by Zoe Chant
Reive's solemn face cracked into a reluctant smile. "LARP?"
"You know, live-action roleplaying? People dress up like elves and vampires, and run around acting it out?"
"I thought he looked more like a cultist."
"We're not supposed to have those either! We're in Indiana!"
And that somehow set her off again. This time Reive laughed a little too. The abrupt relaxing of tension snapped between them like a rubber band, pulling them together, and as her urge to laugh subsided, she found herself more relaxed than she had been since those things burst into the library.
Looking at Reive, wiping tears of laughter out of her eyes, she couldn't help thinking how gorgeous he had been as a dragon, gleaming in the sun like a polished copper kettle. It was strange: she had no idea dragons existed, but as soon as she watched him transform, it was as if something inside her said Yes. Why wouldn't dragons exist, when a monster of stone lived under her skin? There should be amazing, beautiful, magical things in the world to balance out the ones that were twisted and wrong.
And she had never seen such beauty, such power. She could still see the dragon vividly in her mind's eye, the flexing copper-colored length of him, with red racing stripes.
Looking at him now, she still thought she could see echoes of the dragon under his skin, the grace in the way he moved and the copper gleam in his eyes.
There had been something marring his copper perfection, she recalled. Like a darker mottling. It had been on the same side as the hand he wore the glove on. Was his disability reflected in his dragon form too?
None of your business, she told herself firmly.
He smiled a little wider, and she felt herself teetering on the edge of another laughing fit—or falling into his eyes forever. She forced herself to jerk her eyes away. Her gaze fell on the suitcase and she realized it was half full of, mainly, underthings. She hadn't really been paying attention; she had just grabbed handfuls, and now there were panties and bras poking up around the walking flats and a crumpled skirt.
"So," she said, cheeks flaming, and reached out hastily to slam the suitcase. "I'm going to Italy. I'm going to find the other half of that book. You can come if you want. In fact, I—"
—I wish you would, was what she wanted to say, but she broke off on the verge of it, before so much else—so much unwanted truth—spilled out.
You can protect me from monsters and tell me all about dragons and somehow help me talk a reclusive billionaire into giving us a priceless, unique treasure. I want to find out more about you. I want to know what's under that glove.
You can tell me about the magic in the world, the wonderful and the terrible kinds. Maybe you can even tell me what I am.
He was going to say no. That was how this kind of thing always went. She had never wanted something so desperately without having it fall apart on her one way or another.
But he only said simply, "Of course," as if there was no other option.
Her breath caught, a strange tight feeling under her ribs.
"Oh," she said, a tiny sound, and then, trying to stabilize her voice, "Oh. Okay. I, uh—need to finish packing; it won't take long. Do you have any luggage?"
"Backpack." There was a tiny smile, rueful this time. "It's at the library."
Jess's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, no."
"There's nothing in it I need. Just some shaving stuff, soap, a change of clothes. Everything important, I carry on me—passport and wallet, basically." He shrugged. "I can buy the rest of it in Italy."
Her hand dropped away, and she looked at him with new understanding. The world-weary look, the travel-dusty clothes. Traveling with only a handful of things that mattered so little he didn't even care if he left them behind.
Like her. Never belonging anywhere. She had tried to put down roots here, but as she looked around, she became aware of how sparse her house really was. For a librarian, she hardly even owned that many books; it was mostly used bookstore paperbacks, easy to replace.
Was he an orphan too? Like her?
She drew in a breath and reached for the suitcase. "My car is in the driveway. I usually walk to work, because it's so close—oh, I almost forgot!"
She clapped her hand over her mouth. Her work laptop was still at the library, completely inaccessible; she didn't even want to try going back for it.
But ...
"What?" Reive asked.
"Remember when I said that I'd contacted a university in Oslo about the book? I sent them scans of some of the pages. I ought to have it backed up in the cloud." She looked around one last time, and started for the door. "Which I can check from the airport. Come on, let's go."
Reive
Jess's car was a small blue sedan, older but nicely kept. Reive got into the passenger seat with a strange mix of visceral discomfort and trust. It wasn't that he minded her driving him; it was that it felt very strange to be in a situation that was simultaneously this intimate and out of control. Up until recently, when he had to stop riding the bike, it was motorcycles or flying everywhere. He got himself around on his own two wings or his own wheels. He was never reliant on people to drive him.
And then he'd been thrown into the necessity of taking buses or trains, sometimes hitchhiking, and it was—it was just something he had to deal with, handing over a portion of control the same way he had done for his whole life at the Aerie. He had spent his life being a useful tool for his clan. Having to take a bus wasn't a terrible slight against his pride as a dragon, though he knew some dragons would see it that way. It was just an unpleasant necessity, to be borne like any other unwanted task in his life.
But now there was this. As Jess pulled out of the driveway, he found himself acutely aware of her every little move. The way she held the steering wheel, those capable long-fingered hands curled over its curve. She drove with the same unconscious confidence that she had handled the books in the library. She was sure and strong and capable, and he trusted her instinctively with his life.
The last thing he wanted to do was put her in danger.
"Where are we driving to, anyway?" he asked.
"Indianapolis," Jess said. "That's the nearest international airport. It's about an hour's drive from here."
"You don't have to go all the way to Italy. You could get a hotel in Indianapolis for a while." But it sounded weak even to him.
Jess shook her head. "No. You need me. I'm the one who knows where to find the book."
"You can tell me—"
"And I can actually read it, unlike you. And I'm also the one who can get those scans from Oslo." She glanced at him. "Don't you want me to come?"
She sounded hurt. His dragon surged up in its chest as if looking for the source of her pain. Unfortunately it was him.
"I do," he said, quick and heartfelt. "Of course I do. But Black Robe might be going there too." Or might have been there already, but he decided not to think of that.
Jess laughed, her mood rebounding. "Black Robe?"
"We have to call him something."
She started to answer, but pulled over abruptly as sirens came racing up in their rearview mirror. A whole cavalcade of emergency vehicles blazed past them, a parade of police and fire trucks, with a racing TV news van bringing up the rear.
Jess craned around, hooking an arm over the back of her seat. "I think they're going to the library."
"Better late than never," Reive murmured. Also better late than on time, in this particular case.
"Did you have a car there?" Jess asked. "I'm sorry, I didn't even think of that."
Reive shook his head. "I came into town on a bus."
"Are you sure you don't want to stop and try to pick up your things?" But she looked pale at the thought. And he didn't relish hanging around anywhere there were a lot of emergency vehicles and people asking questions.
"No, it's fine. Like I said, I'll just pick up some basic toiletries in Italy, and a T-shirt or two." He forced a smile. "It's normal to buy souvenirs, right?"
Jess smiled back, but it seemed a little strained on her as well. She merged onto a highway, and they joined with the stream of traffic, making Reive feel a little less hunted. Assuming their enemies had no supernatural way to track them, they were completely safe for now.
He didn't regret the lost backpack. He had what he needed in his pockets—passport, wallet, phone.
Everything else he could take or leave.
This was a very unusual trait in a dragon. Most dragons were extremely possessive of their things. But he was an unusual dragon. Reive's life had been one of upheaval, driven by others' choices. Unlike most dragons his age, he had not yet started to accumulate a hoard. His motorcycles—at one point, he'd had three—were about the closest thing, but he didn't have the intense, overwhelming defensive urge about them that he understood most dragons did for their hoard items.
Not for the first time, Reive found himself wondering about that, and worrying that his early life had broken him too badly to lead a normal dragon life. He wasn't even sure if he had a mate. Take Jess, for example—his dragon's fascination with her was far beyond its reaction to any woman he'd met. But if she was his mate, he was so badly broken that he couldn't even tell.
"Marion," Jess mused aloud. "I have to call her. She needs to be warned so she doesn't walk into this without knowing about it. This is going to break her heart. The library is her baby."
"Do you want me to drive for a little while so you can call her?"
Jess's profile looked firm and resolute, framed against the lowering sun. "I've got the hands-free setting on the car stereo. I'll just do it that way."
"I don't mind, if you're okay with it."
"It's fine this way." She had asserted a rigid self-control that rebuffed any attempt he might have made to offer comfort.
She's like me, he thought. She's used to being alone.
Technically, he was never truly alone; he had his clan. But the clan he'd grown up in was an autocratic, dysfunctional mess, where clan members were encouraged to spy on each other and the clanlord—his grandfather—ruled with an iron fist. Grandfather had been overthrown a couple of years ago and Reive's uncle Heikon restored to his seat, and Heikon had set about undoing the damage that had been done through all those years of despotic rule.
But for Reive, as for a lot of the other younger dragons, those had been his formative years. He'd grown up knowing that he was unable to trust even his closest family members. Now things were back to normal, supposedly, but he didn't even know what normal was.
Like this thing with his arm ... He flexed the stiff, gloved fingers draped lightly over the armrest on the car door. Going to Uncle Heikon with the problem would have been the logical thing. Reive had been injured while helping defend Heikon's mate and grandchildren from an attack. Everyone would have understood.
But ... he couldn't. Something deep inside him, a strong core of dragon's pride, refused to let him.
It wasn't as if they could do anything to help. He doubted if anybody in the clan knew any more about gargoyles than Reive did. Most dragons used to think gargoyles died out ages ago—extinct, or nearly so—until they had suddenly showed up again, a couple of years ago, and started causing trouble. And the idea of having his entire clan know he was dying ... no. He shook his head sharply as if to shake off the thought. All they'd be able to do was hover over him and sit at his deathbed. He wouldn't inflict that on them.
He was going to solve this problem on his own, or die quietly in a foreign land, causing problems for no one.
Meanwhile, Jess had been going through settings on the stereo. Now she hesitated with one hand on the buttons. "What on Earth am I going to tell her?" she said. "I can't possibly explain that the library was trashed by gargoyles and I'm going to Italy to find a magic book."
"You mentioned you had trouble with teenagers before."
"Yeah," she said, "playing pranks, not wrecking the entire place. Anyway, I don't want to get local kids in trouble for something they had nothing to do with. I wonder if anyone would believe it was a gas leak."
"What about thieves? It's not even untrue."
"And they tore apart the place just for fun?" she said skeptically.
"Maybe looking for a valuable book? Again," he pointed out, "not untrue."
Jess heaved a sigh. "I guess it's the best we've got." She pushed a button on the stereo.
"Hello?" Marion's voice quavered on the other end.
"Hi, Marion." Jess glanced at Reive, who tried to give her an encouraging look.
"Jessamy!" Marion exclaimed. "Jess, dear, I have dreadful news. Dreadful news."
"Oh ... no?" Jess ventured, exchanging another glance with Reive.
"Some sort of hooligans broke into the library! I was just on the phone with Chief Durham! They utterly wrecked the shelves in the local history aisles, and there's damage to the doors where they broke in. He says it's awful."
"Oh no," Jess said more convincingly. "How terrible, Marion! Thank goodness, uh, that no one was there when it happened, right?"
"I was just about to call and make sure you were safe, dear—"
"Oh, yes, absolutely. Everything seemed perfectly ordinary when I locked up. Do they have any idea who the culprits are?" she asked cautiously.
"Chief Durham assures me that they're pursuing every lead," Marion said, her voice earnest.
In other words, Reive thought, they have no idea. How could they? None of the evidence at the scene would have made any sense at all to humans.
"I'm so sorry, Marion," Jess said. "And I only called in the first place to—to tell you I'll be out of town this weekend. I found a lead on a book I was looking for and I, um, I'm flying out of Indianapolis to get it. I don't expect to be back before Monday at the earliest."
"I can't imagine we'll be open next week, if it's as bad as they say," Marion said.
"I hate to leave you to deal with it all on your own."
"No, no, don't cancel your trip. Actually," Marion said, and Reive could hear the old lady perking up. "This might be an opportunity. We're going to need funds for the rebuilding, and it might be possible to get the money from the city council for that new reading room we've been wanting. And we could organize the local teenagers into a cleanup crew; perhaps if they're involved with rebuilding the library, they'll be more invested in it."
Jess now looked like she was suppressing a smile. "It sounds like you've got this well in hand. I have to go, but I'll call and check on you, all right?"
"You just have fun and don't worry about us here," Marion said. "I'm sure they'll have the culprits in hand soon."
"Oh yes," Jess said. "I'm sure. Take care, all right?"
She hung up and took a slow, deep breath, resting both hands loosely on the steering wheel.
"I can't believe I lied to Marion," she said, sounding like she had run a marathon.
"You were magnificent."
"She'll be okay, won't she? Will they bother her?"
"I don't see why they would," Reive said. "She doesn't have anything they want." He smiled a little. "She seems to be handling it okay."
"That's Marion," Jess said. She shook her head. "I thought she'd be devastated, but instead she's on fire to organize the whole thing. She'll have the library whipped back into shape in half the time that it would take anyone else."
"She seems like a great lady."
"Oh, she is, she really is. I hope I have half her energy when I'm her age," Jess said. She reached behind the seat and fumbled around, then came up with a half-empty box of granola bars. "Snack?"
"Sure." Reive took one, though he wasn't particularly hungry. One of the worrying side effects of the poison was that he hadn't really felt like eating. Normally he would have been starving, with his shifter metabolism in overdrive trying to heal his body.
"We can stop and grab a burger or something on our way to the airport." Jess gave a nervous laugh and opened the wrapper with her teeth, driving one-handed. "I can't believe I'm doing
this. Flying off to Italy with someone I've barely met. Believe it or not, I'm not normally like this. I'm usually a very cautious person."
Reive couldn't help smiling again. She sounded more put out by the fact that she was doing something spontaneous than she was about having her entire life upended by gargoyles. "I really am sorry about your library," he said. "Especially if I had something to do with it."
"No, I don't think it was you," Jess said with a strangely intense conviction. "Don't blame yourself. I—I guess collecting all those things about gargoyles, asking around on message boards and shopping online book sales, I was painting a target on myself. I just didn't know it."
The low evening sun slanted into their eyes as they merged onto a bigger freeway. Jess pointed to the glove compartment, with his knees bumping it. "There are sunglasses in there. Could you get them out for me? I'm sorry, I don't have any for you."
"I'm fine." His eyes had naturally adjusted; shifters could tolerate a wider range of conditions—light and dark, heat and cold—than humans could. He passed the sunglasses to her, felt a brief thrill at the touch of her hand. "So what's the deal with the gargoyle collection?" he asked to distract himself. "Did you know they were real beforehand?"
"I ... it's just a hobby," she said a little too quickly. "I should have been researching dragons instead, apparently. Are you the only one?"
"No, there are entire clans of us. You're taking this much better than most people do when they find out about dragons, by the way."
"Have you told a lot of people?"
Reive grinned. "Okay, you got me. No, I haven't."
"Maybe people would take it better than you think."
"That's true," he admitted. "I haven't been around humans that much."
"Where do dragons live? How have they stayed secret all this time?"
He was not oblivious to the fact that she'd just redirected the entire conversation from her secrets to his, by which he could only conclude that she did already know about gargoyles, but didn't want to talk about it for some reason.