“Also a possibility.” Dante agreed.
“Sooooo, now what?” Tennyson asked.
“We research the crap out of these bad boys.” Branwell tapped the black pages with his finger. “If there is something else here, we’ll find it.”
Tennyson nodded. “We treat this like a historical forensics investigation. Scan the pages with non-visible light wavelengths, like infrared or ultraviolet.”
“Exactly. I’ll get Claire right on it,” Dante said, referring to his wife. “She’s brilliant with this sort of stuff.” He slid the one uncovered vellum sheet back into its plastic sleeve.
“So all this weirdness with Cesareil Pompasoaside, why the scars? Why are they rifting open? And why are they showing up around Chiara?” Branwell asked. “Are we projecting these somehow? Or areyoua common factor, Jack?”
Jack moved out from within me, drawing closer to my brothers. Though I physically couldn’t feel him leaving, part of me instantly missed that connection. Cesareil Pompasowasn’t the only D’Angelo a little messed in the head.
Jack shrugged. “As we’ve noted before, it is almost impossible to know.”
Hmmm.
My brothers all looked at each other.
“Would you like my opinion?” Jack asked. “Ihavespent a lot of time pondering this.”
Every head swung Jack’s way.
“For centuries, the assumption has been that your GUTs are the result of a gypsy—or Romani, as they call themselves—curse over seven hundred years ago, correct?”
We all nodded.
Jack continued, “The events last year with Branwell and the Etruscan mirror show that your GUTs might have a much longer history. Clearly, Branwell’s abilities are tied to something ancient civilizations knew thousands of years ago, possibly through your bloodline.”
“Yes. We’ve already been over this.”
“Agreed. We know the mirror Branwell used to access the shadow world was part of the cult of Tages, a hereditary oracle and part of the ancient Etruscan religion,” Jack continued. “The mirror connects Tages with the shadow world. It basically provides a gateway. As a resident of both this world and the shadow world, I am unique. Given this, it’s no surprise that I can see and interact with things that belong to both worlds.”
“But aside from my interaction with the Etruscan mirror last year, what evidence do we have that our family has any genetic connection to ancient oracles?” Branwell asked. “As we’ve said before, it could simply be that gifts of Second Sight access this shadow realm, regardless of the minutiae that any specific society packs the gift in, be it Romani or Etruscan. An Etruscan connection doesn’t prove or disprove the initial origin of our GUTs.”
Trust Branwell to ask the smart question.
“More importantly, why would our GUTs be accessing this shadow realm in the first place?” Tennyson asked.
“I have an idea for that,” Jack said. “The shadow world, as a realm between life and death, would be the logical place for future and past information to reside. You exercise your ‘talents’ and the scars glow and flutter open, allowing you to draw knowledge from the shadow world.”
Huh. That made some . . . sense.
Jack was pacing now. It was lordly and commanding and ridiculously attractive despite his wet trousers and unbuttoned shirt. Who was I kidding? The clinging trousers and half-off shirt only added to his overall gorgeousness.
“The appearance of the scars seems haphazard,” he said. “But what if it’s a one-two punch of the two of us—cursed D’Angelos and cursed Jack—being thrown together?”
“How so? The scars have only appeared in the last couple weeks.”
“And you’ve been around for over a year, Jack.”
“Precisely. But the one thing thathaschanged recently is my ability to make myself corporeal. When I push part of myself into this realm, the pain is excruciating. It feels like I’m dragging myself through the fires of Hell. I think that the scars and my ability to push myself corporeal have to be connected. The scar here”—he waved a hand toward the china cabinet—“didn’t appear until I pushed my finger into corporeality.”
“You’re making cuts in the fabric of the universe every time you push yourself one way or the other.” Branwell whistled.
“Exactly. The cuts are just there until one of you uses your GUT, causing invisible energy to flow through it, making it larger. The cut seals again, but not perfectly, leaving a misaligned, visible scar. The two other places I’ve seen scars, Villa Maledetti and Branwell’s apartment, are also places where I pushed my finger into physicality. I bet if I were to return to my own villa, I would find scars there now. I didn’t really put it all together until yesterday, when all of the events occurred within seconds of each other.”
I had a thought. “But how can these scars be a new thing? If they’re powering the D’Angelo Sight, then they have to have been around since time immemorial.”
