Now and for Never (27 page)

Oh would you stop?! He is not.

“It doesn't matter.”

Connal's voice jarred Clare from her momentary meltdown and for a second she thought he was talking about Milo and Piper. She shook her head, forcing herself to pay attention to
what the handsome Druid prince was saying. His expression was clearing, and as the shadows disappeared from his gaze, Clare's worries went with them.

“We are here,” he said. “Now. And Mallora was emphatic that we must contact Milo there. Then.”

Connal could reach out through time, he said, through scrying. But only if Milo was open to the attempt, and Connal didn't know how they could ascertain that before making the attempt. Pushback from an unsuspecting Milo could be dangerous for both of them.

“Wait!” Clare said. “This scrying thing sounds kind of like a mystical Skype session, right? Okay, I think I have an idea.”

The two Iceni stared at her blankly as Clare furiously thought it through. All she had to do was somehow get a message to Milo that he should answer Connal's “call” when it came through. Like texting someone who screened their calls to let them know to pick up. And Clare could do that via her digital camera. Couldn't she? It was kind of a whacky idea—and she really wished Al was there to first endorse and then assist in said whackiness—but it was worth a shot, so to speak. With no Al around, Marcus and his inferior understanding of modern technology would have to stand in. Clare would have asked Morholt, but she didn't trust him enough to hand over her precious digital camera.

Clare crouched down beside her pack and pulled out the camera, passing it to a bemused Marcus. Then she dug around for her Sharpie and another scrap of sailcloth she'd hastily cut from the ship's stack. With hardly any cloth left, she had to be succinct in her instructions. Finally she looked up. Connal was standing beside the dark mirror of the cave's spring pool. He would use the surface of the water as his scrying glass.

“I am ready,” he said when he saw Clare looking over at him.

“Oh. Uh. Yeah. Right …”

She was trying not to blush or stare too obviously at Connal's bare, really very
awfully
nice chest. But then she thought of Milo—picturing him in a likewise shirtless and symbol-festooned state—and realized that all those drooly sorts of thoughts really
were
reserved for Milo, and Milo alone.

“Right,” she said again. “Ready. We're ready. I sure hope
he
is …”

She sent out a silent mental apology to Milo for what she was about to inflict on him—again—two thousand-ish years in the future, and walked over to stand beside Connal with the scrap of canvas she'd prepared.

Her scrawl read:

Go look in the mirror. Now!

She frowned at it, and then added in parentheses:

(sorry! really sorry!)

The planes of Connal's face were relaxed in the soft light from the torch Comorra held. Clare stepped beside him and held up the sign. On cue Marcus raised Clare's camera to one eye, squinting through the tiny viewfinder window.

“No, no,” Clare said. “Use the display screen to frame the shot. It's much easier.”

“Ah.” Marcus lowered the camera and frowned at the glowing image. He fiddled a bit with the buttons and then raised the camera in front of his face again, holding it further out this time.

“You sure you know what you're doing?” Clare asked. “Is the flash on? We have to make sure the patterns show up clearly—”

“
Yes.
It's on. I'm doing everything you told me to. I'll get the shot.”

“Okay … okay,” Clare said and turned to Connal. “This is probably going to be a little weird for you. There'll be a bright flash—sort of like lightning—but don't freak out, it's harmless.”

“I trust you, Clarinet,” he said, looking at her with those deep green eyes.

Clare swallowed and nodded. And held up her sign. “Now, Marcus.”

To his credit, Connal didn't freak out. Then again, he was a Druid prince and a fearless warrior who'd helped craft powerful blood curses. He'd been perfectly willing to participate in a ritual that would end with him both dead in a bog and mystically travelling the astral planes. On the specialeffects scale, he could handle something as low-rent as a camera flash.

His only reaction was to squeeze his eyes shut and rock back a step.

In the darkness that followed the magnesium flare, all was silent. Still. Collectively they held their breath as time seemed to spiral out from that one point in the universe.

Okay,
Clare thought,
so … now what?

Mallora had said they needed a conduit—a connection— between Milo and Connal, but Clare was a little foggy on how that would happen. The last time—when she'd carried the Druid prince's spirit forward through time, housed in one of Llassar's magical creations; a silver wrist cuff that, when Milo wore it, transferred Connal's consciousness to Milo's brain—it hadn't been a connection so much as a hostile takeover.

And it wasn't a situation Clare could duplicate this time around, even if she'd wanted to. So, really, a preliminary conversation between the two boys had seemed in order. But Clare wasn't sure where Milo would be if/when he got her photo note (assuming he'd even been able to descramble the rest of the digital picture files), or whether he'd have access to
a nice quiet bowl of water, or how she'd explain to him why he'd need one. But mirrors were plentiful in the twenty-first century, right? Okay then. So that's what she'd written.

And now … what?

She and Marcus exchanged a glance. He seemed to be nearing the absolute rope-end of his patience when it came to postponing the Al hunt for the sake of Druid Shenanigans. But suddenly Connal grunted in pain and surprise and dropped like a stone to his hands and knees, leaning over the glassy surface of the pool.

Every muscle in his body was rigid with tension. And the face that stared up at him from the depths of the dark water … wasn't his.

“Holy smoke!” Clare exclaimed.
“Milo …?”

The image spread outward, clarifying and resolving.

It was Milo all right.

With Goggles the antiquarian's arms wrapped around him in a tight embrace.

18

E
ver since the picture of Allie and the creatures descrambled, Milo had been sick with worry. There were still two files that Dan's program had yet to wrestle into submission— Milo didn't know if it ever would—and the uncertainty was tying him in knots. Piper had tried in vain to either rationalize the images or take his mind off them as together they had boarded the little prop plane that would take them from Halifax to Entry Island, along with a couple of rock-climbing enthusiasts out for a day of cliff rappelling, a crab fisherman, a lobster fisherman, and a plain old fish fisherman.

Even the spectacular scenery as they approached the tiny jewel of an island failed to ease Milo's tension. And it was spectacular. Unspoiled and so beautiful, Île-d'Entrée seemed practically enchanted. Locked away from the rest of the world, a hallowed, special place.

Once they'd set themselves up in the rustic little house they rented to use as a base of operations, Piper declared loudly that she was bloody well going to make Milo a bloody cup of tea if he so much as opened the bloody screen on that bloody machine in the next fifteen bloody minutes.

The threat of yet more tea was almost enough to distract him.

But then came the
ping
and Milo dove across the room, flipping open his laptop before Piper could squawk out a
protest. The third-last image on the camera roll had finally shifted its pixels into a coherent whole. Milo's gaze fastened unblinkingly upon it … and the wood-panelled walls of the cottage began to spin.

An overwhelming sensation that he was staring into a mirror hit him like a brick.

Only he wasn't.

The face in the picture wasn't his. Wasn't even vaguely similar.

The eyes were green, the hair long and tied back, a rich shade of auburn. Tanned skin, high forehead, and sharp cheekbones above a wide mouth that looked just as likely to snarl a warning as smile a welcome. No glasses, no blue eyes, no blond hair, a completely different jawline. And yet …

It's me.

And yet …

A moment of disorientation was followed by a stabbing pain at what felt like the very centre of his brain. Milo opened his mouth in a silent scream and clutched at his temples. Then he heard it. The voice.

Holy shit,
he thought distantly through the pain,
not this dude again!

It's him. Connal.

And as the name formed in his mind, a gaping hole opened up there, too.

The young man on the screen stood shirtless and with his arms held out to his sides, his skin painted with the swirling patterns of Celtic magical symbols.

“Oh god …” Milo groaned. “Not again.”

Still, he realized he wasn't entirely surprised. Connal was a part of him now. Just as he was, it seemed, a part of the Druid prince. Milo had all the memories of what had happened in the life that Connal—the Connal in those pictures—had never lived. He wondered how he'd keep those memories from
flooding back into the mind of the Druid prince. Memories of Comorra dead. The world Connal had known, gone. Nothing left but smoke and ashes. Memories of the madness that had followed …

With an effort of sheer, desperate will, Milo wrenched his focus away from the face of the young man. And on to the face of the girl standing beside him. Holding a sign. Her hair was a wild tangle, her face pale, made paler by the camera flash. And her eyes were sparkling with excitement and apologetic at the same time. Milo read the message Clare had scrawled and lurched up off the couch to stagger over to the mirror hanging over a little table in the cottage's front hall.

“Milo!” Piper cried out suddenly from the kitchenette, and Milo heard the shattering of a cup on the floor. “Bloody hell!”

In a flash she was across the room with her arms wrapped around him, trying to help him stay on his feet and frantically asking what was wrong. He ignored her as he felt his jaw wrenching open in a silent cry of denial. Then he fell forward, toward the hall mirror, bracing himself with rigid arms against the wall and staring at his reflection. It dimmed and flickered … and then vanished. The mirror went dark, like the inside of a cave.

And then a living, breathing image of Connal the Druid prince wavered into view.

Clare was there, crouched over Connal's shoulder and staring wide-eyed. Milo could see the glint of torchlight shining off the silver pendant he'd given her.

“Holy smoke!
Milo …?
” she exclaimed.

Milo could hear her voice clearly, but it was as if he was listening with someone else's ears. Which, he supposed, he kind of was.

“Hey … Clare de Lune …,” he ground out between his teeth, having clenched his jaw tightly shut to keep it from unhinging
with the silent scream that had overtaken him moments before. “How's life on the island?”

“Weird! Cool!” Clare blurted breathlessly. “Why is Goggles hugging you?”

“I'm not!” Piper snatched her hands away and Milo almost dropped to the floor.

“Gah! Grab him!” Clare exclaimed.

“But … I … bloody hell!” Piper sputtered and wrapped an arm around him again.

Clare leaned forward. “Milo—you'll never guess who we ran into! Except, uh, maybe you will, because you're wearing his face right now. Or he's wearing yours … oh … this is so strange.”

“You're telling me,” Milo grunted, trying not to hyperventilate.

“Are you okay?”

“I have no idea.” He shook his head and, in the reflection, Connal's head shook with it. “I mean … we're mystically teleconferencing over a distance of almost two thousand years and every atom in my body feels like it's trying to go in a different direction. Does that classify as okay?”

“Not sure if that's the technical term, but it sounds pretty standard considering the circumstances,” Clare said. “Milo … do you know where we are?”

Milo started to laugh a little raggedly. “Yeah,” he said. “I do. Dunno how you ladies did it, but you're definitely across the pond.”

Clare's eyes went a bit wide, but then she nodded. “We thought we might be … Where exactly did we end up?”

“Little plot of land in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” Milo said. “It's called Entry Island—”

“And we only just arrived ourselves!” Piper blurted. “I was making tea!”

Clare blinked at her. “That's nice …”

A jolt of something that felt like an electric shock shot through Milo, up his spine and right down into his fingertips. He clenched his hands into fists and Piper had to grab him tightly again so that he wouldn't topple over. In the mirror, Milo saw that Connal reacted similarly. The magic felt like a swift-flowing river moving just under the surface of his skin. The Druid prince turned and spoke haltingly to Clare in words Milo's ears didn't recognize but his brain thought it might understand if only he could concentrate …