Dorothy blinked, looking away from the abandoned shirt. She didn’t want to give Roman any more reason to worry about the next six days, so she decided not to mention his death or Mac Murphy’s takeover of the Black Cirkus, or Regan and her terrible bag of toys.

“Ash is . . . missing,” she said, instead. “Everyone is certain that I’ve killed him. Including Ash himself, apparently. I came back to see if I could figure out what really happened. And stop it, if possible.”

It was an abridged version of the truth, but it was still the truth, more or less. It would have to do.

Roman leaned against the door, head tilted, a funny look on his face. “You’re here trying to stop Ash from disappearing? You don’t honestly expect me to help you with that.”

“Oh, stop,” Dorothy snapped, frustration rising inside of her. With everything that’s going on, this was what he wanted to focus on? “Your little vendetta against Ash is played out. You don’t know this yet, but you’re going to forgive him, like, tomorrow, so can we please just get on with it?”

Roman, to his credit, looked chastened. “Was I this annoying when I went back in time to see you?”

“Are you joking?” Dorothy huffed. “All that time is a circle nonsense. I wanted to murder you.”

“Touché,” he murmured, studying his hands. After a moment, he sighed and looked back up at her. “So, if I’m to understand you right, you’ve come back in time to figure out if you really did kill Ash, correct?”

“I actually have a theory that someone disguised as me might’ve killed him,” Dorothy admitted. But, as the words left her mouth, she had to admit that they sounded . . . unlikely.

Roman only lifted an eyebrow. After a moment, he said, “When you came up here before, in the past, you were hoping to convince me to do something to change the future. Do you remember?”

Dorothy was quiet a moment. Of course she remembered. Before Roman and Ash had been murdered, Roman had taken her into the future and shown her a bleak, terrifying vision: their city, abandoned and destroyed. Buildings had toppled, and all the people who lived here had either died or disappeared. She still felt sick, thinking about it.

She hadn’t given that terrible vision of the future much thought over the last few days. She’d been too busy trying to save Ash, trying to save herself. It bothered her now, that she’d forgotten everything that had happened so easily.

“You asked me if I had any idea what might have happened to lead to that,” Roman continued. “And I told you that I didn’t.”

“I remember,” Dorothy said, frowning.

Roman, sheepish, said, “That’s not entirely true.”