End of the Century Read Free Page B

credit card, an ATM card, four hundred and fifty-two dollars in American bills, and seventy-two cents in American coins.
    Sunglasses.
    A Ziploc bag containing various toiletries, including toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant.
    A half-dozen tampons.
    A Diamond Rio 500 Portable mp3 player, with headphones.
    Three spiral notebooks, one completely filled, one partially filled, one entirely empty.
    Four Uni-ball Vision Micro roller pens, all with purple ink.
    A vial containing 125 milligram doses of divalproex sodium, brand name Depakote, an anticonvulsant, prescribed to an Alice Jean Fell of Austin, Texas.
    That, along with the clothes she had on—leather jacket, blue jeans, eight-hole Doc Martens, and black Ramones T-shirt—was all that Alice owned in the world. And her nose ring, she supposed, if someone wanted to get technical. And the ink in her three tattoos. And the platinum filling in her left rear molar.
    â€œReason for your visit to the United Kingdom, miss?”
    Alice shifted her gaze away from the mustached Sporty Spice, trying to think of a convincing lie.
    â€œMiss?”
    The truth was, she was on a mission from God. Or she was completely batshit crazy. There wasn't much middle ground. But she was pretty sure that neither answer was likely what Sporty Spice wanted to hear, and that either answer would greatly diminish her chance of walking through the door and getting on with it.
    Alice looked up from the counter, and with a smile, said, “Pleasure?”
    Sporty Spice narrowed his eyes, pursing his lips again, making his bristly mustache stand out at all angles.
    Alice was sure that the guy thought she was a drug mule or somethinglike that. As if any drug mule worth their salt would show up to the airport with a nose ring and dyed-black hair, less luggage than most kids carried to a regular day at high school, stuffed into a backpack with the word “FUCK” scribbled in purple ink next to the carefully wrought anarchy symbol. Wouldn't she be better off wearing a sign around her neck that said, “Please give me the full body cavity search, I'm carrying drugs,” and cut out the middle man?
    An eternity later, the guy pulled out a little stamp, carefully laid Alice's passport on the counter, and after stamping it a couple of times handed it back to her.
    â€œEnjoy your visit, miss.”
    Alice stuffed all of her junk into the backpack, slung it on her shoulder, and moved on before Sporty Spice had a chance to reconsider.
    She breezed by all of the tourists and businessmen wrestling with their heavy luggage, or waiting around the carousels at baggage claim. She fished her sunglasses out, put them on, and stepped outside. It had been one hundred degrees outside and sunny when she left Austin the day before. Here, it was sixty degrees at most, about as cold as it got at night back home, this time of year, but just as sunny.
    Alice pulled a cigarette from the half-empty pack and lit it with a match from the silver vesta case her grandmother had given her just months before. Months before, she'd been Alice Fell, the girl from that accident no one liked to talk about, finishing up her junior year at Westwood High School, watching her grandmother die by inches.
    Now, she was all by herself in London, and she was on a mission.
    That, or she was completely batshit crazy. The jury was still out…

G ALAAD WAS LOST ALMOST IMMEDIATELY . Within moments of passing through the gate in the city wall, he had no earthly notion where he was or where he was going. Embarrassment and frustration rose red in his cheeks, and he struggled to seem anything but completely out of place.
    It wasn't as if Galaad was a rustic, after all. Both of his grandfathers had been born Roman citizens of Britannia. He'd studied civics, geography, and history, and his first language had been Latin. He was a devout follower of Christ, duly baptized, and while the Church in Rome might reject Galaad's sect of Pelagianism