Jess took a few tentative steps into the library. She spun slowly around, looking up at the rows of shelves with her head tipped back. Gio's underground library had fascinated her, but this made her think of Belle's library in Beauty and the Beast. It was a fairy tale library. She could lose herself here for days, weeks, years.
And you have a mission, she told herself firmly. We're on a clock.
"What was it you wanted to find here?" she asked Mace, with her eyes still fastened on the shelves.
"First, we need to find out exactly how to do this ritual." He gestured at the shelves. "The pages from the book, yours and mine combined, have most of the specific elements of the original gargoyle transformation, but I need to pull out all my books on magic lore. You can help me. I'll show you how I have things sorted. It's according to my own personal cataloguing system and might seem obscure to anyone else."
Jess's inner librarian-self perked up and took notice. "You know, if you need any help cataloguing, I'm a librarian. I do it all the time."
Mace looked up from setting the book's loose pages down on a reading table. He smiled a little. "I wouldn't want to make more work for you."
"It's wonderful work. I love it. I work at a small library in Indiana."
Was the present tense even appropriate anymore? That life seemed impossibly far behind her now. She hadn't thought of it in days. She really needed to call Marion and check on her, if her phone even worked here, come to think of it. She still had the European SIM card in it. And her car was still in long-term parking in Indianapolis ...
One thing at a time. First, research.
Thinking about her former library made her realize the one thing the room was missing that she would have expected to see in an old-fashioned library with those high, high bookstacks. There were no ladders to reach the tallest shelves.
"How do you get up there?" she asked, pointing toward the ceiling. The highest bookshelves were at least fifteen feet above them, framed by stained-glass windows.
Mace smiled. "Do you really need to ask?"
And he shifted.
This time, she got to watch without distractions. Gray stone rippled across his body, changing his clothes along with the rest of him. His shoulders grew more massive, his jaw broader, and wings rose from his shoulder blades.
When the transformation finished, he gave her a brief smile, flashing fangs, and reached for one of the heavy wooden columns supporting the shelves.
Jess stared openmouthed as Mace climbed effortlessly. The wood, she now noticed, was deeply scarred with claw scratches. She hadn't even thought about it; she had just assumed it was scratched up because it was old.
She had to cast a sideways glance at Reive to see how he was taking all of this, but he didn't look horrified or shocked, merely thoughtful.
High above, Mace half-spread his wings and leaped to catch hold of a ceiling beam. Now clinging upside-down to the ceiling, he retrieved a book from one of the shelves and jumped off. Jess gasped, but he spread his wings and glided down, touching the floor with barely a thump. He shifted back, the gray color and stony texture flowing out of his clothing and skin to leave normal colors behind.
"That was ..." She didn't know what to say. The idea that it could ever be that natural, that easy for her was beyond comprehension. No fear or shame or need to hide, nothing but a simple and primal joy in using her natural talents.
Mace held out the book. The title was Chatham's Theory of Ritual Magic Circles. Jess handled the cracked, flaking leather cover with great care.
"Is this real?" she asked, carefully turning a page. The paper was thick and cream-colored. It seemed irresponsible to be handling it without gloves. Mace peered over her shoulder.
"Real magic, you mean? Some of it. I keep the magic books with some seeds of truth up high where only I can reach them. Also the histories that mention shifters." He reached over to flip the pages to a thick leather bookmark. "We will need to cross-reference the information in this book against the book you have."
"Is that something I can do?" Reive asked quietly. "I don't know how much help I'll be otherwise."
Jess turned swiftly and saw that he'd lost even more color under his tan. It looked like he was struggling to stay on his feet. She slipped an arm around him and noticed that he seemed to regain a bit of color and strength. Under the guise of snuggling against him, she helped him to a leather-upholstered couch in front of the fireplace.
"Are you sure you shouldn't be in bed?" she murmured.
Reive shook his head. "This is for me. I need to help. Anyway, I want to be near you if Black Robe comes back."
"Mace says we're safe here."
"I know. But I still need to stay close."
She was privately unsure if Reive would actually be able to hold his own in a fight right now, but she nodded and reached for the leatherbound book. "Here, you can—actually, I don't know exactly what needs to be done." She looked up at Mace hopefully.
Mace tapped the edge of the lost book's copied pages to align them. "Actually, there is something that won't require much knowledge of the ritual; it will just take time. We need to sort out the pages that specifically pertain to the ritual."
"I can't read it, though," Reive said.
"You don't have to be able to. Just sort out the pages with symbols and diagrams. Like this." Mace demonstrated, showing a page written in Greek with a column of symbols down the side. "I have spent enough time with the other book that I can easily find the appropriate pages in the second half of the book myself."
Jess opened her mouth to say that she had spent a lot of time with the first book and could help with that, but then she closed it. Reive needed to do something useful. And there was little enough else that he could do.
Mace drifted to the other end of the library, running his fingertips across book spines, while Jess got Reive settled on the couch with the loose pages. There was a soft woolen blanket folded on the end of the couch. She draped it over his legs, and Reive smiled.
"You don't need to fuss."
"I want to fuss," she said firmly, and kissed his forehead.
Leaving him with the pages, she rejoined Mace at the book stacks.
"Will this really help him?" she asked in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Reive couldn't hear her.
Mace glanced that way too, just as Reive reached to touch his stone arm, brushed his fingers over it with a wince, then picked up the pages again.
"There are no guarantees," he murmured.
"So he might die anyway."
"We are going to do our best to prevent that from happening." Mace started to turn back to the bookshelves, then tilted his head to look at her. "May I ask a personal question? This is not just curiosity; the answer may affect the ritual."
"Of course," she agreed. "For Reive—anything."
"Are you two mates?"
Jess looked at him warily. Of the various things she thought he might ask about, that definitely wasn't one of them. "Reive says so," she said hesitantly.
"I thought so," Mace said. His quicksilver smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Has Reive told you what that means?"
"He explained it to me a little earlier. And I—I felt something change when we got here. It was like something clicked into place in my heart. Reive said something changed for him, too. Is it this place that did it?"