Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) by Sarah Woodbury Read Free Book Online Page A

it’s like, even if he can’t really understand
it. He knows that you’re from this world, even if we call it
Avalon.”
    Anna nodded. “That’ll help. And I suppose
you’re right that it’s a good thing we’re here since otherwise we’d
be dead.”
    Meg reached out to touch Anna’s hand. “Do
you want to talk about the fact that Marty didn’t come with
us?”
    “ Now that it’s over, I feel
bad for him. He just wanted to go home,” Anna said.
    “ I get that,” Meg said,
“but I can’t forgive him for threatening my daughter’s
life.”
    “ He was holding on to me,
pressing against me, while I was holding on to you. But then his
grip loosened there at the end, which gave me a second chance to
fight him off. He screamed and let go of me. I don’t know why.”
Anna choked a bit over the words. “We were already
falling.”
    “ What’s done is done,” Meg
said matter-of-factly. “The last thing you should feel is guilt
about what might have happened to Marty. Now, we need to focus on
getting back.”
    “ I could do with a shower,”
Anna said. “Is that too much to ask before we return? One
shower?”
    Meg laughed. “I can’t answer that. We have
no money, no I.D., and we possess only what we stand up in. A lot
is going to depend on where we are, and who we can call on for
help.”
    “ Cassie and Callum will
help us,” Anna said.
    “ We have to find them
first,” Meg said. “If we can find an internet café, we can look up
MI-5 and send Callum an email.”
    Anna scoffed under her breath. “Do you think
it will be that easy? MI-5 is a secret government agency.”
    “ I imagine if I put we’re here in the subject
line, someone will pay attention,” Meg said. “I don’t want to end
up in a cell like David, but it might be preferable to freezing to
death out here.”
    “ That isn’t going to
happen, not unless this place is really, really remote,” Anna
said.
    “ It looks pretty remote to
me,” Meg said.
    “ Yeah, but they know we’re
here, right? Callum keeps talking about a flash,” Anna said. “They
could be scrambling rescue helicopters even now.”
    Instinctively, both women looked up. Meg had
a vision of men in Kevlar converging on their position, but the
only sound was the rustle of the wind in the trees and the crunch
of snow beneath their feet. The sky remained clear of rotor blades.
“It’s late afternoon. Maybe nobody’s on duty.”
    “ The world could have
changed a lot in two years,” Anna said, “Maybe nobody’s on duty at
all.”
    “ That’s a very nice
thought, Anna,” Meg said, “and I hope it’s true, although it would
be unfortunate if we’ve fallen into a world undergoing the zombie
apocalypse.”
    “ It’s weird to think about,
isn’t it?” Anna said. “Anything could have happened here. Maybe
MI-5 has taken over the world.”
    “ We have too much to do to
spend even an hour in a cell,” Meg said.
    “ I don’t suppose you have
any modern money hidden in that dress you’re wearing?” Anna
said.
    “ No.” Meg cursed to herself
as she realized what an idiot she’d been. “In fact, I don’t have
anything good on me at all, not like last time.”
    Before Meg had taken Goronwy and Llywelyn to
the modern world, she’d carefully sewn her passport, credit cards,
and money into the hems of several dresses as a precaution against
the day the opportunity to time travel arose or Llywelyn fell ill
enough to make the need to come to the twenty-first century urgent.
Which he had. Unfortunately, Meg was wearing a new dress today and
hadn’t bothered to transfer any of those papers into it. “What’s
really dumb is that I actively didn’t do it. I told myself there
was no need.”
    “ Hindsight is 20-20,” Anna
said. “It’s like when you’re cutting a bagel with the blade towards
you and you think—right before you slice through your
finger— this is really
dumb .”
    “ I had no business becoming
complacent,” Meg said, still kicking