“I don’t like this.” She chewed on her lip. “You camesoclose 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 That was more shades of the Chiara I knew, but she was still withdrawn.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 scarsaretied to the D’Angelos and your GUTs, which means . . .”
I paused, debating. And then said it anyway. “You have a GUT, too.”
SIXTEEN
Chiara
You have a GUT, too.
Jack’s words lingered in the room, taking on a life of their own.
A GUT?!
Me?!
The idea cut through my brain, sparking me to life.
I instantly rejected it. “Not possible, Jack. I don’t have a GUT.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as anyone could be.” I gathered the weight of my hair and pulled it into a loose bun. “I mean, yes, I think I would know. Just . . . the scar opening and now this”—I flicked a hand at him—“it’s a lot to process.”
Part of me was still panicking over how close I had come to losing him to the Chucky-slime. If I had wondered before that moment if I really had feelings for Jack, realizing he had been so close to annihilation had quickly set me straight.
I adored Jack Knight-Snow. I loved his snarky sense of humor. His quick mind and insightful ideas. His lingering Lord Knight mannerisms. His kindness and gentleness. His too-seeing eyes and the way that he accepted me, obnoxious and imperfect as I was. The sense that he would always care for and protect those he considered his.
