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

from day one that Avery had wanted a trophy on his arm, a pretty, quiet wife who would smile at the appropriate times and laugh at his colleagues’ jokes. Now that Dorothy was . . . different, she was of no interest to him.

Which suited her just fine. She had never wanted Charles. As long as he allowed her to stay next to Ash’s side while he recovered, she was perfectly happy.

Her mother, on the other hand . . .

“How did this happen?” Loretta asked her now, her voice low and filled with fury. Her eyes flicked to Ash, still lying motionless on the bed, his skin still pale but remarkably less green than it had been. Loretta’s lips twisted in disgust. “Who is this boy? Where did you find him?”

Dorothy opened her mouth and then closed it again. Heat burned up her cheeks. She could see no way out of it. Her mother deserved an explanation for all that had happened and yet this explanation was so strange, so farfetched . . .

Loretta blinked at her daughter. “Well?” she snapped. “I’m waiting.”

Here goes nothing, Dorothy thought.

“Mother,” she said slowly. “This boy is a pilot named Jonathan Asher. He’s a time traveler from the year 2077.”

There was a beat of silence once Dorothy had finished her story. The edge of Loretta’s lip twitched. For a moment, the two women just stared at one another, saying nothing.

And then, Loretta released a low, thin breath from between her lips. “What game are you running?” she asked.

“Game?” Dorothy blinked. “Mother, this isn’t a con.”

“Don’t be smart with me, girl, I know a con when I see one.” Loretta lifted her bad hand and made quite a show of cleaning a piece of lint out from beneath one of her long, yellow fingernails. “Tell me your angle. You want out of the engagement? Fine, there’s nothing I can do to repair that relationship anyway, but if you think for a second that you’re getting money—”

“Mother, look at me.” Dorothy motioned to the wreck of her face. “How could I have faked this? You saw me moments before I disappeared, but this scar is long healed.”

Loretta looked up, her eyes settling on Dorothy’s face. Until now, she’d only cast her daughter passing glances, as though it physically pained her to look any closer, but now her eyes narrowed, studying her.

She seemed to be having some internal battle with herself before, finally, she lifted a hand and brought her finger to Dorothy’s scar.

Dorothy felt the lightest brush of pressure. Her mother hesitated, her breath sucking inward, and then she dropped her hand, quickly, like she’d been burned.

“I don’t know how you did that,” Loretta said stiffly.

“It isn’t fake, Mother,” Dorothy said softly. “I’m telling you the truth.”

Loretta shook her head, still unconvinced. She stood and began to make her way to the door. “I’m going to attempt to smooth things over with Avery. If he throws us out now, we’ll have no choice but to take to the streets.”

Dorothy had to work hard not to roll her eyes. Her mother was exaggerating, as usual. There was always a plan B, a hotel that didn’t lock its back door, or a bar filled with businessmen whose pockets were heavy and brains were empty, or else there was an old friend who’d let them sleep on the couch. But she didn’t want to argue, and so all she said was, “Thank you, Mother.”

Loretta pulled the door open but paused before leaving the room. “I did all of this for you, you know,” she said, in a very different tone of voice. “To keep you safe and fed, to give you a different sort of life from my own. It may not have always appeared that way, but it’s true.”

Dorothy stared at her mother, taken aback. In all these years of cons and lies, it had never once occurred to her that her mother might be trying to give her a better life. Her chest clenched.

“Mother—” she started.

But Loretta had already stepped into the hallway, letting the door fall shut behind her.

24Ash

Ash’s eyes fluttered in his sleep, images playing below his lids:

He was in the Professor’s workshop, standing before the Second Star, his time machine. He unlatched the door to the cargo hold and threw it open, grunting. “Back in the war, we had a word for—”

The rest of his sentence got caught in his throat. There, crouched in the Second Star’s cargo hold, was the girl from 1913, her wedding gown creased and muddy around her.

She pushed the sweaty hair off her face. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

And then she vomited on Ash’s boots.

The memory faded. In its place, Ash saw a rowboat surrounded by black water . . . Ghost trees glowing white in the darkness . . . A woman with a hood covering her head . . . White hair fluttering in the wind . . . A kiss . . . A knife . . .

The image changed again. Ash was in Fort Hunter complex, watching a girl on a video feed.

The girl shifted toward the camera, and Ash caught the sketchy, white curve of a foxtail painted over the front of her dark coat.

Quinn Fox. Ash stared, uneasy. If Quinn was here that meant they’d really done it. The Black Cirkus had found a way to travel through time without exotic matter.

Quinn lifted her hands, pushing away the hood covering her face.

She was turned away from the camera and, at first, all he saw was her scar. It carved up half her face, a misshapen, gnarled thing that made it difficult to focus on the rest of her. Ash cringed at the sight of it. It wasn’t unusual to see bad scars and deformities in New Seattle—medical care wasn’t what it used to be. But now Ash understood why Quinn hid her face. Her hair came out of the hood next, tumbling around her shoulders in a tangled mess of curls.

Ash’s heart stopped beating. Somewhere deep inside his body, his veins were leaking acid.

He’d never seen Quinn’s hair before. It had always