She giggled as she shook his free hand and wiggled her shoulders so thather butterfly wings fluttered.
“And I’m Sorcha,” the brunette said. Instead of shaking his hand, she slithered up to him, parked her hands on her hips, and let her eyes rove all the nooks and crannies of his body.
“As I was saying,” the Brigid impersonator cut off her friends’ leering gazes by standing in front of him. “We need to regroup and come up with a plan. Whoever was followingus meant to do us harm, so I brought Griffin here.”
“How are we going to hide him?” Sorcha waved her hand at the piles of cardboard boxes, fabrics, feathers, wands, crystals, and miles of bric-a-brac. “Those two Garda officers came back with a warrant and searched the entire place.”
“Then they won’t be back,” Clare said. “Since I’m sure they found nothing.”
“What were theseGarda searching for?” Griffin asked.
A niggle of worry wormed its way into his gut. Clare could have been followed after taking his diamond, and there were others interested in stealing it from her.
The three women stared at each other, large eyes gaping with obvious warning.
What did they know?
Clare put her finger over her mouth in a zipping fashion. She raised theother hand which was attached to him and said, “Griffin suspects I’m either his fairy queen, Brigid, in human form, or a changeling who has taken the place of his beloved Brigid. Don’t you, Griffin?”
Her friends’ eyes popped out of their sockets, and their mouths hung open.
“Of course, if you’re a changeling, then the true spirit of Brigid would be imprisoned in that object you’researching for,” Sorcha said.
“Um, um, um.” Maeve continued fluttering, her chest heaving and her wings all a flitter. “What could the magical object be?”
“I might be Brigid herself,” Clare proclaimed, cutting off her blond friend. Her cheeks pinked, and her eyes sparkled. “Imagine that. When I met Griffin and visited his domain, I felt as if I’d known him in all of his previous lifetimes.”
“Wow.” Maeve clasped her hands together. “You mean, you’re the one he’s been waiting for? The one who the magical item would bring to him?”
Griffin almost rolled his eyes at how stupid the butterfly lady was. She practically confirmed Clare’s guilt of not just stealing his Heart of Brigid, but also her scheme at using it to get him to fund her movie.
“Ahem, I don’t think it’squite like that.” Sorcha cleared her throat. “There’s only one way to test your theory. If the object in question is real, then when it is placed in the fairy mound, it will dematerialize from this world and materialize in the Otherworld. If it is a well-manufactured fake, it will stay there like a lump of coal.”
“Enough theorizing,” Clare said. “Griffin and I are hungry. After we eat,we’d like to stay in my old room. Tomorrow, I’ll cast runes to determine our next step. We need to tread carefully. Now that the object in question is on Irish soil, it has the ability to create illusions.”
Again, Clare’s friends gaped at each other in obvious confusion. She was spewing a bunch of hooey and trying to get them to buy into her Brigid façade.
Enough was enough. He wasn’tgoing to burst her bubble—not yet, because he didn’t know which fairy mound she’d hidden the Heart of Brigid inside.
Tonight, he’d humor Clare. Whether she was Brigid in the flesh or the Morrigan daughter of Richard “Strongbow,” he needed her to complete his destiny. Once he had the Heart of Brigid, he could take both Clare and the Heart down to the queen’s bedchamber and change the entireworld.
