“I’m grateful, of course,” Dorothy murmured, lowering her eyes. The words seemed insufficient to describe what she was feeling. How, exactly, was she to make it clear how touched she’d been that Zora had come for her? Zora didn’t trust her, and Dorothy knew she was still half convinced that she’d killed her best friend, and yet she’d taken on Mac and the Black Cirkus just to break her free. It was loyalty beyond anything Dorothy had ever known. Not that that was saying much, but still.

“Don’t mention it,” Zora said, gruff as always. Dorothy’s gratitude seemed to make her uncomfortable, and she became, suddenly, very interested in a loose cuticle near her thumbnail. “What were you trying to do back there, anyway?” she asked. “Because, from the outside, it looked like you were committing suicide by way of psychotic gang.”

“Not exactly.” Dorothy hesitated a moment, trying to figure out how much to reveal. At any other time in her life, she would have lied. The exotic matter and the Professor’s discovery were valuable bargaining chips. Who knew how useful they might be later, if she needed a little leverage?

But Chandra and Zora had just risked their lives to break her out of the Fairmont. It had softened her. She couldn’t imagine trying to manipulate or blackmail them now. They deserved the truth.

And so, exhaling, she found herself telling them everything. “I was in Roman’s room early this morning, looking for . . . well, looking for money, if I’m being perfectly honest. I’m broke and, as I’m anticipating being on the run, I figured I’d need everything I could get my hands on.”

She waited, eyes shifting from Zora to Chandra, to see whether either of them would pass judgment on her, but they stayed silent.

“I didn’t find any money,” she continued, after a moment, “but he had these . . . these papers hidden in his bedside table.”

Zora, blinking, said, “Papers?”

“Journal entries,” Dorothy clarified. “They’re from the Professor’s journal. I recognized the handwriting from the last time.”

A year ago, to Dorothy, and just a few weeks ago to Chandra and Zora, Dorothy had found the Professor’s journal among Roman’s things. She’d handed it over to Ash, but only after making a bargain. She wasn’t particularly proud of that moment, now.

Clearing her throat, she continued. “Roman must’ve torn the pages out before he left the journal for me to find. He didn’t want us knowing about them, for some reason.”

“You read them, though,” Chandra said, frowning. “What did they say?”

“Well . . . among other things, they seemed to indicate that it was possible to travel through time without a time machine.”

“No.” Zora’s brow furrowed. “My father would have told me if he were working on something like that.”