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

a few feet before her and paused. A voice cut above the shouts.

“Eliza! Bennett! A little help with the bodies.”

It was Regan Rose. Dorothy was careful not to breathe too deeply, lest she give herself away, as someone slipped their hands beneath her armpits and hauled her up off the ground.

“She looked a lot smaller before she was dead,” Bennett grumbled.

“You think she looked smaller?” Eliza grunted. From the labored sound of her voice, Dorothy guessed she was busy hauling Ash.

“Enough,” Regan said, and there was a sudden, sharp sound of a clap. “Take them into the back where we won’t have to look at them.”

Dorothy held her breath to keep her chest from ballooning. She didn’t dare open her eyes any more than they already were, and so she couldn’t see Ash being dragged around behind her, but she could hear the sound of his boots thudding over the ground, and so she knew he was right behind her.

Good, good, she thought.

The sounds of shouting and arguing faded as they were dragged into a back room, far from the other Cirkus Freaks. Eliza dropped Dorothy onto the ground, which hurt, and she heard another thump, which had to mean that Ash had been dropped beside her.

“Let’s go, I want to see what’s going on back there,” said Bennett.

“Yeah,” said Eliza, and there was a shuffling sound of footsteps and the two of them were gone.

Ash and Dorothy were alone with Regan.

“You can open your eyes now,” Regan said. “They’ve gone.”

Dorothy eased her eyes open just as her mother slid back her mask.

“You did well,” Loretta said. Then, glancing at Ash, she added, “Both of you. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have believed you were dead myself.”

38Ash

They’d taken Loretta back first, to September 2077. There, they’d given her a costume, some money, and instructions on who to make contact with.

Loretta had curled her lip at it all. “This world may be new,” she’d said, “but the game is older than I am.”

“Even so, I’m not leaving you here to starve,” Dorothy had told her mother, shoving the money into her hand. “Take it.”

Loretta looked unconvinced, but her hand curled around the crumpled bills, and she’d shoved them deep into her pocket.

“Eliza introduces you to Mac in a little over two months,” Dorothy told her. “By then, you have a reputation around the city for being cruel. That’s what gets Mac’s interest. You need to make sure that reputation holds. Can you do that?”

Loretta blinked slowly at her daughter. “I admit, I’m new to all this,” she said carefully. “But I believe that, if you saw it happen, I must be successful. Correct?”

Dorothy had to admit, her mother had grasped some of the more complicated aspects of time travel rather easily. “All you have to do is gain his trust,” she continued. “And then, on November 13, when Ash, the Professor, and I return, you’ll need to replace the bullets in his gun with blanks.” Here, her throat seemed to close, just a bit. “If you fail . . . all of us will die.”

Loretta met her daughter’s eyes and said, her voice firm, “Then I will not fail.”

Now, Ash, Dorothy, and Loretta quickly gathered their things and crept silently through the Fairmont, through dark and moldy hallways, down narrow staircases until, finally, they reached the entrance that dumped out onto the back docks.

No one had seen them. They’d been like ghosts.

Dorothy got the door and swung it wide, eyes peeled for movement as she ushered her mother and Ash through. She pulled the door closed behind her, shivering as she stepped onto the docks.

A boat was already waiting. Zora sat in the front, one hand propped on the motor.

“Let’s go,” she said, starting the engine.

Their little boat flew past aisle after aisle of old dinghies, motorboats, and the odd yacht that’d seen better days. They kept low, in case there were other Cirkus Freaks about, and the boats rocked on the waves they left in their wake. Otherwise, the night was still. Dorothy squinted into the darkness, her nerves on edge as they approached the library. She knew they were safer here than almost anywhere else in New Seattle. Mac and what was left of the Freaks were still back at the Fairmont, and it was unlikely that anyone had noticed them missing yet. But, still, she worried.

Dorothy was soaked to her knees and shivering by the time they docked in front of the library’s doors.

“Hurry,” she said when Zora cut the engine. “It’s already getting late.”

Ash had a hand cupped over his chin, fingers nervously tapping the side of his face, but he smiled at her and said, “Aye, aye, boss.”

“Get a room,” Zora muttered, rolling her eyes at them both.

They climbed out of the boat and hurried inside, weaving through the stacks, to where the others waited.

The Professor stood near the window, anxiously flicking a curtain aside every few minutes, his left eye twitching. Chandra appeared to be trying to decide on something to wear. She seemed to spend a long time straightening T-shirts and picking invisible pieces of lint off the hems of the jeans.

“You’re back,” Willis said, standing. He had to crouch to keep his head from knocking against the ceiling. The shadows in the library painted his face in harsh grays and blacks, making him look like a man hewn from stone.

At the sound of his voice, the other two looked up.

“Well?” said Chandra, her eyes moving anxiously between the three of them. “How’d it go?”

“Do we look dead to you?” Ash asked.

Chandra frowned. “Well, no . . .”

“So, it went okay.”

Chandra opened her mouth but, before she could respond, Zora had elbowed him. Ash grimaced and rubbed at a spot on his arm.

“We need to move.” Zora’s expression remained the same, but her shoulders tensed beneath her stiff shirt. To her father, she said haltingly, as though choosing each word very carefully, “How did things go back here?”

Everyone went quiet, watching Zora and