Once Every Never (5 page)

As he surveyed the ravaged landscape of the woman’s back, the charioteer spat out another string of words—awfully impolite ones, from the sounds of them—and Clare was close enough to see that bright tears filled the corners of his eyes. But the woman merely lifted her proud head and held up a hand. Then she turned her palm face-up. Wordlessly, the young man reached into the folds of his tunic.

Clare gasped, her heart suddenly hammering, as he drew out a massive gold neck ring. It looked like the
very same one
she had touched in the museum. The woman smiled grimly and took the torc, bending the ends out slightly so that she could slip it around the strong white column of her graceful neck and settle it on her collarbones. She looked as if she’d always worn it. With a nod of thanks the woman turned back to her own chariot, but then she froze. Her gaze drifted toward the blanket-wrapped bundle on the floor of the young man’s cart.

She asked the charioteer a single, soft-voiced question.

He hesitated, a riptide of emotion distorting the handsome features of his face, but then—as if in answer—he stepped aside and gestured, his shoulders sagging in what looked like a kind of defeat. From behind the rock Clare craned her neck, watching as the woman strode past him and leaned down to push aside the folds of the heavy woollen blanket.

There was a moment of utter stillness. Silence. And then a high, thin sound spiralled out from where the woman stood, tearing through the fabric of the night air. The cry built to an ear-shattering howl and the red-haired woman fell to her knees, raising her fists to the night sky and throwing back her head. The grief that poured from her throat was like the cry of a wounded animal.

Clare looked back at the chariot. She wished she hadn’t.

The folds of the blanket, now thrown aside, had concealed the crumpled form of a teenage girl maybe a year or two older than Clare herself. With only her face and one bare white shoulder exposed, the girl looked as though she could have been asleep; dark eyelashes feathered upon the clear, pale skin and a cloud of long, deep auburn hair pillowed her head.

But from the way her limbs sprawled under the blanket, awkwardly propped up against the sides of the chariot, it was clear that the girl was
not
asleep.

As she stared at the dead girl in the cart, a profound awareness descended upon Clare—her careless actions back in the restoration room had landed her in a very dangerous place. It was a realization that was dramatically reinforced when she suddenly felt the small hairs on the back of her neck rise.

A shiver went all the way up Clare’s spine and she turned her head very slowly …

To find herself staring into a pair of wide blue eyes.

4

T
he blue-eyed girl crouched in the long grass behind the rock, less than a foot away. She looked to be about the same age as Clare, but the similarities ended there. There was a distance and a depth to the girl’s gaze that spoke of having seen and lived through things Clare couldn’t begin to imagine. She wore a cloak and a calf-length belted tunic of deep green wool. Her hair was strawberry blond, long and wavy, but it was tangled into knots where it had escaped from a thick plait. There were fresh, deep scrapes along one of her arms and the shoulder of her sleeveless tunic was torn. Tears ran down her cheeks and her pretty face was flushed with exertion. Her breath came in panting gasps.

And she stared right through Clare as if she wasn’t even there.

The girl’s blue gaze was instead focused sharply on the path and the two charioteers. Her mouth worked silently for a moment and then she whispered the word
“Tasca.”
Her voice broke on a sob and she raised a hand as if reaching out toward the unmoving girl in the cart.

Clare jumped back, startled. But she wasn’t fast enough to evade the girl’s reaching hand and, as her fingertips connected with the space Clare was already occupying, there was a sudden crackling in the air like a strong electrical discharge.

As the girl gasped and flew backward. Clare felt as if she’d been hit by lightning—a much bigger bolt than the one that had sent her there—and the night all around her grew subtly brighter, almost as if she’d turned up the contrast on a TV screen. Sounds suddenly seemed louder, too. She could hear crickets and the scurrying of small animals in the grass—and the laboured, raspy breathing of the blond girl in front of her who was shaking her head back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut. When she opened them again a moment later they went almost perfectly round in shocked surprise.

And they were focused on Clare’s face.

“Clare!” she whispered.
“Rho ddiolch i Andrasta!”

Clare! Thank Andrasta!

The moment froze in time. Clare’s mouth worked sound-lessly as she tried to form some sort of reply to the words she heard in her head—different from the ones she’d heard with her ears.

Her name. She had said Clare’s name.

Suddenly the girl turned her head sharply as though hearing a noise from somewhere behind her. When she turned back, her gaze was full of fear.

“Helpa fi, Clare! Maent yn fy hela …”

Please help me, Clare! They are chasing me
…

“What?” Clare blurted finally in response, her voice a startled whisper. “Who …”

The girl opened her mouth to reply but a sudden shadow blotted the moonlight from her face. A large, rugged hand clamped tightly over her mouth and Clare skittered backward as the looming form of a man, dressed in a bronze helmet and armour, rose up behind the girl and grabbed her cloak—yanking her back behind the rock, out of sight of the path.

The girl whimpered, but the sound was almost completely muffled by the soldier’s calloused palm. The man and woman on the track with the chariots would never hear it. Clare watched helplessly as the girl thrashed about wildly, her hands struggling at a brooch that fastened her cloak around her neck. As the man tried to drag her away she made one wild lunge directly at Clare.

Clare shook off her paralyzing terror and tried to grab the girl’s flailing limbs. Tried to help somehow. But the soldier cracked the girl sharply on the back of her skull with the butt end of his sword hilt and she went limp, eyes rolling up into her head.

Clare cried out in protest, but the soldier ignored her as if she didn’t even exist. Or wasn’t even there …

With a glance in the direction of the redheaded woman and the chariot driver, the soldier threw the girl’s slim body over his shoulder like a sack of grain and loped away, running silently through the long grass toward the dark edge of the forest and away from the river track.

The girl’s cloak lay upon the ground. Clare plucked at the material as if trying to convince herself that what she’d just seen had really happened. Fear and confusion clutched at her and she stayed crouched down, frozen and unsure of what to do. But the young girl was pretty obviously in a
serious
heap of trouble and Clare couldn’t help feeling that it was somehow all her fault. If she hadn’t been there—hadn’t distracted the fleeing girl and stopped her in her tracks—she would have made it to the riverbank. To the young warrior and the ferocious-looking woman, either of whom might have been able to help her …

“Help!” Clare shouted suddenly, leaping up and shouting, waving her arms wildly in a desperate attempt to attract the attention of the pair on the path. But the woman had already leapt back into her own cart and, with a crack of the reins, the pair of chariots thundered off down the path, away from the distant smoke and fire. Clare pounded down the track in their wake, hollering and flailing her arms to absolutely no effect, the dust thrown by the chariot wheels burning in her throat.

They didn’t hear her. They hadn’t seen her.

Clare slowed to a jog finally, the sound of her own laboured breathing almost drowning out the sudden harsh call of a raven, startled from its night perch into flight. She bent over, hands on her knees, dizzy. Sparks flared behind her eyes and the world tilted on its axis.

“
WHAT HAVE I DONE
?” Clare gasped.

“You tell me. Then we’ll both know.” Al’s voice still managed to convey tightly wound sarcasm in a fierce whisper.

Clare blinked.

Sudden starbursts faded from her vision and Al’s pale, frightened face, framed by the dark fringe of her hair, bent into focus inches from Clare’s own.

“Oh
shit
…” Clare shook her head and glanced around the restoration room. The overhead neons seemed painfully bright after the darkness by the riverbank. She was dizzy and felt as though she were still a bit transparent. She was also, she noticed, shaking like a leaf.

“Clare?” Her aunt’s voice floated over to her from behind a row of metal shelving—that is, if something that stern and prickly could float. “You aren’t
touching
anything, are you?”

With an almost audible twang Mall Cop’s steely gaze snapped over to where the two girls stood. Al composed herself enough to give him a bored
“as-if-we’d-touch-that-dusty-old-stuff”
glare. Satisfied, he went back to his recruiting-poster stance, eyes empty of all emotion except perhaps a wistful longing for mirrored sunglasses to complete the look.

“
Gawd
, no, Mags,” Clare replied, trying to clamp down on the warble in her voice. “There’s history cooties all over that stuff.”

“That’s my darling angel.” Maggie’s voice dripped weary sarcasm.

Clare heaved a sigh of relief and turned back to Al.

“‘Oh
shit
…’?” Al parroted Clare’s sentiment of moments before. “
Where
did you just go? And
how
did you do that? And
what
exactly is going on? Clare?”

Clare put a hand to her head, feeling shaky.

“Clare?”

“Look—can we just shelve the ‘Allie McAllister, Girl Investigative Journalist’ thing for a second?” she hissed.

Al’s mouth snapped shut, a hurt expression clouding her eyes.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” Clare took a deep breath. “Mags?” she called. “Going to the cafeteria …”

“All right, luv,” Maggie called back. “If you’re not there when I’m done, I will have to murder you.”

“Deal. Bye.” Clare grabbed Al by the wrist and they bolted from the room.

“Why are we going to the cafeteria?” Al asked as they ran.

“To get away from Officer Friendly and the Brainiac Twins,” Clare said over her shoulder without slowing down. For some reason, she found that running just at that moment made her feel better. Her sneakered feet pounded down the echoing corridors, Al following noiselessly in her wake.

AL BLINKED
. For the first time in what was probably five minutes. Give or take. Since Clare had started talking, really. She blinked again. “Okay.” Her voice was quiet. Calm. “I give. Tell me where the hidden camera is. And how you did the disappearing thing. I get it. I’ve been punk’d. Very good. Very funny. Rich.”

Clare’s tone was just as quiet. Just as calm. “Al? I understand that this a little weird. And more than a little out of character for me.” She leaned forward over the table, clasping her hands in front of her, her stare boring into Al. “I also just experienced what I can only describe as a paranormal phenomenon to which you were the sole witness, and I’m pretty sure that if you don’t stick with me on this one I’m gonna start screaming like a freak any second now.
Okay
?” Clare smiled tightly and tilted her head, waiting.

“Um.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” It was Clare’s turn to blink.
“Seriously?”

“Yes.” Al nodded solemnly. “Okay. I believe you. Tell me again what happened and we’ll figure this out, Clare. Together.”

The tension flowed from Clare’s shoulders.

“You’re a peach, Al,” Clare gasped with relief. “What would I do without you?”

Al didn’t bother to answer. Of course, neither of them could imagine a situation in which that circumstance would ever arise. Clare and Al had been inseparable almost since the day they’d met, the only two new kids in the entire third grade of an upper-crust private school in Toronto’s swanky Rosedale neighbourhood that didn’t exactly have a tradition of rolling out the welcome mat for misfits and newcomers. After only a week the girls had decided—most solemnly—to pledge eternal loyalty to each other as blood sisters. To that end, they had spent almost an entire afternoon joined at the thumb with an elastic band after they’d pricked their flesh with a safety pin to draw forth drops of blood, which they pressed together to ensure everlasting sisterhood.

Clare’s mom had been apoplectic when she’d found the girls in the garden, giggling and purple-thumbed, and had shrieked at them about the dangers of “blood-borne pathogens” and “infectious microbes.” Al’s mother, on the other hand, had thought it a “sweetly arcane ritual worthy of the bygone romance of the Byronic age.”

Al’s mom is certifiable
, Clare thought—not for the first time—as the incident flashed through her mind. But as flaky as Mrs. McAllister may have been, her daughter was a font of pure analytical thought and Spock logic. She revelled in math problems and puzzles.