Chapter 22
PETER PAN
The parking lot behind the strip mall runs between stone and water, with a shallow creek burbling north and south down a steep embankment. At two a.m., the lot is empty save for a few wandering cats.
We park behind a bookstore and get out, the night air heavy with mist.
There is something about this I don’t like.
Darling asked me if I trust Kody, but I don’t think one trusts Kody so much as uses him when the need arises and hopes that he will work the way he did the last time he was needed.
He’s the quickest way to the stones, the only thing that can help us when standing against the Witch Killers. We have no choice but to work with Kody and hope he feels the same.
Headlights appear on the south side of the strip mall and slowly approach our spot. I stand at the head of our group, with Darling insulated between us all.
The sleek black car, now outdated by mortal standards, comes to a stop in the middle of the lot. Kody climbs out but keeps the car running.
He’s joined by two other men, neither or which is a gnome. One of them has the red eyes of a Pleasureland fae, the other the look and leer of a pirate.
“You made it!” Kody says as he comes over to me.
“Do you have the stones?” I ask him.
“Sure. Of course.” He waggles his fingers at the pirate and the man pulls a canvas pouch from the pocket of his leather overcoat. Kody opens the bag and upends it over the palm of his hand, letting the stones slide out with a clink. “Give. As requested.”
I don’t reach over to take them just yet. “Any information on Merry’s whereabouts? Or the Witch Killers’ plans?”
“Nothing I could dig up, unfortunately.”
The pirate shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his hand sliding closer to the dagger strapped to his hip.
I have less than three seconds to calculate the fuckery I’ve gotten us into. Less than two seconds to decide what to do about it.
When I possessed the Neverland Life Shadow all those years ago, before the Darlings, I thought that my power belonged to it, and that only with the Shadow would power belong to me.
Without it, I thought I had nothing and was nothing.
So for years and decades, my own power, the divine magic that burned in my veins and had been threaded through every fiber of my being, lay dormant, calcifying beneath the weight of my own fears.
I have no such fear now.
Even in the mortal realm, I only have to think of it, and it is there, burning bright like a star.
The pirate is immediately engulfed in flame.
He spins, screeching like a wounded animal.
The Pleasureland fae charges forward, but the twins are already reacting, already spinning a lie.
The man looks down, screams and then stumbles back.
Whatever illusion the twins have spun, it has the man so terrified, he’s pissed himself.
“Good luck, Peter Pan.” Kody slips in behind the wheel of his gigantic car and spins the tires as he hits the gas in reverse.
Smoke clouds the night, stinking of burnt rubber and grease.
Shadows emerge from the thin line of trees that stand between the parking lot and the creek.
And the glowing purple light of the bones hanging from the leather around their necks tells me all I need to know.
Kody has sold us out to the Witch Killers.
My power is gone in an instant.
“Get her in the car!” I yell to the twins, but they’re already surrounded, and Bash has a knife sunk in his thigh.
It takes three men on Vane to get him on the pavement, blood pouring from his mouth.
Kas is fighting off a woman whose movements are so quick, she’s practically a blur.
Another man comes charging at me, a dagger brandished in his hand. But he doesn’t make it. Because an arrow gets lodged in his skull.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the familiar cut of a man in leather trousers and linen shirt.
Hansel.
I turn to Darling — if I can get her far enough away, we can fly out of here. Except there’s a woman behind her, her arm around Darling’s waist, the other at her throat, a knife pointed down at her chest.
“Do we have your attention now, Peter Pan?”
I hold up my hands.
The fighting comes to a sudden, silent stop.
“You have my attention.”
There is a war in my gut, one between untenable rage and fear.
Darling has half the Neverland Dark Shadow — she can survive a knife wound. But only if we can get her away from the Witch Killers before it’s too late.
I spent years thinking I had no power, but in this moment, I know what it truly feels like to be powerless.
“What do you want?” I ask.
The woman takes a step back, dragging Darling with her, but I notice her gaze flick over my shoulder, to the shadows clinging to the creek.
“Come forward, Hansel.”
The Witch Killers part for him, and he steps within the loose circle of men and women. There are more weapons sheathed across his chest than before, and a crossbow in his hand.
I notice he isn’t wearing his bone fragment.
“Don’t look at him, Peter Pan. Look at me.”
The woman tightens her grip on the dagger, the sharp point dangerously close to Darling’s chest, to the place where her heart lay beating like a drum.
“There’s the part of this story you know,” the woman says, “and there’s the part of this story you don’t.”
“Then why don’t you tell me.”
Darling swallows, takes in a deep breath through her nose.
“You know what we do: we kill witches. For us, there is no distinction between good or bad. All witches are the latter.”
Bash snorts.
The dagger pierces Darling’s flesh and she grimaces.
“Careful,” the woman says.
“Payla,” Hansel says. “Please.”
“The part you don’t know, likely the one you’re wondering about, is how Hansel fits into this.
One of the greatest Witch Killers of all time, the one responsible for killing one of the most powerful witches in all of the realms. The one responsible for harvesting the cursed bone fragments that hang around our necks and render all power unreachable.
He made us what we are today. He and his sister.
And yet, he would turn on us? For some random mortal girl who somehow charmed the infamous Peter Pan and the Dark One, and the Fae Princes. ”
Her arm tightens around Darling.
“Why would Hansel throw everything away for one Darling girl?”
I know why.
But this isn’t how I wanted Darling to find out.
I meet her eyes where tears are glittering beneath her lids. I can’t tell if she’s in pain or if she knows too, all of the secrets crashing down around her.
Merry Darling was not always a madwoman. At one point, she was a gorgeous woman full of life and hunger. And yes, even power.
“Tell her, Hansel.”
The man steps around me, hands aloft. “Don’t hurt her, Payla.”
“Go on.”
“Winnie,” he says, the light of the parking lot catching the sheen of sweat on his brow. He didn’t want it to go down this way either.
But there’s no turning back now.
“Winnie, I’m your father.”
“There it is.”
And then Payla sinks the blade into Darling’s heart.