He nodded. "In the first tome, scribed in the ancient tongue. Pages of names. So you see, I don't need you. I know human ways far better than my enemies. I could easily conceal myself long enough to track another one down."
"Then, why don't you?" she asked faintly.
And how would she survive if he did?
"I endangered your life. I will fix it."
Gabby blinked up at him. His voice was tight, his accent more clipped than usual and. were he a normal man, she would have thought he was furious with himself for having placed her in jeopardy.
Ok for crying out loud, her inner fourteen-year-old snapped, even for a Fae prince he sounds furious with himself for having placed you in jeopardy. Cut him some slack, would you?
She stood, mouth open, a dozen different questions vying for her tongue, but he shook his head.
"Not now. We must go. There will be a place to talk soon enough. This is not it. Come."
Gabby stood, tucking her purse securely over her shoulder. As she moved to join him, she suddenly noticed that the water trickling down his wet shut held a reddish tinge.
"Are you hurt?" she exclaimed, reaching for his arm.
He twisted away with a shrug. "It's nothing—"
"Let me— "
"Leave it. I'm fine. I rinsed it out in the lake. It's not deep. Come, Irish. Hand. In mine. Now."
When she just stood there, frowning worriedly up at him, he said, "I have no intention of expiring before I'm made immortal again. Rest assured, if I say it's of no consequence, it isn't." He paused a moment, then added softly, "And you needn't fear, Gabrielle. I destroyed them."
"The Hunters?" she said blankly. "No you didn't."
"The pages that name the Sidhe-seers. You shouldn't make things so easy for my race. They can be without mercy, dangerous."
"Unlike you, that oh-so-nice-guy-Adam-Black?" The caustic comment slipped from her tongue before she could stop it.
He shot her a look of impatient rebuke. "Try to see past your preconceptions, Irish, would you? Try seeing me."
Okay, now that messed with her head. Made her feel like she was being judgmental and petty. She wasn't judgmental, she was merely going by the facts, and the facts were—
Well, the facts were... er, that she wasn't entirely certain what the facts were at the moment.
Damn it! Why couldn't things just be black and white? Human good, fairy bad. Simple! That was what she'd been raised to believe.
Had he really destroyed those pages betraying all the Sidhe-seers? Why? Why would he even expend the effort?
For that matter, why had he so gently retrieved the flopping tadpole from the ground and returned it? There was no doubt that he had; he'd been freshly drenched again. He could have just lied (after all, lying was supposed to be his second nature) and told her there was no time. She would have believed him; she had no idea what Hunters were capable of.
And he had told her to walk away the minute she'd spotted the lone fairy. Had he truly meant to send her away for her own protection, at his own risk?
What kind of fairy did such things? A legendary seducer and deceiver?
Or... halfway decent fairy? Was there such a thing?
At a complete loss, she slipped her hand into his.
His big hand swallowed hers, making her feel dainty and feminine. She tipped her head back, looking up at his chiseled face. His eyes were dark, his jaw set. And he looked so very... human.
As they began to sift, she was ambushed by the realization that, though she knew she wasn't safe from him, she felt strangely safe with him.
* * *
They didn't stop again until well after nightfall. Actually, she mused muzzily, it felt nearer to dawn. She'd lost track of the passage of time during their discombobulating passage through place.
He sifted them onto a passenger train just outside of Louisville, Kentucky, explaining that they now needed to travel by human means for a while, to ensure the Fae couldn't track them. Assuring her that the Hunters would be tangled up for quite some time in the net of magic-residue he'd left behind.
She was once again so tired she could barely function. When he guided her through the cars until they found a nearly empty one, then took a seat by the window and pulled her in next to him, she sank limply down. Since Adam Black's advent into her life, her sleep schedule had become the biggest joke.
Judging by the faint streaks of orange and pink on the horizon beyond the glass, it appeared she'd again been up nearly twenty-four hours straight— and again they'd been some of the most traumatic hours she'd ever endured.
Unable to find a single solid point of reference to latch on to in the recent epidemic of otherworldly events, she decided to deal with it all later and yielded to exhaustion, slumping down in the seat, chin nodding toward her chest.