“Who’s on duty tonight?” she asked, her voice chilly. The Fairmont was under armed guard at all hours.

“Quentin’s team,” said Bennett. “We all go on in an hour.”

“Good,” added Roman. “Pay particular attention to the basements. We can’t afford a robbery before tomorrow night.”

He and Dorothy turned to go, and Donovan picked up the conversation where he’d left off. “I’m telling you, it was one of them time travelers, the pilot, I think. Before the mega-quake, I’d see him walking across campus to meet that damn Professor, acting all superior because he got to sleep up in that fancy college while the rest of us were in the tents.” Donovan scratched the back of his neck, big lips twisting. “Only I don’t remember his name. Ashy? Or Ashes?”

“Asher?” Roman said, turning back to them. Dorothy felt everything inside of her go very still.

Ash? Here?

She wasn’t prepared for that. When she thought of him—and she tried not to think about him, not often, not anymore—she always pictured him in the pilot’s seat of the Second Star, skin flashing blue and purple in the light off the anil, gold eyes crinkled.

He didn’t make sense in this small, dark space, surrounded by these people.

Roman asked, “He was here?”

“Not here, down at the Dead Rabbit,” said Eliza. “Donnie says he left about half an hour ago.”

“Did he speak with anyone?”

Donovan shrugged. “Not that I saw.”

Roman glanced at Dorothy, frowning distantly. She knew he expected her to do something, or say something, but everything she thought to do or say seemed . . . insufficient, somehow. Her pulse fluttered.

It had been a year since Ash had kissed her. For her, at least, it had been a year. She’d seen him since then, but only once, and she’d been Quinn then. She’d cut his cheek with a dagger, but that hadn’t exactly been romantic. And now he was here. Or he’d been here.

“I’m headed to bed,” she said. She felt suddenly and abruptly exhausted.

Or, perhaps, she just wanted to be alone.

To Roman, she added, “You should sleep, too. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

Dorothy’s room was on the fifth floor of the Fairmont, but it looked exactly like the one she’d been kept in when she was kidnapped the year before. Two beds, each covered in a white quilt. Wooden furniture. White curtains. Blue chair. She hadn’t bothered trying to personalize it, like Roman and the other Freaks had done with their rooms. Maybe it was all those years of traveling across the country with her mother, but she’d grown used to living out of suitcases, staying in nondescript hotel rooms, ready to move at the drop of a hat. She felt most at home in rooms where it looked like no one lived at all.

The only item in the room that was actually hers was the small, silver locket hanging from her mirror. Her grandmother’s locket, the one thing she still had from her own time period. She touched it with one finger, like she always did when she came into the room.