This can’t be happening. How on earth has everything gotten so screwed up?
Piper suddenly hauled off and violently kicked the cabinet.
“I’m doomed!” she exclaimed, a sheen of tears unexpectedly glimmering on the lashes of her dark brown eyes.
“You’re doomed?” Clare was aghast. “What about Al?”
“What about her?” Piper rounded on Clare fiercely. “At least she bloody still exists! Without the diary, we have no way of sending you back. And if you don’t go back who knows if I’ll even ever be born? This is my fate we’re talking about here! I expect I’ll start disappearing soon, like the people in Marty McFly’s family snapshot in Back to the Future!”
Okay. Maybe she had a valid point. Still, there had to be a way forward. A way out of this mess.
“But … you guys have read it, right?” Clare glanced back and forth between Piper and Ashbourne. “The diary? You know what it says. You can just tell us and we can take it from there. Right?”
“Not … well, not exactly.” Ashbourne shrugged helplessly.
Clare felt her fists clenching in frustration.
“There are … things. Symbols and such.” The archaeologist struggled to explain. He looked at Milo. “Things Morholt wrote that only a Druid would understand.”
“A Druid? Milo? You read it. Right?” Clare said. “And … and you know Druish. We just established that. You have knowledge. What things did Morholt write?”
“I only had the chance to skim the thing, Clare.” Milo shook his head, glaring flatly at Ashbourne. “I must have missed that part.”
“Who on earth would take such a thing?” Piper moaned.
“Maybe one of your stupid spoon ladies was back here rummaging and got sticky fingers,” Clare said accusingly.
Before she and Piper could get into another scrap, Milo suddenly stood up. “Stop. Look … it doesn’t matter who took it or why. All that matters is it’s gone and that means we’re out of luck on this road. Without the diary, we’ll just have to do a U-turn and find another way.”
“But—”
“You said we still had some time,” he snapped, cutting Piper’s protestations short. “You said that according to what Morholt had already written in his diary—as of right now—Allie is still safe. And frankly—as of right now—I need to get some air and clear my head …”
He turned away from them abruptly and, in three long strides, was out the back door of Piper’s shop. Without asking Clare to go with him. Without even a backward glance. Clare watched him go, too stunned to even think about trying to call him back. She just sat there, confused, and feeling a little like she’d been thrown overboard off a ship in the middle of the ocean.
The whole stupid situation had Clare treading water as fast as she could, but she knew perfectly well that, unless help arrived— and arrived soon—she was going to drown. And now Milo, her life preserver, had just floated away. She turned back to Piper and Ashbourne, both of whom were—for a merciful moment—rendered speechless by the suddenness of Milo’s exit.
He hadn’t even taken his laptop with him. Clare gazed dumbly at the thing where it sat on the worktable, screen glowing gently. As she watched, another screen cap from Dan popped up on top of the others. Clare’s breath caught in her throat. The dark, branching veins of time-travel distortion appeared to be growing, spreading out.
“You said this whole place is a portal. Is that what you meant?” She pointed to the screen.
Ashbourne blanched when he turned to look at it. “Yes. That’s exactly what I meant. Your … shimmering, as you call it, is restricted to your immediate person. Or, you and anyone you happen to be in contact with. Like the unfortunate Mr. Morholt. Correct?”
Clare nodded.
“This”—Ashbourne pointed to the screen—“seems to be a location-based version of the same kind of magic. Or rather, an inversion. Instead of an individual stepping backward in time, time—these ribbons of temporal distortion that you see here— seems to overtake individuals. But the effect isn’t as strong as it was with you. Nor as tangible. I’ve heard stories of the locals wandering through fields and suddenly finding themselves knee-deep in a bog that was drained generations ago. Or having night turn into day. One chap claims to have spotted an Iron Age fortress off in the distance. Or hearing a passing Celtic war band. Some claim to have seen the Church of St. Michael sitting atop the Tor—the whole church, not just the tower—and that hasn’t existed since the mid–fifteen hundreds.”
“Oh.”
“Most of those … encounters have, of course, been written off as the delusions of hippies in various states of psychotropic alteration. Because the time distortions are weak. They sweep on and the poor bloke experiencing the phenomenon is left with no proof of it ever happening beyond a pair of muddied shoes.”
“Has anyone ever vanished into one of the portals?” Clare was wondering whether Ashbourne knew about Maggie’s classmate’s disappearance. She didn’t want to mention it in connection with her aunt, though.
But it seemed Bloody Nicky was in the dark about that. He just frowned and shrugged and turned his attention back to the screen.
“Perhaps there will be now,” he said. “Those distortions look to be getting stronger …”
Most of them, so far, snaked across open fields and forested areas and down the steep, terraced sides of the Tor itself. Places where people were less likely to wander. Which was a good thing. Clare wondered how long it would be before a mailman taking a shortcut or grad students cutting through a pasture on their way to the pub got sucked into the vortex.
“Do you think this has something to do with Al unearthing your skull? With the whole ‘the head is the seat of the soul’ thing Milo was talking about? Do you think it triggered an increase in these … temporal incursions?” As proud as she was for working her way through as much of the puzzle as she had, Clare silently wished Milo was still there. She could really use his brain power. And a hug.
Ashbourne nodded his still-attached head (a facet of the whole puzzle that was still deeply confusing to Clare but, y’know, one thing at a time) and said, “Yes. I do. Miss McAllister is connected to you through blood. You are connected to the torc. The torc was the engine of my curse, and the skull is my skull. It then follows. Mallora’s designs were for this very thing to happen. Morholt has said she was a visionary. And she wanted to bridge the gap between her world and ours—to bring her scathach to this place and time. To take it for her own.”
Clare turned back to the screen, envisioning the moment when Bloody Nicky’s unpronounceable, death-dealing warrior women would come pouring through a rip in the space–time continuum to wreak havoc amongst the day-tripping busloads of New Age enthusiasts and granny cavalcades out for a spot of touristing. Hell, if they were lucky, maybe Mallora would bring along a bunch of bog zombies like her little sis Boudicca had. Because that had been fun …
The spiralling areas of darkness on the screen mesmerized Clare and reminded her of the darkly beautiful designs on Llassar’s creations. She thought about the deadly, cursed torc he’d made for his queen. About how it had transported Clare through time …
“Professor Ashbourne.” Clare frowned, thinking hard. Something was niggling away at the back of her brain. “When, according to historians, was the Snettisham Torc finally buried? Y’know … at Snettisham?”
She could almost see him fight the urge to reach up toward his neck. And she wasn’t surprised that he knew the answer off the top of his head.
Er. So to speak.
“Experts think it was sometime around AD 74 or 75. That’s thirteen or fourteen years after the death of Boudicca,” Ashbourne said. “And … well, of yours truly.”
“Why did they settle on that particular date?”
“It was found buried with a number of other artifacts, including a Celtic coin caught in the torc’s coils that, judging from the designs on it, indicated that time period.”
Ashbourne reache
d up to a shelf crammed with reference texts and pulled down some sort of archaeological catalogue that had the size and heft of a phone book. He thumbed through it, muttering. Eventually he found the entry he wanted, complete with black-and-white photos, and pointed. “See, here’s a picture of the torc, catalogued shortly after it was discovered, along with the other pieces found in that hoard. Including the coin that—”
“Aw, hell …” Clare interrupted. Muttering darkly, she reached into the pocket of her jacket. “You mean this coin right here?” She slid the tarnished little metal disc across the workbench to Ashbourne.
He blinked at it in disbelief. And then at her.
Clare waved a hand in weary dismissal. “Yes, that’s a coin from the grad weenies’ triumphal find. No, I’m not a klepto. Much. That’s the one you flipped at me yesterday and I accidentally put it in my pocket. I was going to return it but then, y’know, I got a little distracted here …”
“Extraordinary,” Ashbourne said, openmouthed. “This is not a similar coin. This is the same coin. Look, you can see that the irregularities in its edges—here and here—match the image precisely.”
Piper crowded in to see. “So it doesn’t mean the torc was buried that many years later, it just means the damn thing is still in play—in Morholt’s timeline—right now.”
“Right,” Clare said. “Or, y’know, then. With Morholt. And more importantly, Al. And, I guess, you.” She looked at the archaeologist and shook her head in a kind of overwhelming frustration. A feeling of defeat, almost galactic in proportion, descended like a heavy fog. “Damn it. When we beat Boudicca we didn’t end anything about that stupid curse! We didn’t finish it.”
“It would appear not,” Ashbourne agreed, still looking a bit gobsmacked.
“It’s like the torc is some kind of temporal monkey wrench,” Clare continued. “When I stranded Morholt back there with the thing I thought it was near Snettisham—I travelled part of the way back with him and I could smell the sea—and I figured he probably just buried the thing right away. I thought that was how it got there in the first place.”
But it wasn’t, obviously. Clare had made a terrible mistake. The smell of the sea hadn’t been the Norfolk coast, it had been the strait separating the Welsh coast from Mona. The Druid Isle. She thought back to her vision/dream/thingy and pieced it together anew: when Clare had unwittingly left Morholt and his dangerous booty stranded in the past, she’d left him near Mona in easy reach of the Druiddyn, who then took the cursed gold and gave it to the sorceress Mallora, who cursed it even more.
And then wrapped it around Quintus Phoenius Postumus’s neck.
“It was your friend Allie, Miss Reid,” the ex–Roman commander explained, “who told me what must be done in order to finally break the torc’s curse.” He shrugged. “At least, she will. Of course, you’ll have to tell her first. After I tell you what she told me, that is.”
“Okay—BOOM!” Clare exclaimed, flinging her hands out from either side of her head like her brains had just kablooeyed out her ears. Which, to be fair, they might have a little bit. “You know?” She smiled acidly at Goggles and Bloody Nicky. “I thought I was getting pretty good at doing the whole follow-the-bouncing-ball thing where time travel is concerned, but … what the hell? How am I supposed to tell Al anything? And how is she … and then you … aargh! I don’t … I can’t even …”
Ashbourne waited patiently for Clare to cycle through her minimeltdown.
Finally she dropped her head in her hands, infinitely weary. “Okay. Fine. Hit me. What did Al tell you to tell me to tell her so she can tell you what to do because you told me to tell her so?”
Ashbourne told her.
And Clare thought she might just have to go barf in the back alley again.
Right. The beheading thing … She swallowed against the sick feeling clawing up her throat. “There’s really no other way?”
“I don’t see how. For every one of my men who dies at the foot of Ynys Wyddryn, that’s one step closer to the doorway opening. And one more brave legionnaire dead,” Ashbourne added grimly. “The only way to break the curse that torments my men—and powers the widening portal—is to shut off the life force feeding the torc’s magic. Mine. You, Clare, conveyed that information to Miss McAllister, and she in turn convinced me to order one of my men to cut my head off on top of Glastonbury Tor. At least, that’s what happened before. With the diary gone and no way for you to get to her, I don’t know what will happen now.”
Clare stared at him, horrified by the idea that he would have to make—had already made—that sacrifice. She’d always thought the Romans were selfish. But what he proposed was an act of extreme selflessness. And unfathomable courage. She shook her head. “One thing I don’t get. This Mallora chick. If she was Boudicca’s older sister, how come no one’s ever heard of her?”
Ashbourne laughed mirthlessly. “The Roman historians would not dare to even commit her name to record. But I can confirm that she held the highest of high offices amongst the Druiddyn during the time when the Romans were sacking Mona and decimating the Iceni. She was a priestess unparalleled. A seeress and a sorceress. And not one to be trifled with. Unless, apparently, you were Piper’s ancestor. This Stuart Morholt of yours had rather a grand old time trifling with—”
“Gah! Stop.” Clare put her hands over her ears. “I know. I heard. I’m scarred for life.”
Ashbourne was still toying with the tarnished coin in his hand, and Clare found her attention returning to it. There was a question that neither Piper nor Nicky had managed to ask yet. Clare couldn’t blame them. It took some getting used to, thinking in terms of temporal loops, but she’d obviously had some experience. And so, plucking the coin from Ashbourne’s fingers, she asked the question for them.
“So, if this coin is the one they found with the torc, and I’m sitting with it right here and now, then that means only one thing.” She felt herself smiling, even though she had no rational solutions to their current problems: namely, how to go back in time, find Al, save Al, have Al give Quintus Postumus instructions on how to break the curse (Clare widely circumnavigated the decapitative practicalities of that), and make sure the torc got buried good and proper this time. In Snettisham, where it was supposed to be.
“What one thing can that mean?” Piper prompted when she got tired of waiting for Clare to finish.
Gawd, Clare thought. I miss Al so much. Goggles was a disappointing step down in sidekickery. She rolled her eyes at the other girl.
“It means,” she said, as if explaining to a six-year-old, “that we’re still in the game. We may have lost the diary but somehow the coin goes back. Which means that whoever has the coin in their possession goes back. I have the coin. And that someone is going to be me.”
She pocketed the coin and closed Milo’s laptop, tucking it under her arm.
“I just haven’t quite figured out how … yet.”
17
What the hell was Marcus doing in the river? He was supposed to be yukking it up in the mess hall with his returned-from-the-dead praefect. If he’d wanted to tidy up first, there were dozens of places along the riverbank he could have chosen. Places that weren’t directly in the path of Allie’s escape route.
Seriously. This guy is easily the most infuriating human being I have ever met.
Also, very possibly the most … stunningly handsome and … sculpted …
Allie clapped a hand over her eyes as Marcus, with his back to her, suddenly stood in the shallow water and waded ashore just downstream of where she crouched, hidden from view, in a stand of long grass. But she wasn’t quite fast enough, and the image of his naked, muscled torso and legs, not to mention his ridiculously chiselled backside, was already burned into her brain. She thought of the one and only time she’d seen male buttocks that hadn’t belonged to a toddler—when her brothers had thrown her into the guys’ locker room at school after football practice for a joke—but, really? No comparison. None.
Somehow her fingers slipped and she accidentally snuck another peek.
Now that is what I call a tight end , she thought.
And then felt herself blushing furiously at the pun. This was why Clare was dead set against puns. They were inappropriate. The whole situation was inappropriate. Allie groaned inwardly and wrapped her arms around her head. This was not happening. NOT.
For one thing, she was not suddenly having those kinds of thoughts about Marcus Donatus. Or whatever he wanted to call himself. She was getting out of there and she was leaving him. Behind. And not thinking up cheesy puns about it, present circumstances notwithstanding. So … what then? One accidental glimpse of Legionnaire Gluteus Maximus in the altogether and … what? She wanted to date him suddenly? No. No, no. He was arrogant. And annoying. And bossy. He wore armour and he spoke Latin ten times better than she did. With a really stupid, stupidly sexy accent.
Those last two things are not contraindicative of relationship potential, McAllister, she chided herself. Try harder.
Okay. He was a soldier in the Roman army in AD 61. And it looked like that’s how he was going to stay. So, by that logic, he’d already been dead for almost two thousand years by the time she was born. Talk about dating older men.
No, don’t talk about it! We’re not talking about i —
“Allie? What in hell are you doing out here?”
Allie cringed and opened her eyes.
“Are you trying to escape?”
Marcus’s bare feet were planted on the ground in front of her. Her gaze travelled up his lean legs to the short length of linen he’d wrapped around his waist like a bath towel and held bunched in one fist. Just below the hollowed curve of his hip bone …
This was a guy who once wore a skinny leather tie, she thought. How?
“Are you okay?” he asked, frowning.
Allie’s mouth worked soundlessly. She kept trying to say things to make him go away but nothing was coming out. He held out his free hand to help her stand.