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 killedme.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.
