“You told them?” Ash asked, annoyed. After Fort Hunter, he’d told Zora that Quinn Fox was the girl from his prememory, the one who was going to kill him. He had not told Willis and Chandra, and yet, it seemed, they knew.

Zora didn’t even bother looking guilty. “Of course I told them. Secrets are stupid.”

Ash was at a loss for words. He’d kept the truth a secret because he’d been embarrassed. Quinn Fox, the Black Cirkus assassin. The cannibal of New Seattle. How was he going to fall in love with her?

And now?

The anger left him at once. It had just been a flicker of feeling, not the real thing. It was impossible to be angry about something like a spilled secret when he had only a few days left to live. Besides, maybe Zora was right. Maybe secrets were stupid.

“So did you meet her?” asked Chandra.

Ash blinked. “What?”

“You went downtown tonight to find Quinn, right?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Well? Did you?”

“He would have told us,” Willis said. But he didn’t sound convinced.

“I would have told you,” Ash assured him. “No more secrets.”

“Right,” Willis said, and Ash didn’t think he imagined the relief in his voice. “You would’ve.”

“So you still haven’t met her?” Chandra asked.

“I still haven’t met her.”

“But you know she’s going to be at this masquerade at the Fairmont tomorrow night, right?” Chandra gave him a sly look. “Does that mean we get to go?”

“Of course we’re not going,” said Zora, incredulous. “The point is to keep Ash from meeting the cannibal who’s going to murder him, not deliver him like a present.”

Ever since seeing Zora break down on the roof of Fort Hunter, Ash had an easier time hearing the small fluctuations in her voice, when her anger dipped into fear. He heard it now, and that’s the only reason he was able to answer her calmly instead of snapping and starting a fight.

“Actually,” he said, shifting his eyes away from her face. “I think it’s about time the two of us were introduced.”

Zora answered with a short, hard laugh, like he’d told a joke she didn’t think was funny. “If you meet her, you’ll die.”

Ash noticed that she hadn’t included the part about falling in love first. “I’m going to die either way.”

Chandra coughed into her fist. Willis did something unnecessarily loud that involved a spoon clattering against the sugar bowl.

Zora was looking at him now, brow furrowed. Ash watched her swallow, trying to gather herself.

“I don’t understand,” she said firmly. “We talked about this. We were going to figure out a way to fix it. We were—”

“Fix what, exactly? How do you propose we go about changing a memory?”

“It’s not a memory yet!”

“Zor— Jesus—that’s what a prememory is. Didn’t you read the Professor’s journal? He saw the mega-quake before it happened. He saw it for months, and he didn’t do anything because he couldn’t.” Ash raked a hand back through his hair. “If it was possible to change it, don’t you think he would’ve? Don’t you think he would’ve done anything to save—”