“All I’m thinking is that I want to leave,” I said wearily. Should I try to calmly reason with him or would tears be more likely to work?
“It will all be over soon,” he added with a smile.
I did not like his smile. I did not like anything about him — especially the telltale glow shining from his hand. My gaze fixed on his hand as he reached up to push back a wet strand of hair, then followed it down to the table. Dyce idly drummed his fingers. The glowing seemed brighter now, a beacon drawing my gaze.
If only he would leave the room! I thought. Then I could send an SOS through the GEM. What had he meant when he said it would “be over soon”? If I didn’t use the GEM immediately, I might never get a chance.
“I have to go pee,” I announced, squirming for effect.
He scowled. “Can’t it wait?”
“No.”
“Nice try. You can manage on your own. The bathroom is right there.” He pointed to a door which I’d assumed was a closet.
I shifted slowly, placing my bound feet on the ground, then standing up. I bunny-hopped a few feet, then wobbled.
“Don’t fall—” Dyce jumped up to catch me.
“Nooooo!” I screamed as his Dark Lifer hands came toward me. “Stay away from me, Gabe!”
He stopped abruptly. “What did you call me?”
“Um … nothing.” Steadying myself against the wall, I avoided his gaze. “I’ll just hop over to the bathroom.”
“Wait. Why did you call me Gabe?” He blocked my way.
“A slip of the tongue.”
“It was more than that. What have you guessed, Sharayah?”
I faked confusion. “I don’t know what you mean. We only met yesterday.”
“You know better than that,” he said softly.
“I only know that my arms and legs hurt, I want out of here, and I need to pee.”
As I waited for him to answer, my gaze returned to the shiny patch on his hands. He caught my look, and glanced down and covered the shiny skin with his other hand.
“Who are you?” he demanded, sounding more confused than angry.
“That’s a stupid question,” I snapped. “You admitted to studying me for months, so you probably know me better than I do.”
“I’m not so sure anymore.”
He reached out toward my face with his arm — the one with the shiny patch — and I recoiled. “No! Don’t touch me!”
“Why not?” he asked, moving closer.
“I–I just don’t like being touched.”
“Or could it be you don’t like my touch?” he said, reaching out with both hands. “Tell me why.”
His palms hovered so close that my pulse raced with fear.
“No!” I cringed, turning away.
“I’m going to place both of my hands on you and keep them there, pressing down harder and harder until you tell me the truth. Just like this—”
At the touch of his palms, I screamed, “Keep your Dark Lifer hands off me!”
My words seemed to steal the air from the room. Instantly Gabe pulled his hands back and went silent. Overwhelmed, I collapsed on the bench.
Gabe crossed to the table, sitting in a chair with his arms bent and his head resting against his hands. He sat like this for at least five minutes. The only sound was my quick breathing and an occasional drop of sea water slipping from his shirt to the floor. I wanted to kick myself, but of course I couldn’t with my legs bound. I’d forgotten to act like Sharayah. Dumb, so dumb! I’d blundered big time. I’d thought that knowing his secret while he didn’t know mine would give me power. But maybe I was looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the truth, as the saying goes, could literally set me free.
As long as I mixed in a good amount of lying.
“Okay, I admit it,” I said. “I know what you are.”
He arched one dark brow, his expression like stone. “What do you know about Dark Lifers?”
“They’re renegade Temp Lifers but without energy from the other side, so their hands and fingernails are gray and glowing. I guessed that you sprayed on a tan to hide your glow.”
“How does a mere girl know this?” he demanded.
“My grandmother told me.”
“Your grandmother?” he repeated doubtfully. “I suppose you believe in the Big Bad Wolf and Humpty Dumpty, too.”
I didn’t appreciate his mocking tone. “FYI, my grandmother has an important job on the other side. And I know Dark Lifers are real because I’ve met one. He tried to hurt me, too, but I got rid of him.”
“Oh?” Gabe looked doubtful. “And how did you do that?”
“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 Let’s Fake a Deal, a self-help book written by a top Hollywood agent, was to first convince yourself you were telling the truth. “The DDT will be here soon,” I repeated.
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.”