October 16, 2023

"Nate, wow. You've become a magnet for supernatural creatures." From how she says it, Nathan can't tell if Jamie finds this fascinating or incredibly alarming. Probably both at the same time. "You're like a living, breathing GPS tracker to these things."

"I've noticed," Nathan replies. "Now how the fuck do I turn it off?"

Jamie doesn't bless him with any suggestions. She's as aware as he is that there isn't a way to do so.

They stand in front of their hotel room window, looking at the square outside. In the shadows of an alley next to the old church opposite Campo dei Fiori, the Doctor loiters. It gazes up at Nathan and Jamie, rigid and unmoving. Though Nathan never saw it come after them as they walked through town with the rest of the family, it found their hotel effortlessly, confirming Nathan's suspicion the Doctor can sense him. He doesn't feel the creature's own presence strongly now, but it's still there. Lingering like the revenant itself.

"It's playing some sort of messed up game with us," Jamie asserts. "Trying to get into our heads. It must be a power and control thing. Trust me, I've had stalkers before." She takes out her phone and snaps a picture of the Doctor through the window.

"Seriously?" Nathan asks. "I've already sent you my selfie and your parents' pictures."

"It's the information age we're living in, Nate. Document everything."

Fair enough, but still.

"I'd rather get the fucker out of my sight than create another reminder it exists."

"I can get rid of it—the Doctor, I mean, not the picture—if you'd like. You won't be seeing it anymore anytime soon, guaranteed."

Nathan frowns. "How?"

"Like this." Jamie pulls the curtains closed.

Well. She didn't lie.

They say to never take your eyes off your enemy, but Nathan kind of likes that the curtains are closed. It makes him feel less watched. He doesn't believe the Doctor would try to force its way into their hotel room to cause harm, anyway—the risk, alarms and multiple locked doors will keep the revenant out. And Jamie may be correct: this might not be about killing. Not yet. It's about power and control.

Nathan moves away from the window and sits down on his bed. "It's a good temporary solution. Temporary being the keyword. If the revenant left Poveglia to seek us out, it clearly isn't done with us. I know I said we could drop our involvement in whatever this is if it got too dangerous, but I think Doc over there wouldn't let us if we tried."

"Yeah, yeah, no. Agreed." Jamie swipes at her phone's screen, refreshing her emails for what might be the fourteenth time in a span of five minutes. She's awaiting Veronika's reply, even though it has been less than three hours since she sent the scholar her infamous email. "Curse Veronika. Why can't she just drop everything to give us a hand here? What does she even need a life of her own for?"

"Veronika won't leave us hanging," Nathan assures her. "She's much too interested in this stuff. We need to be patient and give her a chance to think it all over. In the meantime, we're on our own and that's just how it is."

Jamie sighs. "You're right. I'm just a little stressed, I guess."

"Do you have any new theories about what kind of creature we're dealing with?" Nathan asks, hoping the question may alleviate that stress somewhat. "Based on how it's been behaving tonight."

"Honestly? Its behaviour so far doesn't resemble anything I remember covering in my videos, and I've covered a lot in eight years." If Jamie keeps on pacing around the room for the rest of the trip, she'll have worn a pattern into the floor upon their departure. "So I'm afraid we may be dealing with an idiosyncrasy."

"An idiowhat now?"

"Something odd, unique, one of a kind. Imagine vampires are real, and all the stories you hear about them proclaim they drink blood, and every vampire you meet confirms this. Then suddenly you run into a vampire who shuns blood, but is mad into apple sauce instead. Except you never hear about apple sauce-loving vampires because it's really just this one guy. There's your idiosyncrasy."

"Out of all possible substitutes for blood, you chose apple sauce," Nathan points out. "Why?"

Jamie raises an eyebrow as if she can't believe he's even asking. "Because apple sauce is awesomesauce?"

Touché.

"Anyway, I've mostly been thinking about how the Doctor got to Venice from Poveglia," Jamie continues unperturbed. "Because in European folklore, evil and unholy creatures are often said to be unable to cross running water. But that obviously doesn't apply to this revenant. I assumed it was confined to Poveglia, but apparently, it's not. It may be staying there by choice for the most part."

A remote, ruin-dotted island with ashes in the soil and death in the air. Off-limits, forbidden and obscure, a place most often avoided rather than sought out. What better hunting grounds could a murderous revenant wishing to go unnoticed find?

"It might have access to a boat," Nathan theorizes. "Some of the people it killed over the years must have arrived in boats of their own. It might have kept one. We didn't find any boats, but we also didn't find the lair it likely has, so maybe that's where it was hidden."

Any undead creature intelligent enough to hide and operate a boat strikes fear into Nathan's heart. He vows right then and there to kill it so well it's never getting up to walk around again.

"Yeah, that makes sense..." Jamie pauses, promptly coming to a halt. She stares at nothing in particular, pensive. "...We need a boat."

Now Nathan raises his eyebrows. "We do?"

"Yeah. Think about it. The Doctor can't hang around us forever, because my family will call the police on its ass if its loitering becomes noticeable. So we'll probably have to look for it to find it again, either on Poveglia or in the city, and relying on public transport to get around would be impractical and inefficient. If we bother Giovanni or other hired boatmen with this, we're dragging innocent outsiders into our dangerous mess. Conclusion: we need a boat."

Solid argument. Nathan is just wondering how easy and costly it would be for Jamie to obtain a little boat and how to justify its sudden appearance to her family when the epiphany hits him. "Gino has a boat. Maybe we could borrow it?"

Jamie starts moving again. "Technically possible, as Gino isn't taking Stella on romantic boat rides all the time, but... He's never going to lend it to me."

"Why not?"

"Poveglia. As far as Stella's aware, we haven't been there despite my wanting to go, and if she catches wind I'd like to borrow Gino's boat, she'll assume I'm going to use it to visit the island. I know my sister. She'll have told Gino to keep that boat out of my hands just in case."

"And there's no way he could be convinced to lend it to us in secret?"

"No. I know Gino, too. We may get along well, but he wouldn't knowingly go behind Stella's back to do me a favour. Ultimately, his loyalties lie with her. And as annoying as that is for us now, I can't fault him for it."

So it's curtains for that plan, if Jamie is to be believed. But Nathan thinks there's one obvious possibility she's overlooking.

"Maybe he won't lend it to you, but he might lend it to me," he suggests. "I'll need to come up with a good reason, one where it seems clear I'm not asking for it on your behalf. If I could talk to him alone, without Stella there to remind him to be skeptical, there's a chance he'll allow me to use his boat." Nathan will happily spend time hanging out with Mr. Perfect Son-in-law if it's for a cause as good as this one.

"That's... If you could think of such a reason, it might just work." Jamie relaxes, a triumphant grin growing on her face. "I should be able to keep Stella occupied for a while. Sisters' bonding time. All we need to do is tag along to Verona tomorrow."

Verona—roughly an hour from Venice by train and a hot topic of conversation in what, plague-riddled troubles aside, was a surprisingly chill walk back to the hotel. Stella and Linda, both appreciators of Shakespeare, got to work planning an impromptu day trip to the city serving as a backdrop in two of the man's plays.

They invited Jamie and Nathan to join, but the latter, shaken as they were, hadn't accepted right away and said they'd think about it a little longer. Nathan never finished his secondary education and his literary inclinations don't stretch beyond picking up a comic book every once in a while. Jamie watched Gnomeo & Juliet ironically as a twelve-year-old, got through a whole six pages of required reading total in her entire high school career, and otherwise cares for the Bard's work only when spirits or witches rear their heads. The Shakespeare angle hadn't been enough to hook either of them.

But now, Verona it is.

"Yeah. We should." Nathan returns Jamie's smile. "That ought to keep our day Doctor-free, too. I doubt it's going to bother figuring out how the Italian public transport system works."

Jamie laughs. "I almost want to see it try, but let's not jinx that." She makes for the door, reinvigorated and with a spring in her step. "I'll let Mom and Stella know we're joining."

Once she has left and Nathan is alone in their room, his momentarily brightened mood dampens. He walks up to the curtains and glares at them—he doesn't need to open them to know the Doctor is still out there, staring. The uncomfortable tingle in his scar tells him as much. It isn't too painful now, and not nearly as strong as it was on Poveglia, where the sensation must have been amplified by the oppressive atmosphere and negative paranormal energy lingering in the air, the soil, the ashes never fully washed away by centuries of rain. He loathes the sensation regardless.

If you come after me or anyone I care about, I'm going to make you way more dead than you already are. That's what Nathan told the Doctor as they posed for the picture he despises more than any other. And the Doctor followed them here, coming after them quite literally. It feels like a challenge. Try to kill me, I dare you—see if you can.

"Challenge accepted, Doc," Nathan mutters into an empty room, and he turns away from the window.

The sting in his scar persists for the rest of the night. Nathan feels it still after Jamie has fallen asleep, feels it all the way until a fortunately dreamless sleep takes him, too.

In the morning, it is gone without a trace.