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

Here, that was practically a death wish. She doubted she’d ever be safe again.

The dock dipped. Water inched past the edges of her boots, bringing a poison-green snake with it. The snake slithered around her ankles, tail flicking in and out of the black. Dorothy kicked it loose, swearing as the pest disappeared below.

Chandra’s words tripped through her head:

You’ve met three times . . . Once, after the ball, and then again at that super-shady bar near the Fairmont, and then, you know, when you saved him. . . .

She ran a hand back through her hair. How could this be true? She knew how to fly a time machine, but she wasn’t currently in possession of one. The Black Crow—the last time machine, as far as she knew—was currently locked up in the Fairmont, guarded by an army of Cirkus Freaks and Mac Murphy himself. There was no way she could get her hands on it without getting herself killed.

Waves lapped against the dock. Wind rustled the white tree branches. Dorothy hunched down in her cloak, trying to quiet the frustration she felt building inside of her. Every time she thought she was on the verge of discovering something new, she seemed to slam into another wall, another obstacle. It was infuriating.

She shook the wet from her boots and kept moving. Dante’s bar was just ahead. Freaks didn’t drink at Dante’s, Dorothy knew, so she might actually be safe there. For a little while, at least. Long enough for a drink, maybe even some food. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that it had been a full day since she’d eaten anything.

She glanced around to make sure no one was following her. The dock was empty, the water surrounding it still. Satisfied, she found the window that acted as the bar’s entrance and climbed inside.

Grease stains crawled up the walls, and the air held the heavy smells of fried fish and beer. Dorothy’s stomach rumbled painfully. She pulled her hood low over her face, hoping no one would notice her as she made her way toward the cheery sounds of voices and laughter.

Dante’s was a cramped, dirty space filled with mismatched tables and chairs, with strings of half-busted café lights hanging from the low ceiling, and a few vinyl booths shoved up against the walls. A boxy television set from 1985 sat behind the bar but, for now, it remained dark.

Dorothy waited at the bar, her hood pulled low, white hair carefully hidden, until a shortish, youngish guy wearing a baseball hat made his way over to her.

“What can I get you, darling?” he asked.

“Hooch?” Dorothy said, remembering the clear drink Zora had ordered for her the first time she’d come here. “And food, if you have it.”

“Kitchen’s closed right now,” the bartender said apologetically. “But we got a shipment of protein bars from the Center, and a few bags of black-market chips if you’re interested.”

Dorothy wet her lips. She was interested in anything as long as it was food. “I’ll take both, thank you.”

The bartender nodded, wiping his hands on a white apron that hung from the waistband of his baggy shorts. He pulled a bottle of clear liquid out from behind the hubcap that served as the bar and filled a glass. Then he found a protein bar and a dusty bag of chips and tossed them onto the bar next to it.

“Thank you,” Dorothy murmured, dropping a few bills onto the counter. She took her drink and moved through the crowd, head ducked. She kept imagining that people were sending sideways glances her way, whispering to themselves. She had no way of telling whether the paranoia was in her head.

Finding a seat near the back of the bar, she took a sip of her drink. The hooch burned all the way down her throat and settled in her gut like a tire fire. She swallowed, grimacing, and tore into the protein bar, a brownish, lumpy substance that tasted salty and chocolaty and a little like sawdust. It was the least “food-like” food she’d ever eaten, but it managed to calm the rumbling in her belly, at least a little.

While she ate, she went over everything she knew.

Chandra said she’d been meeting with Ash in the past. She didn’t have a time machine, but she did have the Professor’s journal pages, and they happened to detail just how one might travel through time without a machine.

She tightened her fingers around her sticky glass, thinking. Was that what she’d done? Figured out how to travel through time without a vessel? It seemed unlikely. The Professor’s journal pages were helpful, but they weren’t exactly an instruction manual. And he’d made quite a point of talking about just how dangerous it was to even attempt such a thing. Dorothy still couldn’t get the phrase skin ripped from his body out of her head. She shuddered and put the rest of the protein bar down on the table, uneaten. She couldn’t imagine a less pleasant way to die.

The boy at the bar suddenly raised a hand, motioning for the patrons to quiet. He was staring at the television hanging over the bar. The image on the screen had skipped, and then froze.

Dorothy watched, dread pooling in her stomach as the image disappeared completely, replaced by two figures: Mac, and that strange, unfamiliar woman in black she’d seen on the docks that morning.

And now, she felt her anger flare. They were standing in her studio, the one she and Roman had built in the Fairmont’s basement. They were using the cameras that Dorothy had stolen from a defunct television station in 2044 and standing in front of the tattered American flag that Roman had hung from the ceiling.

How dare they?

“Friends,” Mac said, smiling slightly. He was a toad-like man, stumpy and short with thick lips and perpetually red-rimmed eyes. “Do not attempt to adjust your television set. This broadcast has taken over every channel. It is untraceable.”

Dorothy couldn’t speak. She knew those words. For heaven’s sake . . . she’d written them.