Every Never After Read Free

forever.
    He’d done it for Clare.
    Since that time, Clare and Milo had been almost as inseparable as Milo and Connal had been—although in a much less scarymystical-rampaging-Druid sort of way. Clare had initially worried that Milo’s feelings for her might have been a byproduct of all theexcitement—even though Al had repeatedly, eye-rollingly assured her that he’d been pretty much crushing on her since he was a kid. But Milo seemed just as keen on spending as much time together as possible as she did. And so the thought of being separated from him for any length of time, so near the end of her summer tenure in Britain and just when they were on the verge of becoming … whatever it was they were on the verge of becoming, was a downside. Even though Clare totally understood that Milo had a job to do in London and he couldn’t just up and go gallivanting around the Somerset countryside on a whim.
    Milo made maps. Complex digital maps for the Ordnance Survey, Britain’s venerable mapmaking agency. Somehow, Milo made mapmaking sexy. Clare couldn’t quite wrap her head around that fact, but as a girl who’d recently discovered that she could mystically travel into the distant past, Clare was willing to just roll with things. Most things. It was easier that way.
    As she crouched down over the duffle bags to double-check she’d packed everything, Clare came across the heavy canvas work gloves her aunt had given her. They were purple and red tartan, a tiny bird with a red rhinestone eye embroidered on each cuff. A raven. Maggie had special-ordered a custom-made pair for each of the girls. Al’s were exactly the same as Clare’s—except her tartan was black and grey—and she was just as thrilled that Maggie had been so thoughtful. Well, in Al’s case it might have been thoughtful. In Clare’s, it was care ful. The merest touch of Clare’s bare skin against an ancient artifact could—and had, on more than one occasion—send her tumbling through a vortex to wind up back in the past. Hence the gloves. And long-sleeved T-shirts.
    Maggie had witnessed firsthand her niece’s astonishing abilities and knew the potentially dire consequences. But, Clare suspected, Maggie also recognized that, for the first time in Clare’s young life, Clare was actually engaged—mentally, emotionally, one hundred percent invested in learning about something that didn’t come from a magazine or a mall—and Maggie, in her understated British sort of way, couldn’t be more thrilled. She really seemed towant this for Clare. And Clare sure as hell wanted it for herself. She wanted to do this. And she could do this.
    Couldn’t she?
    “What are you frowning about?” Al asked, misinterpreting why Clare was suddenly staring so intently at her gloves. “Glastonbury is a tourist town. There’s bound to be at least one nail salon in a five-mile radius of the place.”
    “Well then I’ll be fine,” Clare snorted and stuffed the gloves back into her gear bag, ignoring the chill that had just crawled up her spine. “But unless you packed your own supply of Midnight Matrix Glossy Black, your manicure is toast, pal.”
    Al’s standard mode of couture fell on the techno-ninja side of things—sleek and dark-hued. It had started out in middle school as a kind of silent rebellion against her mother’s arty-farty, elegant-whacko bohemian style. Clare was never sure if the rebellion had worked or not—it was so hard to tell what, if anything, Mrs. McAllister noticed about her daughter—but Al had grown into the look and now wore it like a second skin over her own alabaster-pale flesh. And the dark hair made her grey eyes look super cool and mysterious. Clare had been briefly amused, wondering how Al was going to cope with the required sunhat. But then Al had surprised her by doffing a beat-up, black suede cowboy hat with a hand-rolled brim and silver-coin band that somehow not only worked with her streamlined black attire but actually