Chapter 21

He's late.

And we're running out of time.

My heart is beating so fast I feel shaky. I glance anxiously at the mural overhead, but this time, instead of avoiding eye contact with my mother, I look directly at Indigo.

Did she know?

She couldn't have.

Indigo's chin is tilted back from the impact of a punch that happened a split second before the painter captured the moment. Is it really Ezekiel in all those shadows? Have I been staring up at a marital dispute this whole time? Mother would have been livid if she'd known. She'd have done more than punch him.

"You sure I can't?—"

"Not now!" I shout, making Vee jump back. Heads turn toward me. She looks alarmed, and I can't blame her.

"Sorry," I say. "Sorry, just nervous. About my date. Whatever you want to make will be great."

She gives me a look that says she doesn't appreciate my outburst in her place of work. I go to apologize again but catch myself. There isn't time to explain what I've seen. Jasper will be here soon, he'll be dead again not much longer after that, and it turns out the stepfather who has been my rock for the last two years killed my mother and is probably responsible for my and Jasper's deaths too.

When he finally comes in the door, he looks awful. Even his hat is worse than usual.

"You look terrible," he says as he sits down. I can't possibly look worse than he does, but I smooth down my shirt and sweater, wrinkling my nose. Technically I only put them on this morning, and fortunately every time the day resets, whatever stains are on the material vanish. But equally as technically I've been wearing the same thing for an eternity. If we ever get out of here, I'm going to burn this outfit.

But never mind my wardrobe. We have more important issues to contend with right now.

"Indigo is Ezekiel."

Jasper rubs his chest. "I think I'm getting worse. It hurts more this time."

"Did you hear me?" I ask. Maybe I didn't speak. The words keep yelling themselves over and over in my head.

"Hmm?" Jasper says. His eyes are ringed in dark purple-like bruises, and even his cheeks look sunken.

"I said, Indigo is Ezekiel." I half shout it, trying to quiet the noise in my brain.

Jasper pales further when I didn't think that was possible. "What?"

"Indigo is who?" Vee has returned to the table and is staring at us with undisguised shock. The table descends into awkward silence as I wrestle with what to say, but you know what? Fuck it. My stepfather is a supervillain, and my boyfriend is dying with alarming frequency. I need all the help I can get.

"Indigo and Ezekiel are the same person."

Jasper frowns. Vee gasps.

"How do you know?" she asks.

Oh, that might be a reason to not tell her, because there's not enough time to cover that whole backstory.

"I saw him," I say, abbreviating. "In his office. He snapped his fingers and suddenly he was..." I wave my hands. "Empty."

"So what do we do?"

"We?" Jasper says. "Aren't you a waitress?"

My toes curl in my shoes as my ears go flaming hot. So much backstory. For everyone.

"Vee and my mom were... they knew each other."

Vee jerks a thumb at Jasper. "Who's this?"

"He's my... partner... boyfriend. Uh... we're on a blind date for the sixty-seventh time. Maybe more. You're going to need more pins for the board in your freezer tonight, by the way."

"Feels like I'm missing some details here," Vee says. "And how do you know about the board?"

Jasper laughs, which quickly turns into a consumptive cough. The effort doubles him over. He appears to be shrinking inside his flannel.

"We don't really have time for that," I say, pushing up from my chair.

"Does he need an ambulance?" Vee asks.

"More like a miracle," I say. People are watching from their tables. My mother is watching from overhead, and I can't think like this. "Can we go downstairs and talk? We need help."

Vee doesn't hesitate. Jasper stumbles. I put an arm around him to help guide him between tables. Getting down the stairs to the basement is trickier, but we manage. Jasper's breathing hard by the time we're all tucked away in the freezer.

"Wow," he says as Vee helps him sit down on an old leather desk chair with cracked arms. "This is pretty cool."

It is. The maps. The lighting. There are fewer pins on the board than there were the last time I was here, but as I watch, they begin lighting up. Tiny explosions that start at the diner begin radiating outward.

Silently, I count. One, two, three. I lose track somewhere around thirty when Vee goes, "What the hell is that?"

I don't need to count to mentally tick the number going up higher and higher.

"It's me," I say on a sigh.

She looks me up and down. "What do you mean?"

I pinch the bridge of my nose. It would be so helpful if just one person could remember what was happening here so I didn't have to explain every time.

The phone in my pocket starts to ring. When I pull it out, my heart drops so fast, little ridges of frost form on the screen around my fingertips.

Incoming call from

Ezekiel Ziro

Okay, someone other than Ezekiel. I put the phone back in my pocket, fighting for breath. He doesn't know where we are. Doesn't know about this place beneath the diner. Does he?

Vee, of course, has been watching over my shoulder and says, "You're not going to get that?"

"Not really feeling like talking to him right now." I can't. I can't even begin to think of what to say. Because Ezekiel is Indigo. He killed my mother. He killed me. More than once. He's living a life outside the confines of the time loop, and all of that put together means he must be the one behind it, and the very idea makes me want to throw up. Betrayal is the worst kind of grief.

"He's not really Indigo, though?" Vee asks. "You didn't mean what you said upstairs?"

I nod. "I don't understand either."

"But that's impossible. I was there. Your mom and me and Ezekiel. He was in the room when Indigo killed people on the other side of the world. He can't be two people at the same time."

I had the same thought. But I can't deny what I saw in the window at the house.

My phone rings again. Still Ezekiel. My throat goes dry just looking at the name. If I'm right, the implications are overwhelming. What does it mean for me? My mother and Vee? What does it mean for all the work I've put in over the last two years?

"Morgan," Jasper says. He's staring at the board with wide eyes. The lights are still flickering.

"What is it?"

His lips are moving, and I realize while Vee and I have been talking, he's been counting.

"It's a lot," he says, voice wavering. "Maybe a thousand? I dunno. I keep losing track, but I've crossed two hundred a few times."

We stare at each other. My knees threaten to give out from under me. A thousand. That's what, three years? How? How could we have been in the loop for that long? And if it's true, what changed that we finally started to remember?

The phone rings in my hand again. Jasper coughs, doubling over with the effort. He lifts his shirt as he straightens and the space between his nipples is mottled with bruising. Blues, purples and red. It's modern art. Or something trying to burst out of his chest.

"What the hell is that?" Vee asks him, looking alarmed.

"Morgan," he gasps. "I don't think..." But he gets cut off again in another spasm of coughing.

I answer the phone. "What the hell did you do to us?"

"Morgan," Ezekiel says. The relief in his voice makes me angrier. "What are you doing? I never wanted you to kill yourself. What were you thinking?"

What was I thinking? How can he even ask that?

"Answer me," I say. "Why are you doing this?"

"I know. I know." He sounds absolutely wrecked, and a flicker of sympathy sparks inside me, but one glance at Jasper's flagging frame is all I need to bolster my conviction. "I'm sorry. I can explain everything. Where are you? I can come to you."

"Like hell." There's no way I'm letting him within a mile of Jasper and Vee.

"Please, Morgan. I'm so sorry. I never meant for it to go this far." He sounds genuinely sorry, and I want so much to believe him. I know him. Have known him for years and even more so while we worked together on the Ziro Machine. But if everything has been a lie from the beginning, I'm not sure how I'll survive that.

"How long has it been?" I ask, because if he'll admit that much, maybe I've misread everything. He must have a reason. "How long have we been in the loop?"

The phone gets quiet. Jasper coughs. If he gets any paler, he'll be translucent.

"Four years," Ezekiel says softly, and the answer offers exactly zero reassurance.

"Why?" My voice wobbles with tears.

"I had to," he says, sounding almost as distressed. "Please. Please tell me where you are, and I'll explain everything."

"And you'll bring Indigo with you to finish us off?"

I expect him to deny it, but all he says is, "I can control him. You don't have to worry."

Worry? I glance at Jasper. He doesn't have much time left. Vee's watching us both with deep concern, and I regret not getting her involved sooner. Like four years ago, apparently. I was so caught up in grief and Ezekiel's lies that we were going to change the world that I didn't notice when my blind date turned into an Olympic event. Vee would have smelled a rat from the beginning.

"I'll come to you," I say. "Meet me at the lab. With Mother."

That he doesn't ask for more information or feign shock says exactly how much he really knows. All he says is, "Yes. Yes, thank you. Please come. I'll see you there soon."

My hands shake as I hang up.

"What do you mean, ‘with Mother'?" Vee asks.

I bury my face in my hands. How is this my life? I thought it was bad before when I was somehow both an epic failure and a guardian for one of the most powerful secrets in the world. This is a zillion times worse.

Jasper staggers up his chair, though he has to hold on to the back for support.

"Let's go," he says.

I shake my head. "No. You stay here with Vee."

They both protest, but they're not going to change my mind.

"Jasper, you're dying. Again."

"What do you mean ‘again'?" Vee asks, voice echoing off the freezer walls with frustration. "What's with all the cryptic covert bullshit? Will one of you please tell me what's going on?"

"Jasper can," I say, but he stumbles forward, grabbing at my wrist.

"You can't go see him. What if it's a trap?"

"Oh, it's a hundred percent a trap," I say, giving him a rueful smile. "But what's he going to do? Kill me for the twelve-hundredth night in a row?"

Vee makes a truly aggravated noise. If I survive, I'll be apologizing to her for a long time.

But Jasper only holds on tighter. "If Ezekiel is responsible for the loop, that means he also knows how to stop it. He could kill you and then..." He trails off, but the fear in his eyes is clear, and I don't need to hear the words to know where he was going. This could be it. Ezekiel could trap me, stop the loop, kill me one last time, and that would be the end. No more dates. No more arguments. No more Jasper.

I kiss him. I try to put every feeling, every promise, every apology into it. We wasted so much time, most of it without ever knowing what was happening. I chose bickering over being with him. If this is all we have, I want this last moment to be everything we could have been.

"Don't forget about me," I say, resting my cheek against his. He holds me close. His breathing is raspy on my neck. "I love you."

"I love you too," he says desperately. "Whatever happens, I'll be waiting for you. Come find me."

I will. Whether it's at Wench or the big diner in the sky, we are owed some time to ourselves.

Vee walks me back upstairs and to the door.

"I can go with you," she says. "Your mom would be pissed that you're going alone."

I shake her hand, letting a little frost build up between us. She gasps as she stares down.

"I'm not as defenseless as I used to be," I say, giving her what I hope is a confident smile, even though I feel anything but. "And this is how it works, right? The hero and the villain, facing off one last time." I was never much of a hero, but I know how the game is played.

She hugs me, her embrace tighter than Jasper's.

"Farah would have been so proud."

I don't know if that's true or not, but now is not the time to dwell on old hurts.

When I step outside, I look both ways and cross the street to my car alone.