4. Vane
CHAPTER FOUR
VANE
Winnie is demanding we go.
She’s pacing the loft, the Neverland Shadow ribboning around her.
When she is excited, stressed, agitated, or angry, the shadow reacts, trailing her like a cape made of mist.
My shadow never did anything of the sort. It and I were always at odds. There was no sense of collaboration between us. I hunted it down, demanded its swift hand of revenge. It was hungry, so it complied. But everything after that—after I destroyed the Darkland royal family—was fraught with conflict.
It hated being on Neverland. Neverland was not its home.
But this dark shadow claimed Winnie as much as she claimed it.
They were made for one another. When she needs it, it’s there. When it needs something from her, she immediately responds.
Sometimes I feel like the unwitting third party to their symbiotic relationship.
Not that I will complain. Winnie and the shadow saved me, and sharing it means I get to keep an eye on her in a way the others cannot.
“Wendy Darling is my great-great-great grandmother,” Winnie is saying. “I want to meet her. I should have that right.”
Pan is awake. The twins are here. The girl, Asha, is waiting outside on the front porch for our answer.
It seems Roc has devoured something he shouldn’t have. Now he needs me to fix him.
I have my suspicions as to what he wants, but I don’t have it. I can’t help him.
“I was very clear,” Pan says. “Hook and Roc are not allowed on my land.”
“Your land?” Win turns on him.
Peter Pan is a god, but when Winnie Darling scowls at him, he is reduced to a man.
“Come on, Darling,” Kas says, grabbing hold of her around the waist. His touch is gentle, a little coaxing. But I can tell he’s trying to prevent her from charging at Pan.
Now that Win has the shadow, she has a claim to Neverland too. We all do. The twins, Kas and Bash, possess the Neverland Shadow of Life. We all, equally, have a claim.
But Peter Pan has been here the longest. Once Neverland’s king, he sometimes likes to pull rank. Win likes to remind him that the past is no longer.
Now, she is queen to his king.
“I want to meet my ancestor.” Win slips out of Kas’s grip and puts her hands on her hips. “Remember Wendy Darling, Pan? The one you abandoned on Everland?”
Pan closes his eyes and summons a breath. No one on this island, not even me, could get away with half of the things Win gets away with. Pan might sometimes make her pay for her brattiness in the bedroom, but here, right now, her stubbornness will make him bend.
I already know it. He knows it. I’m not sure why he’s still dragging his feet.
“Fine,” he says and then scoops up a glass of whisky and slings it back. “We’ll go to the docks. We’ll meet Wendy. We’ll see what Roc wants. But then they’re gone.”
Win crosses her arms over her chest. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Pan repeats.
They stare at one another for several beats. The tension is thick enough to braid.
When they get like this, they are either two seconds away from shouting at one another or two seconds away from fucking.
But we don’t have time for that.
I step between them, diffusing the tension. “Let’s get to the docks before it gets too late. Before my brother does something stupid and we all have to murder him.”
Pan ticks out a breath. “How about we just murder him and forget about the rest?”
Behind us, Bash says to his brother, “This should be fun.”
“No one is murdering anyone,” Winnie says, charging ahead.
She may boss us around with impunity, but when it comes to the Crocodile, she will have no say.
She thinks she knows us, she thinks she has peered into the darkness and taken its measure.
But Roc and I, we are a darkness that cannot be tamed and I will do everything in my power to keep her away from it.