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

game at a rickety table. Willis towered behind her, his skin and hair pale beneath black clothes. The bones in his face slanted at sharp angles, causing the skin to pull too tight over his cheeks and chin. Neither seemed to have noticed them come in.

Willis leaned over Chandra’s shoulder and touched one of her cards with the tip of his massive finger. He said, in a deep, velvety voice, “You missed the ace.”

“I didn’t miss the ace,” Chandra snapped, rolling her eyes. “I was just saving it.”

Willis frowned. “Saving it?”

“I like saving up a bunch of cards in a row and then, when I’m ready, I get to go bam bam bam and do them all at the same time.” She mimed flipping a bunch of cards onto the table. “It’s fun.”

“I didn’t realize solitaire could be quite so exciting,” Willis murmured, a smile curling his lips.

Dorothy felt an ache, watching them. She’d forgotten what it was like to be around these people, how comforting it could be, almost like having a family. Once, she’d thought that Willis and Chandra could become her friends.

But that was a long time ago. She hadn’t seen either of them in over a year and, since then, things had gotten . . .

Complicated.

Her smile flickered. If she’d made different choices, she might be sitting among them right now, playing cards and laughing. It was much too late for all that. The past year seemed to rise up between them, massive. She doubted either of them would consider her a friend anymore.

Still, she had to try. She took a step toward them, tentative. “Hell—”

She was interrupted by a click of metal, the feel of something small and cold pressing against the skin on her neck. She snapped her mouth shut, swallowing the rest of her greeting.

Zora was pointing that gun at her again.

Lovely.

Dorothy’s mangled greeting had drawn the attention of both Chandra and Willis. They’d looked up from their card game and were staring, but Dorothy couldn’t tell whether they were surprised or afraid. Perhaps a little of both.

“Try anything and I’ll make that pretty face of yours a little less pretty.” Zora removed the barrel of the gun from the back of Dorothy’s neck, but she kept the thing trained on Dorothy’s head as she moved around to her other side.

Dorothy bit back her disappointment. She was used to this feeling, after all. She couldn’t think of a day in her life when some form of aching loneliness hadn’t plagued her. Even when Roman had been alive, she’d been well aware that the rest of their gang had only tolerated her out of fear.

But she wouldn’t have anyone pity her. She may not have a friend in this world, but she did have some pride.

“I’m not sure it’s possible to make my face any less pretty,” she murmured, a poor attempt at a joke. She motioned to the scar that cut across one of her eyes and curled into the corner of her mouth.

Chandra released a surprised laugh. Dorothy glanced at her, a flare of hope shooting through her chest, but Chandra had quickly recovered and gone back to studying the cards spread across the table before her, brow furrowed, all traces of laughter scrubbed from her face. Willis met Dorothy’s eyes, but his gaze was chilly. It made Dorothy’s heart hurt.

She shouldn’t be so surprised by this less-than-warm welcome, she knew. In the year since they’d last seen each other, Dorothy had fallen out of a time machine, gotten her face carved up, taken over a bloodthirsty gang, and risen to the top echelons of power in New Seattle, becoming Quinn Fox: assassin, murderer, rumored cannibal. This had all been possible because of the (quite false) stories about what a violent monster she was, but Dorothy hadn’t been bothered about any of that. Power was power. She’d lived long enough without any of her own to appreciate it in whatever form she could get.

She and Roman had come up with the rumors about her viciousness to keep her safe, and they had no more truth to them than most fairy tales. But still, they’d stuck. People loved to tell horror stories.

Unfortunately, Dorothy found that they were less likely to tell the happy stories. Like how she’d tried to save the city. How she and Roman had restored electricity and brought back much-needed medical supplies, among other things. People seemed to prefer gruesome lies to the truth.

Anyway, none of that mattered anymore. Everything, all that she and Roman had built, had been taken away. In the course of just twenty-four hours, Mac Murphy had managed to steal her time machine and take control of her gang. Quinn Fox was gone, and she was only Dorothy again. Roman, her closest ally and the only person she’d actually trusted in this godforsaken city, had been shot and left for dead in the blackened ruins of the future.

And Ash . . .

Dorothy’s throat closed just thinking of it. She couldn’t let herself dwell on what may or may not have happened to Ash just now.

“Sit,” Zora said, pointing to a stool near Chandra.

Dorothy gathered up the wet ends of her cloak and sat, chair creaking beneath her. Despite everything, she was glad to be here. Back at the Fairmont, she knew everyone wanted to kill her. Here it might just be two out of three.

“Well?” Chandra’s eyes skittered toward Dorothy and away again. “What did you find?”

Willis added, “Is he really—”

Neither of them actually said the word dead, but Dorothy heard it ringing through the air, almost as though it were being sung on a loop.

He’s not dead! she wanted to scream. He couldn’t be.

But she didn’t actually have any proof of that. She was holding tight to the fact that they hadn’t found Ash’s body, but that damn boat was floating in the middle of the Puget Sound. Any murderer with half a brain would’ve thought to drop him over the side of the boat, allowing his body to sink to