Jess glanced over at Mace. He lit the incense burner—the spicy smell drifted to her over the water—and opened the briefcase. The book was inside, now open to a page that was weighed down with a rock. Her soul cringed.
"At least cover the pages with plastic! The salt in the air will destroy the paper."
Mace laughed under his breath. "You're definitely a librarian."
"I'll take that as a compliment. Can I do anything to help?"
"Just what you're doing," Mace said over his shoulder. "It's the most important part."
"It doesn't feel like it," she muttered, but she kept moving, wading deeper and deeper.
Looking down at Reive's slack face, where the stone patches seemed to have spread visibly since she'd first noticed them, was making her anxious. She looked up at the sky instead. The last pink-gold rays of the setting sun still touched the top of the grotto, though chill blue shadows cloaked the bottom where they were.
She might not have seen what she saw, except for the steep angle of the sun, casting long shadows from every protruding knob and cleft in the rock. There was more than just rock up there.
In the cliff, there were faces.
"Mace!" she gasped out.
"What?" He spun around at the alarm in her voice, half-spreading his wings. "Oh." He followed her gaze to the clifftops. "Those are mine. Don't worry about it. This place isn't warded as well as Stonegarden, but it has its defenders."
Jess stared up anxiously at the cliffs. The gargoyle statues seemed to be frozen in the act of emerging from the cliffside. The statues at the house and in the village hadn't unnerved her like this, but there was something creepy about these. She found them more frightening than comforting.
Looking at the cliffs also made her aware that there was no visible way to get down into the grotto. There were no steps cut into the rock, no paths, not even so much as a ladder. With the sheer cliffs along the sea and the rough surf, no one could possibly get here if they didn't have wings or Mace's ability to travel underground.
It should have made her feel safer, but instead she felt trapped.
You have wings, Jess. You can fly out of here.
It wasn't quite the voice of something entirely apart from herself, but it was a voice she had been hearing in the back of her mind for her whole life. It was her common sense and sanity; it was the reasonable part of herself, the part with its feet planted firmly on the ground.
"Jess?" Reive's voice murmured.
She wrenched her gaze from the clifftops to look into his face. His eyes cracked half open, staring up dazedly at the sky. When he managed to focus on her face, his gaze sharpened, as if he was pulling himself back to consciousness by sheer force of will. He smiled weakly.
"Hi," she said, smiling back. Remembering her task, she took a step deeper into the pool. Reive flinched and tried to sit up, then seemed to realize that he wasn't being supported by anything except the water and her arms, and thrashed in an abrupt spasm that almost made her drop him.
"It's okay. Settle down. I've got you."
Reive calmed down, but raised his head enough to look around. "Where are we?" he asked weakly.
He was still gasping for breath between each word, and she could feel his heart beating rapidly where his body was pressed against hers.
"We're in a place Mace took us to. We're going to do the ceremony here."
She was braced for argument, and not entirely sure what she was going to do if he objected. But instead he just nodded, and then he said, "Are we ... wet?"
"Yes. Sorry. It's part of the ceremony."
Reive nodded again. He laid his head back against her shoulder, but smiled up at her. "Never gonna mind getting you naked and wet."
"Reive!" she said, casting a quick glance at Mace, who had his back to them. And then she remembered abruptly and shockingly that she was in her gargoyle form. And ... he hadn't reacted badly to her at all. She hadn't seen any shock or alarm in his face at all, not even surprise or a moment's lack of recognition. He had only looked glad to see her.
It's true. He really does see me and not the gargoyle.
But that wasn't entirely it.
No. I am the gargoyle. That's what he sees, no matter what shape I'm wearing. He just sees me.
There was a time when she would have reacted with vehement resistance to the idea that her gargoyle form and her human form had anything at all in common.
But they weren't actually that different, were they? She looked down at her hands, curled around Reive's shoulder and thigh. Those were her fingers, bigger and stronger, but—except for the claws at their tips—still basically the same shape as the hands she was used to seeing wrapped around a cup of coffee or turning the pages of a book.
Even her face as a gargoyle was broader and thicker, but discounting the fangs, it was her face. Not someone else's, not even that different.
It really is me.
Told you, some other part of her brain seemed to say.
They would have been floating now, but for her gargoyle weight holding them down, keeping them stable. The water was up to her chest. Reive's head was out of the water for now, but then it lolled again, his brief moment of consciousness flagging. The back of his head dipped into the water, his black hair floating before he gasped awake and jerked himself a little higher in her arms, throwing an arm around her neck.
"That's cold!"
"Good," she said. "It'll help keep you awake."
She felt her way across the bottom of the tidal pool with her toes, letting the pebbles guide her. This seemed to be about as deep as it got. They were submerged except for their heads and her shoulders. She could feel the water tugging at her, trying to lift her, while her weight held her down. Water versus stone.
"How do you feel?" she asked Reive.
"Cold," he said. He drew a labored breath. "Wet. I—ah!"
His head snapped back, dipping so low in the water that she had to throw her shoulders back and lift him to keep his face from going under. The spasm of pain contorted his whole body.
"Reive, no! What's wrong? Mace! It's getting worse!"
"He has to change," Mace called back from the shore. He was hunched over the little altar he had set up with the bowl and incense burner on a slab of rock. From here, Jess could see the flickering light of fire in the bowl; it lit his face from below. "We don't have a choice."
Jess clung to Reive as he writhed in pain, as if her arms could hold him here in the world. She couldn't help thinking back on Reive's distrust of Mace. Maybe he was right. Maybe Mace was tricking them, tricking her.
"He's hurting so much! There has to be another way."
"Just keep holding him," Mace called. "You're helping, you really are. Don't let him go."
"Not ever," she whispered.
Unable to watch Reive writhing in pain, she tilted her head back, looking up at the bright salmon-colored sky on fire with the brilliant colors of sunset. The cliffs were outlined sharp and dark against it.
And at the top of the cliff above them: a human figure, cowled and cloaked, with the skirts of the robe flapping in the wind.
Jess sucked in a breath of shock and alarm.
"Mace!" she shouted. "He's here!"