Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) by Sarah Woodbury Page A

so he
could grasp Cassie’s hand.
    “ I’m sorry your jobs
haven’t worked out,” Mom said.
    Cassie shrugged. “Your appearance today may
change everything.”
    Mom frowned. “Are we going to find MI-5
agents beating down the door?”
    “ At the moment, Mark Jones
is the only agent who knows you’re here,” Callum said.
    “ We’re hoping it stays that
way,” Cassie said.
    “ But how long we can keep
it a secret, I don’t know,” Callum said. “Our colleagues in the CIA
pulled out a year ago. They may have their own people on this, but
if they continued the Project, they did it without telling
us.”
    “ The CIA can’t work inside
the United States,” Anna said.
    Callum gave her a completely blank look.
    “ That’s—that’s the law,
right?” Anna said.
    Cassie gave a brief laugh that was more of a
scoff. “I’m not sure we can count on strict adherence to the law.
Your arrival here would be counted as one of those ‘drop
everything’ events if Callum’s office had anything to drop.”
    “ But you’re right,” Callum
said. “Neither the CIA, MI-5, nor my office have jurisdiction
inside the United States. I have no authority to act, either to
take you in or to let you go.”
    “ That’s convenient,” said
Mom.
    “ It is, isn’t it?” Cassie
grinned. “It means we are currently acting as concerned citizens
only, helping friends in need. Whether Callum would be remiss in
not reporting your presence is something that he can debate with
his boss when we get back to Wales.”
    “ Who’s your boss?” Anna
said to Callum.
    “ It was the Prime Minister
himself,” he said. “Unfortunately, the man now in office is not the
same one who was in power two years ago, which is largely the
reason for our budget cuts. He has different priorities. That and
the worldwide economic downturn.”
    In medieval Wales, Anna gave zero thought to
how this world was turning out, beyond hoping Cassie and Callum
were okay. A ‘worldwide economic downturn’ and its consequences
just wasn’t something she had ever felt the need to think
about.
    “ But he’s not your boss
now?” Mom said.
    “ We are being
reincorporated back into MI-5,” Callum said. “A man named Tate is
the new director.”
    “ So you’re not going to
tell either of them that we’re here?” Mom said.
    “ Not yet,” Callum said.
“For two reasons, and the first has nothing to do with you at all.
The British government has been facing a series of internal crises
since Cassie and I returned. Over the last six months, the problems
have escalated. There have been bombings, protests, and general
unrest, culminating in the destruction of the GCHQ about an hour
ago. It’s—” He broke off and shook his head.
    “ It’s a mess, is what it
is,” Cassie said. “This may be only the beginning too.”
    Anna looked from Cassie to Callum. “Did
people die?”
    Callum nodded, his face drawn. “I don’t know
what we’re going to find when we get back.”
    “ I’m sorry,” Anna
said.
    Mom made a sympathetic noise too. “And the
second reason?”
    Callum took in a deep breath. “Well, it’s
past one in the morning in England, and since we’re all here in
Oregon, it isn’t as if I can bring you into the Prime Minister’s
office as proof that time travel really exists.”
    “ Oh, I get it now,” Anna
said. “He doesn’t believe what we can do is real.”
    “ He does not,” Cassie
said.
    “ Well, good for us,” Mom
said. “That leaves only our own government to worry
about.”
    “ And it just so happens
that it’s Thanksgiving,” Cassie said, beaming. “Nobody’s
watching.”
    That made Anna feel a little bit better
about being here. Mom and Dad’s journey across Wales and David’s
imprisonment the following year had been haunting Anna from the
moment she opened her eyes to find she and Mom were in the modern
world. Anna had grown up in Portland, but even at the oblivious age
of seventeen, she’d known how neglected