#FreakshowFriday

Chapter 14: The Things We Really Need

October 15, 2023

"So let me get this straight." Jamie throws the door to their hotel room open a little too hard, though her voice is for once appropriately lowered—it's still somewhere between four and five in the morning and Campo dei Fiori's walls aren't that thick. She marches into the dark room. "You lost consciousness because some ghost seized upon you to, to ask for help dealing with some evil thing it called the doctor. A doctor who's supposedly out there killing people on Poveglia. And if that plague doctor mask vision you had was anything to go by, your ghost was talking about the creature that chased me through the woods."

"That about sums it up," Nathan says, closing the door after her. "Hey, what happened to turning on the lights?"

"I don't need lights, I need answers–" Jamie's spatial awareness fails her, for she slams straight into their desk chair. "Ow, fuck."

"You need lights," Nathan observes as he flicks the switch and illuminates their room. In all honesty, he'll be happy to turn the lights off again soon. His ghost encounter on Poveglia sapped all the energy out of him, left him sluggish and ready to sleep for days. He did his best not to overexert himself on the way back to Venice and their hotel, moving slowly and swapping stories with Jamie in as coherent a fashion they could manage, but he's still running on empty in every way.

"The question is, what's next? This is insane, but we can't just, I mean, we can't just forget this happened, ignore it and move on, can we? What the hell do we do now?" Although Jamie—now de-leaved and de-twigged—can't exactly be brimming with energy either, she paces the length of the room with a feral restlessness, operating on her last dregs of adrenaline with absolutely zero chill.

Nathan isn't exactly renowned for his own level of chill, but he's an expert at postponing all that can be reasonably postponed. They only just returned from the island, are tired and still processing everything without thinking straight, and both he and Jamie could use actual rest. The problem will still be there for solving a good few hours from now and they'll be staying in Venice for two whole weeks.

Plenty of time to get down to business.

"What we do now is sleep," Nathan announces as he flops down on his bed. In ideal circumstances, he'd shower before going to sleep, but he doesn't trust himself to keep standing upright for too long. He'll just take these dirty clothes off and call it a day. "We'll sit and talk about our next move properly when we're well-rested. I don't know about you, but I'm wrecked. Damn ghosts and magic did a number on me."

Jamie shoots him a worried look, wringing her hands together. "Yeah, I guess that's... Yeah. Fair enough. You should rest. Can I, um, can I get you anything?"

"You could sit down and try to relax," Nathan says. "Rest would be good for you, too. Your night was as intense as mine."

"That's different. You had something paranormal take a toll on you. I was just running around."

"Based on what you've told me, just running around doesn't quite do it justice," Nathan corrects. "I want to examine the footage you got today, but it can wait until later. Until after we've slept and have gotten that coffee appointment with your family and Gino's mom over with. Because I think your father wanted to have breakfast at, what, eight? before going there, so we have some three hours to rest up before that time."

Nathan's attempt at alleviating Jamie's agitation backfires. Her eyes widen so fast he realises she'd momentarily forgotten all about the morning's family obligation. "Coffee appointment," she forces out before stumbling to their shared bathroom with haste.

Nathan sighs and peels himself off his bed, following to figure out what the issue is. "What's wrong?"

"My face is what's wrong."