Now and for Never

  In fact, she even started to relax a bit and enjoy the adventure. But when Al told her Marcus’s theory about their whereabouts, she tensed right up again.

  “What?!” she squawked, sitting bolt upright. “But … but …”

  But what? Think about it. It makes sense.

  She thought about it. And it did. But just on principle, she put up a decent show of disbelief. After that the trio resigned themselves to having somehow wound up on the wrong side of the ocean. Clare even made up another canvas sign:

  You’re not going to believe this, but …

  Look for us ACROSS THE POND!

  (er—not sure where, exactly …)

  As she wrote it, she remembered how Milo had joked with her that, in his eagerness to see her again after the summer ended, he might just make it to North America before she did.

  Ha, she thought. Got ya beat.

  But not by much, she hoped. As a sudden wave of longing swept over her she was struck by how much she missed Milo. She popped the cap of the Sharpie back off and, in the bottom corner of the scrap of canvas, drew a little heart and wrote the initials CR + MM inside. Then stoically ignored Al’s snickering as she posed with the message for another picture.

  “Right. So … where’s the Snettisham Torc now?” Clare asked, tucking the camera back into her bag. “’Cause … that’s kind of the temporal lynchpin to this whole caper.”

  “Paulinus has it.” Marcus’s lip lifted in an expression of distaste. “It’s the one piece he wouldn’t let into the treasure bags destined for the emperor. For, I suppose, obvious reasons.”

  “Huh …” Clare frowned, reaching for a handful of roasted pinenuts from a little woven bowl Comorra had left out. “Well. We’re just gonna have to get that back from him so we can return it to Snettisham.”

  “Not just the torc,” Al said. “I’ve been thinking about another bit of history that’s going to get all twisty if we don’t do something about Paulinus himself. And his band of not-so-merry men. I mean, I’m pretty sure there’s more to him historically than just vanishing off the face of the map.”

  “Ha!” Marcus threw back his head and barked a laugh. “I know exactly what happened to him. Good job, ladies! You got that rotten sod fired from his cushy job!”

  “What?” Clare said.

  Marcus nodded. “I just remembered something I’d read in one of the histories before I wound up stuck back here … Suetonius Paulinus was relieved of his duties as governor of Britain sometime not long after his defeat of Boudicca.”

  “Wait,” Al said. “That hasn’t happened yet. The relieving of duty, I mean.”

  “No, it hasn’t. If I remember correctly, his removal was suspected to be politically motivated. Which is hardly surprising—I don’t think he’s the type to make deep, lasting friendships.”

  “No kidding,” Clare muttered. “Guy has all the charm of a honey badger.”

  “Right. And someone in Rome decided to get rid of him. But—and here’s the interesting part—the histories said that the excuse the emperor gave was that Paulinus had lost some ships.”

  “Oooh …” Clare sat back, thinking about the implications. “So we don’t just have to get the torc back to Jolly Really Olde, we have to get him back, too.”

  “Sans ships.” Al was frowning faintly.

  “Right. Or we risk messing up the timeline anyway.”

  “Right.”

  Clare sighed in frustration. “And then there’s Llassar, too, to think about. He’s still got the coin—the one he turned into the shimmer trigger—and that’s supposed to wind up in the hole in the ground in Snettisham, too. Along with the torc and the rest of that hoard.”

  Al nodded. “Yup.”

  “And here’s what’s giving me the biggest brain cramp of all,” Clare said. “The coin was found in Snettisham, along with the torc—stuck in its coils in fact. But we found it at Glastonbury. I mean, the pompous grad students found it there, but still. How the hell, y’know?”

  Al chewed on her bottom lip. “I have a theory,” she said after a moment. “The Grad Squad found the coin after Morholt got trapped in the past with the torc but before we decided to come back and set things right. I think … for those few weeks … everything was up in the air. The torc has been roaming free.”

  “Like a kind of … temporal wild card?” Clare asked.

  “Exactly!”

  “I see where you’re going with this,” Marcus said, excitement in his voice.

  He was gazing at Al with something approaching adoration, and Clare probably would have giggled if she thought it wouldn’t break Al’s train of thought. As it was, Al’s train wasn’t about to be derailed.

  “I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” she said. “And I figure it this way. As much as it pains me to admit it, I was wrong before with my closed-loop temporal theory. The timeline isn’t just a circle. It’s more like … a spiral. Every time we circle back around to the same place, it isn’t quite the same. See, the Snettisham coin wasn’t ever supposed to wind up in the Glastonbury find. Not after the moment here, in this past, when we freed Llassar from imprisonment and you told him to go back to Norfolk and bury the coin with the torc.”

  “But … we haven’t done any of that.”

  “No, but we will!” Marcus exclaimed. “Somehow. Allie’s right. She’s a genius.”

  “Pff. No …” Al looked like she was trying not to blush. “Anyway, I think that’s how it’s supposed to happen. And if you could somehow go back to the moment when the grad students found the coin hoard on this go-around, after you do that I’d bet modern-day money that the coin—the Snettisham coin—wouldn’t be there. Because it no longer needs to be.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Clare said, feeling a time-thinky migraine coming on.

  “I am.” Al’s eyes gleamed in the darkness as she leaned in and let Clare in on a little secret she’d been keeping to herself—probably for the sake of Clare’s peace of mind. “In all the years I’ve known my cousin—and that is all his life— Milo has never worn an earring. Until you.” She glanced at the mouth of the cave where the rain still fell in torrents. “And him. Connal.”

  Clare thought about sitting beside the Druid prince as they ate dinner, noticing how the firelight glinted off the tiny gold hoop in his ear. She frowned. “But … that would mean …”

  “Yeah. Don’t think about that one too hard,” Al said. “You already look like you’re getting a headache.”

  “I am.” Clare sighed. “Al … Did we break the universe?”

  “No!” Al shook her head adamantly. “For one thing, the earring looks good on Milo. It suits him. And he suits you.”

  “And if you hadn’t done what you did, I never would have met Allie,” Marcus said with a grin. “So I, at least, am damned glad of your meddling, Clare.”

  “So … we’re … fixing the universe?” Clare asked hopefully.

  “With chewing gum and a paperclip, yeah, maybe.” Al laughed. “But I think it’ll all be okay now.”

  “That’s if we get home again.”

  “You’ll get home, Clare,” Al said. “You’ll get all of us home. Even his worship Governor Paulinus and his pals.”

  “Except I have no idea how I’m going to do that.” Clare sighed, wondering how on earth she’d braid all the fraying time strands back together again, especially when both Mallora and Connal were magic-depleted.

  “On this end of the timeline, Connal might not be firing on all cylinders,” Al mused, “but on the other, you have a certain super-brain mapmaker who already has a mystical link to that Druid prince and who, because of that link, managed to tear open the fabric of the continuum once already. And? We have the blood of good old barking-mad Boudicca in a vial, and so does Milo, and that has to be useful for something, right?”

  Clare hesitated.

  “She’s got a point, Clare,” Marcus said, a ring of certainty in his voice. “You seem to have all the instruments. You just need to st
ep up to the podium and conduct the orchestra.”

  Her musician parents would appreciate the analogy, Clare thought.

  So she smiled, nodded, and didn’t bother pointing out that she had a tin ear.

  16

  It was infuriating.

  The time it was taking Dan’s stupid program to unscramble the photos from Clare’s camera’s memory chip wasn’t normal. It had chugged away for the entire flight. By the time they’d gotten to Heathrow they had less than two hours to wait before their flight to Toronto. Once there, they’d changed planes and flown to Halifax, where they’d wait until the next day for the puddle-jumper flight to the little island. Now Milo and Piper had checked into their Halifax hotel for the evening, and he still had only one more photo to show for his troubles.

  And it’s not as if it tells me anything I didn’t already bloody know!

  Only that, travelling by way of first-century Roman galley, Clare and Allie had somehow already arrived at their mutual destination. Entry Island. Suppressing another surge of frustration, Milo sighed and flipped to that picture again. It was a shot of Clare, still looking slightly wind-mussed but otherwise hale and hearty—and ridiculously pretty, Milo thought longingly—sitting in a cave beside a stoic-looking Marcus Donatus and holding a sign:

  You’re not going to believe this, but …

  Look for us ACROSS THE POND!

  (er—not sure where, exactly …)

  “Well … at least we know we’re on the right track,” Milo murmured.

  “Yes,” Piper agreed in a bored tone. “We do. For the millionth time. Would you please put that thing away for a nanosecond? You’re driving me around the twist!”

  “Sorry?” Milo looked up at where Piper sat across from him in the little lobby lounge/restaurant, the sandwiches on their table going mostly untouched.

  “You’re getting a bit OCD about your girlfriend’s holiday snaps is all,” Piper said. “Doesn’t that machine go ping when it’s accomplished something? Like unscrambling another shot?”

  Milo fiddled with the cursor pad for another moment. “Yes.”

  “Well then. Watched pot and all that, right?”

  It was possible she had a point. Milo sighed and, making sure the audio notification was turned on and the volume up, he reached for the screen and pulled it closed. In truth, he hadn’t really been lingering on the image because it offered proof positive that not only had Clare and Allie accomplished stage one of Operation Roman Holiday, they’d successfully made contact with Allie’s favourite legionnaire. And made it safely onto the right island. He’d never really doubted that. No … it had a good deal more to do with the tiny heart drawn on the corner of the canvas with CR + MM written inside.

  Ever since his first (ill-advised and blue-painted) rescue mission, he’d had a growing, nagging feeling that he and Clare had been on the verge of a really big … something.

  Fight. It’s called a “fight,”you idiot.

  I prefer the term “disagreement.”

  Prefer away. It’s still a fight.

  Milo had never fought with a girl before. He’d never even been in a situation where such a thing would have been … a thing. He could count on one hand the number of girls he’d gone out with for more than just coffee or a movie. He’d just been too busy with work and school. And no one had ever measured up to Clarinet Reid in his mind.

  That’s your mind. What about hers? the voice in his head had nagged at him. What if she’d changed her mind? Clare, he was sure, had barely spared him a thought in all the long years he’d been besotted with his cousin’s best friend. She hadn’t had any reason to. And now? What if she felt differently about him? What if she didn’t? After all, she’d be going home at the end of the summer.

  Yeah? And you’ve waited this long for her.

  I’d wait forever. And ever.

  Let’s hope you’re not left waiting for never.

  Shut up.

  “So … we make a pretty good team, right?”

  Milo looked up again, startled out of his reverie by the sound of Piper’s voice. He kept almost forgetting she was sitting there. “Sorry?”

  “You and me,” she said with a casual shrug. “Like at that Dan guy’s place. Back in London. We were like … I dunno. TV detective partners or something.”

  “Oh … uh, yeah. I guess we do,” Milo said. “Like … uh …”

  “Holmes and Watson?”

  Milo smiled and nodded. “Sure. Or the Doctor and a companion.”

  Piper grinned and finally reached for her sandwich.

  It was only when they got back to their rooms that the ping sounded loudly from inside Milo’s messenger bag. Milo strode past Piper, slung the bag on her bed, pulled out his laptop, and flipped open its lid.

  Piper peered over his shoulder and he heard her gasp as the next picture in the digital queue began to resolve into a coherent image. Then the next, and the next …

  “What the hell …?” Piper murmured.

  Most of the shots were unfocused and motion-blurred. But in one, whoever was shooting—Milo assumed it was Clare— had managed to capture the scene with crystal clarity: Allie, unconscious, her head lolling back, wrapped in the muscle-corded, deeply tanned arms of a shirtless young man with long dark hair and sharply defined features. His eyes glowed the way an animal’s do in photographs. The effect was startling. His teeth were bared in a frightening grimace and they looked sharper—and longer—than a normal person’s teeth. He wore a long loincloth draped around his hips and a wide belt of yellow animal fur fastened with an intricate pattern of knotted leather cords and coloured beads.

  Milo zoomed in on the background. Silhouetted against a blurred, silvery curtain of rain and framed by the arching mouth of a cave were cougars—three enormous, powerfully muscled hunting cats crouching there, fangs bared, snarling, ready to spring.

  Piper reached over his shoulder and drew her fingertips across the track pad, zooming in on the face of the boy cradling Allie in his arms and snarling at the camera. “Who … what is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t look human,” Piper said in a strained voice.

  “No. It doesn’t. And it has Allie.”

  “What the hell is happening on that island?”

  “I don’t know,” Milo said grimly. “But I get the feeling that on Entry Island, Druid blood magic might not be the only supernatural kid on the block.”

  CLARE COULDN’T SLEEP.

  Even though it was deep night, probably closer to morning even, she was still tossing and turning beneath the thickly woven woollen blanket. In the gloom of the cave she kept imagining that the shadows the fire cast on the rock walls weren’t shadows. Her eyelids were lead-heavy and kept drifting closed, but then a noise—the rumble of thunder from the storm that had rolled in after sundown, the crash of a wave on the beach beyond the cave mouth—would jolt her back out of a downward spiral toward slumber. On the other side of the fire Al was sawing logs with gusto. She’d drifted off to sleep with the strap of her messenger bag slung across her torso, arms wrapped around the thing as if it was a teddy bear. She still wore the voluminous raven cloak Mallora had given her, which she seemed to be taking quite a shine to. Marcus—in a fit of adorable chivalry—had positioned himself near the mouth of the cave, an obstacle to any wayward local fauna seeking shelter from the storm. His breathing was deep and regular. The spring pool at the back of the cave made an occasional burble and the fire cracked and popped.

  At long last, Clare managed to drift off.

  When she jolted awake again the fire had burned so low it was barely embers. The shadows had more substance now, and drifting white smoke seemed to hover in the still air. Clare wasn’t sure what had awakened her. For a second she couldn’t even remember where she was. But then she knew. A noise.

  Noises …

  The sounds in the darkness were enough to make her blood run cold. Hissing and growling and the low, guttural huffing of animals
breathing. Mingled with that were voices, speaking in a language Clare didn’t recognize—not Iceni, not English, but something else entirely. Her own breath had stopped in her throat and she froze, holding herself as still as she could. When she cracked open one eye, the dying fire was just able to illuminate the hunched shapes moving about the cave.

  The air was faintly perfumed with a sickly sweetness that seemed to crawl up Clare’s nose and tug at her eyelids. It made her want to pull the blanket over her head and sink back down into oblivion. Then suddenly Al screamed—a blood-curdling cry in the darkness—and Clare heard Marcus startle awake with a shouted curse. The interior of the cave devolved into chaos in moments.

  Clare couldn’t think, couldn’t move …

  She heard Marcus howling for Al and the scrape of steel as he drew his sword, but in the dark he was stumbling and clumsy, bashing into walls and falling over himself as he swung wildly at the shadowy shapes. Clare, too, was rubberlimbed and out of control as she tried to untangle herself from her bedding and stand up. It felt as though she was tumbling through a dream—a nightmare—except that each time she fell to her knees on the hard rock floor the pain was shockingly real. Then she remembered the cloying scent that had drifted through the cave in a weird narcotic haze.

  They must have thrown something on the fire.

  They who?

  The shadow shapes.

  In the confusion, Clare did the only thing her foggy brain could think to do. She reached for her bag and hauled out her camera, groped in the darkness to find the On button, and fired off a string of shots in the direction of the intruders, hoping to scare them off with the brightness of the flash and managing to momentarily blind herself in the process. When her vision cleared she saw Marcus, a look of pure, feral battle rage on his face, swinging his sword in a downward arc that drew a swath of bright blood from the muscle-bunched shoulder of a dark-haired man—no, Clare’s brain groggily corrected her, that’s not a man, that’s a freaking bear—who grunted in pain and then blurred like smoke, disappearing through the cave mouth and out into the storm, Marcus in hot pursuit.