Anyway, none of that mattered anymore. Everything, all that she and Roman had built, had been taken away. In the course of just twenty-four hours, Mac Murphy had managed to steal her time machine and take control of her gang. Quinn Fox was gone, and she was only Dorothy again. Roman, her closest ally and the only person she’d actually trusted in this godforsaken city, had been shot and left for dead in the blackened ruins of the future.

And Ash . . .

Dorothy’s throat closed just thinking of it. She couldn’t let herself dwell on what may or may not have happened to Ash just now.

“Sit,” Zora said, pointing to a stool near Chandra.

Dorothy gathered up the wet ends of her cloak and sat, chair creaking beneath her. Despite everything, she was glad to be here. Back at the Fairmont, she knew everyone wanted to kill her. Here it might just be two out of three.

“Well?” Chandra’s eyes skittered toward Dorothy and away again. “What did you find?”

Willis added, “Is he really—”

Neither of them actually said the word dead, but Dorothy heard it ringing through the air, almost as though it were being sung on a loop.

He’s not dead! she wanted to scream. He couldn’t be.

But she didn’t actually have any proof of that. She was holding tight to the fact that they hadn’t found Ash’s body, but that damn boat was floating in the middle of the Puget Sound. Any murderer with half a brain would’ve thought to drop him over the side of the boat, allowing his body to sink to the ocean floor. They wouldn’t have found a body, no matter what had happened.

Dorothy stared down at her hands, blinking hard. She wouldn’t let herself cry. Not here, not in front of these people who hated her.

“We found his boat outside the anil,” Zora was saying. Her voice cracked as she added, “It was covered . . . there was blood, everywhere.”

There was a beat of silence. And then—

“You actually did it,” Chandra murmured. “You killed him.”

Dorothy lifted her eyes and found Chandra glaring back at her, arms folded across her chest. It was like a knife twisting through her chest. She couldn’t remember ever seeing Chandra angry before.

“I didn’t kill him,” Dorothy insisted. She looked from Chandra to Willis but found no sympathy in either of their faces. What would they do to her, if she couldn’t make them believe her? Her voice began to waver. “You—you have to believe me . . . I was as surprised to find that empty boat as Zora was!”