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

The sound of the gun shot came from far away, like she was hearing something that had happened in another room of a very large house.

The bullet hit Ash on the right side of his chest, jerking him backward. He swayed forward, landing on the ground cheek-first, plumes of dust and ashes billowing up around him. The canister of exotic matter skidded away from his body, rolled into the side of the Fairmont—and shattered.

There was a popping sound, and a small explosion, like a firework. Dorothy saw sparks of blue lightning, and then soft, crackling flames, and then the exotic matter disappeared in a cloud of thick, gray smoke.

The ashes obscuring Ash’s face cleared, and then he was staring at her, his eyes not quite focusing. He swallowed, with difficulty. Dorothy watched the slow rise and fall of his Adam’s apple beneath the skin at his throat.

And then—he winked.

All was going according to plan.

36Ash

Playing dead was the hardest part.

Ash had to work to keep his breathing shallow so that no one would see the rise and fall of his chest. The air was thick with dust. His nose twitched. This was embarrassing but . . . he badly needed to sneeze.

He’d closed his eyes before the canister of exotic matter had hit the ground, and so he never saw the moment it smashed. He heard the sound of shattering glass, though, and that’s how he’d known that very last store of exotic matter on the planet was gone.

Something inside his chest clenched, painfully. It had been a bittersweet realization. He knew it had to be like this, but the exotic matter had changed his life. It’d changed a lot of people’s lives. He didn’t like thinking that there was no longer any of it left. That time travel was now a thing of the past.

Well, mostly.

Footsteps pounded against the dock, and, a moment later, Ash felt the toe of a boot nudge into his arm. He had to remind himself to keep still.

“He dead?” a woman’s voice asked. Eliza, Ash thought grimly, remembering her name. A couple of days ago, she’d helped torture him to within an inch of his life. He wasn’t her biggest fan.

“We didn’t need him,” Mac answered. His voice was gruff, but Ash could hear an undertone to his words.

“He knew how to fly the time machine,” Eliza pointed out.

“You read those pages, same as me. We don’t need a time machine anymore.” But Mac didn’t sound as certain as he had a moment ago. His voice was wavering, weak.

He was getting nervous, all right. The thought made Ash want to laugh out loud.

Good.

Eliza seemed to pick up on this as well. The dock beneath Ash’s cheek trembled as she stood and crossed over to the Fairmont stairs. “We needed that canister, though, didn’t we?” she said, and, in contrast to Mac, her voice filled with barely concealed anger. “That exotic matter or whatever it was . . . you can’t travel through time without it, can you?”

“We don’t know that for certain . . .”

“We do.”

Ash bit down on the inside of his cheek. Now that Mac had gone and screwed everything up, the Black Cirkus was turning on him, just as Dorothy and her mother had said they would.

Their plan was coming together beautifully.

He was dangerously close to smiling again.

Play dead, he reminded himself. You’re supposed to be dead.

The con started more than 150 years ago. Loretta had been the one who’d come up with it.

“According to my daughter, this . . . Mac Murphy has been causing some trouble in your city,” she’d said.

They were back at Avery’s house, in the stuffy sitting room, and Loretta had been handing out lukewarm tea sweetened with far too much sugar.

“He has,” Ash had admitted, taking the teacup Loretta had offered him. It felt too small in his hand, like a toy.

“Thank you,” Ash murmured, and took a sip, trying not to let his lips pucker.

Loretta placed the tea tray on a table and perched on the edge of a chair next to Ash, eyebrows lifting.

“A lonely man with too much money and power and not nearly enough allies.” Loretta had sniffed, unimpressed. “What we need is a good con.”

“I’m not sure that man can be conned,” Ash had said.

“Anyone can be conned,” Dorothy said. “The key is to make them believe they’re in control. Mac has too large a head to think he could be played.”

“We can use that, of course,” Loretta added. “Men with that much power have blind spots. They’ve spent far too much time grasping for money and respect. It makes them weak. Now, all we need is something he wants. Tell me, what does he want?”

“Time travel,” said Dorothy, frowning. “Exotic matter, the Professor’s notes . . .”

Loretta had waved all of that away. “No, no, none of that will work. He’s already planning on going after you and Ash, isn’t he? What else?”

Dorothy had frowned, thinking. “I’d say he needed new muscle after losing me and Roman, but . . .”

Her voice had trailed off, her eyes lighting up. “Oh,” she’d said. “I . . . I think I have an idea. A good one.”

Ash frowned, not following. “Do you care to share with the rest of the group?”

“It’s something my mother said that made me think of it. . . . Men like Mac, they tend to not have a lot of personal relationships,” Dorothy added carefully. “It’s how my mother and I managed to make so much money so easily. Powerful men are so used to everyone around them cowering in fear that they have no idea when they’re being played. It makes them easy marks.”

“So you’re going to . . . what exactly?” Ash asked Dorothy. He took a sip of his tea, thinking, and when the idea occurred to him he nearly choked it back up. “Seduce him?”

Loretta and Dorothy exchanged a look, grinning.

“Not me,” said Dorothy.

37Dorothy

Dorothy’s eyes were open, but only just.

She watched a pair of black boots make their way through the screaming crowd. The boots stopped