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

Fairmont, half-flooded, with its ruined carpets and lovely columns. She thought of Zora and Willis and Chandra, and the horrible future that awaited them. Blackened sky. No sun. A lump formed in her throat. She thought of Roman, dear Roman, who hadn’t deserved to die the way he did. All alone in a bleak and terrible future.

And, on top of all that, Mac and that dreadful woman in black were still holding New Seattle hostage. Dorothy lowered her face to her hands, gently pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. It made her head spin to think of it all.

“We have to go back,” she said eventually. “Soon, I hope.”

“Go back?” Loretta lifted an eyebrow. “To the”—she grimaced, as though it pained her to say it—“future?”

“Yes, Mother,” Dorothy said.

“Will you ever return home?”

Will I? Dorothy blinked, surprised to find that she hadn’t fully considered that question. She certainly hadn’t planned on returning, but now that she thought of it, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to, even if she’d wanted to. Once they got back to the future, they would need to find a way to destroy the remaining exotic matter. It wouldn’t be possible for her to come back.

For some reason, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to return made it all so much harder to face.

“I . . . I won’t,” she said, blinking hard. Were those tears in her eyes? How strange. “Which means this is goodbye, I guess.”

Loretta studied her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. She’d always been hard on her. Cruel, even, Dorothy thought. But now that she knew what it was like to try to take care of herself in a world where she’d had nothing—no friends or family or money—Dorothy thought she understood where that cruelty came from. She’d become a monster, too, after all.

After a moment, Loretta sighed and reached out to touch her daughter’s ruined face with her own badly damaged hand. She traced Dorothy’s scar with her thumb, and, for a moment, Dorothy was sure that her mother was about to say something terrible about how reckless she’d been with her beauty. She steeled herself . . .

But Loretta was quiet. Something passed between them, and then Loretta took her hand away.

“What will you do in this future world?” she asked, sniffing. She glanced over her shoulder, toward the hall, where Ash and the Professor were still talking. “Will you be with him?”

“I—I’m not sure,” Dorothy said, her cheeks coloring. She hurried to add, “There are other things we need to take care of, much more important things.”

Loretta lifted an eyebrow, and Dorothy could read what she was thinking as clearly as if she’d spoken the words out loud.

More important than marriage? Does such a thing exist?

“There’s this terrible man, Mac Murphy,” Dorothy rushed to add. “He’s sort of a crime lord in New Seattle. He wants time travel for himself, and the only way to stop him is to make time travel impossible.” Dorothy stared down at her tea, feeling helpless. “So, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Loretta was studying her now, frowning. She looked disappointed, which made something inside Dorothy ache. Even now, after all this time, there was still a part of her that desperately wanted to please her mother.

Eventually, Loretta picked up her abandoned teacup and stared down at the dregs inside, nose wrinkled. She swirled the tea, thinking.

Finally, she said, “Mac Murphy is this man’s name?”

Dorothy frowned. Her mother had a way of asking questions so that they didn’t actually sound like questions. It was as though she already knew everything and was only waiting for her to confirm it.

“Yes,” Dorothy said, “that’s his name.”

“And he’s something of a crime lord?” Crime lord said with a curl to her lip, as though the idea were a joke.

Dorothy took another sip of her awful tea. “He is,” she said, swallowing. “He has the entire city in his back pocket.”

“Happy man, is he?” Loretta cocked an eyebrow. “Lots of friends? Family?”

“Well . . . no.” And now Dorothy frowned. She’d never given that much thought to Mac’s personal life, she realized. He’d always just sort of . . . existed. “I don’t suppose he has any friends or family, now that I think about it.”

A small smile twitched at Loretta’s mouth. Dorothy knew this smile well. It was her mother coming up with the beginnings of a con. Her heart quickened.

“What?” she demanded, setting her teacup back into its saucer. A bit of tea sloshed over the side, filling the saucer with weak, brown liquid. “What are you thinking?”

“It’s just that I’m a bit disappointed with you,” Loretta said. “Men like that, men who have power but no relationships, men who are lonely. How have I taught you to treat them all this time?”

“As a mark,” Dorothy said, feeling numb.

“Exactly.” Loretta slapped her ruined hand against her knee, making a point. “Men like that are weak, no matter how much power they seem to have accrued. They are blind. They think that their wealth and their influence will save them, but they’ve left themselves open and vulnerable. What do we do with men like that?”

Dorothy felt her lip twitch. “We ruin them.”

“Exactly,” Loretta said, with cool triumph. She took another dainty sip of her tea and said calmly, “We ruin them.”

30Ash

Ash and the Professor had retreated to a small sitting room. It was a fussy sort of room, Ash thought, all small and crowded, the furniture slightly dainty, like he might break it in half if he moved around too much. Ash felt much too big for it. He balanced at the edge of a floral-patterned love seat, one hand pressed to the bandage on his abdomen. His knife wound was starting to sting, and something perfumed hung in the air, making his nostrils twitch.

The Professor took the seat across from him, and, for a long moment, the two of them sat in silence.

Ash shifted his gaze down to his knees. He’d spent the last year going over and over