Chapter 3

Sixty? That's like two months. I don't remember what I had for breakfast this morning. Trying to remember where I was two months ago...

That's a really long time. And we've... what? Been going on dates that I don't remember, except for the one time I got hit by a bus?

My laugh is thin, tinged with nervous desperation. "You're joking."

He shakes his head sadly. "I'm not that funny."

"You expect me to believe you?" A muscle jumps behind my eyebrow. Is this what they mean by a brain cramp?

"Morgan, I'm sorry. I don't have any other way to tell you and?—"

"You're lying." Am I dreaming? I fell asleep at the lab and my anxiety about Clarissa's ridiculous blind date has manifested itself as this strange person who thinks he can get me to believe that this is not even our second date, but our sixtieth.

"I'm not lying." His fists clench on the cement. "Please, you have to?—"

"I don't have to do anything." Certainly nothing he says. Brush my teeth, drink more water, look both ways—now more than ever, apparently—when crossing the street. Those are things I have to do. Listen to a stranger spouting impossible nonsense? Doesn't even make my list. Travel through time? I can't even charge a laptop.

"Morgan. Wait." He scrambles to his feet as I try to march off. "You remember. You just said. The bus. You said you remembered."

"I don't know what I remember, but it's not that. That would be impossible. How can I be here now if I were dead?" How many times did I wish for my mother to come back when we all knew that she was gone?

"I know it's a lot. If you would just come with me, we could talk." He reaches for my hand, but I yank it away. The door to the diner opens, and a bunch of people stumble out.

Good. Witnesses.

"Get lost. I'm not going anywhere with you."

"No." His face turns anguished, and if I knew him or liked him better, I'd feel bad about it. But I don't, on either front. The only thing recommending him is he did save me from a second horrible death by bus—though the very idea it's happened twice makes my brain spasm. I shake it off. Saving my life doesn't make up for his career choices. He works for Walter Wolfe.

Though if he's a criminal, why did he save me? Maybe I'm making that up. Clarissa said he and Alyssa met in med school. So he's a doctor, right?

If you need henching.

Woah, where did that come from? We hadn't even gotten to the "so what do you do for a living?" part of our supposed date. Trying to make sense of it only leaves me with a twisting, nauseous feeling.

"Please. You're the only one who can get me out of this." He grabs for me again. I step out of his way, and he crashes into the group who just exited Wench.

"What the hell?" someone asks.

"He's drunk," I say. "And an asshole."

"Watch where you're going." A big guy in a leather jacket shoves at Jasper, pushing him farther away from me. The big guy folds his arms over his chest like he's expecting a fight, but when Jasper rights himself, his gaze is on me and his smile is cold.

"You've tried this before," he says. "It won't help. I give you two hours tops before we do it all over again."

Is that a threat? I take an unconscious step back before I gather myself and say, "Thanks for coming tonight, but I don't think this date?—"

"Is worth repeating," he says, overlapping the end of my sentence. My cheeks heat, either in fury or from the rush of fear that comes with the little voice in my head that says he might be telling the truth. Either way, my erstwhile bodyguard is holding his ground, and Jasper doesn't push it. I blow Jasper a gentle kiss, then hurry across the intersection—after checking for oncoming vehicles—to the lot where my car is parked.

The last time I see Jasper Jackson, he's staring after me as I drive down the street, leaving him in my rearview mirror.

I call Clarissa on the road home.

"So?" Her voice is full of anticipation.

"You're in so much trouble."

"It didn't go well?"

I can't even begin to describe the levels of fucked up still rattling around in my head. So instead, I sigh. "It didn't go well."

She makes a noise of sympathy. "Did you try? I know you were nervous, but Alyssa said he's a really nice guy. But if it wasn't a fit, that's okay. There's this guy from the Toronto office I want to introduce you to. He'll be at the board meeting next week."

Ugh. The idea of the board meeting is exhausting, as is the idea of meeting more guys like Jasper. It's been a long day, regardless of how many times I've supposedly lived it.

But at least the mention of work grounds me in something normal. No time loops. No lying bloody on the sidewalk while Jasper asks me not to forget him again.

"Did you send me the updated slides?" I ask.

She growls. Really growls. Clarissa's superpower at SPAM was the ability to mimic animal noises. Her range is impressive, and today's sound is either a pissed-off Doberman or Rottweiler. They're very similar, and over the phone it's hard to make the distinction. And fortunately, there's not a lot of call for animal noises in crime fighting, even minor crime fighting, so when I jumped ship and went to the Ziro Foundation, she was more than happy to go with me.

"Morgan," she says. "The slides are fine."

"They can't only be fine. They have to be impeccable. Ezekiel is counting on us."

In four days, we're presenting the Ziro Foundation's research. The findings will change the world. It's going to be a massive paradigm shift, and I've been at the centre of it for the last two years. It has to be perfect.

"The slides aren't ready," I say.

"They are," she says. "It's all ready. You're ready. It'll be great."

The annoying thing about best friends is they know what you need to hear. That I'm enough. That I'm ready. It's taken a lot of therapy to realize being unsuper in a super family has left me with a pathological fear of letting others down. And since I can't walk on water or hit a target from a mile away in a strong headwind, I've had to dedicate myself to more earthly pursuits. It's been a lot of work, and it's culminating in something amazing.

"Did I tell you April's going to be there?" Clarissa asks.

My skin crawls at the name, and I have to adjust my grip on the steering wheel where my palms tingle. April was my boss when I worked at SPAM. She was a tyrant with a minuscule tolerance for bullshit, though she can't really be blamed for that when she's wrangling subpar superheroes around the world. I haven't heard from her since the day I turned in my resignation, though. The fact she's resurfacing now only makes me uneasy.

"Why would April be coming to the presentation?" I ask.

"Moral support?" Clarissa asks hopefully.

April is not one for pep talks. She's much more of the "pull yourself together and get back out there" type. In another life, she'd make a killer high school football coach. In this life, she helps catch other kinds of killers. And her two-year silence is all the confirmation I need to know she wasn't sorry to see me go. The superhero life was never for me. I thought SPAM was a reasonable compromise, but I never got promoted beyond filing and phone answering, and after Mother died, there didn't seem to be much point in trying to prove myself that way.

"So it really went badly?" Clarissa asks.

"The presentation? My job? My life? You'll have to be more specific."

She laughs. The sound is like a parrot mocking me, but I know it's unintentional.

"The date, silly."

We're not talking about the date. For once, I was the one let down, because no one can blame me for not wanting to go on a second date with a man who claims we've already been on sixty first dates. There are weirdo stalkers, and then there's whatever Jasper was.

If you need henching, I'm your man.

I shake my head. That didn't happen. He's a friend of Alyssa's with a weird sense of humour. I never have to see him again.

But before I can make up some half truth that won't lead to more questions, Clarissa says, "I have to go. IT is calling. Get some sleep and stop looking at the slides." Then the call ends, and I'm left to my own thoughts about Jasper and his wild theories as I drive down the darkening road toward home.

When I pull into the curved driveway at Ziro Hall—yes, it's cheesy, Ezekiel's grandfather named it—the lights are all on. The BMW iX is parked in the garage, but as I walk into the foyer, Ezekiel's still in his coat.

"Are you just getting in too?" I ask. "Have you eaten?" Since my stomach is no longer turning itself inside out, I'm ravenous.

He shakes his head. There's a tightness to his jaw that says he's not popping out to the store for snacks.

"I'm on my way back to work, actually. Make yourself something. I'll eat at the lab."

Ezekiel is a creature of habit—and also my stepfather, so I've had years to learn his patterns—and going out after dark is not one of them. For a while after my mother died, he hardly went out at all, even in daylight. It was only when we started working on the Ziro Machine that his routine finally returned to normal, and both our schedules have mapped a loop between the lab and the house without much deviation for the last two years.

"Everything all right?"

He rolls his eyes. Even on a late-night errand, he's immaculately dressed. Pressed shirt, silk tie, charcoal suit that sets off his salt-and-pepper hair. Clarissa told me a few months ago he'd be on top of several Most Eligible Bachelor lists in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the fact he's still not over Mother. Then Clarissa realized what a shitty thing that was to say and changed the subject.

Either way, he's good-looking, and it's easy to see how he swept Mother off her feet, even when she swore she was married to her job—or jobs, really. Together, they were the ultimate power couple. Ezekiel Ziro and Farah Field. They wined and dined. They didn't go places; they made appearances. But the couple I knew—Ezekiel and the Legendary Flame—were even more powerful. They were going to save the world. Ezekiel, through patronage and scientific discovery. My mother, by taking down the criminals human agencies wouldn't mess with. They were unstoppable, until they came face-to-face with Indigo.

"There was an attempted data breach at the lab," Ezekiel says.

I clench my keys. I may not have super speed, but I'm ready to leap into action.

"Let's go. I'll drive."

"No." He puts a hand on my shoulder. "They didn't get very far. Nowhere near the machine. We don't have to both go. Take it easy. You look tired."

Why does "You look tired" always sound like an insult? The passive aggressive way of saying "You look like shit." But I really must be tired, because I know he doesn't mean it that way. When Mother was killed, we probably both needed some looking after, but neither of us was in a place to do it for the other. So instead, we drifted through the halls and around the grounds for a few months like living ghosts. Eventually, though, the silence turned to stilted conversations, which then became a slow exchange of ideas. We never talked about Mother, but late at night, we devised the concept for the Ziro Machine. It was a far cry from grief counselling, but it's given us a purpose and drawn us closer than the stepfather/stepson label might make one believe.

All this to say, he doesn't mean I look like shit. He means I look tired. Hard not to be. The conversation with Jasper—the many conversations?—rattles back to life in my head, along with visions that can't possibly have happened, since I'm here to tell the tale.

After Ezekiel leaves, I make a plate of cheese and crackers and settle into bed with my laptop. As I take notes on final adjustments for the slides, my eyes grow heavy. My headache still hangs like an echo inside my skull, as does the memory of Jasper's face as he asked what I remembered. Sandwiched between these is the crushing sensation of being flung through the air as the bus hit me. But when I hold up my arms, they're straight and unmarked. I kick at the blankets, and my legs work exactly as they should and without any pain.

If Clarissa wants to set me up again, we're going to have another conversation about who does and does not qualify as proper boyfriend material first. Men with criminal connections—even ones with broad shoulders and charming smiles—and dubious fashion sense shouldn't make the cut in the first place. But if they manage to sneak through, wild stories about living the same day over and over are an automatic disqualification.

I don't think this date is worth repeating.

Did I say that or did Jasper? Doesn't matter. He also said it would only be a few hours until we saw each other again, but here I am, safe at home.

I know I fall asleep because soon enough I'm in the dream. The same dream I've had almost every night since my mother died. It feels like a memory, but it can't be, because I wasn't there. I am now, though, watching it all. My mother on the roof of the hotel, a bright ball of orange and red as she chases after Indigo's long shadow. They'd been adversaries for years. Indigo was the assassin's assassin. Leaving no trace, a perfect kill every time. Mother pursued him, but Indigo was always one step ahead of her. Tonight, though, they're finally in the same place, and it's time to settle the score.

I'm in the van, watching the whole thing unfold on the monitor. Vee is beside me. She says something like "You have to get up there. I don't know what went wrong" and suddenly I am running across the roof. My mother tells me to stop, but the split second of her distraction is all it takes for Indigo to break free of the light box that Ezekiel and Vee have been building for the last ten months. I try to shout a warning, but it's too late. Indigo engulfs her. He's like an eclipse, swallowing her light whole. I rush for her as her face disappears into darkness, then they both fall over the edge of the building, tumbling down. Sometimes, that's the end of the dream; tonight, I tumble after them, falling and falling into nothing.

My whole body jerks against the mattress as I wake up. I've been drooling on my pillow and the laptop screen has gone black. When I check my phone, it's almost one in the morning.

I hate that dream. Hate the falling feeling and the powerlessness of it all. The therapist said there was nothing I could do. Only Ezekiel was on-site. April, Clarissa, and I watched from a bunker several hours away as my mother fell to her death. Vee was in the hospital after a lab accident. Rationally, I know none of it is my fault or anyone else's beside Indigo's, but my subconscious has other opinions.

Hopefully that's it for the night, though. Between Jasper's whacky time loop ideas and my endless guilt for not saving the world's greatest superhero when she finally met her match, I'm tapping out.

But just as I pull the blankets back up around my ears, a noise makes me freeze. No. Not really a noise. The idea of one. Maybe the squeak of the bed frame as I roll over. Like the memory of being struck by a bus, it's very possible I imagined it.

Except then the sound happens again, and it's clearly a real sound. Like a cabinet door being closed. I sigh as I wrestle my way back out of bed. Probably Ezekiel. I didn't hear him get home, but he could have come in while I was asleep. So much for well-rested, but the data breach at the lab is more important.

My feet are quiet as I go down the stairs. When I get back down to the main floor, the door to his office is open and a light is on inside. See? He's back and finishing up a few things before he calls it a night.

"Everything okay at the lab? I thought?—"

The rest of my question dies in my throat.

The man at the desk is not Ezekiel. His size and bulk are all wrong, as is the way he basically sucks up all the light in the room. His form is entirely a deep opaque blue, like the sky at twilight, despite the glow of the desk lamp. There aren't even any shadows in the folds of his clothes, and while he's wearing a brimmed hat, like a fedora, the void where a face should be is too absolute to be a function of his headwear.

My breath turns short and frightened. I blink, trying to clear my head. Surely I'm still dreaming.

"Indigo."

Who knows if I say the word out loud? Everything is screaming at me to run. I am staring into the empty face of the monster who killed my mother. The murderer who has haunted my dreams for the last two years, even though no one has seen so much as his shadow since the night he killed the Legendary Flame.

He lifts his hand toward me. I flinch, but I can't move. There's a rushing sensation beneath my skin, like all my blood has reversed course. The wrongness of it burns inside me. Then he snaps his fingers—though the gesture makes no sound—and he might as well have shoved a hand into my chest and stopped my heart, because the stabbing pain behind my sternum is blinding.

"Why?" I say, but it's already getting hard to breathe. He brushes past me like I'm not even there as I drop to my knees.

My last thought as the room goes dark is that Jasper better be right.