There. She felt a click and closed her eyes, a smile crossing her lips as she exhaled.

Still got it.

She eased the door open behind her back and slipped inside, pulling the door shut again very quickly. There wasn’t much time. She groped along the back of the hold in the darkness until she felt the edges of the panel that separated her from the main cockpit. She pressed her ear to the wall and waited until she heard nothing but silence in the main hold. Then, barely daring to breathe, she slid the panel away.

The cockpit was empty. She exhaled in relief and slipped forward, kneeling.

The internal control panel was one of the key design elements of the Black Crow. The exotic matter was stored in a hidden compartment. Dorothy moved her hands over levers and buttons, until the panel fell open, revealing a glass cylinder filled with liquid sunlight. Then a shadow passed overhead, and the substance turned the color and texture of steel. A moment later, it was a swirling blue mist.

Dorothy’s breath caught in her throat. She could easily stay there and watch the strange, ever-changing substance forever, but there wasn’t time for that. She needed to get gone before another Freak climbed into the cockpit to try his hand at flying the damn thing.

Moving quickly, she removed the canister of exotic matter from the ship and slipped it inside her cloak, then she went back out the way she’d come, replacing the panel that separated the cockpit from the cargo hold and slipping silently back into the garage.

Here, she paused a moment, looking around. No one was watching her. They were all turned to the front of the garage, waiting to see who the next fool to attempt to fly the time machine would be. She swallowed, hard, trying to still her nerves. The canister of EM seemed to bulge beneath her cloak.

A tall, thin boy separated from the crowd, his hands raised. Dorothy frowned, not recognizing him. Unlike the rest of the Cirkus Freaks, this boy wasn’t wearing a black cloak. He wore a bomber jacket, the leather badly beaten and cracked. Recognizing it, Dorothy froze. She felt a chill move through her.

“Ash?” she murmured, voice low. She watched the boy, skin tingling. He had his back to her, and so she saw only the knit hat pulled down low over his head, his shoulders.

Had she and Ash both come back in time to this moment?

No, she told herself immediately. It wasn’t possible—Ash could never have walked into a room filled with Cirkus Freaks without being recognized.

And yet Dorothy couldn’t pull her eyes away from that boy. She watched as he climbed into the cockpit, easily flipping switches and dials.