He stepped into his bathroom from a linen closet and ran into Seamus dressed in a top coat with tails.
“Griffin, you’re late to the party.” Seamus pointed a knife at him. “Get behind me, useless cur, and watch me finish what you could never start.”
“You have the wrong woman,” Griffin said. “It won’t work.”
“We cannot afford to wait for the next time the full moon coincides with the Vernal Equinox,” Seamus said. “Ireland’s waited long enough. Now that we have the Heart of Brigid and the Changeling, we must forge ahead to bring the Otherworld back to our world.”
“Clare is not Brigid. I swear to it,” Griffin blocked the way to the closet.
“You won’t know until you try.” Seamus slashedat Griffin with the knife. “Out of my way.”
“No!” Griffin ducked the gleaming blade and tackled the sturdy, tricky O’Toole.
The two of them tumbled to the bathroom’s marble floor. Griffin twisted Seamus’s arm, but the other man headbutted him in the jaw.
Griffin’s head snapped back against the tub, and he lightened his hold for a moment. A searing pain sliced across his thigh,but he slammed his shoulder against the other man’s gut.
“Oof.” Seamus’s lungs collapsed with a whoosh, and the knife clattered to the floor. Griffin grabbed it, along with the bag of Clare’s Morrigan clothes, and limped toward the walk-in closet. He activated the secret door and rushed through it.
Seamus stomped after him, but Griffin slammed the heavy door and threw down the bolt.
Fists pounded on the door, followed by heavier, cracking thuds. Griffin limped down the corridor toward the bedchamber. Blood seeped from the wound on his leg, and he felt light-headed and dizzy.
He staggered through the rune-covered gate and jiggled the doorknob of the bedchamber.
“Clare, Clare, open up,” he called. “It’s me, Griffin, come to save you.”
There was noanswer.
Was she in there? Or already dead?
“Clare, let me know you’re okay. Say something.” He pounded on the door, but there was not a peep from the chamber.
He stuck the knife into the doorjamb to jiggle the latch. It wasn’t flexible enough.
“Clare, please, open up. Tell me you’re alive. I know you’re not my Brigid, but you are my heart.”
He pressed his earto the door, hoping to hear a sound, anything, that let him know his beloved was alive.
Instead, several sets of footsteps clambered up to him, and he was grabbed and tackled by two pairs of hands.
“Got you, Gallagher,” Mack said while Seamus unlocked the door to the bedchamber.
“We’re here to make sure you complete your part of the deal,” Seamus said. He picked up the knifeand slapped it into Griffin’s hand. “We’re your best men.”
“Dum, dum, dum, dum…” Mack hummed the Bridal March. “Dum, dum, dum, dum.”
Seamus joined in, and the two of them propped Griffin in front of the bed.
A skeleton dressed in full wedding regalia lay on the bed. Alone.
