Ash had thought he’d understood time travel, but in all the years he’d flown through the anil, first in the Dark Star, and then in the Second Star, he had never felt anything like that sensation.

It was like fate, like magic.

He dove down into the water, and through time itself.

43

Dorothy

Dorothy lifted a hand, fingers trembling as she pressed them to the bulge of fabric at her neck. She’d tucked her old locket beneath her shirt and now she relished the chill of cool silver on her skin. It was familiar. The closest feeling to home she could conjure.

The locket had come with her on her first trip into the future. It felt fitting that it come with her for this trip, too.

They were in the Black Crow, flying low over the water on their way to the anil. Dorothy and Roman sat up front while Mac lounged in the passenger cabin, his bad leg propped up on the seat opposite him, as he carefully polished one of his guns. The rhythm was almost hypnotic. He’d hold the gun up so that the barrel caught the green light coming off the control panel and then shake his head and lower it again, spit, and rub the metal with the edge of his bloodstained shirt.

Roman, sitting in the captain’s seat, glanced at Dorothy and away. His hands were tight on the yoke, his shoulders stiff.

There hadn’t been another chance to kill Mac. The Freaks he’d wooed over to his side had surrounded him as they’d made their way through the twisting hotel hallways, and down the stairs to the parking garage where the Black Crow waited. The Freaks had stood outside the time machine’s doors while the three of them crawled inside and, once he was seated, Mac had pulled out his gun and busied himself polishing the barrel.

It had all felt carefully, perfectly planned, and now Dorothy stared straight ahead, worrying that she would only ever have that one chance, back at the hotel. She’d let it pass, and now there wouldn’t be another.

No, she told herself, focusing on the daggers beneath her sleeves. Once the three of them landed in the past, she would find another moment, or she would make one.

The Puget Sound anil yawned ahead of them. It was light dancing on the waves. A great, reflective bubble. A swirl of smoke and shifting color.

Roman aimed the nose of the ship toward the tunnel. Dorothy swallowed.

“The Black Crow is moving into position for departure,” he said, plunging them through the crack in time. The ship shuddered, and they were through.

Lightning flickered from the curved edges of the tunnel, and vicious winds howled outside the ship’s thin walls, but their full supply of EM kept the ship itself steady.

Mac picked at his teeth with his thumb. “I want to see the golden age of piracy first. That was, what? The 1700s? 1600s? I always thought I’d make a great privateer.”