Dark Stars by Danielle Rollins (most read books of all time .txt) 📗

through. One of them was Eliza, Dorothy saw, her nose wrinkling. They weren’t looking her way, and so she breathed a little easier. They must not have heard her on the stairs. A small bit of luck.

“It is,” Eliza said, her shark’s smile glinting in the dim light. “Mac, meet Regan Rose.”

Dorothy hadn’t noticed the woman in black standing among them until she took a step forward, separating herself from the crowd. She looked exactly as she did in Dorothy’s present timeline: small frame, black cloak, and mask and gloves. Studying her, Dorothy felt a little ripple of hysteria move through her body.

She forced herself to stay quiet as she listened.

“Charmed,” Mac Murphy was saying, his voice gruff. He didn’t let even a hint of a smile invade his face as he took one of Regan’s small, gloved hands into his own meaty one. “Tell me why I haven’t heard of you before now.”

He seemed to be trying his best to intimidate her, but Regan was poised and calm behind her black mask. “A woman in my line of work does best to keep her reputation under wraps,” she said in a low, husky voice.

Mac considered her for a long moment. He sniffed. “And you know what we’re looking for?”

Regan inclined her head in a slight nod. “I’ve heard that Quinn Fox will soon be out of employ. It seems you’ll need a replacement.”

Mac raised his eyebrows, pausing to exam her more closely. “You tell her that?” he asked Eliza.

Eliza shook her head.

Mac said, to Regan now, “All right, love, where are you getting your information?”

“You can hardly expect me to answer that,” said Regan.

Mac’s nostrils twitched.

In her hiding place, Dorothy bristled. So this was what he’d been doing while she and Roman were messing about in the past. She’d known for a while that Mac had been working against them, but it felt like another thing entirely to witness it, to hear evidence of his treachery and her gang’s disloyalty with her own ears. It made her want to scream.

Mac rubbed his chin as he studied Regan, his lips twisting: almost a smile. “And would you be interested in an arrangement like that?”

“That would depend. What are your plans for after?”

“Let’s just say I’ve seen the future of this city,” Mac said with a shrug. “It ain’t what I’d call pleasant. The best thing any of us can do is get the hell out of Dodge, leave this damn city to its ruin.”

Regan tilted her head. “And my payment?”

“I might be compelled to take someone who helped me out along with me to the past.” Mac’s toad-like eyes narrowed. “Life, girl, would be your payment.”

“An intriguing offer,” Regan said, head tilting. She took a moment to consider before saying, “I accept. Sir.”

She held out her hand. The two of them shook.

Mac let out a bark of a laugh. “I’m sure we’ll be an excellent team.”

Dorothy took a step backward, so that she was entirely enveloped in shadows once more. For a moment she stayed still, barely daring to breathe.

Even after everything else he’d done, Dorothy had assumed Mac felt some small loyalty to his city. Oh how wrong she’d been. Mac cared for nothing but himself. He really was going to let the city fall to ruin.

Unless . . .

If you don’t kill him, time travel will continue, and, eventually, bring about an earthquake that will destroy us all, Roman had said.

Dorothy pictured bloody water. An empty rowboat. Prememories are memories, she thought. They’ve already happened.

There’s nothing you can do to stop them.

LOG ENTRY—OCTOBER 1, 2074

20:34 HOURS

THE WORKSHOP

Now that I’ve determined that Tesla’s theory for time travel without a vessel actually works, I’d like to begin the complex process of breaking down exactly how it works.

Initially, I posited that Tesla had figured out a way to travel through time without exotic matter, access to an anil, or a vessel to travel in, but that’s not quite the case. I used exotic matter, I just inserted it directly into my body. And I may not have needed to physically travel into the Puget Sound anil, but I did end up utilizing the power of the smaller, microscopic anils that exist within the earth’s crust to pull me along the currents of time.

So, really, the only thing that I no longer need is a vessel. My body, essentially, became the vessel.

This, naturally, leads me to wonder how far the exotic matter extends beyond my physical body. For instance, when I traveled back in time, I was able to take my clothes and my glasses with me. I did not show up in the past blind as a bat, wearing nothing but my birthday suit (thank God, no one wants to see that). No, I’d been lucky enough to appear wearing the exact same faded jeans and T-shirt that I’d been wearing in my original timeline. And they were in good shape, too! No rips or tears, a little ripe around the armpits, but I’m afraid that’s because I’ve been wearing them for a few days, not because traveling years into the past caused my shirt to stink. Everything was just as it was in my present timeline.

Which means that the exotic matter extended beyond my physical person to protect the things closest to my skin.

But how far beyond myself does that power extend? Could I, for instance, take an object with me?

A small animal?

Another person?

The only way to know for certain whether that’s possible is, of course, to experiment. Best start with something that’s not actually living, shall I? Like, for instance, a potato? No one can be angry at me for injuring a potato.

This, actually, is a tad nerve-racking. It reminds me of that old Jeff Goldblum movie, The Fly. For those of you who aren’t familiar with 1980s horror, our boy Jeff experiments with teleportation and accidentally crosses chromosomes with a fly. He then starts turning into a fly, which is a horrifying thought to say the least.

Will attempting to take a