Once Every Never Part 4

"I'm a.s.suming by 'normal' you mean still utterly untouched by intellectual curiosity. Well, thank Heaven, I suppose. I haven't a notion as to what I'd tell your parents ..." As always, the sarcasm dripped in jolly gobs from Maggie's words. "All right, girls. The installation consult is taking a bit longer than expected. Clare, if I give you cab fare, can you and Alice manage to find your way back to the flat?"

"No!"

Maggie's eyebrows shot toward her hairline. "No?"

"I mean, yeah. Of course we can," Clare amended. "But it's okay. We don't need cab fare, Mags."

"You don't."

"No." Clare turned and gave Al a look. "Al was going to call her cousin to come get her, and I'm sure he can drop me off on the way. Right, Al?"

"Uh ... right."

Maggie eyed her niece with thinly veiled skepticism. "No detours, no stopovers, no 'retail therapy,' no random shenanigans?"

"None of the above." Clare drew an X over her heart.

"All right then. I'll be home in time for dinner. Shall I pick up a curry on the way?"

"Sure. Make it b.u.t.ter chicken and I'll love you forever." Clare stood and gave her aunt a hug. "You're the best, Mags."

"I know, dear." Maggie patted her fondly on the back and turned to leave. "Stay out of mischief, you two," she said over her shoulder as she went.

With a sigh of relief, Clare turned back to find Al staring at her, her head tilted to one side.

"What?"

"Nothing. I'm just impressed by your ability to mult.i.task," Al mused, a half-smile ticking at the corner of her mouth. "With everything that's happened to you today, you've still got Milo on the brain."

"I figure it this way," Clare said dryly, plucking Al's cell phone up off the table and handing it to her. "Now that I've crossed 'Paranormal Phenomenon' off my life-experience todo list, I might as well start working my way up to 'Close Encounter.'"

Al laughed. "Are you saying my cousin is an alien?"

"I'll let you know when I get close enough to find out."

Clare grinned at Al, but a chill crawled uncomfortably up her spine. Only a determined effort kept her gaze from straying back to the picture of the warrior queen who, even in that artist's rendition, glared so fiercely out at the world, a wrath-filled Fury, frozen forever in time.

5.

"So it's Celtic, and it's called the 'Battersea Shield' ..."

"Yes."

"But they found it in the Thames River?"

"Mm-hm."

"Then why-"

"Because they found it in the part of the Thames that runs through Battersea."

"And when-"

"Clare. Dear." Maggie straightened up abruptly from her task. "Alice's cousin didn't give you any drugs, did he?"

"What? No!" Clare jumped back, startled, from the work-table where she'd been leaning on her elbows, eating the remains of their takeaway dinner straight out of the foil container and peppering Maggie with questions. She hoped she wasn't blushing too furiously at the mere mention of Milo. Clare was still inordinately pleased with herself just for having managed to form complete sentences in his car on the way home. Geeks were not supposed to make her feel weak in the knees. And they certainly weren't about to start supplying her with illicit substances, if that's what Maggie was implying.

"I was just wondering, duckling ..." Maggie shrugged and returned to dusting the pottery shards she'd laid out on her table.

"What on earth would make you think something like that?" Clare asked.

Maggie lifted her gaze over the rim of her gla.s.ses. "You do realize that you are in my work room, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And that you have been here for some time?"

"Yeah."

Maggie put down her brush and straightened up, the arch of her eyebrow creeping skyward.

"Mags-"

"And that, during this extended tenure in what you have hitherto referred to as 'the Bas.e.m.e.nt Apartment in Downtown Deadsville,' wherein you are normally loath to set one dainty purple-painted toe, you have asked a series of questions of, dare I say it, a decidedly academic-albeit grammatically suspect-nature."

"Yeah, but-"

"Insofar as I am aware, your intellectual life has up to this point remained unsullied by queries regarding the nature of ancient archaeological artifacts."

"But-"

"I've also never observed any particularly keen interest on your part in the veracity of noted historical chronicles. Or, as you so eloquently put it, 'that Tacitus dude's story about the b.i.t.c.hin' redhead queen-chick' ..."

"I don't really talk like that, you know," Clare muttered. "And I was just wond-"

"I smell a rat."

"We are in a bas.e.m.e.nt ..."

"Clarinet." Maggie's eyes sparkled fiercely. "What in the name of St. Helen's holy underpants are you up to?"

"It's nothing. I swear!" Clare protested hotly as Maggie's eyes glittered some more. "I just ... I saw some stuff today that made me curious, okay? That's all." She pouted a bit for dramatic effect. "After all ... you're always telling me to open up my 'TV-addled' mind, y'know. I thought you might be happy ..."

Direct hit. Sunken battleship.

Maggie's stern expression melted and she stepped over to Clare, enveloping her niece in an only slightly awkward embrace. "Oh, my-oh I am! Clare, my dear, of course I'm pleased."

"Uh ... good." Clare returned the hug with a pat on her aunt's shoulder. "Cool."

"It's just that you've seemed-well-altered since this afternoon." Maggie held her at arm's length and peered into her face with genuine concern. "Are you certain you're all right?"

"I'm fine, Mags." Clare nodded solemnly. "Really."

"You know you can always come to me if you have a problem, duck." Maggie squeezed her shoulders gently and then turned briskly back to work. "Real problems, mind. I'd rather not hear sordid details about fashion gaffes or runny mascara or the uckiness that is 'the teenage boy.'"

"No sordid uckiness. I promise."

She bid her aunt a good night and headed out of the bas.e.m.e.nt workshop. At the top of the stairs she absently stuffed her hands in the front pockets of her jeans-and gasped at the feeling of cold metal pressing against the palm of her hand. The sensation cut through a sudden, dizzying vertigo that threatened to send her plunging back down the stairs to Maggie's lair. The house wavered and blurred like mist all around her and Clare felt herself starting to fade out of existence, just like back in the museum.

Before that could happen-before she felt the lightning-bolt jolt that would send her once more hurtling through time-she jerked her hand out of her pocket and out of contact with whatever was in there. Clare gripped the banister as the walls around her resolidified and the sensations of smoke and sparkling dissipated.

A cold sweat sprang up on her brow.

Panting like a scared animal, she ran through the kitchen and up the stairs to her room. Slamming the door, she pushed the bolt lock closed. Then she stripped off her jeans and hopped about with her feet caught in the pant legs, pulling one sock half-off in her haste. Wide-eyed, she grasped the jeans by the cuffs and held them upside down over the bed. A gentle shake and the metal object that Clare had felt in her pocket tumbled out and onto the pastel meadow of her floral bedspread.

"Oh G.o.d ..." Clare moaned, stricken. "I'm a kleptomaniac ..." She sank onto the bed and stared down at a round metal brooch decorated with the same kinds of swirling patterns that had adorned the bronze shield and the great golden torc in the museum.

"Great." Clare s.n.a.t.c.hed up a chiffon scarf that was hanging off her bedpost and threw it over the brooch as if covering up evidence. "Now I'm a freak and a thief."

AL'S CELL PHONE rang straight through to her voicemail.

"Al, it's Clare. Call me back. Now!"

Less than a minute later she called back again. "NOW!" Three minutes of hard staring at her phone did nothing to increase Clare's incoming call ratio. An added five minutes of pacing produced less than fruitful results. Al was obviously incommunicado. Maybe screening her calls. Probably having a good chuckle with Milo over Clare's pathetically dorky behaviour- She almost jumped out of her skin when the phone rang. Clare lurched across the room, knocking it off the side table and under the bed. She had to dive for it before it went to voicemail. Lying half under the bed, spitting at a dust bunny stuck to her lower lip, she shouted, "h.e.l.lo! Al! h.e.l.lo!"

"Clare?"

"Yes!"

"Stop shouting." It was Al. Rock solid, cuc.u.mber cool. Clare had never doubted her for a second. "What's going on? In your message you sounded like you were being attacked by rabid badgers."

"Nothing so recreational," Clare snorted. Then she poured out the details of finding the brooch and how it had almost sent her on another inexplicable time trip.

"Maggie is going to murder me when she discovers I've gone all sticky-fingers on her. My mother already has her half-convinced I'm some kind of juvie just because of that stupid party ..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Al's voice crackled with cell-phone hiss. "I don't think you stole anything."

Clare blinked at the phone for a second. "h.e.l.lo? Brooch?"

"Look, Clare, I'm telling you," Al said. "I was watching you the whole time-well, that is, when I could actually see you-and you didn't touch anything even remotely broochlike."

Clare had stopped listening. "Oh G.o.d ..." she moaned, certain of impending doom.

"Clare ... Clare! Get a grip." Al's voice finally penetrated Clare's panic fog. "Jeezus. You're gonna sprain something."

"Okay. I'm okay." Clare struggled to keep from hyperventilating. Al's reasoned tone helped. A little. "Oh G.o.d ..."

"Describe the brooch to me."

"Uh ..." Clare hesitated. She didn't even want to pull aside the scarf that covered the thing.

"You don't have to touch it," Al coaxed. "Just look at it. Tell me what it looks like."

Clare reached out, gingerly snagged a corner of the scarf, and jerked sharply, pulling the cloth away as if a venomous tarantula hid beneath. She was almost surprised to see that the object was really very pretty and not the least bit threatening. Just a little open circle of gleaming bronze, the ends flaring out as they came together-not quite touching, interrupted by a hinged, straight pin that cut across the diameter of the circle. "It's ... uh ... it's round. Ish," she said.

"'Ish'?"

"Yeah ..." Clare peered even more closely. "Not totally round, but close. Like a broken circle ..."

The whole of the design, she went on, was accented with twisting, knotted lines and a deep red stone was set at the top of the curve. Clare's words trailed off as she looked closer and closer.

"You there?"

"Yeah. Yeah ... I'm still looking. Hang on ..." Clare leaned in further, intrigued now in spite of herself. Up close there was nothing to be afraid of, it seemed. Not that she was going to touch it or anything.

"Can you tell what the design is? Does it look like anything or is it abstract?"

"Um ... well ... there's these bits that curl around and stick out like ... uh ... oh, I get it! Those are wings. It's a bird. I mean, it looks like a bird that's been all kind of stretched out and rolled up and tied into a spirally knot like a pretzel."

"A pretzel bird?"

"Yeah ... kinda. I think the stone is its eye ..."

"You're lousy at description. Look-take a pic and message it to me."

"Hang on." Clare aimed her phone's camera at the brooch and with a few clicks sent off a picture to Al.

After a moment Al's voice came back on the line. "That," she said quietly, "is cool."

"It's very cool," Clare agreed. "I stole something very cool. From the British freaking Museum."

"No, you didn't."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because it's the truth." That tone of utter a.s.surance again. "There was nothing like this on the table. Nothing."

"Well then how-"

"I have no idea. All I know is that, wherever you got that thing? It wasn't from the restoration room."