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

She swallowed and said, very carefully, “You know that for sure, do you? That I’m going to kill you?”

Ash gave a little shrug. “Prememories are never wrong.”

“But how do you know it’s me?” she asked. “Did you see my face?”

“Nope. I saw this.” Ash twirled a strand of her hair around his finger and pulled it, like a bell. “White hair. The girl in my prememory has white hair. I realized it was Quinn Fox when I saw you running around the halls back at Fort Hunter. That’s when I finally put two and two together.”

Dorothy felt a flicker of something deep in her chest. Wait a minute . . . she hadn’t been to Fort Hunter—not as Quinn Fox, anyway. Roman had gone back in time to complete that mission on his own.

“But you didn’t see my face,” she murmured, thinking.

Ash cocked his head. “What?”

“You said that you saw Quinn Fox at Fort Hunter. But did you actually see my face? Or just the white hair?”

“Dorothy, I might not have seen your face, but I saw your scar, your cloak. It was you.”

Dorothy pressed her lips together, considering this. Each new piece of this puzzle seemed to point to yet another place in history that she’d traveled back in time to visit. So far, she’d taken it for granted that it was always her. But, now, she wondered.

Could someone else have gone back instead?

Someone pretending to be her?

For some reason, she thought of the woman in black, Regan Rose.

“Hair can be dyed,” she said, more to herself than to Ash. She took a measured breath and added, “What about in this prememory? Did you see my face, then?”

Ash let her hair unravel from his finger. “I didn’t want to believe it, either,” he murmured, tucking it back behind her ear. “But I’m trying to make my peace with it. Prememories are memories, there’s no way to stop them—”

“Just tell me,” Dorothy interrupted him. “Did you see my face?”

“Why this sudden interest in my death?” Ash frowned, studying her. “Unless . . .”

Zora’s voice suddenly reached out of the darkness. “Asher!”

Dorothy turned, squinting. She could make out the shape of someone standing on a dock in the distance, the long, thin silhouette that was, unmistakably, Zora.

“I have to go,” Ash said. He, too, was looking at Zora, and his shoulders had gone rigid. “Will I see you again?”

There were two more secret meetings that Dorothy knew about, the next occurring the very next night.

“You will,” she said. “Soon.”

He touched her cheek, briefly. “Take care of yourself.”

And before she could ask him anything else, he was off, diving into the black water, swimming toward Zora.

Dorothy remained long enough to make sure he made it safely onto the dock. And then, numb, she made her way back to the Black Crow.

14

It started to rain as Dorothy flew the Black Crow back to the anil, heavy splatters of water smacking against her windshield, making it impossible to see anything in the inky darkness. Wind howled and battered into the sides of the ship, sending her sliding back and forth on the pilot’s seat.

She gritted her teeth. Roman could’ve thought to include windshield wipers in his design. Or, at the very least, a seat belt.

A moment later, the thought turned bitter because Roman wasn’t here to tease about it.

She took a deep, steadying breath and tightened her grip around the yoke. One down, she thought, trying to ignore the knot forming in her stomach. Two more to go.

She still had so many questions. Was she really the one Ash had been seeing in his prememory? Was she deluding herself, thinking there was a chance that someone else had been posing as her, trying to trick him?

Perhaps. But she couldn’t waste these last two meetings asking the same questions over and over again, hoping for a different answer. There were other questions she needed to get to the bottom of.

The Professor’s experiments through time without a vessel, for instance. Other than the Professor himself, Ash was the only one who’d managed to figure out the secret. Perhaps he could teach Dorothy what he’d learned.

She pressed down on the gas, and the sudden acceleration sent her rocketing backward so that her body felt glued to the chair behind her.

The time machine leaped forward, into the future—

NOVEMBER 7, 2077

Dorothy landed the Black Crow in the tangle of docks behind the Dead Rabbit and cut the engine. She hadn’t needed Chandra to tell her about this meeting. She’d seen Ash inside the Dead Rabbit herself. She remembered how he’d motioned for her to meet him.

She hadn’t. She’d followed Roman to his room and confronted him about what they’d seen when they’d traveled to the future. But, later, Eliza mentioned spotting the Ash and Dorothy on the docks. And there was that photograph of the two of them about to kiss . . . her cheeks burned just thinking about it.

She made her way around to the back of the bar and waited beside the back door, one hand tucked inside of her coat, fingers curled around the hilt of Roman’s dagger. The Dead Rabbit was known to have some unsavory clientele. There was no telling who else might be wandering around back here. She couldn’t be too careful.

Some time passed. Dorothy saw no one and, eventually, her grip on the dagger loosened. The air outside was cold and wet, and she shivered, letting go of the dagger altogether so that she could hug her arms around her body, holding in what remaining warmth she had left. The dock tilted beneath her, making her feel a little seasick. She would never get used to the way that this damned city was always moving, how nothing felt steady.

She was just starting to wonder if she’d gotten it wrong, if they hadn’t met after all, when the bar’s back door creaked open and Ash stepped outside.

“You’re already here,” he said, letting the door fall shut behind him.

“I thought you . . . wanted me to come,”