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

She slipped one hand into her cloak pocket, fingers curling around Roman’s dagger. The weight of it comforted her. It was much heavier than the signature, deadly thin daggers she usually kept hidden up her sleeves. She’d lost those when she and Roman and Mac had gone to the future, but Roman’s dagger would work in a pinch. It was heavy, its blade thick. She could do some damage with it, if she needed to.

Holding her breath, she flung the door wide—

The hall was soaked in darkness. It played tricks on her. She stepped forward and, at the same time, something in the shadows twitched, sending her heart leaping into her throat. But it was just the window at the end of the hall reflecting her own movements. Nerves pricked the back of her neck.

There was no one here.

Dorothy turned in place, looking around the empty hall, the open doors and dark rooms. She tried to recall what she’d heard and found that she couldn’t quite remember what it sounded like. Perhaps it hadn’t been a footstep at all but merely the wind blowing against the window, or wood creaking as the old building settled and shifted on its foundation.

“Or, perhaps, I’m losing my mind,” she muttered under her breath. Quickly, she hurried back into Roman’s room and grabbed her duffel from the foot of his bed. She double-checked that the Professor’s journal pages were safely tucked up her sleeve and stepped back into the hall—

“Did Donovan actually say that he saw her? Or was he only bragging, like always?”

The voice drifted up from the staircase. Dorothy recognized it immediately as Eliza, a Cirkus Freak who seemed to harbor a particular hatred for her. Dorothy held her breath, worried about making a single sound.

Somewhere deeper in the hotel, a door opened and closed, and then there was the sound of footsteps winding their way up the stairs, down the hall . . .

“He said he saw her,” said a second voice. Bennett, Dorothy thought, her body going tense. “’Bout twenty minutes ago. Said she took the back entrance.”

“Twenty minutes?” Eliza released a short bark of a laugh. “She’d be a fool to stay any longer than that.”

Dorothy backed into Roman’s room and eased the door closed. Blast. She closed her eyes, pushing a finger to the skin between her brows.

Think, damn it!

There was another staircase at the other end of the hall, but she couldn’t risk going back down the way she’d come. If someone had seen her sneak into the hotel, then Eliza and Bennett wouldn’t be the only ones looking for her. There would be others as well, probably a pair for every floor. Any route she might take back down to the docks was effectively blocked.

It would have to be the roof, then.

Silently, she crossed the room and threw Roman’s window open. Eight rows of sleek glass windows separated her from the ground below. From up here, the murky brown water below seemed unbreakable, like concrete.

Dorothy swallowed and looked away. She’d been exactly here once before and, then, she’d chosen to jump in order to escape the people chasing her. This time, fortunately, she wouldn’t have to attempt anything quite so dramatic.

Sliding her duffel to her back, she propped a foot on the windowsill and hoisted herself up, balancing on the edge. Wind blew against her legs, and the world spun below her.

Deftly, she eased along the thin ledge of concrete that jutted out from below Roman’s window, fingers gripping along the walls for the worn-down grooves in the rock that Roman had taught her to look for. Wind whipped her cloak against her legs, threatening to flick her off the side of the building like a child might flick a spider. Her fingers quickly cramped, and her lips quivered, but she kept going.

Past one window, and then two, until she’d reached the balcony of the room next door. She took a single moment to catch her breath, and then she began to climb up . . .

There was one floor between Roman’s room and the Fairmont’s roof, but Dorothy’s arms still burned when she finally pulled herself up and over, legs scrambling for purchase beneath her, desperate to take some of the weight from her arms. She stayed on all fours for a moment, gasping for breath. Only when her head stopped spinning did she bother to sit up.

The whole of New Seattle spun, dizzily, below her. The corpses of long-dead trees grew up from the black waters, their white bark reflecting the light of the moon so that they seemed to glow in the darkness. From where she sat, Dorothy could make out the flat concrete saucer that was all that remained of the Space Needle, the outlines of tall buildings, and the dull black of the water that was everywhere else.

She sighed and leaned back on her elbows. In her year of living in New Seattle, Dorothy had never quite gotten used to the skyline. It looked strange and futuristic and alien, as always. The only thing that felt familiar was the moon hanging above her, close enough that she almost thought she could reach up and pluck it out of the sky.

She lifted her face, staring up at that moon. Back when she’d been new to the Black Cirkus, she often came up to the roof to think. No one else in the gang would risk climbing so high. Other than Roman, of course.

A tear touched her cheek. She brushed it away with an angry flick of her hand, but another came after it, and another. Eventually she gave up and let them come. In all her life, she’d never felt as alone as she did right now. Even during those first terrible days back in 2076, when she’d crash-landed in the wrong time, she’d still had Roman. But, now, he was gone. He was gone, and Ash was gone, and the Chronology Protection Agency wanted nothing to do with her, and her gang had betrayed her.

A lump moved