Now and for Never

  Al handed over one of the tubes and tucked the other one safely away in her messenger bag. The others turned back to their preparations, but Clare kept sneaking glances at Milo. She was worried about him. About them. About leaving him behind with Piper.

  “Hey, uh … Milo?” She tried to keep her tone nonchalant. “Um …” She cast around for something to say. “Oh! I know— did any other pictures load up from the camera card? I mean, maybe I actually wrote something helpful at some point.”

  “I’ll check,” Milo said, taking out the machine and flipping it open. His fingers slid back and forth across the touch pad for a few long moments before he finally swore under his breath and slammed a fist down on the countertop.

  “The files are corrupted,” he said. “After the first two pictures, the rest are scrambled. Damn it!”

  “No!” Clare leaned over his shoulder. “I thought you said the Falderall cage would protect the camera!”

  “Faraday,” he corrected. “And it did. The camera worked fine. It took pictures. The image files are here, they’re on the card … the computer just can’t read them for some reason. I guess I’m not totally surprised. After all, this memory card was hidden in the back of Morholt’s diary for almost two thousand years.”

  “But … if the data is still there,” Al chewed on her lip, frowning, “there must be a way to retrieve it. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  Milo thought for a minute. “I know a guy.”

  “Of course you do.”

  He half-smiled at his tech-obsessed cousin. “It’s going to take data recovery software, but I think it’s possible, so I’ll put in a call to my guy.”

  “You mean the mysterious, amoral Dan?” Clare raised an eyebrow. “He of the hacking and the classified information and the lack of scruples where passing it on is concerned?”

  Milo shrugged. “He’s only slightly amoral.”

  “Please be careful,” Clare sighed. “I don’t trust guys like that.”

  “He’s not exactly Stuart Morholt. It’ll be all right,” Milo assured them. “As soon as we’re done at the Tor, Piper and I will drive straight back to London. And while Dan’s at it, I’ll get him to help me figure out where the island in the photo is so we can get there in time to meet you.”

  “But how—”

  “Same way I found Boudicca’s burial mound,” Milo said. “Computers, topographical know-how, good old-fashioned guesswork.”

  “Three days isn’t a lot of time.”

  “We’ll be there, Clare. Trust me.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I do. And we’ll be there, too.”

  “I know. You already were.”

  She held his gaze for a long moment until she thought she might not ever be able to look away. “Okay …” She blinked rapidly and paced around to the other side of the table before she did something embarrassing. Then Clare realized there was something else that needed to happen before they went.

  “Al … Remember the thing we did in grade school? With our thumbs and the safety pins?”

  “Yeah. We pricked our thumbs, tied them together, and swore an oath of eternal sisterhood,” Al said, grimacing. “And your mom almost had a conniption.”

  “Good times.” Clare nodded. “I think you and Piper should do the same thing. In case anything happens to me, or we get separated or something. Then Piper will still be able to call you home.”

  “Yeah, no.” Al shook her head. “For one thing, I’ll faint.”

  “You won’t faint.”

  “I almost fainted the first time. And for another thing? No way.” Al crossed her arms over her chest. “Nothing is going to ‘happen’ to you and we’re not going to get separated.”

  “Look—I know that. You know that. The scathach and the Romans? They don’t know that. I’m contingency-ing. And I’m not taking no for an answer. No thumb prick, no shimmer.”

  When Al hesitated, Piper rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t be such a baby. Clare’s already stabbed me in the thumb once and I promise I don’t have cooties.”

  “Fine,” Al muttered and glared at her thumb as if it were treasonous.

  Piper stifled a grin. “I’ll go get the sewing kit and rubbing alcohol.”

  Once the pricking, binding, and band-aiding was accomplished, Clare headed to the back room where Milo had been wrapping her digital camera in layers of foil. He held up a roll of heavy tape and Clare tentatively lifted her shirt high enough for him to attach the little silver packet to her abdomen.

  “You … uh … you could probably just carry it in your bag,” Milo said, a faint hint of pink colouring his cheeks. “I mean … I already took out the batteries and wrapped it up pretty well and—”

  “Sure,” Clare said. “I could. But better safe than sorry, right— Eep!” she yelped at the chill touch of the foil against her skin. A shiver ran up her spine as Milo pressed the tape along the sides of her ribs.

  “Are you going to be okay with this?” he asked. “I mean, when you get there?”

  “Sure.” Clare grimaced, shifting uncomfortably. “It’ll be just like ripping off a band-aid. I’ll make Al do it. I’ll bite down on a stick.”

  “I meant with all of it.” He stared down at Clare over the rim of his glasses as she tugged her shirt back down.

  “I’ll apply the same principle to all situations.”

  “‘Make Al do it and bite down on a stick?’” Milo raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s your strategy?”

  “Yup!”

  “I can’t argue with sound reasoning.” Milo sighed and held up a small, neatly folded piece of paper. “Here,” he said. “I drew a rudimentary map of Norfolk and the approximate area near Snettisham where Celtic treasure hoards have been found—including the one that contained the Great Torc. In case the opportunity arises to return it there.”

  Clare nodded and tucked the map into a pocket of her jacket. “It will,” she said.

  A long moment of silence passed between them, and then Milo shuffled back a step or two and reached into the back pocket of his jeans.

  “I didn’t have time to wrap this or anything,” he said, “but I wanted to give you something before you left. A … a good luck charm, I guess.”

  He held up a delicate silver boxchain and a little silver pendant in the shape of a traditional Celtic knot. An unending, twisty spiral that could very well represent Clare’s entire summer vacation to that point.

  “Piper helped me pick it out from the shop’s collection.”

  “I … oh.” Clare blinked at the necklace through a sudden spangle of wetness on her lashes. “It’s perfect,” she said and smiled up at him as he fastened it around her neck.

  Clare hesitated for a moment then stood on tiptoes and kissed him, only to find herself suddenly tangled in a fierce embrace that made the foil taped to her body crinkle. Milo kissed her back with such intensity that she could feel her lips start to tingle. When he finally let go of her they both staggered back a step, dizzy and gasping. Clare reached up and closed her fingers around the pendant.

  “For luck,” she said.

  “Not that you’ll need it.”

  “Right.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Milo said. “You always are. And you’ll have Allie with you.”

  “Right. And you’ll have Piper.” Clare paused and bit her lip. “Um. I mean, Goggles. She’ll be with you, I mean …”

  Milo tilted his head and took another step back so that he could look into Clare’s eyes. He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “You should,” he said gently. “And you should maybe give a bit of thought to trusting Piper, too. She’s got just as much at stake in this, remember. Maybe more. And she’s already proven herself as your homing beacon. Give her a chance to do it again.”

  “I don’t have much choice,” Clare grumbled.

  “And speaking of chances,” Milo said, tactfully
ignoring Clare’s grumble, “don’t take any. Be. Careful.”

  “I will if you will.”

  “Deal.” He lifted her hand and then turned it over so that he could drop a kiss in the centre of her palm. Clare was torn between giggling and gasping at the sensation.

  “Oy.” Piper took that inopportune moment to round the corner and interrupt them. “Break it up, you two. Sun’s finally going down. Time to head for the hill.”

  Clare and Milo followed her into the front room of the shop where Maggie and Al waited. Clare walked over to her aunt, who wordlessly folded her into a hug that was brief, fierce, businesslike, and heartfelt all at once. Then Maggie pushed Clare to arm’s length. “Right. Off you all go then. I’ll keep the candle in the window, so to speak.”

  “Right.” Clare nodded. “Just make sure the curtains don’t catch fire.”

  8

  The shadow of the tower on Glastonbury Tor moved across the summit’s scrubby turf, marking the passage of time like a giant sundial arrow.

  Clare had suggested they do the shimmering at the top, just in case her power needed an extra boost to get them back to where they were supposed to go. Where that was, Clare had repeatedly assured Allie, she hadn’t the freaking foggiest notion; moreover, she didn’t seem too bothered by that.

  Allie, for her part, was trying hard not to hyperventilate. She wanted this. She’d advocated for this. Raged and whined and gotten her very first brandy hangover for this. She could do this. She could.

  I can.

  “I’m ready.” She stalked over to where Clare stood talking to Milo. “Are you ready? We should get re—”

  “We’re ready, Al.”

  “Right.”

  Clare turned back to Milo. “So tell me again how you’re going to figure out where to meet us?” She adjusted her bag, tightening the strap across her torso so that it nestled snugly against her side. “I mean, what if those first two pictures are the only ones you manage to retrieve from the memory card? And why didn’t I give you better instructions? I made a joke in the first picture! A lame joke.” She huffed in annoyance. “What was I thinking?”

  “You were thinking, ‘According to the digital information stored on the memory card from my camera, this is what I wrote on the sign in the first picture,’” Milo said. “And so that’s what you wrote.”

  “But—”

  “He’s got you there,” Allie said.

  “But—”

  “That’s what you wrote, Clare.” Milo interrupted her protest. “No experimenting with changing the message, okay? I won’t be a happy mapmaker if I find myself in an alternate universe where apes rule the planet, or Mr. Spock has an evil goatee, or Superman’s spaceship landed in Russia instead of Kansas.”

  “Okay, okay!” Clare raised her hands in surrender. “I promise. No apes, no goatees, no Siberian crash landings. I’ll be a good little monkey.”

  “I know you will.” He glanced over at Allie. “And you’ll take care of my cousin while you’re at it.”

  “Right around the same time she’s taking care of me,” Clare said, sharing a sideways eye roll with Allie.

  Milo suddenly reached out and grabbed them both by the hands. “I love you guys. You know that, right?”

  Clare sputtered and turned fire-engine red. Allie saved her by punching Milo on the shoulder and snorting. “Dude.”

  Over by the Tor’s stone tower, Piper slumped into a nonchalant pose and ambled over, hands stuffed in the pockets of her slouchy cargo pants, the ponytail wings of her pale hair fanning out behind her. Allie remembered Piper’s ghostly owl manifestation that had called them home and shivered a bit. She wondered if her own spectral appearances as a raven resembled her as closely. “So!” Clare clapped her hands together loudly, making them all jump. “Let’s do this thing.”

  Allie glanced around. Tourism looked as though it had been pretty sparse on the Tor that afternoon, and as a last, lingering couple headed to the path back to town and a refreshing pint in a pub, she and the rest of the Time Monkey Gang stepped en masse through one of the tower’s arches and into the cool dimness of its ancient interior. The swatch of sky overhead was shading from crystal blue to reddish purple as the sun drifted toward the horizon. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen.

  Not even the hint of a breeze.

  Birdsong distinctly lacking …

  Allie shook off a sudden feeling of foreboding and stood patiently as Piper tied her and Clare’s hands tightly together with an absurdly long silk novelty scarf they’d brought from the shop.

  “It’s patterned to resemble the Tom Baker scarf, so I’d appreciate it if you managed to bring it back intact,” Piper said.

  “Who?” Clare asked.

  When Piper and Milo shared a laugh at Clare’s non-nerdly expense, explaining that the iconic scarf had been worn by “Who” indeed—Doctor Who, of course—Clare got a look on her face that was equal parts embarrassment and annoyance, with (Allie thought she could detect) a subtle current of raging insecurity running beneath.

  Allie bristled and almost intervened. It was one thing for her and Milo to poke geeky fun at Clare. That was allowed. But a girl they barely knew who dressed like a steampunk anime character, grocked Spock talk, and knew that a Dalek exclaiming “Exterminate!” wasn’t referring to a household termite problem? Not so much. Especially when Clare was about to leave her boy-genius boyfriend all alone in easy reach of Piper’s fingerless-gloved mitts. Allie glanced surreptitiously over at her cousin just to see if he’d noticed Clare’s not-okayness. He had not. Instead, he and Piper were doing a last-minute time-travel stand-up routine as Piper finished tying Clare and Allie together.

  “What do we want?” she asked.

  “Time travel!”

  “When do we want it?”

  “That’s irrelevant!”

  Goggles giggled and Milo pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned. At which point Allie suspected Clare might be debating the wisdom of leaving Milo with a cute girl whose geekish tendencies were so obviously knit from the same ball of wool. Allie, for her part, wasn’t worried. She’d sensed that a tension had built up between Clare and her cousin in her absence … but no. Milo’d had fierce Clare yearnings far too long for them to fade in the Green Lanternesque light of another girl. Not that she trusted Piper Gimble. Piper seemed kind of lonely. Or maybe it was just that she was a loner. Well, whatever she was … it was something to worry about after Goggles brought them home safe in one piece. Or rather two pieces. Her and Clare.

  Three pieces, Allie’s brain corrected her snappishly. You, Clare, and Marcus.

  Right. She shook her head. Eyes on the prize.

  Her very own, distinctly geeky prize.

  She fervently hoped she was right. And that Mark O’Donnell really, really did want to come home. Allie could feel a sheen of sweat break out on her brow as she withdrew the ancient silver coin from her pocket and held it out to Clare.

  Why is this time so nerve-racking? she wondered.

  Because it’s different. There’s stuff. Hanging in the balance. There’s Marcus.

  The coin glinted dully in the fading light.

  “Right,” Clare said, her hand hovering over Allie’s palm. “In for a penny …”

  “In for a pounding,” Al muttered.

  Clare hesitated and shot her a look. “Okay, pal,” she said. “Now or never.”

  “Right. Now. Now and for never,” Allie stammered back.

  The coin had been cool to the touch … until Clare came into contact with it. Then it sparked with a metaphysical heat and Allie felt it vanish from her hand. More accurately, she felt her hand vanish from around the coin—as if the coin had fallen through a hole in her palm. But then that feeling was washed away by an overwhelming sensation of plunging into a giant glass of cosmically charged ginger ale. She watched Clare’s eyes go saucer-wide and heard herself yelp—a tiny mousenoise sound lost in the shimmering—as stars burst all around them, exploding into firecracker sp
arks, and the world and the tower at the top of the Tor fell away.

  So did the Tor.

  And the rest of terra firma.

  Moments later, Clare and Allie hit the deck of a Roman sailing ship as it crested a massive ocean wave. And that right there almost ended their shimmer trip before it had even begun.

  “CLARE!”

  She heard Al scream her name as she hit the heaving, sea-spray-slick planking, landing hard on knees and elbows and tumbling out of control toward the outer rail. Clare hit the side boards just as the deck dropped sickeningly beneath her, the ship nosediving into the trough between two massive waves. Arms and legs flailing, she pitched over the low rail and spun through the air, heading for the boiling grey cauldron of ocean below.

  Clare’s own scream added a discordant harmony as she felt her hand slip out of Al’s grasping fingers. But the knot in the silk scarf binding them together held—barely—and Clare jerked to a sudden stop in mid-air. She felt as if her shoulder had been half ripped from its socket as she dangled above the angry churning waters, struggling and kicking her feet. With the scarf tightening painfully around her wrist, Clare hung there like bait on a fish hook, thrashing and trying desperately to reach up with her free hand to grab the rail or a rope or anything.

  In the depths of her full-on panic, she was dimly aware of voices crying out over the crashing waves and the howling winds that filled the blue-and-white-striped sail that billowed and snapped above her.

  “Clare!” Al shouted again. “Hang on!”

  “I’m trying!” Clare yelled back, her own voice screechy with pain and fear. She really was. But she knew she was slipping and that any moment she’d fall into the sea and sink below the waves.

  I’m going to die.

  “Da mihi manum!” a harsh, deep voice suddenly hollered from above.

  I don’t know what that means …

  “Give him your hand!” Al urged frantically.

  “Wh—”

  Clare couldn’t lift her head to see who “him” was, but with her last ounce of strength she threw her free arm up and scrambled with her sneakered feet to try and climb just that few inches higher up the side of the ship. She felt herself falling back toward the water when, with a sudden, shocking jolt, the calloused grasp of an iron-fingered hand suddenly clamped around her wrist, viselike and bruising. Clare gasped at the familiar lightning-bolt sensation of physical contact with someone in the past—and got a lungful of sea spray as she lurched upward as if she’d just bounced off a trampoline. Then she flew, arms and legs windmilling, through the dark, salt-damp air to land hard on her shoulder.