on her lower lip. After a moment, she said, “If I do this, if I help you meet her, will you at least try to change things?”
Ash swallowed. He’d gotten so tired of waiting. There were only seven days left. Seven days to fall in love with the enemy, seven days for her to betray him. It didn’t seem like enough time.
A small part of him still hoped for a miracle. The curiosity was stronger, but it didn’t mean the hope wasn’t there, too.
But if there was nothing he could do to change the future, at least he could meet it face-to-face.
He took a deep breath.
“Of course,” he said.
Zora stared at him for a beat longer. “Then, I guess it’s settled,” she said.
9
Dorothy
“I wish you’d take that stupid thing off,” Roman said, as they climbed the stairs to the Fairmont’s main floor. “You look like the Angel of Death.”
Dorothy didn’t have to push her hood back to know that Roman was scowling at it. She lifted a hand without meaning to, fingers brushing gnarled skin. The wound was a year old, but the memory of the pain was still fresh. She dreamed about it most nights. She’d often wake with her heart racing, certain that her fingers were still coated with blood, her face still split open.
She adjusted the hood so that it covered more of her face. “Can you imagine the stories people would tell?” she said. “The cannibal of New Seattle is missing half her face. The rumors about me are bad enough already.”
“I’m serious. Tomorrow night we’re planning to convince the people of this city that we’re their saviors. We can’t do that if they think you’re a monster.”
There was a pause. Dorothy could feel Roman’s eyes on her, and she knew he was debating whether to apologize for calling her a monster, or push her harder.
This was the paradox at the heart of her new identity: she had to be utterly terrible if she was going to keep the Black Cirkus in line. But the rumors about her made the rest of the city wary of trusting her.
It was an impossible role to play: savior and monster, devil and saint.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said, trying for casual. “I enjoy being the city’s monster.”
Roman looked at her and then away, saying nothing. He would see through her nonchalance, she knew. He had a way of reading a person’s thoughts with a glance, which was doubly infuriating since she was never able to guess his own. His eyes were always flat and black and distant, his expression infuriatingly blank. Unlike her, he seemed to easily control the members of the Black Cirkus without ever wandering over the line marking him as a monster. He could charm an old lady and terrify a Cirkus Freak all in a single breath.
Dorothy turned away, nose twitching. It hardly seemed fair.
The Fairmont’s main floor was perpetually damp, slicked with the sludgy water people carried in from the docks on the soles of their boots. The furniture and walls were covered in creeping black mold.
Still, the old hotel was beautiful, even in its dilapidated state, with its oak columns, brocade walls, and intricately tiled floors. There was a swimming pool, although it was, somewhat ironically, underwater, the top of the domed skylight peeking out from below the black waves. The rest of the hotel centered around a courtyard, also underwater, but morbidly beautiful, nonetheless, with plush armchairs and ornate lamps forever drifting on the still water.
Best of all were the Fairmont’s garages. Half-hidden below the waves, they looked flooded from the outside, making them the perfect hiding spot for a very large time machine. Dorothy didn’t know of another place in New Seattle quite like it. And, if Mac called in their debts, they would lose it all.
“We could always go back to the way things were before.” Roman shook the damp from his boots as he stepped into the hall beside her. “We could send a group of Freaks out tonight.”
Dorothy was quiet for a moment, turning this over in her head. Roman was right, if they sent out a group of Freaks to the docks, they could probably steal enough money to satisfy Mac by morning. But that would undo all the goodwill she’d been trying to build with the broadcasts. They’d be right back where they were a year ago.
“No,” she said finally. “We can’t do that.” The open hallways surrounding the flooded courtyard weren’t crowded at this hour,