“I contacted the Dark Disposal Team.”
His tanned face turned as pale as old bones. “You know about them?”
“Yes, and they’ll be here soon.” A method for telling a convincing lie that I’d learned from
As if my words had physically struck him, he stepped back from me. Then he shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”
“Then wait around to find out. But from what my grandmother tells me, you won’t like what they do to Dark Lifers.”
“Your grandmother is the overseer of the Temporary Lifer program?”
“Yeah, and even though she’s dead she’s very protective of me. She told me a secret way to let her know when I find a Dark Lifer. So you better scrap your plans for dumping me in the ocean and get out of here while you can.”
“I’ve eluded capture for over a century and have no intention of returning now.” He glared at me. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I think so.” I spoke calmly, but inside I quaked at the dark energy oozing from him. He’d been playing with me before — but now he was serious and angry.
“No, you don’t. And you’re wrong about my dumping you in the ocean. I would never hurt you. I’d planned to let you fall in love with me all over again, then explain to you how love is only a trap. Once you understood that love isn’t real and learned to guard your heart, I would have let you go. I went through all of this to help you. I still care about you, Sharayah.”
“Nothing says ‘I love you’ better than duct tape,” I said with a sarcastic lift of my bound hands.
“I had to make sure you listened.”
“You’ve confessed to sending me death threats and plotting revenge for what happened to Gabe … I mean, to you.”
“Right,” he admitted, his cap bobbing with his nod. “I’d never failed before that night, and at first I was angry. But that’s only part of the reason I tracked you down. I had to finish what I started — to save you.”
“Save me?” I almost choked. “From what?”
“From a life destroyed by false love. You fell in love with me too easily, quicker than most girls did. You were so eager for romance and so trusting that I knew someone would destroy you if I didn’t teach you to be strong.”
“By breaking my heart?” I asked incredulously.
“By showing you the true deception of love. That’s all I wanted to do — convince you that true love doesn’t exist.”
“I don’t believe that,” I argued, thinking of Eli.
“You’re still too trusting and naive. That’s why I tried to prevent you from making the mistakes that I did.”
“What mistakes?”
“When I was alive, I was betrothed to a sweet young lady. As was common with gentry in those days, I also had a mistress. I respected my betrothed but only had passion for my mistress. I would rather have lived in poverty than in wealth without her, so I planned to run away and marry her. Instead, she murdered my betrothed so that we wouldn’t have to run. And since I still loved her and wanted to protect her, I confessed to her crime. She came to see me while I was in prison and laughed that I’d been a fool. She said that she had many men and only loved my family’s money, never me. Everything that mattered died before I met the gallows. When I became a Dark Lifer, it wasn’t out of fear — it was to save naive romantics from the destruction of love.”
He seemed to be waiting, watching me for a reaction. But I wasn’t sure what to say. His twisted logic chilled me, yet inspired some sympathy, too. I mean, going to the gallows for someone you loved was tragic.
“I’m sorry that you died and everything,” I said after what seemed like a long stretch of silence. “The DDT will be here any minute.”
“You shouldn’t have contacted them.”
“You shouldn’t have taped me up.”
“I did it for your own good. In one hundred and twenty years, you are my only failure. I regret not helping you, Sharayah,” he said sadly.
Then a shift took place in his expression, as if he was realizing something he’d forgotten until now. “But you aren’t Sharayah. Are you?”
I hesitated, then shook my head.
“Who are you?”
Lying seemed a waste of time, so I went with the truth. “Amber.”
“A Temp Lifer?” he guessed.
“Yes. Sent to repair the damage you did to Sharayah by letting her think she’d killed you. What really happened that night?”
“I was getting ready to give my speech about deceitful love. After that I always walked away, knowing they’d be wiser now. Only Sharayah ruined it and I fell. I missed the rocks but suffered bad cuts. Do you know what happens to Dark Lifers if they bleed?”
“They can’t stay in the body very long.”
“Right, and have to immediately find a new one,” he explained. “I hitched a ride and switched with the guy who picked me up. Unfortunately, the car was a hot one and I got arrested. I spent three stinking, disgusting, humiliating weeks in jail.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“Not sympathy, but respect for my attempts to reach you. I never gave up trying to find you, even though it took weeks. Finally I found you in San Jose and slipped into the body of a young man residing in a nearby dorm.”
Something clicked. “Was his name Caleb, and did he go out with a girl named Katelyn?”
“Very good,” he said, impressed.
“What about the real Gabe?” I asked. “Is he really paralyzed?”
“I’m the only real Gabe — my name is Gabriel Deverau — but I suppose you mean the body I used when I dated Sharayah. What was his real name?” He touched his chin thoughtfully. “Well, no matter. He only has a few memories of my time in his body. Aside from some cuts and confusion, he walked away to resume his safe, boring life. And now I must resume my lives, too.”
I cringed at his use of “lives” plural. He was a menace and would keep breaking hearts unless he was stopped. Still, I was relieved that he didn’t have any plans to drown me.
“The DD Team will never catch me,” he said as he started up the stairs.
“You’re just leaving?” I cried, thrashing my bound hands and legs. “What about me?”
“The DD Team can set you free.”
Then he was gone.
22
Oh, great.
I’d lied to Gabe so convincingly that he’d left without untaping me.
Still, I could turn my “lie” into the truth easily enough.
Bending sideways, I reached for my GEM again.
It took awhile to push it out of my pocket with just my fingertips, but after a lot of groaning and twisting, I was rewarded with a thump on the floor. The GEM flipped over twice, then fell open to a beautiful blank page.
Before I’d finished asking for the DD Team and explaining where I was, there was a startling flash and four members of the DD Team, wearing business suits, squished into the tiny cabin. Gabe must be high on their
