“The past is our right! The past is our right!”

Ash felt fidgety, all too aware of the eyes in the crowd. He saw a man standing a few feet away, staring, head cocked like he was trying to work out how he knew him. Ash turned away, pulling his collar up to hide his face.

He’d been hoping for some sign of Dorothy, but she hadn’t left the time machine, hadn’t even stuck a hand out the window to wave at her adoring fans.

This feeling—the sudden hope followed by crushing disappointment—was so great that his hands curled into fists. He glanced at Zora and saw that her eyes were glued to the swirling mess of colors churning in the middle of the sea. The skin between her brows creased as she reached for his arm.

“Does it always do that?” she asked.

Ash focused on releasing the tension in his hands. “Do what?”

“That tremor—”

Before he could answer, the anil lit up. It was no single color, but all colors, shifting and unknowable. The ground below them began to shake.

The Black Crow was returning.

19

Dorothy

NOVEMBER 29, 2073, SEATTLE

Dorothy hadn’t spent a month planning this con. It’d been easy. All they’d needed were a few props.

Roman landed the Black Crow in a thick copse of trees near the edge of town, next to the white-and-blue SolarBeam delivery van he’d procured on an earlier trip back in time.

“Damn thing took forever to find,” he’d complained bitterly. “I had to hack into old Craigslist ads going back over two years before I found someone looking to unload one. Craigslist, Dorothy. The user interface alone made me want to kill myself.”

Dorothy had rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “Do you know what this is?”

Roman’s face had darkened. “Don’t.”

“It’s the world’s smallest violin playing just for you.”

After the van, everything else was relatively easy. Uniforms were ordered from a wholesale retailer with same-day delivery, and they’d picked up the clipboards while they were in the 1990s, from a place called Target, which had delighted Dorothy endlessly (they sold bananas and arm chairs and trousers all in the same place!). And then it was simply a matter of storing their finds in a safe place until they needed them.

Now, Dorothy unbuttoned her cloak and tossed it in the back seat, revealing her SolarBeam uniform: navy-blue polo shirt, dark trousers, and silver windbreaker. She hid her hair beneath a head scarf, and then slid a SolarBeam baseball cap on top, lowering an eye patch over her ruined eye.

“They’re going to think you’re a pirate,” Roman said, tucking his own polo into his trousers.

Dorothy checked her appearance. The scarf hid her white hair, but Roman was right, the eye patch was a problem. It made her memorable. Memorable was bad.

“Next time, we should try pulling off the glim dropper.” She pushed her door open and a blast of chilly, November air swept over her, raising the hair on her arms.