“Well, obviously, you die.” He gives me an apologetic smile. Somehow, I keep having to remind myself about the whole henchman thing. Jasper really seems more like the kind of guy who holds your hand during the sad part in movies than the kind who slaps it away and tells you to give him all your money. “But no. No. Sorry. I don’t know how or where. The only time I ever see it is when it’s here with the bus.”
That’s really not very helpful at all. All those data points lost. We could have used those to map something better going forward.
“What about you?” I ask.
“What about me?”
“Do you die?”
He looks away uncomfortably for a second, which gives me the answer I was expecting even before he says, “No.”
“Have you tried?” The question comes out meaner than I intend. His eyes get big. Has he really never considered this? Jasper scrabbles for the handle on the door. On instinct, I bang the lock down on my side. He goes pale.
“I—” He swallows. “What if I don’t come back?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “I’m not going to murder you in my car in the name of scientific inquiry, Jasper. I only want to know what we’re dealing with. And I’ll have you know that, even though I come back, it still hurts like a son of a bitch. After Indigo obliterated my?—”
“What?”
The car goes quiet. Shit, I wasn’t ready to bring that part into this. Not yet. I still want to understand how this works—the limitations, the variables—before I introduced new factors.
“Indigo?” Jasper says slowly. For a guy who was so cavalier about his underworld connections earlier—yesterday? Damn, this really is hard—he suddenly looks nervous, maybe even more than when he thought he was about to meet his demise in the front seat of a luxury SUV.
I stare up through the moonroof. Full moon. That wouldn’t be relevant, would it? Of course not. The moon causes tides, but it doesn’t alter the course of time. Whatever is going on, there’s a person causing it. If it were a natural phenomenon, it would have been documented. Studied. Even the parting of the Red Sea has a plausible scientific explanation. And if someone is doing this, they can be found and be made to stop it. Maybe knowing a henchman will prove valuable after all. We just need to follow the clues.
I try again, without the insinuation of murder.
“After I left our date... yesterday? Last night? The one before this. Ugh, what’s the best way to talk about this?”
Jasper relaxes. “Yeah. Yesterday. That’s the easiest way, I’ve found. Even if today only lasts a few hours, it’s easier if you think about each one as its own day. I never know how much time I’m going to have, so stitching it together to make a twenty-four-hour period is an exercise in frustration.”
“When I left yesterday, I went home. I went to bed and I woke up later, and I heard a noise downstairs. When I went to check it out?—”
“Were you in your underwear?” He shows off his crooked tooth again as he grins, but I’m not in the mood for his leering, even if he’s clearly joking. I punch him—hard—on the shoulder.
“Ow.” His amusement turns to a plaintive pout. It should not be as endearing as it is.
“Not so tough for a henchman, are you?” I ask, watching the way he rubs his arm. Despite the fact he’s dressed super casually, he fits his flannel very well. In another timeline, I wouldn’t mind rubbing his shoulder for him.
“Why did you punch me?” he asks.
“Where do you get off asking questions about my underwear? Just because we’ve been on sixty dates doesn’t mean we’re a couple. That was rude.”
“It’s such a horror movie cliche. All alone at night. You hear a sound. You go to investigate, usually wearing only?—”
I jab a finger in his face. “You don’t get to ask about what I wear to bed. We don’t even know each other.”
His mouth works like he’s going to argue. I almost want to make him feel better, but then I think about sixty days where he knew me and I didn’t know him and my sense of reality gets fuzzy all over again. Finally, he says, “So you heard a strange noise.”
Right. Answering feels risky. There’s still a chance I’m a rat in Jasper’s maze. Maybe he’s wearing a wire and some researchersomewhere is listening to my answers going “Hmm. Yes. Very interesting. The simulation is progressing as expected.”
But not telling him means we’re more likely to continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over, and somehow those always seem to result in me bleeding from an important artery or trying not to move as my bones puncture an organ. So I’ll have to give him this much.
“Indigo was there. In my stepfather’s office.” My eyes widen as a terrible thought occurs to me. “Ezekiel! Where is he? If Indigo got me, then—” I fumble for my phone, getting ready to type a text. Only what am I supposed to say? Don’t go home? I can’t tell him how I know what I know. We’ve got too much riding on the presentation for Ezekiel to start worrying about my mental well-being, and he absolutely will if I start texting him impossible stories about blind dates that never end.
“Indigo?” Jasper’s still hung up on other revelations. “Like,theIndigo?”
I nod. I guess it doesn’t matter what happened to Ezekiel last night? We’re back at the beginning, which means even if Indigo killed him too, he’s alive again, just like me. Right? My fingers still itch to message him, but Jasper whistles softly and says, “And then?”
