Stoneskin Dragon (Stone Shifters Book 1) Read online

  Fortunately the car was right there as a distraction. "What do you think?" he asked her.

  "I can't believe you're doing this. Can you afford it? What am I saying, I keep forgetting your family is loaded. Do you always travel like this?"

  "But you like it?" The words came out hopeful. He really did want her to like it. It felt as if he and his dragon were gently shoving it in her direction, like a courting offering from the hoard he didn't have.

  "Reive—it's amazing. Of course I love it. I've never been in a car like this in my life." She put her bag in the back, and cautiously felt around the seat, finding the adjustment levers. "I feel like I'm in a Bond movie or something."

  "Wait 'til we put the top down and go cruising in the countryside," he said, and threw the car into gear.

  Jess

  Jess honestly couldn't remember when she'd had this much fun in her entire life.

  She was glad Reive was driving in the city, as he fought his way through heavy traffic full of manic drivers. But once they were out of the city on a country highway, the car nearly flew.

  They drove through suburbs at first, but eventually they were out in the tawny countryside, driving past fields of olives and sunflowers, past farmhouses with terra-cotta tile roofs and fields full of lazy cows, gas stations and gated industrial yards; past forests and lakes and railroad bridges and surprisingly rugged hills.

  She had expected Italy to be beautiful, but she hadn't expected so much of it to be this wild. She'd had a mental image of rolling hills covered with neat ranks of olive trees. There were definitely those, but there were also places where the trees pressed close to the road and they might almost be back in the woodsier parts of Indiana, except for the particular fierce clarity of the light.

  They had the top down. The hot wind tangled her hair and threatened to blow her sunglasses away.

  It was wonderful. It would have been perfect, if not for one thing.

  Reive drove casually, with his left hand draped over the steering wheel and his gloved right hand resting on the gearshift. Despite the heat of the day, he hadn't even unzipped the heavy leather jacket.

  "Reive," she said cautiously. "Your, er—your friend, the one who was hurt by a gargoyle. What happened?"

  Reive glanced at her. She was glad her sunglasses hid her eyes.

  "Are you sure you don't mind hearing the story?"

  "We've got a drive ahead of us. It'd be a good way to pass the time."

  "It's really not that much of a story anyway." He looked ahead as he navigated a turn in the road. "It happened at my aunt's place in Greece, a while back. It was a family vacation, so we had all ages there, right down to little kids and my very pregnant step-cousin. The gargoyles attacked us out of nowhere, unprovoked."

  Little kids. A pregnant cousin. Jess swallowed. "They must have had a reason," she said, and then kicked herself for defending them.

  "Oh, sure they had a reason," Reive said, anger lacing his words. "They were working with my—with a usurper to help him take over my clan from our rightful clanlord. So yeah, they had a reason, but not one that'd make you want to invite them to the neighborhood barbecue."

  Jess swallowed, her fingernails digging into her leg. She realized with horror that their tips had begun to change to claws in response to her emotional agitation, and fought back the change; there would be no worse time and place to turn into a gargoyle than right here. "And your, uh, your friend was hurt defending the others?"

  She could very easily picture Reive throwing himself into danger to protect a bunch of kids and a pregnant woman. It seemed very him.

  "Yeah, he got hit with some poison spikes. Nobody realized at first what was happening to him. They just thought he'd been poisoned, like from a snake bite, but he shook it off okay. We didn't know 'til later that it was worse, so much worse than we thought."

  Jess looked down at her hands in her lap. Was she poisonous to the touch? She didn't have any way of knowing. Maybe all this time, if she had accidentally transformed and touched Marion or one of the kids who came to the library ... She shuddered in horror.

  She truly was a monster.

  "What about the rest of the family?" she asked. "Are they looking for a cure too?"

  "They don't know," Reive said. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, looking at the road, not at her. "My friend didn't want them to know. The only person who knows is me."

  Which, given her suspicions, was even more literal than he probably wanted her to think. Jess blinked back tears.

  Why are you dealing with this all alone? If I had a big close-knit family who loved me, I can't imagine ending up sick and alone on the other side of the world, with no one even knowing what was happening to me.

  But he was alone. Just like her.

  "Reive," she said quietly. After checking to make sure the claws were completely gone, she placed her hand on his leg, carefully avoiding his arm. "We will find a cure, I promise you. If Signor Romano doesn't have it, we'll keep looking as long as it takes. We'll find a way to fix your friend."

  And hopefully along with it, a way to turn me fully human, so I will never be in danger of hurting anyone ever again.

  It was afternoon when they began to approach the address Jess's phone had given them, in the same long glorious golden light they had admired yesterday. The hills lay in humps of dusty gold and green, rolling like the backs of vast tawny lions lying side by side.

  They left the main road and went down winding country lanes, barely a single lane wide. When they met another vehicle coming the other way, one or the other had to pull over to the side. Trees laden with fruit drooped over the road. They had to stop at one point for some goats to cross the road.

  "Your guy really loves his privacy," Reive remarked.

  "I didn't call him a reclusive billionaire for nothing." Jess checked her phone. "I've emailed him a couple more times, but I haven't gotten a response. I really hope he doesn't mind us dropping in."

  "If nothing else, he'd probably appreciate being warned that a magic-using douchebag with a bunch of pet gargoyles might gate-crash him to steal his books."

  "True," Jess admitted. "And that's the sort of news that's hard to tell someone over the phone."

  Just when it seemed that their road couldn't possibly get any narrower and still be a road, they pulled up at a gate between two stone walls. Reive parked, and they both got out. It was very quiet here, the late-afternoon heat draped over them like a soft blanket. Goats bleated in the distance, and the leaves of the trees rustled with a dry rattling sound that was different from the ocean-wave whisper of leaves back home. Jess found that she was listening for something and realized that she kept expecting the rushing shirr of cicadas. There were insect sounds here, but they were different.

  "Ideas?" Reive asked.

  "I'm not sure."

  They went up to the gate. It was black wrought iron in a spiraling design. Through the gate, Jess could see that the road curved away through serried ranks of olive trees. She could just glimpse the low white walls of what was probably a house through the trees.

  "There's an intercom here," Reive pointed out. "Should we call up to the house?"

  She pressed the button, hesitated for a minute, and then said, "Hello? This is Jess O'Dell. I'm the American who's been emailing you."

  The intercom squawked, and someone said something in Italian. Between the static and the language barrier, she couldn't figure out enough by analogy to Latin to have the slightest clue what had been asked.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't speak Italian. Does anyone there speak English?"

  There was a pause, and then a calm, deep voice with only the slightest accent said, "You are the young American lady who has been trying to contact me? The librarian?"

  "That's right," Jess said, her heart pounding. "I'm so sorry to bother you like this, but I'm here with a friend. We're at your gate right now, and we have a terribly urgent need to speak to you."

  The gate buzzed, jerked,
and then began slowly to slide on rollers to the side.

  "Come up," the deep voice said. "You can park in front of the house."

  "Thank you," Jess exclaimed. "Uh ... grazie!"

  "I look forward to meeting you, young American lady, and your friend," the voice said, and the intercom clicked off.

  "Trap?" Reive murmured as they went back to the car.

  "Why would it be?"

  "Just stay alert."

  Reive drove slowly through the winding lane between the olive groves. The gate clunked shut behind them, and Jess tried not to feel trapped. Now that Reive had mentioned the possibility, she could feel all her senses going on high alert. Her fingertips began hardening and lengthening again. She clenched her teeth and forced them back to normal.

  The white house she had seen through the trees was a low, rambling villa, its walls gleaming creamy pale gold in the evening sun. Reive parked the car on a curving drive of crushed white stone. The house was flanked with shrubs and trees, draped in flowers. Their perfume was strong enough to make Jess lightheaded.

  They got out of the car. Jess left her suitcase in the trunk. It wasn't the kind of place where you expected to have things stolen. If they ran into trouble here, light-fingered villa employees were going to be the least of their problems.

  It surprised her, in a way, that the villa wasn't bigger. She was expecting a more McMansion-like building, several stories tall with vast, sprawling wings. Instead it was a rambling one-story structure, most of which was hidden behind flowering trees and gardens. There was a fountain on the lawn, with a statue shaped like a youth pouring water out of a vase.

  She was too busy looking around to notice for a moment that Reive wasn't with her. She looked back. He was still by the car, shoulders hunched as if in pain, left hand lightly chafing his right arm through the leather jacket.

  "Reive? Are you all right?"

  He jerked his hand down and straightened up. "Fine."

  Jess frowned at him worriedly when he joined her at the edge of the lawn. He looked gray.

  "Are you sure you're all right?"

  "Jet lag," he said shortly, and started up the pathway to the house.

  Jess sighed and lengthened her stride to fall in step. The path was surfaced in the same crushed pale stone as the driveway. There was a low stone wall on one side, draped in flowering vines, and an ornamental hedge flanking the other side. The door, recessed in an archway, was up a short flight of stairs, each made from a large slab of rough-finished stone.

  It opened at their approach, and a woman held the door for them. She was middle-aged with curly graying hair and wore a dark dress that made it impossible for Jess to tell if she was an employee or a relative. A crinkling web of lines around her eyes suggested that she smiled often, though she was solemn as she bowed briefly and held out a hand toward Reive. She asked a question in Italian.

  "I think she asked about taking your coat," Jess said.

  Reive shook his head. "No thank you, I'm fine."

  The woman offered another small bow, a dip of her head, and turned, gesturing them to follow her.

  The villa was more extensive than it had appeared from the front, and a lot of it, Jess discovered, was outside, or at least not roofed over. They went through a series of courtyards filled with flowers, one big enough to contain a swimming pool. The sun by now was below the villa's walls, and the courtyards were filled with shadows, the pool's water a deep blue-green as it lapped at the ornately tiled edge.

  Beyond the pool room, they came to a small terrace looking down onto a sloping field of olive trees. There was a small grouping of outdoor furniture, and two men sitting at a white patio table, with glasses of wine in hand and the demolished remains of some kind of light meal spread out between them.

  The two rose as Reive and Jess came in. The older of them stepped forward.

  "You are the American librarian," he said in the deep voice she'd heard over the intercom. "I am Giovanni Romano."

  Giovanni Romano was tall and lean, with a shock of gray hair. She guessed he was about seventy, but he could have been older—or perhaps younger, his skin and hair prematurely aged by the intense sun. There was no trace of an old man's trembling in his warm, strong fingers as he took her hands in his, and kissed their backs.

  "Oh," Jess said. No one had ever done that before. Beside her, Reive subtly bristled. "Oh, uh ... yes, I'm Jess O'Dell, and this is my friend Reive. Thank you for having us, um, Signor Romano."

  "You are both very welcome in my home," Giovanni said. "Please, call me Gio. Are you hungry? Maria!" he called to the curly-haired woman. "Please bring refreshments for my guests. The olives are locally grown, as are the grapes for the wine, and the oil is pressed here. Come, sit—oh, and I am being rude! This is my friend Mace MacKay."

  MacKay? Definitely not an Italian name. Mace was an eye-catching man, broad-shouldered and dark-haired, with a wide, rough-hewn face that wasn't quite what she'd call handsome, but was definitely arresting. His eyes, in particular, were the most vivid green she'd ever seen.

  He gave her hand a firm shake. At least he didn't kiss it. Reive held out his gloved hand and winced when Mace shook it.

  Jess noticed Mace's clear green gaze lingering on both of them, but especially her, even after they sat down at the table. It wasn't leering or lustful. It was just very, very interested.

  Reive, she noticed, had quietly positioned himself between her and the two men.

  "How do you know Gio?" Mace asked her. His accent was subtle and lilting, like nothing she'd ever heard before. Irish, perhaps? Scottish? That was the closest thing she could think of. Yet not quite.

  "We don't really know each other," Jess said. "We've exchanged emails, that's all. I'm very sorry to drop in on you with so little advance warning."

  The woman, Maria, bustled in with two glasses and an open bottle of wine, and Gio leaned forward to pour.

  "Not at all," Gio said. "It is no problem." He handed her a glass of wine. "I could tell from your emails that you are a young lady who appreciates books. I am always pleased to meet a fellow bibliophile."

  Reive had his hand resting on his bad arm again, as if it hurt him. When Gio handed him a wine glass, he took it with his left hand, took a sip for politeness's sake, and set it down on the table.

  "Unfortunately, we're in kind of a hurry," Jess said. "My library was recently attacked by thieves who stole an extremely rare manuscript—the counterpart to the one I emailed you about. We think they might be after yours as well. Has anyone—er—approached you about buying books lately? Other than me."

  Gio laughed. "You need fear nothing. My library is quite secure. No one comes or goes except for me and those I choose to let in."

  Reive spoke up, lightly chafing his forearm with his other hand. "These are very determined and very dangerous thieves."

  "Ah, but what if you are the thieves?" Gio asked lightly. "I let you in, you convince me to show you my library, and then you take my book."

  "We're not thieves!" Jess said.

  "You have no reason to trust us, it's true," Reive said. He kept glancing at Mace as he spoke. "But we are here to warn you about a very real threat."

  Maria came back in with crusty, steaming bread and several small plates. She passed the plates around and poured a dollop of olive oil in each one.

  "We should eat before we talk business," Gio declared. He tore off a piece of bread and dipped it. "Did I mention the olives are grown here? My family has been growing them for generations. You must eat the bread in the Italian style. Here, like this." He leaned across the table, his fingers not quite brushing Jess's; at her elbow, Reive stiffened. "See, you dip like this. You don't have this at home, eh?"

  Thoroughly flustered, Jess decided not to mention that she'd eaten oil-dipped bread like this in Olive Garden. But as soon as she tasted it, she knew that she had never really had it before after all. The bread was amazing, warm and fresh and perfectly crusty, and she'd never tasted olive oil tha
t was so full of flavor, or really had any flavor at all.

  Reive, she noticed, was tense to the point of rigidity. He ignored the offered bread, sitting on the edge of his chair, and looked like he was trying to keep watch on both of their hosts simultaneously.

  Mace also seemed aware of the tension in the air. Only Gio appeared relaxed and cheerful, as if nothing at all was out of the ordinary.

  "Are you feeling well?" he asked Reive, and Jess turned to look at Reive with worry. It wasn't just tension; he was grayish under the bronze tint of his skin.

  "Tired," Reive said tightly. "It was a long drive. Actually ... do you have a bathroom?"

  "But of course," Gio said, and rose. "I'm being a poor host. You have had a long drive. This way, please."

  Moving with the grace and sure stride of a younger man, he ushered them through an arched doorway to a pair of bathrooms across the hall from each other. Jess hesitated, unsure how to read Reive's glance over his shoulder at her, but he slipped into his bathroom, so she went into hers.

  The facilities were completely modern and also ample in size and opulence, with a state-of-the-art toilet and what she thought at first was a second toilet and then realized was a bidet, which she had never seen in real life before. She washed her hands and face in a gorgeous sink supported by a plaster cherub, and pinned her hair back up from its wind-wrecked disarray.

  She came out to find Reive waiting for her, leaning against the wall beside the door. He was rubbing his gloved hand; he jerked his other hand away when she came out. Gio and Mace were nowhere in sight.

  "They're just leaving us alone?" she asked quietly. "Why?"

  Reive gave a slight, one-shouldered shrug. "Maybe they want to see what we'll do if we think we aren't watched. It's an opportunity to speak alone, anyway."

  He glanced both ways down the hall, and took a step back, into a recessed archway half concealed by a man-sized potted plant. He made a slight beckoning motion, and Jess followed.