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?"