Labyrinth by Tarah Scott Page B

she returned home. A Southern boy like him appreciated a good weapon, and this would be one of a kind in Wilkinson County . She laughed. He would likely use it to skin rabbits.
    Margot stuck her credit card back in her tiny wallet and was slipping it into her back pocket when she noticed a plaque above a glass case that read Clan badge belt buckles . She stepped over and scanned the buckles until she spotted one that read Clan Morrison of the Isle of Lewis . The square, antiqued silver buckle showed a hand clutching a sword that rose above a castle tower sitting on the swell of a wave.
    "Where is the Morrison buckle with the driftwood?" she called to the clerk.
    The clerk looked up from the paperwork she still filled out. “Which one?”
    Margot glanced at the buckle. "I see you have the Morrison buckle with an arm coming out of a castle. Where's the one with the driftwood?"
    The woman set down her pencil and came around to the case. “Which one are ye referring to?”
    Margot pointed to the Morrison buckle.
    “Aye,” the clerk said. “That's the Morrison badge.”
    "I'm wondering about the other one."
    "Other one?"
    "The driftwood within a circle." Margot scanned the other badges and saw more than one buckle design for some of them. "Maybe the circle doesn't matter," she said. "But the driftwood, wouldn't that be the badge?"
    "Driftwood?" the clerk repeated, then, "Ah, you mean the Mac Gille Mhoirebadge. Their badge was the driftwood because Gille Mhiore, a Norseman they claim as their ancestor, washed ashore on the Isle of Lewis. But that's only a legend."
    “Legend?" Margot said. “But I saw—” she broke off, remembering where she'd seen the buckle. “You're telling me no one makes these driftwood badges?”
    The woman looked startled. "No. There are different renditions of the Morrison badge, but only one design is approved by the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs."
    Dread crept up Margot’s spine. “These are all silver. What about leather?”
    “Leather badges were common before silver came into use, but today, most people prefer silver.”
    “Do you have a picture of the driftwood badge?" Margot asked.
    "I've never seen one. I can ask, if ye like.”
    Margot shook her head. "No…no, thank you." She smiled. "If you need any more information about shipping the dagger, please call me."
    The woman nodded, and Margot crossed to the exit and pushed past the door. She stopped outside the shop. Her insides trembled. She wanted like hell to tell herself she'd seen Colin Morrison wearing it on Ghost Hunters Inc's site, but the picture hadn't included the lower half of his body. No. She'd seen him and that badge when it wasn't possible to have known either of them existed.
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Eleven
     
    Margot followed the guests of Morrison Castle down the narrow stairs leading to the dungeon. She had to be right in figuring Cat had nothing hidden in the dungeon, or she wouldn’t be giving a tour of the lower level. Margot took the final step onto a brick floor and couldn't help an "Ohh.” An arched entry opened into a hallway that T'd left and right. The brick floor looked new. The walls were made of a sandy colored stone that gave them an airy look absent in the darker stone of the rest of the castle.
    “The stone looks new,” Tory Hanley said.
    “Thankfully, the previous owners redid this part of the castle five years ago,” Cat said. “If this stone hadn’t been replaced, this section of the castle would have collapsed.”
    Like the east section Cat was having repaired now, Margot realized.
    “Oh,” Tory intoned. “There are actual cells down here. Were they used for torture?”
    Cat laughed. “Not torture, exactly, but imprisonment, for certain.”
    “So Lord Morrison imprisoned people here,” Tory said with that same high school girl naiveté   Margot had seen on her first day there.
    “He very well could have,” Cat replied. “Colin was the law in this part of the island and