Chapter 7
A few days later, Clare was still jet-lagged. She’d been dragging herself around Maeve and Sorcha’s apartment, carving wands, sewing capes, stringing beads and nuts, and using the 3D printer to create lucky charms. She was also trying not to think about the contents ofGriffin’s green notebook.
Half of it was written in runes, or the old Irish ogham script, a system of letters looking like cross-hatches and flags. The other fragments were in English, and what it contained was truly horrible.
It contained lurid tales of Ireland’s violent history, of invasions and wars, of battles and conquests. The part that scared her the most had to do with luringan innocent virgin to her death. In the green notebook, love between a human and a fairy always ended tragically for the human.
Every time.
Maybe Griffin was a writer of horror mythology, if there was such a genre. Each story she read was more gruesome than the last, but she couldn’t look away, no matter how many nightmares she caught during her jet-lagged bouts of sleep.
Clare put down a partially constructed cross of Brigid and slipped her hand under the mattress for the notebook. Griffin had great ideas, though. If she could incorporate some of his themes and plotlines into her script, he would be more inclined to fund her movie—maybe even partner with her.
Now that she was locked out of Hollywood, she’d have to go the indie film route, which meant raisingfunds, hiring producers and directors, actors and actresses, as well as doing the marketing and post-production work. Having a partner, especially a wealthy man, would make it easier.
What had Griffin said to her? That his life was dull and boring, and that the stakes were too low? His drivel about the Heart of Brigid and finding his true love was rich boy angst—trying to stir drama intoan otherwise unfulfilling life.
In that case, everything in the green notebook was fictional, and it meant Griffin was writing a novel or he, too, was looking to make a movie or screenplay.
No wonder he’d talked down to her. He didn’t want her as competition. As for the many lives, or never dying and always waking up part, that was him trying out a character and not getting it right.
Clare opened the notebook and continued reading.
Fair Brigid lies still, trapped and imprisoned underground. She yearns for her beloved land, and she weeps for the devastation, the forests destroyed, the waters defiled, and the air filled with soot. She, who cannot die, is suspended between the worlds. She has been this way for hundreds of years, lying in a bedchamber, awaitingthe man who must restore her heart and free her from her shackles.
Only the man whose heart is true will she accept. Only one who has not been beguiled by evil can bestow upon her the gift of reanimation. She lies still for centuries, waiting for her true lover—a man of valor, strength, and pureness of heart.
I have failed her, my son. I was once a young, hale, and hearty man, fullof strength and bright as gold. By crook and hook, I wrested the precious stone, the Heart of Brigid, from my devious and dastardly enemies.
My heart was pure, or so I thought. I was true and loyal to my fairy queen. I worshipped her and kept her bedchamber pristine and clean. I lacked no resources to prepare for her arrival, to do all the enchantments and spells to free her from the icygrip of her captivity.
I followed the instructions to the letter, but I was not perfect. I made a small mistake, so miniscule, I did not suspect it would change the course of my destiny.
But it did, and this is why I’m dying.
My son, you must complete what I could not do.
To restore Brigid to all her glory, you need not only her heart, the diamond in the rough formeddeep in the bowels of the northernmost tip of Ireland. This is the Heart of Brigid. It is necessary, but not sufficient.
You will also need a blood sacrifice—a living, breathing woman. Not just any woman, but one who possesses both extreme good and on the opposite end, extreme bad. She will be the Morrigan, daughter of the man who imprisoned Brigid.
You must bring this human sacrificealong with the Heart of Brigid to the underground chamber, and then you must sacrifice her lifeforce so that Brigid might live again.
This isn’t as easy as you think, my son.
The Morrigan is a seductress. She will be extremely hard to resist—beautiful, beguiling, sly of tongue, and mesmerizing in motion.
She will not make you forget your true love, the pure and innocent Brigid.She will hypnotize you and entice you into the gravest depravity. She will find that one tiny crack of weakness, and wind the strings of her deceitful web around you.
You cannot avoid her, because you need her. But you must deal with her swiftly if you are to join her lifeforce with the inert form of Brigid and restore Ireland to the glory it was when the Otherworld was part of the MortalWorld. You must do this to drive out all invaders from Normans to Vikings to Britons.
Behold, you will see me, a rotted corpse, corrupted by my sins, defiled and stained with decay. Let my predicament be a warning to you.
What I tell you, do.
Don’t write it down, because we cannot let others find the treasure.
Do it quickly, end my suffering. Wring the life out of meafter I whisper the secret to you, but beware of following in my footsteps.
