by Eloise Flood
Phoebe didn’t stop to think. She was too furious, and too frightened. She simply stamped her foot down, hard, on the instep of the man who was holding her wrists. He let out a howl and dropped her arms. Phoebe whirled and planted her fist in his solar plexus. It was a move she’d learned in a self-defense class she’d taken back in San Francisco.
He doubled over. Phoebe was already past him, aiming a kick at the man who was holding Prue. Looking startled, he raised his arms to defend himself. Next to him, Piper was struggling with the man who held her.
The room was in an uproar. Everyone seemed to be yelling and thumping things. “Get them!” Diana’s voice shrilled over the chaos. “You bloody idiots, they’re just a bunch of girls!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Phoebe saw Prue raise her hands. She’s going to zap them! Phoebe realized. Then, suddenly, Prue was falling. She hit the floor and lay there, unmoving.
“Prue!” Phoebe screamed.
And then, even more suddenly, the room was completely silent. Everywhere, people stood stock-still, frozen in the middle of whatever they’d been doing. Piper! Phoebe turned around.
Piper was already crossing to Prue. She knelt swiftly by Prue’s side and checked her pulse. “She’s out cold, but I think she’s okay,” she said. Then she glanced up at Phoebe. “Sorry. I would have zapped them sooner, but that goon wouldn’t let go of me.”
“Soon enough,” Phoebe said with a shaky laugh. “Come on, let’s collect Niall and Mrs. Jeffries and get out of here before they start moving again.”
“Don’t worry,” Piper said grimly. “I won’t let that happen.”
Sidestepping a motionless Diana, Piper quickly unfroze Niall, and Phoebe cut his bonds with a kitchen knife. By that time, Prue had come to. She moaned and felt the back of her head.
“Remind me not to let anyone do that to me again,” she said. “Oooh, I feel sick.”
“We’d better take you to a hospital,” Piper said. “You could have a concussion.”
“I don’t,” Prue said.
“We’ll let the doctor decide that,” Piper said. “They should check you out, too,” Phoebe told Niall as she explored the bruise on his temple with gentle fingers. “This is pretty nasty.”
Prue pulled herself to her feet. “I’m going to get Mrs. Jeffries,” she announced, and headed down the hall toward the attic.
But moments later she was back, looking grim. “She isn’t there.”
Phoebe’s heart sank. “Not there?”
“The attic is empty,” Prue reported. “Diana must have moved her somewhere else when I tripped that magic alarm. Damn!” She shook her head angrily.
“As a rescue mission, this was kind of a failure, I guess we’d have to say,” Piper commented. “No spell, no old lady.”
“I don’t think we can do anything more about it right now,” Phoebe said worriedly. “Wherever Mrs. Jeffries is, I’m sure she’s guarded by spells. We need to think about how to handle this.”
Prue put a hand to her forehead. “I’ve got such a headache, I can’t possible think straight.”
“Hospital,” Piper said firmly. “We still have time to take care of our other business tomorrow.”
With some difficulty, Phoebe and Piper got Niall and Prue down the stairs. On the dark, quiet street, Piper hailed a taxi and asked the driver to drop them at the emergency room of the nearest hospital.
The nearest hospital turned out to be in Hereford, about twenty miles away. Aware of the driver’s curious eyes in the rearview mirror, Prue, Piper, Phoebe, and Niall spoke in low voices.
“Well, attacking them didn’t accomplish much,” Phoebe said gloomily. “Diana had already burned the parchment with Merlin’s spell on it. All I did is make them even more mad at us. Oh, yeah, and now they know Piper’s a witch. I’m batting zero here.”
“No, you’re not,” Piper assured her. “They’d never have let Niall go. It was the only way to get him out.”
“Besides,” Prue added, “that brawl actually was kind of fun for a minute.” The taxi bounced over a pothole and she winced. “That is, until I got whacked on the head.”
“This is all my fault,” Niall said in a low voice. “I should never have gotten you into this.”
“It’s what we do,” Prue told him. “We’re supposed to help the innocent.” She gave him a grin. “Although it is kind of a stretch to call you innocent.”
Phoebe smiled in the darkness. Prue totally believed in Niall by now, she could tell. She even liked him.
So do I, she thought. More than I would have thought possible. I mean, I’ve only known him for three days. But there’s just something about him. . . .
A heavy weight settled on her spirit as she thought about tomorrow night. Whatever happened, it was a no-win situation. Either Niall cooperated with Diana and evil triumphed, or he died horribly. Even if he cooperated, Diana still might let him die, she realized. No, the only answer was to find a way to make sure the ceremony never happened. To send Niall back to his own time before then.
In which case I still lose him forever, she thought miserably. It isn’t fair!
The taxi pulled up in front of a brightly lit building. “Hospital,” the driver announced.
Phoebe paid the man and they all got out. As Prue and Piper walked up to the admitting desk, Niall took Phoebe’s arm and pulled her aside.
“I want to talk to you,” he said. He pushed a hand through his long hair. “Listen, I meant what I said in the taxi. I never should have brought you into this. It’s too dangerous. Look what’s happened to your sister already, because of helping me.” He sighed. “I think you should forget about me and concentrate on rescuing Mrs. Jeffries.”
“Forget about you?” Phoebe shook her head. “Are you kidding?” Feeling the strong emotions welling up inside her, she tried a smile. “Do you think I’m going to stand by and let Diana have her way with you?”
“She won’t have her way with me,” Niall promised. “I won’t do it. But I’m lost. Even if I do what she wants, Diana has no intention of sending me back. I know her well enough to know that. She’s won, Phoebe. And I won’t have you or anyone you love putting yourselves in danger—real danger—for something that can’t be helped.” He touched her cheek gently. “I care too much about you.”
Phoebe’s throat was tight. “You can’t stop me from trying, Niall. I won’t let you go that easily. Because—because I think I’m in love with you.”
Niall’s gaze was impossibly tender. He pulled her close. “That makes two of us, then.”
“Excuse me.” The Trelawney’s waiter glided up to the breakfast table where Prue, Piper, Phoebe, and Niall sat. “Is there a Mr. Oldman here?”
Niall didn’t react. Phoebe nudged him under the table with her knee. “He’s Mr. Oldman,” she told the waiter.
“This note was left at the desk for you, sir,” the waiter said. He handed Niall a cream-colored envelope.
Frowning in puzzlement, Niall slit the envelope and took out the single sheet of stationery inside. He glanced at it and then handed it silently to Phoebe.
” ’See you at ten o’clock tonight,’ ” Phoebe read out loud. “ ’I’ll be waiting.’ “
A leaden hand closed around her heart. The note was unsigned, but the curly monogram at the top of the stationery read DSJ. Diana S. Jones.
“She’s awfully confident,” Piper grumbled. Why shouldn’t she be? Phoebe thought glumly. She holds all the cards. He has to show up—unless we can find some other way to send him back to his own time.
What are we going to do?
Prue had already astral projected back to San Francisco to comb The Book of Shadows for a solution, but she’d had no luck. “I guess none of our ancestors ever faced this particular problem,” she’d said when she returned.
Phoebe gazed around the table. Piper looked all right, though worried. But Prue was pale and heavy-eyed, and Niall’s bruise had darkened so that it looked worse than it had the night before. He�
��d spent the night rolled in a blanket on the sitting room floor. Phoebe had tried to make him take the daybed, but he had refused. “Even your floors are more comfortable than the beds in my own time,” he’d told her with a smile. “No fleas.”
Phoebe sipped her coffee, wincing as the liquid burned her dry throat. “I’m going to go back to Caer Wydyr and look through every single spell book they have there,” she said.
“Good plan,” Piper said. “There’s got to be something we’re missing.”
“Right,” Phoebe agreed. But inside she felt like screaming. Even supposing that she could find a few spell books that weren’t in Latin, what were the odds of finding what she needed in just a few hours? It was hopeless!
Prue had said little during the meal. Now she cleared her throat. “I have an idea,” she said quietly.
Everyone turned to her. “What? What?” Phoebe asked.
Prue leaned forward. “We don’t know how to send Niall back in time,” she said. “But we do know how to send ourselves. I still remember how, anyway.” She glanced around the table. “What if one of us was to go back and get the spell right from Merlin himself?”
Phoebe gasped. “Prue, that’s brilliant!”
“And very risky,” Piper said flatly. “We all know the dangers of time travel. Just one slip and we could totally change history. We could blink ourselves right out of existence.”
“I know the risks,” Prue replied. “But I don’t see that we have any choice. Weigh the risk against the certainty that Niall—and probably Mrs. Jeffries—will die if we don’t do this.”
Piper nodded. “You’re right. I guess I just want to make sure we all understand what we’re getting into.”
“I don’t like it,” Niall said. He looked unhappy. “It isn’t right that you should all be endangering yourselves for me.”
“Oh, be quiet,” Phoebe told him. “You don’t get a vote.” She turned to Prue. “You can’t go alone. If something happens to you, you could get stuck there forever. Someone has to go along to watch your back.”
“Ahem.” Piper raised her hand. “That would be me, I think. No offense, Phebes, but you’re the only one without an active power. If anyone gets into a jam back in the sixth century, your visions aren’t going to help them out of it.”
Phoebe saw immediately that Piper was right. Her smile took some of the sting out of her words, but Phoebe was still upset. “Someday I’ve got to find myself an active power,” she grumbled.
Prue stood up. “Time’s wasting,” she said. “Let’s go get ready.”
Back in their room, Prue flung open the closet doors. “Take a look,” she told Niall, waving a hand at the clothes inside. “Between me, Piper, and Phoebe, we’ve got to come up with two outfits that will pass in the sixth century.”
Niall considered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Finally he pulled out a plain, calf-length grayish green linen shift dress and handed it to Piper. “Try this,” he said. “It’s a bit fancy, but I think it will do.”
For Prue he chose a loose-fitting brown smock of Piper’s. “We’ll have to make the hem look ragged, as if the bottom of the skirt was torn off,” he warned.
“Go ahead,” Piper said with a sigh. Phoebe tore one of the hotel’s sheets into strips to cover her sisters’ hair. “Oh, well. If this plan works, I’ll be happy to pay for a sheet,” she said.
“You’ve no shoes that would pass for even a second,” Niall announced. “You’ll have to go barefoot.”
“Great,” Prue muttered. “I hope we’re going back during summer, at least.”
“When are we going back to, anyway?” Piper asked. “I guess it should be as close as possible to the time Merlin disappeared. We want to make sure he’s already invented the spell.”
“He went into his prison at harvest time, the year before I was born,” Niall said. “Just after the equinox. And I am twenty-four.”
“That would make it late September, in the year 559,” Phoebe put in.
Phoebe and Niall waited in the sitting room while Prue and Piper changed. “I wish I could go with them,” Phoebe confessed. “I feel so helpless, just waiting back here.” She sighed. “Besides, they’re going to get to see Camelot. Camelot!”
Niall gave her a lopsided grin. “Believe me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said. “Better you don’t see it; it would just depress you. Besides”— he lifted aside a lock of her hair and gently kissed her on the neck— “if this truly is my last day on earth, I want to spend every second of it with you.”
“Don’t talk that way,” Phoebe said. Turning, she looped her arms around his neck and drew his head down to hers. “Don’t,” she whispered, and kissed him.
The kiss was just as intense as the first one had been. Phoebe ran her hands through Niall’s hair and down his back, marveling at the shape of his muscles through his thin cotton shirt.
The sound of the bedroom door opening made them pull apart. Phoebe’s cheeks were hot, and her lips throbbed where they had been pressed against Niall’s. “Hey, you two, great look,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to sound casual.
“A bit too clean,” Niall added. His voice was slightly hoarse. “But it will do in a pinch.”
“Excuse the interruption,” Prue said dryly. She adjusted her white headscarf. “I think we’re ready to go.”
“Phoebe, I think you should stick to your plan to look through all the spell books you can,” Piper said. “After all, we’ll need a plan B if this one doesn’t work.”
“Right,” Phoebe agreed. She supposed Piper had a point.
Prue and Piper joined hands. “We’ll be back before you know it,” Prue said, smiling. “Camelot, here we come.”
Together, Prue and Piper recited the spell that would take them into the past. Phoebe watched with a heavy heart.
And then her sisters were gone.
CHAPTER
9
The first thing Piper became aware of was the smell. It was a wet smell—mud and sweat and a few other things she couldn’t identify. Sound faded in gradually. A chaos of baritone shouts and roars, mixed in with metallic clanks and clashes. What is going on? she wondered, alarmed.
Vision was the last thing to come. As with the sound, it came in gradually, like lights going up on the set of a play. Piper found herself staring through a thin curtain of rain at a sea of struggling, straining bodies. A man stumbled against her, and she had a brief glimpse of his grimy, reddened face, streaming with sweat or rainwater. He shouted something at her, but she didn’t catch the words. Then he was gone.
Is this Camelot? she wondered with a spurt of panic. Or did we take a wrong turn somewhere?
“Oh, my God,” Prue said in her ear. “We landed right in the middle of a battle!”
Piper nodded, dazed. She could hardly believe what her senses were telling her.
Then she heard a whirring sound. Something zipped past her left ear. She turned to see what it was—and flinched at the sight of a short-handled ax that was sunk into the tree trunk behind her. It was still quivering.
“Um, Prue?”
“What?” Prue sounded tense.
“Let’s get out of here!” Piper wailed.
“Good plan.” Prue rapidly scanned the area. Off to their right was a thicket of evergreen trees. “Let’s head for that,” she suggested.
The two sisters began picking their way across the battlefield as fast as they could, ducking and dodging as weapons came their way. Their effort wasn’t made any easier by the fact that the ground was thick with cold, slippery black mud—and that their feet were bare.
“Prue!” Piper shrieked as another ax hurtled through the air. It was heading straight for her sister’s back! There was no time to think. She flung up her hand and made a “halt” gesture, palm outspread.
The ax froze in midair.
“Thanks,” Prue gasped. She and Piper both stepped out of the way. “Now unfreeze it before someone notices it,” she ordered.
P
iper waved her hand and the ax flew on its way. It thunked harmlessly into the mud a few yards away.
They reached the safety of the trees without further incident. They plunged deep in among the straight trunks, making sure they were out of sight before they stopped. Piper leaned against a tree, panting, while Prue inspected a cut on her foot. “I’m probably going to get tetanus from this,” she muttered. “I knew I should have gotten that booster shot last month.”
“I didn’t know King Arthur was at war,” Piper said. “Niall could have warned us.”
Prue’s lips set in a thin, anxious line. “I wonder what else he didn’t warn us about.”
“Oh, well.” Piper spoke with a confidence she didn’t necessarily feel. “It can’t be any worse than that battle, can it?”
“Let’s hope not.” Prue glanced over her shoulder as the roar of many voices filled the air. It sounded like some kind of battle cry. “Piper, did you notice that none of those soldiers out there seemed to be wearing armor? Or riding horses?”
Piper’s brows drew together thoughtfully. Now that Prue mentioned it . . . “I didn’t see any swords, either,” she remarked. “Just a lot of those throwing axes and a few knives and clubs. It’s all kind of, well, primitive. And dirty.”
“Not much like Phoebe’s stories, is it?” Prue commented. She tried a step on her sore foot and winced. “All right, we’d better figure out where we are. Come on.”
They made their way out of the trees and up a small, rocky ridge. Piper gazed around her, shielding her eyes from the cold drizzle with one hand.
“Over there!” she called, pointing with the other hand. She’d spotted a stone fortress perched on the top of a hill. A few mud-and-stone huts dotted the slope around it.
Prue gazed at it. “You think that’s Camelot?” she asked in a doubtful voice. “It’s so . . . rugged.”
“I don’t see anything else that’s even a possibility,” Piper pointed out.
A river ran between them and the fortress, but it looked shallow and rocky. Piper was pretty sure they’d be able to wade across it.
At least we don’t have to worry about getting wet, she thought ruefully. We’re already soaked from this rain.