#wackyattack

“...so important?” she finished.

Jack shooed her into her room and shut the door behind them. “Danny doesn’t need to know,” he said, like this was some sort of explanation. “But I figure you’re old enough.”

“Ah,” Jazz said. When it became obvious he was headed to sit on her bed, she took a few quick steps and dropped next to the pillows, forcing him to change course and sit at the other end. “So what’s up?”

He flopped down, making the bed shake and mussing the covers more than necessary. “This,” he said, pulling up the leg of his shorts. 

Jazz had no interest at all in looking at her father’s hairy upper thigh. “What?” she asked again, trying to prevent herself from thinking through where this was headed. 

“The scar, Jazzy,” he said, pointing to his leg.

Jazz looked, seeing a familiar almost-circle scar poking through the dark hairs. Without thinking about it, her fingers drifted to her own leg, where a spookily similar-looking scar existed.

Jack grinned and, thankfully, pulled his shorts back down into place. “Matching scars. You and me. Neat, huh?”

Jazz opened her mouth and closed it a few times, uncertain what to say. This was a lot of dramatic buildup for a very small reveal. “Sure?” she finally tried.

“Fentons - the first-borns, anyways - have always had a scar shaped like that. Ever since Flimius of Fenton was chased out of Ireland in the 1550s.” Jack pulled a small packet out of his shirt pocket, unwrapped the paper, and started laying out pictures. Several were more recent, but many were old and creased. 

Leaning forwards, Jazz blinked. A family history lesson? She knew her family had a pretty well-documented history, but she hadn’t really bothered to look into it. She knew just enough to know her ancestors were as wacky as her father was.

“Family history says he got into it with the local fae, that they cursed him and all of his descendents with a scar.” Jack grinned. “Never have gotten a clear answer about how true that was, the deal with the fairies. Personally, I think it was a ghost.” 

“Of course you do,” Jazz murmured. “But seriously, everybody’s had a scar? That’s… almost impossible. Hard to believe.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jack said. “You don’t pass down scars from parent to offspring. But we have 450 years of stories about this scar, and a lot of those years are documented well enough to prove the story.” His eyes sparkled and he leaned closer, conspiratorial. “Which makes me think it was really a ghost curse.”

Jazz let out a breath between her teeth. She’d come to accept that ghosts were real, but a ghost curse passed down through that many generations? “Besides that, the thing doesn’t make sense. What would be the point of cursing someone with a scar nobody ever sees?”

“Oh, I guess I forgot that part.” Jack frowned and scrubbed at his chin. “It comes with a curse, having that scar. Something about spending your whole life fighting for the truth but never being believed, or whatnot. But I’m not sure that one is true.”

Jazz felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Her gaze flicked back down to two centuries worth of photographs. Each and every one of them having done exactly that - spending them studying and writing about the unbelievable, only to be relegated to the ‘crackpot’ pile in history. Her thoughts instantly went to her newest project, ghost psychology, and how she’d started to think of going down that path for a career. “You’re telling me I’m doomed to never be believed? To study something everybody else will think is crazy?”

“Yep!” Jack patted her on the shoulder. “It’s not that bad, Jazzy. You haven’t picked a career yet, so we have lots of time to talk about your options.”

Jazz stared at him. “You’re being… honest, here, right? Like, not kidding?”

“I’m not joking, no.” He gave her a smile. “It’ll all be okay. We can-

“Jack!” came a call from downstairs. 

“Coming!” Jack bellowed, getting off the bed. “We’ll talk later, Jazzerincess. You… just think about it for a bit.”

“I’ll do that,” Jazz said faintly.

She watched Jack leave the room, shut the door, and heard him clomp down the steps. Then she slowly and carefully picked up all the pictures, wrapped them gently back up in their paper wrapping, and headed straight to Danny’s room.