FIFTEEN
Jack
Princess memorabilia was surprisingly terrifying. That was my conclusion after five hours of Belle and Elsa et al. drilling a hole through my shoulder-blades. Why were there so many princess posters on the wall? And did their eyes have to be so huge and sparkling and judgmental?
Focus.
I had begun the evening sorting through email and messages on my tablet. The media had found my email address, and my inbox showed hundreds of new messages.
No, I did not want to appear on The Today Show.
No, I did not want to send CNN photos of my unique clothing choices.
No, I did not want to grant Candy White an exclusive interview.
No, I did not want to share lottery earnings with a Nigerian prince.
I finally just told Siri to select everything and delete it all.
From there, I watched three rounds of news channel pundits and then moved on to action films. The pounding energy of the movies helped me drag my finger into corporeality as I watched.
Push. Pain. Bounce.
Push, Pain. Bounce.
A sudden shuffling noise sounded to the right of me.
My head snapped around.
Chiara stood in the doorway to the sitting room, eyes staring straight at me.
I recoiled.
It was her psycho stare. The one where her irises bled to black and she moved with wooden animation.
Mmmmm. I shot a glance back at the screen I was watching. Men in Black. An old-school action flick according to Chiara. But right now . . . she kinda reminded me of Edgar, the man possessed by an alien in the movie.
Chiara moved farther into the room, her eyes never leaving my face.
“Lightning. The only answer,” she said in Italian, voice low and hoarse.
All right. I could play along with this.
“How is lightning the answer?” I asked.
She angled her head, a curious bird inspecting dinner perhaps. That same something flickered in my peripheral vision. I swung my head toward it but saw nothing.
“The lightning. Find the power,” Chiara continued.
Well. That was certainly . . . odd.
“End the lightning.” Her forthright gaze was decidedly unnerving.
She moved farther into the room. I glanced at my tablet screen, suddenly realizing I should record Chiara’s sleepwalking for her. It might help us find some answers.
To that end, I pushed my finger into corporeality, nudging the tablet to the side, intent on moving Chiara into sight of the camera. But I never got a chance to start the video recording.
The small action of moving my tablet caused a cascade of events that distracted me.
Chiara continued to stare at me, repeating: “End. Lightning. Power.”
The flickering in my peripheral vision grew. Again, I swung my head toward it.
A scar appeared, small but unmistakable. Glowing, edges fluttering, as if some unfelt breeze flowed through it, just as it had with Tennyson and Branwell several weeks ago.
I blinked, trying to clear my vision.
This wasn’t happening. The rifting was tied to the brothers, not Chiara. There had been no scar here earlier. No scar in my villa, either. No scar had followed us.
And yet, a scar was clearly here now. What chain of events had led to it appearing?
Worse, my fingertip pulsed in time to the fluttering. I glanced down. My index finger fluctuated in and out of existence, as if controlled by some unseen heart.
“Listen!”
I jumped. Chiara had moved closer to me, her face a mere foot from mine.
I lurched backward with a yelp, half burying myself in the couch.
The scar continued to flicker.
“Find. Power,” her voice rasped.
“Power? What power?”
Chiara’s mouth moved, as if trying to speak. Her eyes rolled back into her head, shoulders jerking.
My finger flickered in time with her spasms. The entire supernatural world short-circuiting.
“Chiara!” I poked her with my still pulsing finger. Anything to wake her up.
That was the final straw.
The scar ripped fully open. Roiling blackness poured through, flooding the room, hungrily spreading over chairs and tables, eddying around Chiara. Clinging to nothing but me.
I scrambled upward, but not fast enough. The Chucky-slime latched on to me, creeping around my chest, legs, arms. And then, like before, it retracted, pulling me toward the rift. My finger ached, a fluttering heartbeat.
Frantically, I undulated in the air, desperately fighting the sludge, determined to escape the suction of the black, slimy goo. Glancing behind me, the edges of the rift flapped open. Inside, shapes spun and twisted, caught in the rippling darkness. Every now and again, I glimpsed an arm or torso, a head with accusing eyes glaring.
“Chiara!” I screamed, bucking against the slimy tar. “Wake up!”
I swung my arms and legs, wriggling my body, trying to kick my legs. But it wasn’t enough. The slime continued to crawl over me, dragging me down.
The maw of the rift loomed. The shapes inside . . . open mouths, black eyes, claw-like hands.
“CHIARA!!”
Chiara jerked and staggered sideways, shoulders slumping.
The Chucky-slime vanished off my body, releasing me.
The scar snapped shut.
I shot forward, my head driving into the stone wall. Rock slithered through me.
I pulled out of the rock and whipped around.
Chiara collapsed on the couch. Eyes closed. Chest heaving. As before, the room was completely undisturbed. The dark slime had affected only me. A scar now hovered in the corner near the door.
What. The. Hell.
Weakness swamped me. Stunned, I allowed my body to sink to the floor. Shaky. Unsteady.
Questions flickered through my brain.
Why had the scar suddenly appeared here? Why had the Chucky-slime emerged? And why with Chiara this time? Why had my finger flickered in and out of corporeality?
Were the scars and Chucky-slime tied to me in the end and not the D’Angelos?
Clearly, something between my ghost state and my physical state affected the scars. My finger fluctuating had to be a connection.
But beyond that . . . I sorted through ideas and options, arriving at several potential answers but nothing concrete. I needed to discuss them with Chiara when she awoke.
In the meantime, was I in danger? The Chucky-slime was strong. Would it continue to emerge? And did I care, given Chiara’s current situation? I had come so close to losing her earlier on the highway. If I hadn’t been with her and able to distract the assassins . . .
My heart clenched painfully, lurching into my throat.
I couldn’t leave Chiara alone. She could sleepwalk heaven only knew where. And as long as this thing with the Tempeste family remained unresolved, she would be threatened. I would offer what protection I could. To that end, I scooted closer to the couch. Chiara had drifted back into a deep sleep, her breathing regular.
I adored watching Chiara sleep. Creepy but true. When awake, she was always in motion. So to be able to sit and stare at her . . . her face relaxed in sleep. The faint hint of laugh lines curving toward her mouth like parentheses. The tiny mole next to her right ear. The way her hair curled against her throat.
She was safe. She was here. I was here.
For now . . . that simply had to be enough.
Hours later, midday sunlight crept across the stone floor. I stood and crossed to the window. The Mediterranean Sea spread before me in absolute blue glory. Given our late arrival the night before, I hadn’t noticed the view.
The apartment was part of a medieval house scrambling up the cliff. Glancing down, a narrow lane ran in front of the building—the only thing between the house and a short drop to the ocean below. To the left, houses crowded around a small harbor, structure after structure built on the back of the one in front of it, climbing the steep hillside until the houses melted into sprawling vineyards.
A groan sounded from the couch behind me. I turned just as Chiara sat up, wincing in the bright sunlight.
She pushed the mass of her dark hair away and shaded her eyes, looking for me. “I take it I sleepwalked again last night.” It wasn’t a question.
I nodded.
“Care to elaborate?” she asked.
“You said some weird things. Then, a scar appeared. It opened, and the Chucky-slime tried to pull me through.”
Chiara recoiled, sucking in a hissing breath. “Could you be more blasé about it?”
“Probably.”
She threw her hands up with a disgusted noise. “You stupid British gentlemen and your dumb concept of ennui.”
I suppressed a grin.
I recounted as best I could what had happened: her odd, gravely voice and words about lightning. My finger flickering and the scar appearing and then fracturing open. Chucky-slime emerging and trying to devour me.
She listened without comment, though her quick breathing and convulsive swallowing betrayed her anxiety as I described the Chucky-slime.
When I was done, she didn’t immediately say anything. Instead, she rubbed her hands against her thighs and plucked some fluff from the bottom of her shirt.
I expected her to speak, to explain. Chiara was never silent. On any topic. That alone had alarm bells clamoring around my brain.
“You’re being awfully quiet,” I said.
“I don’t like this.” She chewed on her lip. “You came so close to being hurt, Jack. This Chucky-slime crap is seriously freaking me out. Maybe”—deep breath— “maybe you would be safer somewhere else.”
“Trying to get rid of me already?” I tried to make it sound like a joke.
It didn’t feel like a joke.
“Of course not! Don’t be dumb.” That was more shades of the Chiara I knew, but she was still withdrawn. “How am I supposed to keep you safe from the Chucky-slime?”
I paused, trying to unravel the knot of emotions her words created.
“You can’t keep me safe. You need someone here right now, and the Chucky-slime is a risk I’m willing to take. Besides, we now have more data to apply to our research on the scars.”
Chiara growled a little and sank back into the ouch. “You were almost Chucky-food, Jack. Research isn’t my top priority right now. I don’t like thinking about how this thing can hurt you. It’s not cool.”
“Your concern is noted, but avoiding this won’t make it go away.”
Her concern was touching, if a little unnerving, but I knew Chiara. Given how she kept swallowing, my safety wasn’t the only thing that had upset her. Something wasn’t quite right. It was as if someone had a Chiara-remote-control and had turned down the volume.
I pressed forward.
“Look, I’ve had nearly seven hours to think about this. As I figure it, there are two possible scenarios that explain the scars.”
She shifted and lifted her head, begrudgingly focusing on me. “Which are?”
“One. The scars are caused by something other than your brothers’ GUTs. Another supernatural force working against us or some odd confluence of my presence with some unknown thing. Just because the scar reacts to your brothers using their GUTs doesn’t mean that the relationship is causal.”
Chiara stirred, almost unwittingly interested in my discussion. “Correlation is not causation and all that? Proximity and reaction are not the same thing as origination. So the scars react to my brothers, but they are not necessarily the cause of it?”
“Precisely.”
She angled her head, processing that. “Okay. What’s the other option?”
“The scars are tied to the D’Angelos and your GUTs, which means . . .”
I paused, debating. And then said it anyway. “You have a GUT, too.”