Every Never After (13 page)

“What are you talking about, you head case?” Allie’s anxiety had pre-empted her normally cucumber-cool demeanour. “Clare didn’t send me.
You
didn’t give her instructions. You had nothing to do with me being here at all!”

“Didn’t I? What about
this
then?” He brandished the little book he’d been writing in as if it were some sort of talisman. “It’s finally found its way into Miss Reid’s grubby little hands, hasn’t it? Mallora foresaw the whole thing, that clever girl. She promised me that it would pass down through generations of our descendants. Hand to hand, mother to daughter to granddaughter, straight down through the ages … until such time as one of them could ultimately arrange for your ridiculous chum to stumble upon it. And she was right!”

“What is that, a notebook?” Allie squinted at the thing in the dim light, not really having followed Morholt’s frothy raving. “Big whoop.”

“It’s
the
notebook, you little miscreant. The one you and your meddling monkey Bee-Eff-Eff Clare
found,
” Morholt scoffed, employing air quotes.

Wow,
Allie thought. Having his nefarious plots foiled by a couple of teenagers had really turned the guy bitter toward her demographic. Morholt ignored her head-shaking and kissed the book’s cover.

“Huzzah for acid-free paper,” he chortled. “Oh, it pays to buy quality merchandise—”

“We didn’t find that.”

He glared narrowly at her. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care what you—Wait.” Allie frowned. “What did you mean … your
descendants
?”

“Yes. Well …” Morholt stroked his goatee in a way probably meant to convey suaveness, but since the thing had grown ratty with prison neglect he only made it stick out in odd places. He didn’t seem to notice. “I
do
have a way with the ladies, you know,” he smugged. “Particularly a certain High Druidess—a very powerful sorceress—who, it just so happens, could not help succumbing to my raging charms. Also, I may have gotten her a little drunk. Or possibly it was the other way around. Really, the whole episode is a little murky—”

“Oh
gawd!
”

“—but suffice to say, there
will
be descendants. Oh yes.”

“I’m so gonna barf,” Allie groaned, thoroughly squicked out.

She involuntarily recalled his image in the photo Maggie carried and shuddered at the thought of the leather pants and pirate shirt ensemble.

“Look. I’m telling you … I’ve never seen your stupid journal,” she reiterated.

Morholt’s eye narrowed further. “But if you didn’t get here by way of
this
”—he brandished the book—“then how did you get here?”

“Beats me. All I know is that one minute I’m digging in a field and the next minute I find a skull. Then … zot.” Her hands did a little squiggly dance. “Here I am.”

Morholt’s lip twitched. “I thought Clare was the, er, zotter.”

“Yeah? You and me both.”

“Mallora doesn’t believe in leaving things to chance,” Llassar said suddenly. “This one’s—what does he call it? book?—is one path to achieving a goal. But Mallora made sure there was another. There is always a way.”

Allie stood up and moved closer to the Druid smith, crouching down in front of him and trying her best to ignore Morholt. “You mean, like a … a contingency plan?”

Llassar shrugged one muscle-bound shoulder. “I do not know the word,” he said in his quiet rumble of a voice. “But I sense that yes, we speak of the same thing. Mallora was intrigued by the things this one told her when we brought him before her in the sanctuary of Mona. What is left of it, that is … after the Romans burned the oak groves.” He tipped his chin in the direction of Morholt, who, no longer the centre of attention, was quietly simmering. “She listened to the stories he told of his time—a time when the Romans had been driven from this land—and it fired her imagination. She devised a … as you say—a plan. She seeks to bridge the gap between that realm and our own.”

Allie remembered Clare saying that Connal, her Druid hottie pal, really had no sense of the passage of great lengths of time. That he couldn’t wrap his head around concepts like the distant future. That the Druiddyn lived in the “here and now.” Well, it sounded like that was exactly what this Mallora person had in mind. Turning Glastonbury into one big “here and now” no matter where and when you were. It sounded like a terrible idea. But that wasn’t all.

“And then,” Llassar continued, “she means to send her scathach—her warrior women—out into that realm to claim it in the name of Andrasta, our goddess.”

“Oh boy …” Allie muttered. She knew all about Andrasta. Bloodthirsty, war-hungry, vengeful (probably even more so after what had befallen the Iceni people), and terrifyingly powerful: the Raven Goddess.

“That is why we are in this place. Mallora has seen to it that the Romans are trapped here. They will fight here and die here, at the foot of the Tor, spilling their blood into the soil of Ynys Wyddryn. Once enough of them are dead, the gateway will open, and the worlds will collide. Yours … and mine.”

10

C
lare had a death grip on a travel mug full of coffee when she and Milo returned to the antique shop just after eight the next morning. She hadn’t gotten a whole lot of sleep. Trying to avoid the B&B if Al wasn’t going to be there, she’d made Milo go out for dinner with her—which she was too stressed to eat, and then for a long walking tour of every Glastonbury landmark—which she’d been too stressed to pay much attention to, and then finally on a search for a late-night movie theatre—which, of course, didn’t exist in the tiny town. It had all exhausted her enough that she was finally able to go back to her room, turn her face to the wall, and catch a few brief winks.

But it had put her in a very touchy mood. And if Goggles didn’t have anything to show them that would help bring Al home, Clare was reasonably certain she’d go Defcon One on her baggypants, hyper-bespectacled ass.

The front door was once again open, and they found Goggles squirrelled away in the back room. She was perched on a stool at a workbench wearing yet another set of protective eyewear—clear safety lenses this time, with round, convex magnifying bubbles in the centre for close-up work—and her attention was focused, laserlike, on the object in front of her.

Gone was the oversized sweatshirt. Goggles wore a fitted black tank top instead, negating Clare’s earlier suspicion that she’d been hiding some sort of less-than-perfect physique. In fact, Goggles
sported a petite but annoyingly sculpted body. She still had on the same baggy cargo pants, but slung low on her hips and with a multitude of belts, they only served to emphasize her lithe figure. She wore stripy fingerless gloves that went up to her elbows and her hair, which was dyed a silvery-white shade of platinum blonde, was pulled up into two winglike ponytails high on either side of her head. What with the eyewear, she looked kind of like an anime character. The kind that nerd boys everywhere developed crushes on. Milo was a nerd boy. Clare felt herself frowning and wondered where the sweatshirt had disappeared to. And why.

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 …”