Now and for Never Read Online Free PDF Page B

the light switch on the wall. A soft gold glow filled the room and Milo stood, panting with sudden fear, in front of the mirror. There was nothing. He twisted and turned, examining every inch of his back and chest and arms in his reflection. Here and there he could still make out faint remaining traces of glitter from the eye makeup he’d substituted for traditional Druid woad. But no more than that. The designs were gone.
    It’s your imagination, idiot …
    He closed his eyes and recalled the sensation of Clare redrawing the markings that had become smudged when she’d football-tackled him through the temporal portal and into the past. Her fingertips on his skin, a wry glint of mischief in her eyes as she dragged the blue paint along his ribs. It amazed Milo how Clare could maintain a sense of humour when the world around her was burning to the ground. How she could just sort of roll with things. Even when the going got weird— and it really did—she managed somehow not to collapse. Not to lose it.
    The Raven watches over her …
    Yeah? Is that a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?
    Cursed and Blessed are two sides of the same coin.
    Right. I knew you were gonna say something like … wait. Who am I talking to …?
    Milo took his glasses off and stared at himself in the mirror.
    The eyes that stared back at him were leached of all colour by the room’s dim yellow light. They looked dark, almost black, not like his eyes at all. The sharp shadows under his cheeks and the growth of stubble on his chin made him look harder, older than usual. As if he’d seen things and done things he hadn’t.
    But Connal had.
    Connal the Druid warrior prince.
    Clare had been horrified when she realized that vestiges of the young Druid’s consciousness were still floating around, trapped in Milo’s mind.
    â€œHe’s still in your head, isn’t he?” she’d asked him. “Connal?”
    It wasn’t as if he was possessed or something. Not anymore. But there were … things. Knowledge. Secrets. Magic …
    Power.
    Yeah, he thought to himself. Power that you will never again have the opportunity to use. And that’s the way it should be. You have what you need. You have her.
    The dream girl of his geek heart. Clare de Lune. And he would keep her, because he would keep her safe—by not messing around with any more Druid magic.
    It was chilly in the room, so he went to the drawer where he’d unpacked a stack of T-shirts and plucked one off the top, pulling it on over his head. The faded Superman crest, with the swirling lines of the iconic S, was like some kind of modern pop-culture riff on the ancient protective Druid markings he’d worn painted on his skin only hours earlier. Milo frowned and stripped off the shirt, reaching instead for one emblazonedwith the Batman logo. The foreboding, winged silhouette seemed more appropriate that night.
    He flopped down on the neatly made bed and stared up at the ceiling, remembering kissing Clare in the Roman camp to the accompaniment of catapult song and battle cry and sword clash. That … had really been something. He couldn’t quite believe it had happened. Still, he’d have to turn in his D&D Dungeon Master credentials if he failed to acknowledge that the whole experience had been seriously levelled-up COOL. Demonstrably cooler than making maps.
    Especially, he thought as his eyes finally drifted shut, in an age when there’s almost nowhere left to find. Almost …

4
    S tanding in the upstairs hallway of the Avalon Mists the next morning, waiting for Clare to get dressed, Allie regarded her reflection in a long mirror on the wall through bleary eyes. Gone was the elegant Roman stola, and her feet were once more encased in boots. Beneath the artfully battered black cowboy hat—Clare had thoughtfully rescued it from the dig site after Allie’s unintentional time-zot—her flat-ironed hair was