheeks.

“Okay. So,” he said, going over the sequence of events for the umpteenth time. “Nothing else on the table—nothing except the torc and the shield—made you … you know …”

“Zot,” Al chimed in helpfully.

Clare plucked a trio of malt-vinegar-soaked fries out of the newspaper cone in Milo’s hand and folded them into her mouth. “Can we please come up with a cooler term for what I do?” she said. It was Saturday morning, and the OS offices were deserted. They’d come back to retrieve the brooch—Clare had been feeling distinctly uneasy without it, and so Milo had agreed to fetch the thing, but only after picking up fish and chips on the way. Apparently, his brain didn’t do so well on an empty stomach.

“‘Zot’ doesn’t work for you?” Milo smiled faintly.

“I like ‘zot,’” Al said. “It’s very genre.”

Clare glared.

“Okay. Okay.” Al put up a hand. “Not ‘zot.’ So … what do you want to call it then?”

“I don’t know,” Clare muttered, thoroughly embarrassed that they were even having this conversation. “Never mind.”

“No,” Milo said, his expression thoughtful. “No, Clare, you’re right. You should have a proper name for this. It’s a gift, after all. A talent. And it’s yours. You should call it whatever you want.”

“But I don’t know what it is,” she said, looking back up into his eyes. It helped enormously that Milo was actually taking her seriously. It helped her be less afraid. A little.

“Well … what does it feel like when it happens?”

What
did
it feel like? It tingled. And burned—like cinnamon or ginger—a hot, sweet spice that she could taste and feel. Like fire in her veins. Then everything around her would spark and sparkle, flare sun-bright with that lightning flash that made her whole being feel as if it were made of fireflies … and then she would flicker away into star-spattered darkness …

“It … I …”

Milo waited patiently.

“I …” It was almost a whisper when she said it. “I shimmer.” “

Shimmer?” Milo nodded encouragingly. “You shimmer?”

“Yeah.”

“I like ‘shimmer,’” Milo said, grinning.

“I like ‘zot,’” Al muttered.

Milo ignored his cousin. “‘Shimmer’ it is then, Clare. But whatever you want to call it, there has
got
to be something particular to those artifacts—a specific mechanism of some kind.”

“Mechanism?” Clare frowned, picturing something mechanical.

“A trigger.”

“Oh. Right. So what do you think that is?”

“Pfft.” Milo waved his hand in the air. “I dunno. Magic?”

And there it was.

The M word.

Apparently it had just kind of slipped out, but Milo’s mouth snapped shut the second it did, his scientific sensibilities shocked to their square roots. Because it suddenly seemed that, up until that point, Milo and the girls had been pretty actively avoiding uttering
that
particular word.

“Heh heh.” Al shifted nervously. “Yeah … magic.”

Milo’s frown deepened. “Honestly? I’d be more comfortable with quantum physics. But yeah. Kidding aside, I think we pretty much have to go with magic on this one.”

Clare hugged her elbows in tight to her body, a chill chasing up her spine to her scalp. “When Boudicca and Llassar used the word ‘magic,’ I was really kind of hoping it was, you know, just a figure of speech.”

“Not really looking that way,” Al murmured.

“Which would make me a
total
freak.”

“Yup.” Al nodded in thoughtful agreement. “Or maybe not. I mean, maybe it’s not you. Necessarily. What we need to figure out is what the
actual
event trigger is here. Is this ‘supernatural phenomenon’—I call it that
only
for lack of a better descriptor and, under the present circumstances, in lieu of a clearly defined system of nomenclature—is this phenomenon an inherent psycho-physiological occurrence exclusive to
you
? Or is it a function of some mystical property intrinsic to the artifacts themselves?”

“Al, you’re talking like a grad student again. It makes me want to knock you over the head.”

Milo stifled a grin. “Put it this way: Are you the shimmer-
er
or the shimmer-
ee
?”

“Oh. I kind of think it might be a little from column A, a little from column B.”

“You mean a bit of both?”

“Right. See—and I know this is going to make me sound like some kind of New Age touchy-feely weirdo, but these things—the brooch, the torc—they’re not like, you know, toasting forks. Not everyday stuff. And not stuff that’s … public, either, if you know what I mean. Like, I get
nothing
from the bowl or the comb or the cauldron hook.” She moved her hands in little circles in the air. “But Boudicca’s torc, Comorra’s brooch—those things are special. They’re
possessions
. In the most personal sense, it seems to me. There’s … I don’t know …
feeling
there. A connection.”

“Okay.” Milo shifted and leaned forward. “I’m with you so far. But what about the Battersea Shield? How much emotional investment can you have with a piece of armour?”

“Well,” Clare said, “a
lot
of emotional investment maybe. If you lived back then, your life kind of depended on your equipment, didn’t it? Wouldn’t you develop an emotional attachment to a favourite sword?”

“A sword, maybe. A shield? Seems a bit of a stretch,” Milo said. “I don’t think most shields even made it through an average battle intact. They just got hacked to pieces and discarded.”

Clare blinked at him, and he shrugged a bit shyly and reached for his Pepsi.

“I watch the History Channel …”

At least he’s a well-rounded geek
, she thought.

Al was chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of breaded haddock. “Milo’s right. And, anyway, from everything I’ve read on the subject, archaeologists all agree that the Battersea Shield isn’t really a shield at all.”

“But it is something … special maybe.” Milo said. “Is that what you’re thinking? That it was something more than just an Iceni objet d’art?”

“Yes! That’s my point, exactly!” Clare nodded vigorously. Al and Milo’s enthusiasm for solving the puzzle was infectious. “I mean, I don’t think I could, like, brush up against a Neolithic soup pot and get hit with the mojo. But certain things—important things—
that’s
what seems to set off the shimmering. And when I saw Llassar and Connal about to throw the shield in the river on my very first trip, they didn’t look like they were just taking out the trash. They looked like they were doing something
important
.”

“Like a ritual.” Milo turned his sky-blue gaze on Clare and smiled. “Okay. I’m impressed.”

“By what—the flawless logic of my deductive reasoning?” Clare preened.

Al snorted in amusement. “That—and the fact that you used the word ‘Neolithic’ in a contextually proper fashion.”

“I wish I could go back to the museum and try again with something else,” Clare said. “But things are probably a little on the jumpy side around there, what with the whole theft thing.”

“Right,” Milo said. “The other angle of the puzzle. The worrying angle.”

“Yeah, I’d really like to get to the bottom of that one,” said Clare anxiously. “I mean, what if there’s someone else who can do what I do?” She stared at the gleaming brooch where it lay on her scarf on Milo’s desk. “What if
that’s
how they stole the torc?”

“We don’t even know what exactly it
is
that you do, Clare.” Trust Milo to caution her against leaps in logic.

“Right.” Clare reached over and pilfered another french fry and popped it in her mouth. “What I really don’t understand,” she continued, licking her fingers, “is this: there was, like, a king’s ransom in that room, all laid out on the table like a Sunday buffet. And the only thing missing is the torc. I wonder why the thief took just that one piece?”

“Portability, is my guess,” Milo said. “Dude couldn’t very well have just walked out of the museum with the Battersea Shield tucked under his arm …”

Clare looked over at him. His T-shirt du jour was pale blue with a faded vintage Superman crest on it that stretched nicely over the muscles of his chest. Milo hadn’t shaved that morning and the blond stubble just at the corner of his mouth glistened with a faint shine of chip grease. She wondered what it would be like to kiss the lips of a slightly prickly, salt-and-vinegar-flavoured geek god …