Dark Stars by Danielle Rollins (best affordable ebook reader txt) 📕

bent, walking without stopping to think about where, exactly, she planned to go. Every time she thought about those posters, fresh rage bubbled up inside of her. Mac couldn’t do this; he couldn’t use his lies to turn an entire city against Ash. She wouldn’t let him. She had to do something. She had to stop this.

But what?

She was helpless. Powerless. Friendless, moneyless.

Oh, how she hated that feeling.

After ten minutes of aimless wandering, she realized she’d unintentionally landed on a destination. In this entire city, she knew of only one place where they wouldn’t throw her out immediately.

Taking a deep breath, she turned and headed there now.

Dorothy hid behind a white-trunked tree. Waiting.

Zora was the first to leave. Dorothy watched from her hiding place as Zora pushed a window open and climbed onto the rocking docks below.

She looks terrible, Dorothy thought. Purple circles colored the skin below Zora’s eyes, and there was a sickly gray cast to her dark brown skin. She seemed to be muttering something under her breath, an energy bar clutched between her teeth as she hurriedly pulled her black braids into a quick and untidy bun at the base of her neck.

She didn’t even glance Dorothy’s way but climbed onto her Jet Ski. A roaring sound filled the morning air as she switched on the engine. And then she was gone, an arc of black water spraying the air in her wake.

Willis climbed out the window not three minutes after Zora had left, his eyes moving back and forth, skittishly, as he checked the docks for people. Dorothy frowned. He looked . . . furtive. Like he was doing something he really shouldn’t be doing. Like he didn’t want to be caught.

Head ducked, he quickly moved down the docks, toward Dante’s.

Dorothy exhaled, deep, and moved out from her hiding place. Chandra would be the only person remaining in the library now. That was lucky. She’d been hoping she could manage to catch either Chandra or Willis alone, but, of course, Chandra was her first choice. Chandra had always seemed to like her.

Here goes nothing, she thought.

And she ducked down the docks and over to the library, carefully pushing the doors open.

5

Disco music blared down the library hallway, strings, horns, and electric guitar crashing together like a storm. Dorothy could just make out the rise and fall of Chandra’s (off-key) voice as she sang along.

“‘You are the dancing queen! Young and sweet, only seventeen!’”

Dorothy cringed—she still didn’t like modern music—but she supposed she should be glad for the music. It covered the creak of her footsteps as she made her way down the long hall.

She rounded the corner and found Chandra dancing around a crooked stack of mildewed books that was almost as tall as she was. Chandra wiggled her hips and pumped her hands above her head, the kind of dancing someone did when he or she really didn’t expect anyone to be watching. Dorothy knew she should announce her presence to save the girl from embarrassment, but she couldn’t help staying quiet for a few moments longer.

Chandra grabbed an empty bottle off a stack of papers and held it up to her mouth, belting into it like it was a microphone. “‘Dancing queen! Feel the beat of the TAMBORINE, OH YEAH.’”

Dorothy stifled a laugh. She couldn’t take it any longer. She began to clap, and Chandra released a high-pitched shriek and whirled around, flinging the bottle across the room. It smacked into a pile of papers sitting on an overburdened bookcase, sending them flying to the floor.

“Oh no!” Chandra’s hands flew to her mouth. “Zora’s going to be so pissed. She spent all morning organizing that.”

“I’ve only been here a minute and I’ve, somehow, already managed to anger Zora,” Dorothy said, kneeling to gather the papers. “That has to be some sort of record, even for me.”

Chandra said nothing but hurried over to the ancient cassette player, switching off ABBA. The sudden silence made Dorothy’s nerves twitch.

“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have snuck up on you,” Dorothy said, standing. She placed the messy stack of papers back on the bookshelf. “It’s just that I was hoping to talk to you when you were on your own.”

“Right,” Chandra said. Dorothy couldn’t help but notice that her eyes were a touch wider than they’d been a minute before. She glanced at the window and then back at Dorothy, swallowing hard. “That makes sense, I guess.”

Dorothy frowned. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Of course not.” Chandra laughed, but it came out sounding a touch nervous. “It’s just that we haven’t been alone together since you became, well, her.”

She gestured to Dorothy’s white hair and black cloak, and Dorothy felt her heart sink. She’d always thought Chandra liked her. Back when they’d first met, she’d asked question after question about Dorothy’s time period, her hair, her clothes. It had seemed like they’d been becoming friends.

But the girl standing in front of her now looked utterly terrified, as though she expected Dorothy to whip a blade out from her sleeve and kill her on the spot. Had she been fooling herself that Chandra might be an ally?

“I’m no different than I was when you knew me,” Dorothy said, raising her hands to show that she was unarmed. “I swear.”

“Well . . . except for that thing where you eat people now,” Chandra pointed out, taking a step backward. “That’s new.”

“For the love of . . . I don’t eat people,” Dorothy said, in a huff. “They’re just rumors. There have been dozens of rumors about me over the last year, but, for some reason, that’s the one everyone fixates on.”

“Can you blame them?” Chandra asked weakly.

“They’re silly,” Dorothy said. “Roman and I started them to convince the people of this city I was someone to be feared. There’s no truth to any of them, I swear.”

Chandra raised an eyebrow.

“Fine,” Dorothy snapped. She held up a finger. “I bit one guy, and that was only because he attacked me first.