“Okay, so I think I have it. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure it makes a ton of sense.” He tapped the rubbing with his pen. “It says,I speak to you from your visions. The sparrow guides the way.I need to do more research, but it’s most likely a dedication to a minor Etruscan god of birds.” Jack tossed his pen down. “Damn. I was hoping it would be something related to Cesare, but I guess not.”
Tennyson ran a hand through his hair. “It is odd.I speak to you from your visions. The sparrow guides the way.”
The words slammed into me with all the subtlety of a freight train. I gasped and collapsed back against the couch, a hand clutched over my heart.
Dimly, I heard Jack calling my name.
“Chiara? Chiara!”
But I was lost.
Vision after vision crashed through my frozen brain. Stuttering like a glitching movie reel, snapping between each scene.
Snap.
Jack watching Hamlet in an old London theater, a sparrow dive bombing Polonius as he said, ‘Though this be madness, yet there is a method in’t.’
The madness is not what it seems.
Snap.
A sparrow caught in the conservatory with Sofia D’Angelo—trapped between the house itself and the outside world—frantic to find its freedom.
I am trapped.
Snap.
Watching MST 3000 with my brothers and Babbo, the sparrow darting into the house, sitting on the television as the actors on screen worked to zip shut a pod-like structure.
Jack’s sister, Catharine, holding up her ripped hem, telling her brother she had to mend it.
The cut must be closed.
Snap.
Babbo looking at me, a sparrow by his side.I will always love you,mia passerotta.No matter what. Never forget it.
Snap.
The scenes rushed together, one after another, over and over.
Words tumbled from my mouth.
“The madness is not what it seems. I am trapped. The cut must be closed. I will always love you, my little sparrow.”
The words Cesare spoke through me in Riomaggiore lasered through my mind.Trova il potere. Chiude il lampo.
Find the power. Stop the lightning.
Only this time, I understood them differently.
Oh.
We had all been so impossibly blind. So incredibly stupid.
Trova il potere.Find the power. Yes.
But—
