refreshments. We spent hours this morning going back in time to bring back all that fruit.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the crowd, like he’d told a joke. Ash shouldered through the people just ahead of him. Someone said something, but the voice barely registered. This moment didn’t feel real.
Turn, damn you.
Quinn tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Now, Ash could see the corner of her scar. The line of it cut through her eyebrow and twisted over her eye before curling into the skin at the top of her lip.
Roman continued, “. . . have brought back luxuries from the past, items most of you might only ever dream of.”
Quinn’s lips curved. They were red, just like the rumors said they would be.
Blood, Ash thought, and he felt something sour hit the back of his throat.
Turn and look at me.
Quinn lifted her head. She turned.
For a moment, Ash didn’t understand. It wasn’t Quinn Fox standing onstage at all. It was, unbelievably, Dorothy. Her skin was paler than he remembered it being, and her hair had turned white. And, of course, there was that awful scar twisting down the side of her face. But it was her.
Ash’s lip twitched and for a moment he wasn’t sure whether to smile or frown. He felt an instant jolt of ecstasy—she was here; he’d found her, finally—but it was followed immediately by confusion. Why was she pretending to be Quinn Fox? He looked around, waiting for someone else to notice.
Roman was talking again, and the crowd around Ash had started to cheer. Dorothy whispered something into Roman’s ear.
Ash started shaking his head. Something was taking shape in the back of his mind. A memory.
He was lying in bed after they’d crash-landed in New Seattle, and Zora was tucking a white braid behind her ear.
I think it has something to do with the energy in the anil, she’d said . . . Strange, right?
Ash blinked, absently reaching for his own lock of white hair, just below his ear. If someone had fallen through an anil, would all of her hair turn white?
He took a sudden step backward as the realization grew larger and larger in his head.
Dorothy wasn’t pretending to be Quinn Fox.
Dorothy was Quinn Fox.
His mind still felt sluggish, struggling to catch up with what his eyes were telling him. Dorothy couldn’t be Quinn Fox. Quinn Fox was supposed to kill him, and Dorothy would never kill him. None of this made any sense—
“No.” He said this out loud, but the crowd was cheering again, and he doubted anyone heard him. He said again, “No.”
He felt a hand on his arm. Someone was saying his name but Ash couldn’t form the words to answer. He didn’t think he could move.
He wasn’t going to fall in love with Quinn Fox tonight.
He was already in love with her.
He’d been in love with her all along.
11
Dorothy
Dorothy stood on a platform at one end of the massive ballroom, trying very hard not to look as uncomfortable as she felt. She wasn’t wearing her mask. She’d made the impulsive, last-minute decision to leave it behind.
It was meant to be a statement, a way of facing the paradox at the heart of her identity head-on.
Beautiful and hideous. Devil and saint. Monster and savior.
Both. She was, and always would be, both.
And, perhaps, there was some small part of her brain that thought Ash might be here tonight, that he might see her and realize that she’d never needed him after all. She’d become the most powerful person in this city all on her own.
Petty though that might be, it had seemed brilliant when she’d thought of it. Now, though, she was beginning to wonder if she’d made a terrible mistake. Her fingers twitched as she pictured the slight silver mask, lying on the dresser back in her hotel room, where it was little use to her.
She lifted her chin, trying to regain her confidence. The overhead lights were bright, almost blinding, and she felt rather than saw the crowd of people surrounding her. Watching her.
All those eyes were making her fidgety. Even before she became Quinn Fox, Dorothy had never liked standing before a crowd. Con artists tended to avoid being the center of attention, as a rule. It was too easy to be spotted, for one person to point and say things like, “Hey, I think that’s the girl who stole my wallet,” which, generally, led to more people pointing and realizing and . . .