“This one is a six-sided crystal,” Sorcha said. “It’s quartz. What happened to the diamond one?”
“I, uh, don’t know,” Griffin said.“You’re right. This is not a diamond in the rough.”
A rotten feeling settled in his gut. Had Clare stolen the diamond in the rough, after all?
“She was supposed to return it to you,” Sorcha said, confirming his suspicions. “But here, I see her wearing the quartz.”
She pointed to a picture taken before they stepped into the tunnels.
“You two were dressed to the nines,”Maeve said. “This is a beautiful picture. But Sorcha’s right. She was wearing the quartz.”
“I found this inside the tunnel,” Griffin said. “It was dropped near where I found Clare’s backpack.”
Sorcha and Maeve looked at each other, and a silent warning seemed to pass between them.
“What are you thinking?” Griffin asked. “That Clare swapped the quartz for the real one?”
“Or it’s still back there,” Maeve said.
“No, it’s not,” Sorcha declared. “If it was, the kidnapper would not have disappeared with Clare. They’d still be back there searching.”
“Did you actually see someone hit you?” Maeve asked. “Or did you fall?”
“Someone hit me and took off with the real diamond,” Griffin said stiffly. “I saw footprints and signs of someone being dragged.We need to figure this out quickly.”
“How about your phone?” Sorcha asked. “Did you take pictures?”
“I did, but my phone’s broken,” Griffin said, showing them the broken cell phone.
“Everything is uploaded to the cloud,” Sorcha said. “Do you have the account and password?”
“That’s the thing, I don’t remember.” Griffin rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head. “Someoneknocked me out, and when I came to, I barely knew who I was.”
“Clare would have left a clue,” Maeve declared. “She’s big on clues.”
Griffin patted his shoulder. “I have a fresh tattoo with numbers on it. It unlocked Clare’s phone. Maybe she has a fresh tattoo, too.”
“That’s it,” Sorcha said. She flipped through Clare’s photo stream until she came to a picture of Clare’s rawtattoo. “This must be your password.”
Sorcha browsed to the cloud and typed in Griffin’s password. “It works. You two are either too romantic or stupid.”
The three of them stared at the pictures taken down in the dungeon. The women giggled at the ones where Clare and Griffin were kissing, and they ribbed him on spending his wedding night in a dungeon.
They got seriously quietwhen they came to the secret hiding place. Sure enough, there was a picture of Clare wearing the stone.
“Let’s zoom in and see if it’s the diamond,” Sorcha said.
She spread her fingers over the screen, and the crystals of the stone became clear.
“Four sides,” Griffin said. “Clare is wearing the Heart of Brigid in the last picture we took.”
“That means she’s in danger,”Maeve said, flipping through the Green Notebook. “It’s all in here. The plan. Once the real Heart of Brigid is found, you, Griffin, are supposed to sacrifice a virgin and let her lifeblood bleed over the skeletal remains. You place the heart inside the ribcage, pour the blood over it, and the fairy queen, Brigid, will resurrect.”
“That’s nonsense,” Griffin said. “Why would I kill my ownbride?”
“Let me see that.” Sorcha looked over Maeve’s shoulder. She ran her finger over the passages, and the blood drained from her face.
“What is it?” Griffin made a grab for the notebook, but Maeve twisted around, keeping it from him.
