Read Online Now and for Never by Lesley Livingston - Free Book Online Page B

man was made inconvenient is unfortunate, yes. Collateral damage, even. But I will not apologize for that decision. There are the needs of the many and the needs of the f—”
    â€œAnd now you’re treading dangerously close to quoting Mr. Spock in The Wrath of Khan, ” Milo snapped, an angry light flaring in his eyes. “It riles up the Trekkie in me and that annoysthe Druid in me and, for all I know, that makes me prone to random acts of wizardry. We all know that what we’ve been doing is dangerous. No one’s suggesting we start monkeying for fun or profit. Allie just wants to rescue a friend.”
    â€œYeah, Nick.” Piper frowned. “It’s a snatch-and-grab. No big deal—”
    â€œIt is a big deal!” Ashbourne’s face grew red with fury. “It’s an enormous deal! You’re involved now, Piper Jean Gimble— blood-tied to this … this witch!” He jabbed a finger at Clare.
    â€œWitch?” Clare blinked.
    â€œI won’t have you put in harm’s way!” he continued, his face flushed almost purple. “I made a promise to your grandmother years ago that I’d do everything in my power—everything!— to make sure no harm would ever come to you. That you’d never become tangled up in this terrible business. I don’t intend to break that promise!”
    Without warning he snatched the coin tray off the desk and stalked across the tent to where a small, sturdy safe stood underneath a worktable. He opened the safe, tossed in the tray, slammed the door shut again, and then spun the combination dial.
    Al was aghast. “You’d leave Marcus back there, condemned to an existence he never asked for?”
    â€œNo. But he’s not my concern.”
    â€œAnd I am ?” Piper said.
    â€œOf course you are.” Ashbourne’s words came out strangled and a sheen appeared in his eyes. “You’re my granddaughter.”
    A shocked silence descended like a swift, heavy blanket of fog.
    And into that silence walked Dr. Magda Wallace, consulting archaeologist for the British Museum and Clare’s formidable aunt.
    â€œWell, Nicky old chum,” she said without preamble, “if that’s the case, then you’d bloody well better hand over thosecoins and let Clare and her friends get about their business. Assuming you don’t want your lovely young descendant here vanishing from the pages of history as if she’d never existed.”
    â€œMags!” Clare exclaimed, relieved beyond measure that her no-nonsense aunt had made such a sudden dramatic, welcome entrance. Maybe she could talk some sense into the crazy old archaeologist—
    Who just said he was Goggles’s what now …?
    The declaration registered with a heavy thump in Clare’s brain.
    Oh. Bloody hell.
    â€œMagda?” Ashbourne stepped out from behind his field desk, a storm-cloud glower darkening his brow. “What on earth are you doing here?”
    â€œI came when Clare called me. And it seems a good thing I did. You clearly have need of a good dose of advice when it comes to dealing with exceptional young people.” She turned to Clare while the archaeologist sputtered. “Hello, dear. Milo, Allie. I trust you’re all well? Excellent. Good to know. Now, Nicholas, may I speak to you for a moment?”
    She held open the tent flap and gestured him outside.
    Ashbourne nodded brusquely and preceded Maggie out of the tent.
    After a long moment of silence, Piper, looking as if someone had just smacked her upside the head with a good-sized trout, murmured, “Oh … my …”
    Clare felt a swell of sympathy for her, even as she realized that it all made a kind of shocking sense. Quintus Phoenius Postumus would have been the ultimate stranger in a strange land once he’d crossed over into the time fracture where Piper’s flower-child granny (in her pre-granny days) wandered the Tor,