Twisted Fates Read online

  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, but Dorothy saw several Cirkus Freaks standing at the other end of the room. She felt the shift in the air as they caught site of her in the doorway. She heard the murmured rush of whispers as they leaned toward one another.

  Did you see who just walked in?

  Her lips curved into a practiced smile. This was a different smile than the one she’d cultivated with her mother. That had been demure and pretty, designed to attract. This smile was like the sharp edge of a knife. It would cut someone if they came too close.

  Turning back to Roman, she instinctively lowered her voice, adding, “Besides, I think he’s bluffing. Mac doesn’t care about the money, he’s just using it as leverage to get something else.”

  “Perhaps,” allowed Roman. He glanced at her and it looked like he was going to say something else. But he just shook his head and started across the hall, toward the others.

  Dorothy watched him for a moment longer. She didn’t have to ask what he was holding back. She’d been thinking it, too. Whatever Mac Murphy wanted from them wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t be something they’d want to give up.

  The Freaks were in the middle of a conversation. Though she was still across the room, the acoustics were such that Dorothy could hear what they were saying as she walked toward them.

  “Did you actually see him?” a Freak named Eliza was asking, skeptical. Eliza was beautiful, in a ferocious sort of way, with eyes like shards of ice beneath heavy, black brows, and skin so pale it read at a distance as pure white. “Or did someone tell you he’d been there?”

  “I saw him,” said her companion, Donovan, his voice slow and thick. Dorothy had always thought Donovan had far too much in the way of shoulders and torso, and far too little head sitting on top of it. He adjusted the gun at his waistband with a grunt. “He wasn’t even doing nothing, just drinking his beer. And the way he was sitting there, it was like he owned the place. Asshole.”

  The third Freak, Bennett, smiled, teeth white against his dark skin. He was smaller than Donovan and, though his head was normal-size, he’d never given Dorothy reason to believe that he had anything impressive going on inside of it. Still, he was a hard worker and loyal.

  “I don’t believe it for a second, man,” he said to Donovan. “You got it wrong. They all drink at that grimy bar near the old campus—”

  Bennett stopped talking, glancing up, nervously, as Dorothy joined their circle.

  “You’re back,” he said, a little stiffly, Dorothy thought.

  Donovan’s eyes looked anxious as they flicked to her, like he’d just swallowed something foul. “Evening, Quinn.”

  “Evening,” Eliza echoed, cold but polite. She smiled but, paired with those icy eyes, the expression didn’t exactly come across as friendly.

  In her first frightened days at the Black Cirkus, Dorothy had hoped Eliza might be a friend. But the girl had always kept her distance.

  Like the others, Eliza tolerated the cannibal who hid her face. But that didn’t mean she liked her.

  It used to bother Dorothy that Roman was her only true ally here, that every day she put her life in the hands of people who didn’t seem to care much whether she lived or died. Now, she took it in stride. It was just another irony that came with her life as Quinn Fox.

  They loved Roman. Her, they feared. She’d long ago decided that was close enough.

  “Who’s on duty tonight?” she asked, her voice chilly. The Fairmont was under armed guard at all hours.

  “Quentin’s team,” said Bennett. “We all go on in an hour.”

  “Good,” added Roman. “Pay particular attention to the basements. We can’t afford a robbery before tomorrow night.”

  He and Dorothy turned to go, and Donovan picked up the conversation where he’d left off. “I’m telling you, it was one of them time travelers, the pilot, I think. Before the mega-quake, I’d see him walking across campus to meet that damn Professor, acting all superior because he got to sleep up in that fancy college while the rest of us were in the tents.” Donovan scratched the back of his neck, big lips twisting. “Only I don’t remember his name. Ashy? Or Ashes?”

  “Asher?” Roman said, turning back to them. Dorothy felt everything inside of her go very still.

  Ash? Here?

  She wasn’t prepared for that. When she thought of him—and she tried not to think about him, not often, not anymore—she always pictured him in the pilot�
��s seat of the Second Star, skin flashing blue and purple in the light off the anil, gold eyes crinkled.

  He didn’t make sense in this small, dark space, surrounded by these people.

  Roman asked, “He was here?”

  “Not here, down at the Dead Rabbit,” said Eliza. “Donnie says he left about half an hour ago.”

  “Did he speak with anyone?”

  Donovan shrugged. “Not that I saw.”

  Roman glanced at Dorothy, frowning distantly. She knew he expected her to do something, or say something, but everything she thought to do or say seemed . . . insufficient, somehow. Her pulse fluttered.

  It had been a year since Ash had kissed her. For her, at least, it had been a year. She’d seen him since then, but only once, and she’d been Quinn then. She’d cut his cheek with a dagger, but that hadn’t exactly been romantic. And now he was here. Or he’d been here.

  “I’m headed to bed,” she said. She felt suddenly and abruptly exhausted.

  Or, perhaps, she just wanted to be alone.

  To Roman, she added, “You should sleep, too. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

  Dorothy’s room was on the fifth floor of the Fairmont, but it looked exactly like the one she’d been kept in when she was kidnapped the year before. Two beds, each covered in a white quilt. Wooden furniture. White curtains. Blue chair. She hadn’t bothered trying to personalize it, like Roman and the other Freaks had done with their rooms. Maybe it was all those years of traveling across the country with her mother, but she’d grown used to living out of suitcases, staying in nondescript hotel rooms, ready to move at the drop of a hat. She felt most at home in rooms where it looked like no one lived at all.

  The only item in the room that was actually hers was the small, silver locket hanging from her mirror. Her grandmother’s locket, the one thing she still had from her own time period. She touched it with one finger, like she always did when she came into the room.

  She’d sometimes wondered when or where she’d originally come up with the name Quinn Fox. A year ago, she’d said it was her name because she knew that a girl named Quinn Fox had landed in New Seattle around that time. But if time were a coil, then somewhere along the line back and back, she must’ve thought up the name herself.

  The only clue she had came from the locket. There was an animal of some sort carved on the front, but the years had worn it down until it was no longer recognizable. Dorothy’s first thought was that it was a dog, or a cat, but now she believed that it was a fox. Her mother’s grandmother’s maiden name had been Renard, which was French for fox. So that fit.

  But where had Quinn come from? Dorothy turned the locket over, studying the name engraved on the back. Like the fox, it’d been worn until only a few lines, and a curve remained. It could read “Colette” or “Corinne” as easily as “Quinn” and Dorothy would never know for sure. Her grandmother’s name had been Mary, and it clearly didn’t say that. So it hadn’t belonged to her, originally, but to someone else.

  Dorothy sighed and turned away. If the locket hadn’t belonged to her grandmother that meant there was some other woman who had passed it down, a great-grandmother or a distant aunt whose name—or a twisted version of whose name—Dorothy now used as her own. It was so strange to think that there was an entire line of family she would never know, a family whose legacy she carried on, hundreds and hundreds of years later.

  Would they be proud of how far she’d come? She’d never worried about that before. She’d been so concerned with survival that it had been impossible to think about whether she was dutifully carrying on her family’s legacy.

  Now, she wondered.

  She removed her cloak and draped it over the back of her faded, blue chair. Beneath, she wore thin, black trousers, a slim-fitting shirt, and knee-high leather boots. They were simple clothes, but even simple clothes were hard to come by in New Seattle, especially if they were new. Most people had to scour the thrift stores downtown, hoping to find things in their size with few holes, unworried about whether they matched or had any semblance of style.

  Dorothy could’ve brought something back from the past, obviously, but she’d wanted something from this time period, something modern, and so she’d bribed border security to get a few basics shipped in from the Center. The clothes had been expensive, but, at the time, she’d thought they were worth it. Now, with money as tight as it was, she felt guilty about the extravagance.

  Dorothy only ever removed her hood when she was in this room, alone, and now she stopped before the full-length mirror that hung from the back of her bathroom door and stared in open fascination at the horror that was her face.

  The gash curved from her hairline to her chin like a great, twisted snake. It cut straight through her left eye and arced over her cheekbone, leaving the skin twisted and raised in its wake.

  She lifted a hand, tracing the scar with her finger. It felt warm and smooth to the touch. The scar marked her as other, separating her from everyone else as effectively as the rumors about her did. Monster. Cannibal.

  Turning, she caught sight of the gown she planned to wear the next night hanging from her closet door. It was a floor-length evening dress made of floaty, ice-blue chiffon, with a fitted bodice and spaghetti straps. Dorothy had seen Grace Kelly wear the dress while watching To Catch a Thief and had insisted they go back for it.

  She took the thin fabric between her fingers, frowning. She’d had a thin, silver mask custom-made to cover her scar, and she’d planned to wear it with her hair pinned up, to show off her long neck. She would look beautiful again. The city’s savior.

  She’d told Roman that her injury was the reason she’d wanted to make the party a masquerade. She’d long used the same reasons to explain why she still wore the hood, and they leaped easily to her lips:

  She didn’t want to give the people of New Seattle any more reason to fear her. She couldn’t save them if they thought she was a monster.

  And that was all true. But it wasn’t the whole truth.

  With a deep sigh, Dorothy looked back at her reflection, her eyes moving over the twisted scar, the ruined skin.

  And, beneath all of that, her face. It was different from the face Ash had known, but still familiar. If he saw her, if any of her old acquaintances did, they’d recognize her at once.

  And there was the real reason for the masquerade. Dorothy had insisted on the mask because of Ash, because she knew he’d be there and she didn’t want him to find out who she really was.

  LOG ENTRY—JUNE 14, 2074

  04:53 HOURS

  THE SECOND STAR

  I’ve only just returned home, and I’m afraid I’m the tiniest bit tipsy. Nikola and I talked about physics long into the night. We made it through most of his bourbon.

  Nikola explained his brush with time travel to me, and I’m sorry to say that I now believe it was nothing more than his brain short-circuiting after a near-death experience, much the same as when people claim that they’ve seen “a tunnel of light” and interpret it as the entrance to heaven. Nikola has not traveled through time, of that I’m certain. I’m no closer to learning the secrets of traveling through time without an anil or exotic matter than I was before all this madness began.

  Which isn’t to say that my trip was a complete failure. Far from it. Nikola has gotten me thinking about all sorts of scientific queries I could work on to solve using time travel. Most particularly, he has me ruminating on the future.

  Roman and I have taken several trips into the future, but, to be honest, I’ve found them mostly fruitless. Unlike the past, the future doesn’t appear to be fixed. It changes every time I visit. Sometimes the changes are slight, while, other times, they’re monumental.

  Of course, I, like everyone, have often wondered how my own actions might change the course of the future. But Nikola pushed me to consider this on a deeper level. He was intrigued about my journeys, asking about specific experimentation I might have done to study my own personal ability to effect chang
e.

  He got a strange, puzzled look on his face when I admitted that I hadn’t pursued that line of study very far. It really got me thinking about how I might design a series of experiments to delve deeper into these questions. My mind is on fire.

  More soon.

  10

  Ash

  NOVEMBER 6, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

  There was a door in the old schoolhouse that they never opened. It was just past the kitchen, across the hall from the Professor’s office. It wasn’t so much what the door led to but what it contained.

  Boxes, all carefully taped shut and labeled Natasha.

  Natasha Walker had been Zora’s mother. A historian, she’d provided the team with period-specific costumes and quizzed them on historical trivia whenever they’d traveled back in time. She also made the world’s best grilled cheese sandwiches and had a weakness for twentieth-century British rock singers (she used to play David Bowie on repeat). But she’d died in the mega-quake, and now all that was left of her were these dusty old boxes.

  Most days, Ash pretended the door and the boxes inside didn’t exist. But, today, he and Zora stopped in front of it, preparing.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Ash asked.

  Zora rolled her eyes, but Ash knew this was a front. The muscles in her shoulders had tensed. If she’d been anyone else, he would’ve done the comforting thing—hand on her shoulder, tight squeeze—but she was Zora, so he just reached past her and opened the door so she wouldn’t have to do it herself.

  She released a low exhale, almost a sigh. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Ash squinted into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The closet had an overhead light once, but they didn’t have enough solar panels to keep it working, and the bulb was broken, and, anyway, the boxes were stacked all the way to the ceiling, so it’s not like the light would’ve done them any good. They’d been packed in tight, angled and arranged to fill every spare bit of space.