Or something like that.
Jack ignored my serious violation of his personal space and instead pointed to the screen.
Yep.
That was what Cesare had written. The page ended on the wordanswers.
“What does the next page say?” I reached through Jack and clicked his laptop touchpad.
Confession: I kinda liked sharing personal space with Jack. It was campy and fun without having the awkward side-affect of physical sensation. If I sat with him like this more often, would he think me odd—
I frowned as the next page loaded.
It was black. Pitch-dark.
“Bad scan?” I muttered, clicking onto the next page.
Black again. And the next. And the next.
The fifth page had sprawling handwritten text again. But Cesare was now talking about, ‘The evil empire of hate that has formed against us and spreads untrue falsehoods.’
I clicked back. Four black pages.
“Arethey bad scans?” Jack asked, his voice literally in my ear.
I froze and then slowly removed my body from inside his.
Whoops. Yeah. I had gotten into him too deep too quickly. Trust me to do that. It’s how I always acted with my boyfriends—
My entire body froze at that idea. I lurched upright.
Wow. Okay.Movingonfrom that thought.
Liking Jack as a person did not make him my Significant Other.
Sooooo Jack . . .nota boyfriend. Perhaps a friend who happened to be a boy . . . ehr, a man. No, a ghost. A ghost friend who was a guy.
A ghost guyfriend.
Whew. That had been close. I hadn’t meant for that fluffy, new feeling to expandquitethat much.
Jack as a friend . . . good. Jack as anything else . . .
I took another step back and looked at my wrist.
“Would you look at the time? I’ll call Dante tomorrow about black pages and see if he can pull them for us.”
Jack rose with me. “You’re not wearing a watch, Chiara.” He pointed at my bare wrist.
“Hah! Right! Well, then, I definitely should be going to bed. I’m obviously tired.”
I literally backed out of the room, slamming into the door jamb on the way.
Jack merely stood, eyebrows drawn down, expression a baffled mix of puzzled and vastly amused.
Thoughts of Cesareil Pompasoand his paranoid megalomania haunted my dreams.
An older man appeared dressed in an ostentatiously embroidered frock coat and satin pantaloons, looking like an aristocratic extra from aMarie Antoinettemovie. He paced in an opulent room, muttering in ragged, aristocratic Italian:
