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

The woman in black was small and slight, with a slim mask covering her face, a hood pulled over her hair, and black gloves to her elbows. The only bit of visible skin that Dorothy could see was the white of her neck. Everything else was hidden.

Dorothy felt a shiver of familiarity, studying her. Impossible though it might be, she had the strange, tilting feeling that she was looking at herself.

Was that impossible? She knew that she’d gone back in time. Perhaps she’d stayed, found a way to infiltrate the Cirkus and regain her spot as its leader.

But why? Dorothy frowned as she turned this question over in her head. She didn’t actually want to lead the gang again, and she certainly didn’t want to work alongside Mac Murphy. So why go through all this trouble, the time travel, the disguise, the lies?

Dorothy turned back around, watching a few more Freaks try and fail to get the Black Crow airborne. She gritted her teeth, nerves climbing her neck. The novelty of watching them was beginning to wear thin. They showed no intention of leaving the time machine behind, and Dorothy’s entire plan revolved around stealing the canister of EM inside of the main cabin. How was she supposed to do that if the Black Crow was surrounded?

She chewed her bottom lip, frustrated.

And then she realized . . .

Quinn Fox, assassin, cannibal, leader of the Black Cirkus, might not have a way to get to the EM—but Dorothy, con artist and thief, certainly did.

She lifted a hand to her head and slid a hairpin out of her curls. It was a pin from her original time period, made of solid silver and—so far—strong enough to work any lock without bending or breaking. Dorothy had been careful to keep it with her over the years. It had served her well many, many times in the past.

While the crowd was distracted, she drifted around to the back of the time machine, fingers traveling over the cool metal until she found the crack of a door.

The cargo hold.

She grinned. She was quite familiar with it.

Glancing around to make sure that everyone’s eyes were still on Bennett—the latest poor fool to attempt to fly the Black Crow—Dorothy pressed her back against the cargo hold door and slid her hairpin into the lock. She gritted her teeth, and turned left, and then right.

It took a moment for the lock to catch—

There. She felt a click and closed her eyes, a smile crossing her lips as she exhaled.

Still got it.

She eased the door open behind her back and slipped inside, pulling the door shut again very quickly. There wasn’t much time. She groped along the back of the hold in the darkness until she felt the edges of the panel that separated her from the main cockpit. She pressed her ear to the wall and waited until she heard nothing but silence in the main hold. Then, barely daring to breathe, she slid the panel away.

The cockpit was empty. She exhaled in relief and slipped forward, kneeling.

The internal control panel was one of the key design elements of the Black Crow. The exotic matter was stored in a hidden compartment. Dorothy moved her hands over levers and buttons, until the panel fell open, revealing a glass cylinder filled with liquid sunlight. Then a shadow passed overhead, and the substance turned the color and texture of steel. A moment later, it was a swirling blue mist.

Dorothy’s breath caught in her throat. She could easily stay there and watch the strange, ever-changing substance forever, but there wasn’t time for that. She needed to get gone before another Freak climbed into the cockpit to try his hand at flying the damn thing.

Moving quickly, she removed the canister of exotic matter from the ship and slipped it inside her cloak, then she went back out the way she’d come, replacing the panel that separated the cockpit from the cargo hold and slipping silently back into the garage.

Here, she paused a moment, looking around. No one was watching her. They were all turned to the front of the garage, waiting to see who the next fool to attempt to fly the time machine would be. She swallowed, hard, trying to still her nerves. The canister of EM seemed to bulge beneath her cloak.

A tall, thin boy separated from the crowd, his hands raised. Dorothy frowned, not recognizing him. Unlike the rest of the Cirkus Freaks, this boy wasn’t wearing a black cloak. He wore a bomber jacket, the leather badly beaten and cracked. Recognizing it, Dorothy froze. She felt a chill move through her.

“Ash?” she murmured, voice low. She watched the boy, skin tingling. He had his back to her, and so she saw only the knit hat pulled down low over his head, his shoulders.

Had she and Ash both come back in time to this moment?

No, she told herself immediately. It wasn’t possible—Ash could never have walked into a room filled with Cirkus Freaks without being recognized.

And yet Dorothy couldn’t pull her eyes away from that boy. She watched as he climbed into the cockpit, easily flipping switches and dials.

There was the low groan of a motor. A flash of lights. The hair on the back of Dorothy’s neck stood on end. He was doing it. Somehow, he was making the time machine work.

With a lurch, the time machine lifted from the ground and was airborne. A mix of awe and horror churned through Dorothy’s chest as the machine shot off through the parking garage windows, Cirkus Freaks cheering as it took to the sky.

Dorothy stood, dumbstruck, watching the time machine disappear. The pilot wouldn’t notice that the exotic matter was gone until he tried to take it into the anil. Then, the time machine would begin shaking and falling apart and—if he didn’t act quickly—he would be torn apart by the vicious winds inside of the time tunnel.

If he was just another Cirkus Freak who’d happened to find Ash’s coat,