Once Every Never

It seemed that the brief ceremony was all the formal solemnity the Iceni could take. They rushed forward and surrounded the royal family, hugging and pounding on backs until the whole thing began to look like a rugby scrum. Comorra and her family were swept out of the grove in the direction of some kind of feast, Clare guessed—judging from the mouth-watering smells of roasting meat wafting toward them from that direction.

  As quickly as it had filled up, the clearing emptied out, the whirlwind of revellers vanishing beneath the shadows of the trees and leaving only their whoops and hollers in their wake. Clare sagged against the rough stone, giddy with the contagious excitement of the Iceni. Lightheaded, she closed her eyes for a moment and tried to steady her breathing and slow her rabbit-fast heart. It worked—right up until the moment she felt the ice-cold edge of metal brush against her shoulder. Clare yelped and ducked as her eyes flew wide and she saw Connal lunging around the corner of the standing stone, sword sweeping the air before him. The young warrior grabbed for the space where Clare stood invisible, and the palm of his hand slammed against her shoulder, spinning her around. There was a lightning-bolt electric shock—just as when she’d first made contact with Comorra on the riverbank—and Clare saw Connal snarl and jerk back. But the jolt didn’t deter him for long, and suddenly Clare found herself pinned to the standing stone, held motionless there by Connal’s forearm … and the sharp sting of his sword blade against her collarbone.

  “They say that the kiss of cold iron is death to the tylwyth teg,” he hissed into her ear. “But I think it would take more than just a kiss. You threaten my princess at your peril, Otherworlder … You will not take her away to your hidden realm.”

  “I’m not!” Clare sputtered desperately. “I wouldn’t!”

  The warrior shook his head as if trying to shake sense into her words.

  “I’m not here to hurt her—I want to help her! Comorra—”

  “You will not speak her name!”

  Clare could feel the rapid pounding of Connal’s pulse where his wrist pressed against her skin and she wondered, through her terror, if he was anywhere near as afraid of her as she was of him.

  “You have no power here,” he said. “Return to your own world!” He reared back with his sword as, above their heads, a raven screamed in the night, the sound harsh in the darkness.

  Clare squeezed her eyes shut—and felt herself shimmer out of existence. She heard Connal’s astonished gasp as his blade plunged down toward where she stood … an instant too late.

  HIS EYES ARE REALLY BLUE …

  They were also full of amazement. And concern.

  Wait a second … where … when am I?

  Clare was flat on her back on the floor of Milo’s office, staring up into his blue, bespectacled eyes as he bent over her, gently shaking her by the shoulder. Al peered over his shoulder, frantically calling Clare’s name, her voice harsh and cawing.

  “Why … why am I on the floor?” Clare asked.

  “Because you collapsed!” Al exclaimed.

  “You disappeared …” Milo’s voice wasn’t exactly tense, not like Al’s, but it did sound hoarse. Almost as if he’d forgotten how to use it. Or was too startled by what he’d just seen to remember how to make his throat muscles work properly. “You actually vanished.”

  “And then you reappeared,” Al added helpfully. “And then you fainted.”

  “Oh …” Clare struggled to sit up.

  “You didn’t pass out the last time.” Al crouched on the floor in front of her. “What happened this time?”

  “I don’t know.” Clare had never fainted before. Then again, she’d never almost been stabbed before. Fear of imminent death must have just plain overwhelmed her. She put a hand to her forehead—it was clammy with sweat.

  Milo jumped to his feet and stalked over to the watercooler on the far side of the office. After a moment he brought Clare a little paper cone full of cold water. She gulped at it thirstily. Her mind was a tumbled mess of images and impressions … darkness and howling and … Connal’s sword, descending on her where she stood, shoulders pressed into the unforgiving stone …

  “Oh shit …” Clare shied away from the memory of the torch-light glinting on that blade.

  “Okay.” Al blinked, peering at her intently. “See … that’s what you said the first time this happened. Were you on the riverbank again, Clare? Did you see Comorra?”

  “Riverbank, no. Comorra, yes.”

  Milo helped her climb shakily to her feet and sit down. Clare took a deep breath, finished the water in the paper cup, and crumpled it into a ball. Then she told them everything that had happened.

  “I thought we agreed on no touching. No talking. No monkeying with the time stream!”

  Al was cross and agitated. Clare wondered what kind of sci-fi conjecture had passed between her and her cousin while she’d been gone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose. Does the British Empire still stand?”

  “Very funny,” Al said sourly.

  Milo had gone a little pale, Clare noticed. And quiet.

  But at least he seemed to actually believe her. Hard to deny what had happened, she supposed, when she had shimmered out of existence right before his very eyes.

  There’s your proof of paranormal activity, Hot Stuff, she thought. Logic your way out of this one.

  Al blew a long breath out and sat down, having seemingly exhausted her store of nervous tension. “So that’s how she got the brooch, huh?” she said eventually. “I guess it must have been pretty important to her.”

  “Yeah,” Clare nodded, lost in thought. And she gave it to me for a reason …

  Her gaze slipped over to where the raven-shaped ornament sat innocuously on a nearby desk. Milo reached out a hand for it and Clare and Al both tensed. He closed his fingers around it … and nothing happened. Milo didn’t disappear. He didn’t even flicker. He held the brooch out to Al.

  “Thanks, no.”

  “C’mon, Allie,” he urged. “I want to know if it’s just Clare.” Al hesitated for a moment and then, lips pressed into a tight line, she snatched it from his hand. Nothing. Al let out another long breath and turned to Clare. “Guess you’re the Chosen One, pal.”

  Clare was distinctly uncomforted by the sentiment. They sat together in uneasy, contemplative silence—until Clare’s cell phone jangled noisily and scared all three of them half to death.

  “Oh, for the love of …” Clare grabbed it out of her bag and checked the display. “It’s Maggie. She’d better not be checking up on me,” Clare muttered and slapped the phone to the side of her head with a flat “Hello.”

  Al and Milo listened to Clare’s monosyllabic responses and watched as the blood drained from her face. Clare knew the blood was draining from her face because she could feel herself growing cold, starting with the top of her head.

  “Clare?” Milo asked when she finally hung up. “Are you okay?”

  “No. I don’t think so … no …”

  “What did Maggie say?” Al asked, frowning.

  “She’s at the museum,” Clare murmured.

  “Wow. Shocker.”

  “With the police.”

  “Uh?”

  “What?” Milo’s voice was sharp with concern. “Why?”

  “She said there’d been a … there was a …” Clare felt as if she was about to start hyperventilating. “There’s been a theft.”

  “She said that?” Al asked. “What … when … who—”

  “Allie, shh.” Milo reached out and took Clare’s cold, limp hands and held them, squeezing gently. “What else did she say?”

  “Um …” Clare’s fingers clenched convulsively around Milo’s.

  “Can you tell me?”

  She nodded, staring at Milo with unblinking eyes and breathing in rapid, shallow little sips of air. “Uh … that was it. That was all she said. Just that something had been stolen. From—uh—from the stuff in the restoration room. She wants me to meet her at the museum.” Clare’s knees felt
weak and her stomach lurched at the thought of facing Maggie. That kebab earlier suddenly seemed like a terribly bad idea.

  “Did she say who, uh, what was”—Al swallowed noisily—“stolen?”

  Clare shook her head. Then panic took hold. “I thought you said I didn’t take anything! Jeezus, Al!”

  “You didn’t …” Al didn’t sound so sure anymore.

  “Allie?” Milo looked at her.

  “She didn’t!” Al turned on him, regaining her adamant stance. “I know she didn’t. I swear to God! I didn’t see that brooch—it wasn’t there!”

  “Well, then we don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “We?” Clare looked at Milo and blinked.

  “You.” Milo shrugged. He turned and went back to his desk, taking out a set of keys from a drawer. “C’mon. I’ll drive you.” He grabbed the brooch, wrapped it back up, and locked it in the drawer. “No sense wandering around the museum with anything that could potentially make for an awkward situation.”

  “I didn’t steal it.” Clare looked at him.

  “I believe you.”

  The girls turned to stare at each other silently for a long moment.

  “I’m dead,” Clare said bleakly.

  “Come on.” Milo nodded toward the door. “You’re not dead. And I’m not about to let anyone kill you. Now let’s go find out what’s going on.”

  9

  “Sit down, girls.”

  Clare and Al glanced nervously at each other. Milo was waiting for them in the museum’s Great Court. They’d decided it was best not to gang up and rally to Clare’s defence before they knew if she actually needed defending.

  Maggie waved them toward a couple of hardbacked chairs in a corner of the curator’s office. She was positively crimson with rage as she gripped a sheet of paper in one hand so tightly that it creased around the edges of her fingers.

  “This. Is. Intolerable.”

  Clare swallowed.

  “What on earth would make anyone think they had a right—any right—to take something that quite simply and by all rational argument does not belong to them?” Maggie’s voice skirled upward. “Not only that! This theft is a crime against history. A crime against humanity! The artifacts in this building are a legacy meant for all. Not just scholars. Everyone! The lofty and the common alike. Everyone can come to this institution and gaze upon its contents and be amazed. But only if those contents are not bloody stolen away and—God knows—probably sold on the black market to some crackpot recluse who runs around naked late at night in a private vault stacked with Nazi-looted Monets and crates full of smuggled tribal fertility goddesses—”

  “I didn’t mean it!” Clare blurted, unable to withstand any more of her aunt’s frothing tirade. “I swear I won’t sell it to a naked crackpot!”

  “What …?”

  “Uh … I … won’t sell it to a crackpot?”

  “Sell what?” Maggie’s righteous anger dissipated into a cloud of confusion in the face of Clare’s baffling outburst. “Good Lord, Clare, I don’t have time for games.”

  “No. Of course.” Clare backpedalled furiously. “Sorry.”

  “The torc is an irreplaceable piece of history. Worth far more than its weight in gold, which is substantial.”

  “The … torc?” Clare and Al exchanged confused glances. “The Snettisham Torc.” Maggie rolled her eyes. “Oh for the love of—The great big shiny gold necklace thingy that was sitting on the table in the restoration room yesterday. Surely even you must have noticed that?”

  “I noticed it …” Al squeaked.

  “There, yes, you see?” Maggie turned back to Clare.

  “Uh … okay …” Clare’s mind raced. Of course she’d noticed the “great big shiny gold necklace thingy.” She’d probably even left a fingerprint on it. It had sent her hurtling back through time! But now that she realized Maggie wasn’t accusing them at all, Clare started to calm down. “Right. The torc. And it’s what now?”

  “Stolen.” Maggie’s glare was positively baleful. “Were you listening—even a little—when I told you why I wanted you to meet me here instead of back at the townhouse?”

  “Uh …” The phrase “stolen artifact” must have set off Clare’s inner auto-pilot back in Milo’s office.

  “I surrender,” Maggie sighed and threw her hands in the air. “The television wins. Your mind is mush beyond reclamation. Clare, I’m going to have to stay late today to help Dr. Jenkins and the police with the investigation, and I’ll most likely have to come in early tomorrow, too. It’s getting on, I haven’t shopped for the groceries, and I didn’t want you roaming the city all evening without food or money. I thought perhaps you could wait for me and eat in the museum’s cafeteria …”

  The girls shuddered in tandem. The museum’s “wrapped sandwiches” tasted far more of “wrap” than “sandwich.” And anyway, food was the last thing on either of their minds. As gently as she could, Clare took her agitated aunt by the wrist.

  “Mags?” she said. “Look. Don’t worry about me, okay?”

  Maggie’s normally calm, cool, unflappable exterior seemed to be on the verge of crumbling. Clare had never seen her so upset, and it made her think there was something going on here. Something else going on. She gave her aunt’s arm a little shake.

  “I know this is important, Mags. And I know that my mother probably has you convinced that I can’t tie my own shoes without triggering a minor apocalypse somewhere in the world or altering the flow of history”—Okay, Clare thought, that last one is maybe a little too close to the truth—“but I can totally fend for myself while you take care of this. Without incident.”

  Maggie smiled wearily in something approaching gratitude. Her eyes, Clare noticed, were red-rimmed. She patted Clare’s cheek and, without another word, went over to where her purse sat on a table. She fished around in it and pulled out a bank card.

  “The PIN is your birthday, duck—month and day,” she said and handed it over.

  Clare blinked at her, surprised by that somehow.

  Maggie brushed it aside. “I didn’t figure anyone would ever guess that.”

  “Probably not.” Clare recovered herself and grabbed the card before Maggie changed her mind.

  “No trips to Aruba, please. And scout’s honour you’ll at least try and keep from burning London to the ground.”

  “I’ll at least try. Scout’s honour.”

  “And, oh yes! Not one word of this to anyone. The police are keeping this matter strictly under wraps for the moment. Now keep in touch and off you go,” Maggie said, already turning her attention back to the matter at hand.

  Clare and Al looked at each other and headed into the outer office. Suddenly its door flew open and Dr. Jenkins burst in, flapping like a penguin in a pencil skirt as she hurried past.

  “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.