"What? Why? And why didn't you tell me sooner? I would have kept my hands on you the whole time if I'd known!"
Reive's eyes opened, coppery and warm. He smiled. "I wouldn't mind you keeping your hands on me."
She started to answer, but then heard footsteps and voices. Their hosts were coming back. Jess leaned closer. "You said the gargoyles are coming," she whispered. "How do you know?"
"I can feel it." He hastily pulled the glove back over his hand. "It hurts more when they're around. And it hurt like fuck when that Mace guy touched my hand. I think it's possible he's one of them."
"Wait, what?" Jess began, but just then, Gio appeared in the hallway. Mace loomed behind him.
Jess tried not to stare at him. Could he be another of her kind?
Did she care if he was?
"Ah, young people," Gio said with an easy smile, observing them half-hidden in the alcove. "To be so young again."
Reive stepped protectively in front of Jess, tugging his sleeve down over the glove. "Stop playing games with us. We're not here to steal your book."
"It is not a game," Gio said, abruptly serious. "We needed a moment to consult privately about you."
"And I still think you're making a mistake," Mace said, his voice a bass rumble.
"It is my book, is it not?"
In spite of herself, Jess felt her heart quicken. "Are you going to show us the book?" she asked.
Gio smiled. "Come."
Mace hung behind, bringing up the rear and following ominously along as they all trooped through the clean, cool rooms of the villa. Jess couldn't feel the cold breeze that would indicate air conditioning, and heard none of the telltale humming that would have given away a central air conditioning system, although sometimes when no one was talking, she thought she felt a slight vibration through the soles of her feet. (A generator, maybe?) Yet the house was comfortable inside. The entire place was designed to channel cool air and keep it from overheating.
"When was your house built?" she asked, hurrying to catch up with Gio. Reive lagged behind her, keeping a wary eye on Mace.
"There was a house on this site in Roman times," Gio said over his shoulder. "You will soon see. This is not the original house, of course. But it has been built and rebuilt over the centuries. Who can say when an old house becomes a new house, as one constantly rebuilds the walls?"
"What do you mean, we'll see?" Jess asked as they went down a short flight of stone steps. The house was built on uneven ground, with almost every room a slightly different height from the others. "Is part of the original house still here?"
"In a way."
The doors they passed, like the front door, were made of age-darkened wood, most of them closed. Gio stopped in front of a door that looked indistinguishable from the others. He tapped lightly on it with his knuckles. "Looks like wood, eh? Actually, it is wood over metal. And you will notice there is no handle."
He removed a small pot of flowers from an ornamental-looking notch in the wall beside the door and reached inside. Jess couldn't see what he was doing with his hand, but she heard the distinctive soft clicking of keys being pressed. There was a keypad in there, like the one in an ATM.
With a soft click, the door sprang open.
"That's it, show them all your secrets," Mace muttered. He was still at the rear of the group, looming threateningly behind them.
Gio opened the door and flicked a light switch, revealing stone steps leading down. A breath of cool air wafted up from below. It smelled of damp earth and ... was that the distinctive paper-and-leather smell of old books? Jess also could now more clearly hear the soft thrumming she had noticed in other parts of the house. There was climate-control equipment here, all right, but it was underground.
"Your library is under the house," she breathed.
"Lead on," Gio said, gesturing them forward.
Reive hung back. It was only when Jess went eagerly down the stairs that he followed.
If the rest of the house had felt old, this was ancient. The stairs descended between two roughly mortared stone walls, made of flat stones piled closely together. It was lit with bare light bulbs in wire cages, hung from the ceiling.
"You asked about the old Roman house," Gio said from above. Jess looked up, past Reive, who looked tense and alert even with his hand resting lightly on his bad arm. "This is part of it."
Mace stepped through the door, having to duck his head slightly, and closed it behind them. Jess felt a surge of claustrophobia at being locked in. If Gio and Mace planned to betray them, there was no better place.
And yet, Gio wasn't lying about the books. She could smell them. The book they had come so far to see was close now.
And she was pretty sure that, even if Mace and Gio were both gargoyles, they'd have their hands full fighting off a dragon. Not to mention me.
"This is a mistake," Reive murmured. "A bad mistake. Jess, we should leave."
"He's not lying. There really are books down here," she whispered back.
"That's not it. I don't think he's lying."
"So let's take a quick look and leave."
They reached the bottom of the stairs. There was another door here, this one made of tough-looking, tempered glass or plastic. Beyond it was darkness, but Gio touched a light switch, and abruptly the room beyond the glass door lit up.
There really was a library down here.
It was huge. It looked like it ran the entire length of the house. Bookshelves marched off in rows, each filled with neat ranks of books. Even from here, she could see the tremendous variety, from crumbling ancient tomes to shiny hardcover bestsellers.
There was no disguising the fact that the library was in a cellar, even if it was a very large cellar, but at least it was a comfortable-looking cellar. There were rugs on the floor, and she could glimpse reading nooks scattered among the shelves, with cozy chairs and pretty stained-glass lamps.
She realized that she had started to raise her hand to press it against the glass door, like a kid looking through the window of a pet store, and put it quickly back down. Gio, smiling, typed on another keypad on the wall—this one wasn't hidden—and the door sprang open. Cool air whispered past their faces, and with it came the full-bodied smell that she had caught a whiff of from above. Books. Old books. It was like every library and used bookstore she'd ever been in, all rolled together. She took a deep breath and started to step forward.
"No!" Reive said sharply. His good hand settled on her shoulder. "We've seen enough. We're going upstairs now."
"You are nervous, aren't you?" Gio said warmly. "I assure you, we mean you no harm. This stairwell is the only way in or out. Your thieves will never even find this place, let alone steal anything from it."
Reive shook his head. "This isn't secure. It's the farthest thing from secure. This place is a trap, and we have to get out now."
Reive
Reive's arm burned as if there were a thousand hornets under the skin. His side ached too. He knew without even being able to see it that the stone patches above his hip were spreading. Already it was growing more difficult to rotate at the waist. He couldn't move his right hand at all.