by Nichole Van
Before I could talk myself out of it, I snatched up my keys and walked out the front door of the villa to my Jeep.
Don’t over think it. Don’t linger on any one particular idea for too long. Empty your mind. Float. Exist.
I put the Jeep in gear and turned onto the long lane to the house, driving toward rooftops and buildings and . . . humanity.
Halfway down the lane, it started—emotions filtering into my emptied mind.
A trickle at first.
A wife angry that her husband had forgotten their tourist guide.
A father frustrated with a child who wouldn’t stop crying.
A girl worried that her boyfriend didn’t love her anymore.
There, but not too strong. That would soon change the closer I drove to Volterra. The emotions would morph from tugging to pulling to shredding. Greedy hands, wanting to drag me into a morass of never-ending feeling. Tempting me to lose myself in the pain and joy of others.
I reached the junction of the lane with the rural highway into Volterra. Houses and an apartment building crowded around the intersection, a car or two idling in the parking space in front—angerhopeworrydreadexcitement . . .
I swallowed and focused on my breathing, in and out, forcing my mind to float through the emotions swamping me. Fixating on any one thing could trigger a vision of the future.
I pulled onto the highway, jaw clenched, determined and fierce. This task was too important to leave undone.
I could do this. I would do this.
I just had to survive the next hour or two without breaking.
Today . . . the shadows would not win.
THREE
Olivia
The top of Tennyson D’Angelo’s red Jeep glinted in the autumn sun, speeding away from me down the highway, heading in the direction of Volterra.
Huh.
Had not been expecting that.
I had been sitting in my rental car at the turn off to Villa Maledetti, gathering my courage before driving down the long lane to the house, when Fate sent Tennyson directly into my path. He pulled up the lane and stopped right in front of me before turning on to the highway, his dark hair and chiseled jaw unmistakable even in profile.
Talk about a flashing neon sign of Opportunity.
I counted to five and then pulled out onto the road behind him. Because when life hands you a fine pair of shoulders, you seize that gorgeous hunk of manliciousness with both hands and don’t let go until he agrees to love you or the police arrive, whichever comes first.
Which in my case, it would probably end with the latter.
But . . . what else was I supposed to do?
Clearly, Italy in October was quite a distance from July and my mother’s garden party in Sacramento. After my initial online search, I had painstakingly tracked Tennyson D’Angelo to Villa Maledetti outside Volterra. The old villa had been in the D’Angelo family for hundreds of years. All I had to do was get to Italy without hitting my mother’s radar.
My plan had gone smoothly to this point. My parents thought I was in Greece finalizing a project with my non-profit, before flying to Washington, D.C. In truth, I had finished the project earlier in the week and had taken a two-month leave of absence from my job. From Athens, I had hopped a plane to Florence.
I had intended to simply drive to the villa and ring Tennyson’s doorbell. A frontal assault. I had memorized an introduction speech and prepared lists of questions. I had a battle plan.
But Tennyson showing up in front of me had slightly changed all that. Now I had the chance to spy on him a bit beforehand, moving from cyber-stalking to physical-stalking.
Clearly, I had no shame.
I kept his taillights in sight, following him at a discreet distance. Would his psychic Spidey-senses alert him to my presence? And if they did, how would he react? I needed this man to talk to me, not file a restraining order.
I swallowed, giving myself a pep talk.
You can do this. You’ve made it this far. You can talk to him. What’s the worst that can happen?
He gives you a disgusted hot-guy once over?
He yells at you and tells you to get lost?
He turns into a rabid man-sized chipmunk and tries to store you for winter?
Okay. That last one was probably unlikely. The first two options . . . I could live with.
Though in a related question: What would a man-sized, Tennyson D’Angelo chipmunk look like?
Just . . . something to ponder.
Allow me to be clear. I don’t normally cyber-stalk absurdly good-looking men and track them down physically half-way around the globe to creepily tail them through central Tuscany.
Even my oddball brain knew to draw a line in the sand on that one.
But too much was at stake. The Wriggles reacted to his name; there had to be some connection between them and his superpowers. Tennyson had to be a bona fide psychic. And at this point, I was so desperate, I was ready to pursue any lead.
I just had to convince him to talk to me, to help me find the answers I desperately needed. Or, barring that, perhaps point me in the right direction before booting me out the door.
FOUR
Tennyson
The loud jangle of my phone ringing startled me.
I was on the highway headed into Volterra, trees and houses speeding by, Italian countryside passing in bands of color.
I had been focusing all my energy on floating through the morass of emotions surrounding me. So it was no surprise the ringtone caught me off-guard.
I sent the call to Bluetooth.
“How’s the brooding going?” Branwell asked, his voice booming through the Jeep’s speakers.
“Funny. Who says I’m brooding?”
“Please. You’re always brooding. Your moods are simply superlatives: brooding, broodier and broodiest—”
“Everyone’s a comedian.”
“Naw. Just me.” I could see him in my mind’s eye, bushy beard, wide smile. “You spent some time up on the tower again today. But you’re talking to me, so I assume that means you’re still among the living.”
Ah, brothers.
Why be angsty over something if you could make a dark joke about it? That said, I would take Branwell’s good-natured ribbing over the tip-toes and whispered inquiries of years past.
This recent shift in our relationship was decidedly welcome.
“You see that in a vision?” I asked. “Me up on the tower?”
“Yeah. The scene popped right into my head, clear as day, just as I finished feeding the twins. You know my GUT is super keyed to you, Tenn.”
This was the problem. Generally, Branwell would touch an object and hear what occurred around it in the past. But over the past two years, his GUT had been changing.
Branwell now had some of my ability to feel emotions and some of Dante’s ability to see past scenes. Unfortunately, that ability applied most specifically to myself—Branwell felt my emotions, he saw what I was up to.
He continued, “You’re a bit wound up. You gonna talk about it?”
His emotions threaded through his words: worry, concern, fear. They left an acrid taste in the back of my throat.
A slow-moving bus pulled out in front of me, forcing me to tap the brakes of my Jeep.
“No, not feeling particularly chatty,” I said before changing the subject. “How’re my godchildren?”
“Good,” he grunted. “Missing their uncle.”
Unlike me, Branwell was living his life; he had married, become a father. For over a year now, Branwell’s emotions had been a tangled mass of giddy happiness. My brother and his wife, Lucy, had welcomed a little boy and girl into this world nearly two months ago—Alessio and Bronte.
I, on the other hand . . .
“Talk to me, Tenn,” Branwell continued. “Or am I going to have to say what you hate most?”
I didn’t want to discuss the chaos of my existence—my obsession with falling, the increased fracturing . . .
“You were warned, brother.” The sound of a deep breath and then Branwell said those dreaded words: “You okay?”
Ugh.
Those two words were the soundtrack of my life.
You okay?
No, dammit, I was not okay. Nothing about me was okay. I was never going to be okay.
People didn’t ask that question expecting a genuine answer. They only wanted me to parrot back that I was fine, that I wasn’t walking a tightrope of barely coping, that I wasn’t one bad day away from an even worse decision.
“I’m broodier.” Sarcasm edged my voice.
“Now who’s the comedian?”
“Who’s being funny?” A woman’s voice joined our conversation.
Chiara.
Our younger sister.
I gunned my Jeep and passed the bus on a straightaway. The towers of Volterra rose from the top of a steep hill in the distance.
“Chiara, why are you on this phone call?” Branwell practically growled.
“You’re on the landline in the office, Bran. I just picked up the other phone in the store.” She referred to our headquarters, D’Angelo Enterprises, in downtown Florence where they both worked. “Wassup Tenn?”
“Not much.”
“You okay?” she asked.
Branwell groaned.
I rolled my eyes.
Chiara was not great at respecting personal boundaries, no matter how clearly we drew them.
“He’s broodier today,” Branwell chimed in.
“Of course, he is. So anything you want to share with the class, Tennyson?” Chiara asked, her voice far too chipper to not be suspicious.
I blinked. What did she mean?
I had no news.
Brown, plowed fields flowed past my car window, the towers of Volterra drawing nearer.
“You been seeing omens again, Chiara?” Branwell asked.
Long story short, our sister had her own mini-version of our GUTs. Not debilitating, like us brothers, but still very much real.
I turned onto another highway, intent on winding my way toward my preferred parking lot just outside the north-east city gates of Volterra.
“Not saying until Tennyson does,” she replied.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Chiara,” I said.
“Really?” Her voice was decidedly skeptical. “So no stories about a woman with dark, wavy hair who makes you laugh?”
My entire world cranked to a stop.
Ah hell no.
Could I keep a secret about anything with a family like mine?
Chiara clearly had foreseen some portion of my potential future with her—this unknown woman. I would not ask my sister about her; I would not indulge my curiosity.
But, of course, even thinking that caused questions to pop into my head. Was this woman Italian then? But she had mouthed ‘love you’ earlier in my vision, so maybe she spoke English, too? Or was she American—
Stop.
Stop it.
I shook my head. No asking mental questions about her. Keep your emotional distance.
I would resist her. I had to.
Why?
Because beyond the thrill of those quick visions of her, I saw nothing but a vast blankness.
No wedding.
No life together.
Just meeting her and bam.
Nothing more.
It didn’t take much logic to understand what that meant.
Death was coming for me.
But not today.
Today . . . I had a critical task to complete.
“You gonna spill the beans?” Chiara asked, dragging me out of the morass of my . . . brooding. “Who is she?”
“You met a woman?” Branwell asked.
“I have no idea,” I answered truthfully.
“That’s not even a coherent answer, Tenn—” Branwell was cut off by the phone hiccupping. “Hold on. Dante’s beeping in.”
Saved by Dante. Whew.
“Well, I’ll let you guys go—” I began.
“Let me conference him in.” Chiara talked over the top of me.
I closed my eyes.
That was just lovely. The final bit this conversation had been missing.
The hills closed in around me, blocking out the city. I went around a tight turn.
“Hey guys, what’s up?” Dante’s voice was a reflection of the man himself—strong, commanding, prying.
“Chiara is trying to get Tennyson to spill the beans about some dark-haired woman he met,” Branwell summarized.
“I don’t think he’s met her yet,” Chiara clarified. “But I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed.”
To Dante’s credit, he just rolled with the conversation. “It was a vision then, this woman?” he asked.
“Yeah, but Tenn’s clammed up about it.”
Right.
“You guys are worse than gossiping old ladies,” I cut in. “There is no woman. Period.”
I had reached the outskirts of Volterra by now. I pulled through a roundabout and continued to follow the road around the base of the city. I would park my Jeep and then hike up into town on foot.
If I didn’t mentally kill my family first.
“Tenn, you still haven’t told me if you’re okay,” Chiara said.
“Of course, he hasn’t,” Dante snorted. “Tenn is violently allergic to the word okay.”
“I know. That’s why I say it, duh.” Her tone completely unrepentant. “It’s the sibling code, remember? I get to be obnoxious and—”
We brothers groaned in unison. Loudly.
“There is no code.”
“You gotta stop.”
“Being deliberately annoying is not a healthy expression of affection, Chiara.”
“I love you guys, too.” Sugar dripped from her words.
How Jack Knight-Snow put up with my sister . . . sometimes love truly was blind.
“How’s the research going?” I asked, desperate to change the topic.
“Glacially slow,” Chiara replied. Her tone said she knew I was deliberately changing the topic, and she was allowing me to do it . . . for now. “We’re still at the starting gate. We know there are jagged scars in reality. We know the fractured madness of your GUTs is caused by an oily darkness that sometimes comes out of the scars—”
“Chucky-slime,” Branwell said, repeating the name he had given it. “The Chucky-slime is the madness.”
“Exactly,” Chiara agreed, “not that any of us can see the Chucky-slime or the scars.” Once upon a time, Jack could see both, but not anymore. “In order to stop the mental fracturing and Chucky-slime-caused-madness, we need to permanently heal the scars, sealing the madness away from you guys. But aside from a lead here or there, I’ve found nothing whatsoever about any of this.”
Branwell grunted. “And even if we get answers, how can we heal scars that we can’t see?”
“Exactly,” Dante said. “Without being able to see them, how can we know if we succeed? It’s like we’re at an impasse before we even begin.”
“I keep thinking maybe Jack will be able to see the scars again,” Chiara added, “but so far, no luck.”
Branwell, Dante and Chiara continued to argue over the best way to research a solution to shutting the scars in reality. I knew they were desperate to help me.
Hope was their mantra, their rallying cry.
But for me? I refused to accept it.
Hope was a deadly emotion.
Hope . . . when you hadn’t had any for as long as you could remember . . . could be a dangerous thing. Hope led to wants. And wants led to disappointment. And disappointment, when you were already on shaky emotional ground, could be lethal.
I continued to wend my way around Volterra, finally turning onto the winding road that led to my preferred parking lot.
I refused to buckle to the darkness.
No. Not today. Not tomorrow. I would fight this. I would not get wrapped u
p in hope. I would not fall in love with unknown women, no matter how tempting. I would not succumb to my irrational thoughts. I would exist and that would be enough.
I finally reached my destination, pulling off the road and into an available parking spot. A medieval wall and gate, not to mention the rest of the city of Volterra, loomed before me.
“So we all good here?” Dante abruptly said, interrupting a conversation about research protocols.
“Uhmm—” A pause from Branwell. “—yeah, actually.”
“You have fun in Volterra, Tenn,” Chiara said.
Whoa. What?!
“I didn’t tell you guys I was going to Volterra,” I said, my forehead wrinkling.
“Please. Like any of you can keep secrets from me,” Chiara chuckled.
Sheesh. Give Chiara a tiny bit of paranormal power, and it instantly went to her head.
“Anyway, have fun,” Dante said. “I’m out—”
“Wait. You’re leaving?” I was confused. “What about our discussion about the scars—”
“Meh,” Chiara said. “That was all for show, more or less.”
“Yeah,” Branwell chimed in. “We just wanted to distract your mind on your drive into Volterra.”
“Make sure you didn’t have a vision,” Dante finished.
“You really should be more careful with the driving.” Chiara’s voice hung with accusation.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” Branwell said. “Try to lay off the brooding, Tenn.”
“Yeah,” Dante agreed. “Let loose. Get some gelato. Frolic in a fountain or two.”
“Love you, Tenny,” Chiara chirped.
And then they all hung up.
I sat in my Jeep for another moment or two, sightlessly staring at the city, bewilderment thrumming through me.
They had surprised me, all three of them.
I had driven into town without thinking once about the emotions pounding me. My mind had been deliberately focused elsewhere.
Now, of course, feelings from others swamped my senses.
Angerfearhappyhappyfrustrationirritationhelphelprage.
But, for once, the clearest emotion was my own—
A deep, powerful love for my annoying, crazy, obnoxious siblings.
I focused on that feeling, eyes on the prize.
I had a task to complete.