Firearms, for one thing. And bullets. The idea of going to war with him chilled Dorothy to her core.
Mira turned, and then she was out the door and gone.
“Well,” Roman said. “That ruins everything.”
8
Ash
Ash wasn’t entirely sure how he made it back home. One moment he’d been hunched over the bar, staring into the dwindling remains of his drink, and the next he was hauling himself through the window of the old schoolhouse, the taste of something sour clinging to his tongue.
Beer, he realized, grimacing. Lots of it. He didn’t remember ordering, or drinking, a third (a fourth?). But he must’ve. He could taste it.
He stumbled down the hall, propping an arm against the wall to steady himself as he kicked off his boots.
Another step, and he stubbed his toe on a free weight that Willis had left in the middle of the floor. He swore and hopped around on one foot.
There was a sound, a shuffling of movement, and then Zora’s voice calling, “Ash? That you?”
Ash lowered his injured foot back to the floor, cringing. He smelled coffee. Which meant she’d been waiting up for him. It must be later than he’d thought.
He hobbled the rest of the way down the hall, into the kitchen.
Zora leaned against the kitchen table, her ordinarily calm expression twisted into something troubled. Chandra sat beside her, spinning something that looked like a small, grease-covered gear with an inordinate amount of determination, and Willis was making tea, which seemed like overkill. Ash could already smell the coffee.
“You’re all up late,” he muttered.
Chandra wrinkled her nose and balanced the gear between two fingers. “You’re drunk?” She said drunk like someone else might say stupid.
Ash frowned. Was he drunk? He didn’t think he’d ever been drunk before, but it felt right. He was going to die this week. Getting good and drunk seemed like the sort of thing he should do during his final week of life.
“We were just talking about the broadcast,” Zora said.
Ash sat, propping his foot on one knee so he could study his throbbing toe through his threadbare sock. “You saw?”
The teakettle began to whistle. Willis moved it off the burner. “The whole city saw, Captain,” he said, pulling a chipped mug down from the cupboard above the stove. “It’s all anyone’s talking about.”
“The Black Cirkus can travel back in time,” Zora murmured, scrubbing a hand over her face. “I guess we already knew that, but now . . .”
She trailed off, but Ash knew what she meant. It felt different to hear Quinn announce it to the entire city. A part of him had still been hoping what they saw at Fort Hunter had been a fluke.
Chandra looked up at Ash, pursing her lips. “Wait, where were you all night? You said you were going to meet us at Dante’s.”
Ash blinked, slowly, through his drunkenness. Every pair of eyes seemed to be on him, waiting for an explanation.
Hesitating, he said, “I . . . took a walk.” And then he shrugged, like this might lessen the blow. “I sort of ended up in a bar near the Fairmont. . . .”
“You went over to the Fairmont?” Chandra flicked the gear she’d been playing with to the floor. “Why?”
Zora said, “He was probably looking for Quinn.”
Chandra made a vague noise in the back of her throat. Willis’s mustache twitched as he poured himself a cup of tea. Neither looked surprised by what Zora had just said.
“You told them?” Ash asked, annoyed. After Fort Hunter, he’d told Zora that Quinn Fox was the girl from his prememory, the one who was going to kill him. He had not told Willis and Chandra, and yet, it seemed, they knew.
Zora didn’t even bother looking guilty. “Of course I told them. Secrets are stupid.”
Ash was at a loss for words. He’d kept the truth a secret because he’d been embarrassed. Quinn Fox, the Black Cirkus assassin. The cannibal of New Seattle. How was he going to fall in love with her?
And now?
The anger left him at once. It had just been a flicker of feeling, not the real thing. It was impossible to be angry about something like a spilled secret when he had only a few days left to live. Besides, maybe Zora was right. Maybe secrets were stupid.
“So did you meet her?” asked Chandra.
Ash blinked. “What?”
“You went downtown tonight to find Quinn, right?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Well? Did you?”
“He would have told us,” Willis said. But he didn’t sound convinced.
“I would have told you,” Ash assured him. “No more secrets.”
“Right,” Willis said, and Ash didn’t think he imagined the relief in his voice. “You would’ve.”
“So you still haven’t met her?” Chandra asked.
“I still haven’t met her.”
“But you know she’s going to be at this masquerade at the Fairmont tomorrow night, right?” Chandra gave him a sly look. “Does that mean we get to go?”
“Of course we’re not going,” said Zora, incredulous. “The point is to keep Ash from meeting the cannibal who’s going to murder him, not deliver him like a present.”
Ever since seeing Zora break down on the roof of Fort Hunter, Ash had an easier time hearing the small fluctuations in her voice, when her anger dipped into fear. He heard it now, and that’s the only reason he was able to answer her calmly instead of snapping and starting a fight.
“Actually,” he said, shifting his eyes away from her face. “I think it’s about time the two of us were introduced.”
Zora answered with a short, hard laugh, like he’d told a joke she didn’t think was funny. “If you meet her, you’ll die.”
Ash noticed that she hadn’t included the part about falling in love first. “I’m going to die either way.”
Chandra coughed into her fist. Willis did something unnecessarily loud that involved a spoon clattering against the sugar bowl.
Zora was looking at him now, brow furrowed. Ash watched her swallow, trying to gather herself.
“I don’t understand,” she said firmly. “We talked about this. We were going to figure out a way to fix it. We were—”
“Fix what, exactly? How do you propose we go about changing a memory?”
“It’s not a memory yet!”
“Zor— Jesus—that’s what a prememory is. Didn’t you read the Professor’s journal? He saw the mega-quake before it happened. He saw it for months, and he didn’t do anything because he couldn’t.” Ash raked a hand back through his hair. “If it was possible to change it, don’t you think he would’ve? Don’t you think he would’ve done anything to save—”
He broke off then, realizing he’d gone too far. Zora only stared at him, her expression chilly and blank.
Zora’s mother, Natasha, had died in the massive earthquake that had destroyed Seattle, and the Professor had nearly ruined himself going back in time again and again, trying to find a way to bring her back.
Ash felt cruel, bringing it up like this. He looked at his hands. “Sorry.”
Zora considered him and then nodded, and turned toward the window, her shoulders rigid.