What are they doing? she wondered, creeping closer to the edge of the roof. Mac must’ve given them some assignment, but what?

She craned her neck out as far as she dared, gripping the side of the roof so tightly her knuckles turned white. The ground spun dizzily below her.

The Freaks appeared to be putting up posters and handing out flyers. She couldn’t read what they said from this distance. She would have to get closer.

She started to back away from the roof’s edge when something caught her eye.

It was a woman. Like the Freaks, this woman was dressed all in black. Her black dress had a high neckline and long sleeves, and she wore it with heeled boots, a black hood, and a mask that completely covered her face. It was the mask that drew Dorothy’s attention. As far as she knew, she was the only person who wore a mask in New Seattle.

Have I started a trend? she thought wryly. She rather doubted it.

And there was something else about the woman, something . . . disturbing. She had a strangely magnetic quality to her, a gravitational pull. Dorothy couldn’t manage to tear her eyes away. She felt a chill move through her as she watched the woman move down the docks before, finally, disappearing around a corner.

Who was that?

Dorothy waited until she was certain the woman had gone and then, making sure that Roman’s dagger and the Professor’s journal entries were carefully stowed away in her cloak, she crawled over the side of the roof and began the long climb down.

Dorothy kept to the shadows. She watched from around the side of the building as the Freaks hung their mysterious flyers, voices muffled by the sound of the water lapping up against the side of the docks, and the thin, harsh morning wind.

And then, when they began to move on, down the dock and away from her hiding place, Dorothy slipped out into the daylight, quiet as a shadow, to see what the poster was.

Wanted for murder, it read. Below, there was a picture of Ash’s face.

Dorothy lifted a trembling finger to the poster, something cold washing over her. It looked like it had been copied from an old magazine clipping. Ash wasn’t staring at the camera but grinning at something off in the distance. He was wearing the beaten leather jacket Dorothy knew so well, and his skin was reddened from the sun, wind blowing his blond hair into his eyes.

She looked away, her eyes traveling down the docks. These posters hadn’t just been hung on the Fairmont, she saw, but on every building on this block. It was probably safe to assume that the Freaks had papered every building downtown.