“He was at the house... I mean, he’ll be at the house. Later. You ... I...” I squeeze my eyes tight and try to piece together the best way to explain this. “You asked how I knew about the data breach. It’s because a few days ago... which is today, but not this version of today... instead of coming here, I went home. You were on your way out, coming back here to deal with the breach. I stayed home, fell asleep, and later a noise woke me up. It was—” I swallow. Sometime while I’ve been speaking, Jasper removed his hand, and now I miss it. “Indigo was in your office, and when he saw me, he...” I wave a hand as the remembered pain sweeps over me.
“Are you okay?” Ezekiel asks. He moves toward me, looking concerned, but I’m leaning against Jasper, so there’s not much for him to do.
“I’m fine,” I say, laughing weakly. “Just not an experience I care to repeat.”
“Were you there too?” Ezekiel’s gaze goes to Jasper, who shakes his head.
“No.”
“Why not?” His voice trembles with barely controlled anger. It’s a sign of how much Indigo’s reappearance is shaking him. Ezekiel is poised in every situation. But we’re talking about the monster who killed his wife. You can’t expect him to hold it together.
“You can’t go home,” I say again quickly because Jasper doesn’t need to defend himself. It’s not his fault that I didn’t believe him sooner. “Indigo will be there, and if something happened to you, I’d?—”
Ezekiel looks between us. His eyes are worried, but whatever he sees pass from Jasper to me must be the reassurance he needs because he says, “I’ll stay here. Won’t be the first night I’ve slept at the office.” He gives me a reassuring smile, and part of me wonders if maybe this has happened before. Maybe the reason he didn’t come home the night Indigo was there was because somehow, another version of me had been able to warn him. If the day keeps repeating over and over, are there sixty different versions of me running around the city? Wouldn’t that be wild? But no, that can’t be right, because there’s only ever one of me and one of Jasper when everything restarts at Wench.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Why don’t you stay here too?” Ezekiel says. “Both of you. That way I know you’re safe.”
I glance up at Jasper. It’s tempting. My body is tired, though I don’t know if it’s from the stress of the situation or from the full day of work I put in “today”—whenever that was.
“We can’t stay,” I say.
“You can’t?”
“We can’t?” Jasper says, looking surprised.
“No. We need to find out what’s going on. And I think...” I turn to Jasper. “What are the ways I have died? Sometimes I got hit by the bus, right?”
“Right.”
“What bus?” Ezekiel asks, making me wince. He’s had a lot of surprises tonight, and now he gets to relive my deaths.
“And sometimes I went home where Indigo showed up, right?”
“Probably,” Jasper says.
“Were there any other nights? Any other things I did?”
He shrugs. “A few times you called the cops. We spent a lot of time talking to them and filling out reports.”
“What did you tell them you do for a living?” I ask.
“It wouldn’t have mattered.” He smiles down at me, and I can’t help my answering smile. Sitting this close to him is the calmest I’ve felt since this all started. Probably the whisky. Jasper says, “Even if they’d arrested me, I’d only be back at the date a few hours later.”
“What do you do for a living? Why would they have arrested you?” Ezekiel asks. He’s watching us with growing anxiety, no doubt trying to piece together answers from our shorthand. But I don’t answer, and neither does Jasper. Someday I’ll have to tell him about my date with the henchman, but right now, my priority is survival. If it has to be with Jasper, that’s what I’ll do.
“A couple times, I tried to follow you,” Jasper says. “When you’d leave, I’d call a cab and get it to follow you after you left Wench.”
“And what did I do?”
“Most of the time you went home. The rest of the time you came here.”
“And every time I died, right?” At my question, Ezekiel inhales sharply. Welcome to the club. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, and when you do, the truth is pretty bleak.
Jasper isn’t nearly as upset. All he says is, “As far as I know.”
I turn back to Ezekiel, who is looking pale. “So I can’t stay here,” I say. “Because no matter what I do, I die, and whether it’s a freak explosion in the lab or if Indigo is the cause here too, I can’t put you at risk. So you’ll be safer if you’re not with me.”
