like he knew her. Had he lived on that street they’d looted? It made sense, Dorothy supposed. After all, he was the one who’d chosen the neighborhood, and he’d compiled the names of all the people who were going to die in the earthquake. Dorothy hadn’t even bothered asking where he’d gotten them.
But why wouldn’t he have just told her?
“Don’t worry, Cassia, I wouldn’t have actually kicked him,” Roman continued. “It was weird seeing her again, actually. You know, now that I know what happens.”
Cassia? There wasn’t anyone named Cassia living in the Fairmont. Dorothy tried to remember if she’d seen Roman with a girl she hadn’t recognized at the Dead Rabbit in the last week or so, and couldn’t think of anyone.
A horrible thought entered her mind . . . Mac had once offered to let the Black Cirkus partake of his services. Not for free, mind, but for cheap. Dorothy had been disgusted by the idea, but what if Roman had taken him up on his offer? What if he knew one of the girls Mac kept in that horrible motel of his?
The thought twisted her stomach, and she quickly pushed it out of her mind. Roman wouldn’t do that, she felt certain. But, then, who was he talking to?
She moved closer, and the floorboard beneath her foot gave a long, low creak.
Roman fell abruptly silent.
Blast.
Dorothy glanced over her shoulder, wondering how quickly she could duck back down the hall and around the corner. Before she could decide one way or another, Roman was pulling the door open and she was caught.
“Dorothy.” Roman sounded surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“I—I wanted to make sure you were all right,” Dorothy said. She’d never minded lying before, but it felt strange to lie to Roman, just as it had felt strange to spy on him. She struggled to remember why she’d actually come here in the first place. “You seemed upset back at the Dead Rabbit.”
Roman studied her for another moment and then offered up a quizzical smile. “Right.”
Did he know she’d been listening in on his conversation? Dorothy couldn’t tell. She rose to tiptoes, hoping the long cloak would mask the movement, and tried to subtly peer past his shoulder.
His eyebrows went up. “Looking for something?”
Her eyes snapped back to his face, cheeks flushing. “Of course not. It’s just . . . I thought I heard voices.”
Roman’s expression sharpened, giving Dorothy the impression of someone caught in a lie. Before she could call him on it, he stepped aside, flinging the door open so that Dorothy could see the room behind him:
Unmade bed. Dresser scattered with old photos. Armchair covered in dirty clothes. But no sign of who Roman had been speaking to.
“There’s no one here,” he said. But the light caught his dark eyes, making it seem as though something within them was flickering.
Staring back at him, Dorothy was reminded of a one-man band she and her mother had walked past while they were living in Chicago. The musician wore a mask, which he removed as Dorothy glanced back at him. Beneath, he wore another mask. Dorothy hadn’t looked back again after that, but whenever she thought of that moment she imagined that he wore another mask beneath the second, and another beneath that, and another, going on forever.
Roman was like that. Masks on masks on masks. She wondered if she’d ever see his true face.
She rocked back on her heels, disappointed. “I must’ve imagined it,” she said.
But, of course, she knew she hadn’t.
26
Ash
Ash took the long way home. Waves rippled around his boat, and the angry growl of the motor cut the night in half. The only things that broke up the darkness around him were the white-barked trees that grew up from the waters, standing like skeletal sentries in the dark. He barely saw them. His head was still too full of Dorothy and the Professor’s missing journal entries and the possibility of traveling through time without a vessel.
He didn’t even notice the schoolhouse until he was pulling up next to the dock that ran alongside it, one hand automatically reaching back to cut the motor. He tied his boat up and then hauled the window open, grunting again as he climbed inside and landed, hard, on the floor. There was a light on down the hall.
Ash followed it to the kitchen and found Zora at the table, her father’s notes and textbooks spread out before her, one foot propped against the lowest rung of her