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angry.
    â€œDoing what?”
    â€œArguing like this.” Al’s disappointment at suddenly losing an ally was stark on her face.
    â€œBecause,” Milo said, “Clare’s really the only one who gets to wear the expert hat in this situation.” He glanced over at Clare. “She’s right. It’s just getting too damned dangerous and way too damned complicated. And Clare’s the shimmerer. The rest of us are … incidental.”
    Clare heard the dull hurt in his voice and her heart clenched a little.
    â€œShe doesn’t want you going back,” he continued. “Neither do I.”
    Al shook her head. “Mi—”
    â€œ No, Allie.” Milo’s eyes blazed. “We’re not continuing this discussion. Not now. Not tonight.”
    In a tense pause, the two of them engaged in a staring contest. A silent battle of McAllister wills. Finally Milo turned away, shaking his head.
    â€œIt’s almost not even night anymore,” he said quietly. “The sun will be up in a few hours and none of us is in any kind of fit mental state to discuss this calmly or rationally. Especially not you.”
    â€œHe’s right.” Piper sighed wearily. “I think we should all turn in.”
    Clare nodded. “We can meet tomorrow at the Rifleman for breakfast and decide what to do from here. Okay, Al?”
    Al stuck out her bottom lip mutinously but then got up slowly. Milo shrugged into an old windbreaker Piper held out for him, zipping it up over his bare, still faintly blue chest so that he could walk the girls to their B&B in the chillypre-dawn darkness without raising any eyebrows. The fact that Al was still dressed for an upscale toga party would be hard enough to explain, should they meet any passersby on the short walk back to the Avalon Mists. Which they probably wouldn’t. Glastonbury was a quiet little town and most of its inhabitants were sensibly asleep at that time of night, not having just experienced a mystical spatio-temporal anomaly atop the town’s beloved molehill.
    WITH AL SAWING LOGS on top of the covers and still wrapped in her stola, Clare walked Milo out to the B&B’s little courtyard. She looked up into his face. In the moonlight the hint of blond stubble on his chin was almost silvery, the planes of his cheekbones carved with deep shadows. His normally placid blue gaze was the colour of a stormy sea.
    â€œWhat if it was you?” she asked quietly.
    â€œWhat if what was me?”
    â€œStuck back there. Like Marcus.”
    â€œIt’s not the same.” He shook his head. “And I’m not like him.”
    â€œI know that.” Clare crossed her arms, hugging herself against the cold. “You don’t run around in skirts and sandals following silly orders and oppressing the indigenous populace. But … what if ? I mean, what if it was you who’d gotten trapped?”
    â€œThen I’d have to deal with it.” Milo shrugged. “And I wouldn’t expect you to come after me, even though I know you probably would.” He sighed deeply. “Clare … Allie barely even knows this guy. And he was born in the seventies . He’s way too old for her!”
    â€œYou’re kidding, right?”
    â€œYes,” Milo said. “Sort of. But think about it. You saw him. He’s a soldier in the Roman army, and a pretty well-acclimatizedone at that. He has a life there. Then. It’s not like we’ve left him in a place where he can’t take care of himself. Where he hasn’t built himself some kind of rewarding existence.”
    â€œRewarding?” Clare asked sardonically, remembering what the Roman camp looked like the last time she’d seen it. “I’d say more like flammable.”
    Milo went silent, his gaze boring into her, intense and troubled.
    â€œClare …” he said finally. “You know you scare the hell out of me, right?”
    â€œI