Lesley Livingston - Once Every Never

PUFFIN CANADA

ONCE EVERY NEVER

LESLEY LIVINGSTON is a writer and actress living in Toronto. She has a masters degree in English from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in Arthurian literature and Shakespeare. She is the author of an award-winning urban fantasy trilogy for teens that includes the novels Wondrous Strange (winner of the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award and Ontario Library Association White Pine Honour Book), Darklight , and Tempestuous . Visit Lesley online at www.lesleylivingston.com .

ALSO BY LESLEY LIVINGSTON

Wondrous Strange

Darklight

Tempestuous

ONCE EVERY NEVER

Lesley Livingston

PUFFIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published 2011

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright Lesley Livingston, 2011

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in Canada.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Livingston, Lesley

Once every ever / Lesley Livingston.

ISBN 978-0-14-317795-1

I. Title.

PS8623.I925O53 2011 jC813'.6 C2011-901642-7

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For Ward

B og bodies.

Clare Reid turned from watching the parade of suitcases trundling past on a baggage carousel at Heathrow International Airport to gaze in bemusement at the slender, raven-haired seventeen-year-old girl standing next to her.

Excuse me? she asked, pitching her voice so that she could be heard over the drone of conversation and unintelligible PA announcements in the crowded terminal.

Thirteen of em. Allie McAllister spoke without looking up, her nose buried in the glossy pages of a guide to the British Museum. Perfectly preserved corpses from the first century. Theyre on display and were going to get to see them.

Al why do you delight in tormenting me? Clare asked. Im not tormenting you. Im generating fun and fascinating summer itineraries for you. This ones for when we go to the museum.

Fun and fascinating and Clare counted on her fingers, museum. Huh. Which of these things doesnt belong?

Al grinned. You know as well as I do that sometime within the next forty-eight hours, Maggie is gonna haul our collective butts through the doors of the Hallowed Halls of History no matter how much you kick and scream in protest. I am simply planning ahead.

Clare smiled wanly and shook her head. Typical Allie McAllister, Girl Genius. As usual, Al had applied keen-eyed analysis to a looming problem situation and was already working out a solution. Clare had to admit, though, Al had Maggie pegged.

MaggieDr. Magda Wallacewas Clares aunt. A highly respected, world-renowned professor of archaeology, special projects consultant to the British Museum, andfor the duration of the summerthe functional equivalent of Clares truant officer while her orchestra-musician parents continent-hopped on a world tour with the Symphonia Internationale.

Clare pushed away the brochure Al was waving in front of her face. You actually want to spend precious minutes of our last summer vacation before final year hanging out with dead dudes.

Dont knock it. Vampires and zombies are very hot right now.

First of all, vampires are un dead. And zombies are ew.

So that leaves bog guys.

Clare smiled indulgently at her best friend since grade three and turned back to the luggage conveyor. No sign of their bags yet, so she looked instead at her watch and frowned through the mental calculations necessary to set it to UK time.

This whole time-difference thing wigs me out, she muttered.

It should, Al said, tucking the museum pamphlet into the pocket of her neoprene computer bag. Weve lost hours. Actual time loss.

What? Clare blinked, startled by the notion. No we havent.

Tempus fugit , pal. Al shrugged.

Clare stared at her blankly.

Time flies.

Thats stupid.

Its true. Al pointed skyward. The entire time we were up there, hurtling through the sky, confined inside a pressurized metal tube, events of the world took place all around us that we were fundamentally, chronologically detached from. Its like time travel.

Clare stared at Al for a moment. You watch too many movies, she said and punched her on the shoulder.

Turning back to the luggage-go-round, Clare yawned and stretched, keeping one eye open for a glimpse of her hot-pink tartan suitcase. Shed slept through almost the entire flight over from Toronto and now felt stiff and dehydratedand like her head wasnt screwed on quite right.

Whos picking us up? Clare asked. Maggie hated driving in the city, so Al had told Clare not to worry about it and made alternative arrangements for them on her end. Its not that creepy chauffeur dude your mom had the hots for last time we were in London, is it?

Nope. Al snaked between two older men in suits and nabbed her sleek black suitcase from the conveyor belt. When Mumsys not on this side of the pond, we dont rate a limo.

Charming, Clare said over her shoulder, lunging for her own overpacked bag as it tumbled down the chute. She hefted it off the belt and the two girls made their way through the terminal to the arrivals pick-up driveway.

Milos got a car. He told me hed be waiting for us.

Great. Milo the bergeek. Clare groaned, trying to remember the last time shed seen Als cousin. It had most likely been in close proximity to a reference library or a Star Trek convention. Seriouslyhow does somebody with glasses that thick even qualify for a drivers licence?

Dude. Harsh. Al grinned. You havent seen him in, like, five years.

Your point being?

I think Milos kinda cool.

You think Math-a-lympics are cool. You are an unreliable source.

The last time Clare had seen Milo the Mastermind hed been about fourteen years old and practically a poster child for dorks everywhere, with floppy yellow bedhead hair and Coke-bottle lenses in thick black frames sliding down a nose perpetually buried in grad-school-level textbooks. Brains the size of planetary gas giants ran in the McAllister family genes.