“No,” Tennyson said after a moment. “I don’t think you’ll go insane.”
More lip chewing. How did Tennyson know that? He sounded ridiculously sure—
Oh!
My eyes bugged out of my head, staring at my brother.
“No, Chiara.” He didn’t even glance my way while opening his laptop and powering it up.
“But you know! You saw!”
“You havegotto stop. Not every thought or suggestion out of my mouth is foreseen. It doesn’t work like that. Besides, I will neither confirm nor deny any future knowledge.”
I swatted his arm.
“Ow! Stop being such a brat.” He cringed away from me, lifting his laptop in defense.
“Stop keeping important information about my future from me. What do you know?”
“You’ll be fine.”
A beat.
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“Yep.”
I threw myself back into my chair. “You’re a terrible person.”
“I can live with that.”
Tennyson responded to email and then snagged some of my research materials and started reading. I tried to get back to my own work but instead found myself alternating between staring out the window toward the ruined tower and sending Tennyson evil sister vibes.
“I’m doing you a solid here.” He shuffled the papers, not looking up. “Would you mind pulling back on thedie-Tennyson-dieemotional roller coaster? It’s giving me a headache.”
Gah! Stupid brothers wouldn’t even let me brood in peace.
But I did send him sunny unicorn and rainbow thoughts with chocolate sprinkles and glitter. Lots of glitter.
Tennyson laughed.
That didn’t stop the feeling of impending doom.
Dark clouds billowed on the horizon as the afternoon wore on. The storm felt suffocating. Breathless. Like the whole world waited in the balance.
Lightning flashed in the distance.
I refused to draw mental comparisons between this summer day and that horrific one with Babbo nearly twenty years ago.
Tennyson suddenly sat upright. “Claire just emailed. Look at this.” He stood up and carried his laptop over to the games table. “The results from the scans of those black pages from Cesareil Pompasocame in.”
I followed, sinking into a chair next to him, both of us looking at the computer screen. Documents floated through. I scanned them, mesmerized by what I saw.
“There was something under all that ink in the end.” I reached over Tennyson’s arm and clicked on the next image.
“Claire included a few notes.” He pointed at the screen.
In carefully studying the original documents, it appears Cesare lightly etched into the vellum. Instead of using ink, he used a stylus to essentially mark the message in the thicker vellum and then covered it all with lampblack. It took looking at the pages under infrared light to see the patterns.
