Every Never After

  Not the time, she chastised herself. More important things to worry about …

  Goggles held what looked to be a tiny, cordless circular saw, which was whining at the elevated pitch of a kicked hornet’s nest and effectively masked their approach. Maybe not quite so cool as the image she projected, the girl jumped two feet straight up when Clare tapped her on the shoulder. The mini-saw zanged and whizzed, skittering across the workbench and gouging chunks out of its surface. Piles of junk flew everywhere as Goggles yelped and scrambled after the thing before it could slice through the boxy item she’d been hunched over. She lunged for the saw, Clare grabbed at the box, and Milo went for the electrical outlet, unplugging the cord before the machine took off Clare’s fingers at the knuckles.

  The silence was deafening.

  It stretched out for a long moment.

  Then Goggles cleared her throat and pointed tentatively at the box in Clare’s hands. “Can I have that back, please?”

  Clare glanced down at the little tin box that was sealed with a band of bronze. “No.”

  “Thank you. I— Wait. What?”

  “Not until I get some answers.” She hefted the box: it wasn’t heavy, but it had the feel of containing something. “You said come back tomorrow. That’s now today. You said you’d have something to show us.”

  “I did. And there’s a good chance you’re going to think I’m some kind of outrageous fraud the minute I do. But just so we understand each other, I am totally on the level.” Goggles crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “And I also locked away all the pointy artifacts, in case you decide otherwise.”

  Clare had brought the letter opener with her and was about to fish it out from her bag when Milo plugged the little buzz saw back into the outlet. It whizzed maniacally for a moment, then Milo unplugged it again and said dryly, “This isn’t pointy, but it’ll do the trick. If I were you, I’d do my best to convince us you’re not a fraud.”

  Clare kind of loved it when Milo got all tough-guy like that. But now wasn’t the time to indulge her appreciation. “Okay, Goggles,” she said. “I’m listening.”

  “Gogg …?” The other girl blinked—it was a little like watching one of those YouTube videos of puppies shot up close through a fish-eye lens—and then pulled off her headgear and turned to hang it on a peg. “Goggles. Sure. I get it. How droll.”

  The girl turned back toward them, and Clare felt her spine stiffen when she saw her unadorned face for the first time. Somehow she’d expected that even without the goggles the girl’s amphibian look would remain. Not so much. Probably around nineteen, with dark brown eyes and delicate features currently set in a mulestubborn expression, Goggles was pretty. Really pretty. Beside Clare, Milo made a small, surprised noise.

  I guess he thought the same thing. And I bet he thinks she’s pretty, too—

  Dude, Clare admonished her own brain. Seriously not the time.

  The girl looked back and forth between Clare and Milo and huffed an impatient sigh. Then she turned to face Clare squarely. “My name is Piper Gimble.”

  “Uh huh.” Clare couldn’t care less what her name was. And she was unaccountably irritated by the fact that the girl’s voice was low and sort of musical, with an accent Clare thought might originate from somewhere around Liverpool. She sounded like a Beatles groupie and it was annoyingly interesting. Clare had always kind of wished she’d had an accent. She wondered if her own voice sounded nasal and flat in Milo’s ears in comparison …

  “In one very real sense,” Piper was saying, “I suppose I owe my very existence to you, Miss Reid.”

  “Uh hu— What?” Clare blinked.

  Piper rolled her eyes and waved at a couple of stools on the other side of the workbench. “Sit. I’m going to put the kettle on.”

  “Not thirsty.”

  “It’s not for you,” Piper snapped irritably. “It’s for me. A cup of tea calms my nerves. Okay, that’s a lie … a shot of brandy in a cup of tea calms my nerves.”

  Clare could hardly argue with that, even if it would never occur to her to try calming down that way. She looked over at Milo and shrugged. The two of them pulled the pair of stools over and perched upon them while Piper slammed around a tiny kitchenette at the back of the room, concocting her nerve tonic.

  “You have to understand something,” Piper began as she splashed amber liquid from an antique silver hip flask into a steaming china cup. “These are rather … extraordinary circumstances for me.” She blew on the liquid, took a sip, grimaced at the heat, and then took a slug directly from the flask before putting it away. Colour flushed into her cheeks as Clare and Milo sat waiting, patience thinning perceptibly. “Right. So. I have to commend you, Miss Reid. It must have taken a great deal of effort to piss off someone like Stuart Morholt as badly as you di—”

  Clare actually fell off her stool at the mention of the name, but Milo didn’t so much fall as launch himself off his. And Piper Gimble suddenly found herself backed up against the wall again.

  “What the hell do you know about that son of a bitch Morholt?” Milo snarled, one fist cocked at his side.

  “Milo!” Clare yelped.

  He looked like he was seriously considering punching Piper’s ticket, girl or no. In another moment, Clare might just let him. But not before she figured out what on earth this annoying girl was talking about. She stepped up beside Milo and put a hand on his elbow. Lightly.

  “Here’s something you have to understand, Miss Gimble. My best friend’s continued well-being is at stake here. My best friend and Milo’s cousin. We’re very fond of her and if you’re standing in the way of us getting her back, then life is going to become very uncomfortable for you in the next few minutes. Now. What do you know about Morholt? And what does it have to do with Al’s disappearance?”

  Piper’s eyes shifted back and forth, and then she nodded in the direction of the little tin box that Clare still held, forgotten, in her right hand. “Look at it,” she said grudgingly. “Look at the lid …”

  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:

  This tin is to be kept sealed and held in perpetuity by my direct descendants with my express wishes that it be handed down hereditarily. It is to be opened only by that meddlesome brat CLARINET REID.

  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:

  Instructions are to be followed on pain of incurring a DRUID BLOOD CURSE. And I can do it, too. Don’t think I can’t.

  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 m
e 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, pricey—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:

  I, Stuart Morholt, Archdruid extraordinaire, leave this written record as my legacy to you, Miss Reid. A legacy that will allow you to right the dreadful wrong done when you stranded me here in this temporal hellhole. And we both know just how fond you are of doing that sort of thing now don’t we, you interfering little twit? So pay attention!

  “Wow,” Clare muttered acidly. “Way to bu
tter 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.”