Every Never After Read Free Page B

find them!”
    The girls exchanged a glance.
    “Well. I mean, yes,” Maggie conceded, “I rather suppose they are. Still.”
    “It’s okay, Mags.” Clare grinned and piled into the back of the van, followed closely by Al. “We get it. Tally-ho. Time’s a-wastin’ and adventure waits for no girl.”

2
    A llie was awoken by a sudden, bone-shaking jolt.
    “Whoops!” Maggie yelped a bit as the van bounced on its suspension. “To the devil with these potholes!”
    Startled to full conciousness, Allie sat up and glanced around, bleary-eyed and discombobulated by the bright sunshine that poured in through the windows of the van. She’d been dreaming of darkness. A blood-red moon. And … fire. And voices. Beside her, Clare was doing exactly the same thing. Well, dreaming, anyway. Allie didn’t have the faintest idea what about. She shook off her own unease at the fleeing dream sensations and poked Clare in the arm.
    Clare snorted and rolled one eye open.
    “You’re kinda drooling a little,” Allie pointed out. Then she yawned and stretched and said, “Are we there yet?”
    “What are you, six?” Clare grinned and ran the edge of her sleeve around the corner of her mouth. “Of course we’re not there yet. We’ve only been on the road for—”
    “Here we are!” Maggie announced, pulling off onto a side road.
    “Um.”
    “You were saying?” Allie asked Clare.
    “I guess I was out longer than I thought.”
    “Me too, pal,” Allie nodded. “Guess time passes briskly in weirdo dreamland.”
    Clare glanced at her sideways. “You had a weirdo dream?”
    The way she said it made Allie glance back. “Yeah. You?”
    “Yeah …”
    “What was yours?”
    Clare hesitated for a moment and then started to say something, but Maggie was already slowing the van and turning into a parking area bustling with people.
    “Well, it’s not Bath, exactly,” Clare’s aunt said, referring to the town with the magnificent Roman ruins not too far to the north of where they were. “But it’s a good place to get your feet wet!”
    Allie snorted in amusement at the wordplay, but Clare just groaned.
    “Tell you later,” Clare said, brushing the dream chat aside.
    Allie didn’t press her on it. She had a feeling she knew the general subject matter of Clare’s dreams anyway—fifty percent Milo, fifty percent ancient Britain. And when Clare sighed a little wistfully, Allie figured there must have been at least a little Milo in there somewhere. She knew Clare was trying not to miss him already and she grinned a bit to herself, knowing something—for once—that Clare didn’t, and feeling a little smug about it.
     
    AT THE DIG SITE’S DESIGNATED STAGING AREA , their van was approached by a barrel-chested man with—Clare had a hard time not staring—an honest-to-god handlebar moustache. It was irongrey and bushy and had been waxed into curly points that stuck out an inch on either side. He also wore a pith helmet, a Nehru jacket, jodhpurs, and riding boots, with a bright red scarf tied up high on his neck. The dude looked like a safari guide or a liontamer. Or someone’s Halloween-party idea of what an archaeologist in the field should look like.
    Maggie sighed audibly as the man walked toward them from the field beyond, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel for the briefest of moments.
    “Wow,” Clare said, “that’s quite the sartorial statement.”
    “Be polite now,” Maggie muttered out of the side of her mouth. “That’s Dr. Nicholas Ashbourne. I’ve known him since I was a student at Cambridge. And yes he dresses like he thinks he’s the reincarnation of bloody Howard Carter, but he’s also top in his field, and responsible for this entire dig. The Glastonbury Initiative is his brainchild. That means he is, in effect, your boss for the next several weeks.”
    Bloody Howard Who now? Clare was about to ask, but Al had already insta-Wikipediaed. She held out her tablet to Clare, who scanned the