Chapter 13
WINNIE
We go first to Ninth & Seven Coffee Shop but find the inside dark, the closed sign hanging from a hook in the front window.
This is my mother’s favorite coffee shop, according to Leo, but I didn’t know my mother liked coffee shops, let alone black tea.
I can remember her making a cup of coffee most mornings, but she made instant coffee from a can she bought at the dollar store and mixed in enough sugar and powdered creamer that it resembled milk more than coffee.
She would carry the cup, along with her med box, to the front window of whatever house or apartment we were living in, and she’d sit there and stare outside, watching the street beyond. I could never tell if she was just watching nature or watching for signs of Pan.
Maybe she was daydreaming about a life neither of us was destined to have.
What else about her life now do I not know?
What else has changed? I never took the time to ask her on the rare occasions we visited, and I never bothered to ask Leo.
Maybe I didn’t want to know that she was thriving now that I was out of her life.
That she had built something beautiful and quiet and safe when that’s all I’d longed for as a child.
We follow the street several blocks to the south until we reach the twins’ favorite diner and our next best chance for a lead on my mother’s disappearance: The Lost Knife.
It’s one of those retro diners with chrome siding and neon lighting. A giant sign on the top reads THE LOST KNIFE in neon green cursive.
I’ve been here with them once before, but in the daylight, and we sat in a booth and ordered a round of cloudberry smoothies.
The Lost Knife is the only place on the east side of the country that is an official portal between realms. You walk into the front door of the Knife from the mortal realm, and you can walk out the back door to Pleasureland.
But when I asked the boys if we should visit the other island before returning to Neverland, their response was, “We never go to Pleasureland, Darling. It’s a place you don’t escape.
” So I don’t really know if people actually use the back door of the diner or if it’s mostly just there for decoration and scary bedtime stories.
We go inside and the bell above the door chimes. The two winged fae on the red vinyl stools at the counter turn, checking us over their shoulders. To the left, in the half-circle booth, sharing a giant basket of fries, are four pirates and one of the Pleasureland fae with their bright red eyes.
Several other booths are full of people who appear mortal only from the neck up.
There’s a man dressed in yards of silk that looks like it was fashioned from stars and dreams. A woman behind him is in a hand-stitched velvet jacket sporting the emblem of the royal house of Summerland North.
And beside her is a man with a leather vest adorned with gems that shift in size and cut depending on the light.
All of them are looking at us standing in the soft glow of the diner, and I can’t tell if they’re looking at us like that because we’re covered in Witch Killer blood or if they too know I’m a Darling being hunted by said Witch Killers.
But if I remember correctly, Bash once told me the Knife is neutral ground and fighting is banned.
“Come on, Win.” Vane nudges me to the right, to the U-shaped booth on the other end of the diner. We’ll have a bit more privacy there, with the two booths next to it empty.
The boys sandwich me in the middle, Kas and Bash on my left, Pan and Vane on my right.
A server, Maisie, comes over, laminated menus in her hand. “It’s been a while, princes.”
This, aimed at the twins.
“Kings now, actually,” Bash corrects.
She props the heel of her hand on the back of the booth beside him and arches a brow. “Oh yeah? How’d you manage that one?”
“My sparkling personality,” Bash adds.
She snorts and the hoop earrings hanging from her ears swing. She’s buzzed her hair since last we saw her and added a few more tattoos to her forearms. She smells of fried pickles (the Lost Knife specialty) and rose oil and the stale smoke scent of a cigarette burned an hour ago.
Bash smiles up at her. “So how’ve you been? How’s Samantha?”
“She broke up with me.”
“Oh. A pity? Or a relief?”
She shrugs and softens because Bash has that effect on people. “A bit of both, I suppose.”
“Well then you have my sympathy and my congratulations.”
She sets the menus on the table and starts dividing them up. “What’ll you all have to drink?”
“Bourbon,” Pan says.
“Same,” Vane adds.
“Diet Coke,” I say as she takes our orders in a notepad.
“You still have those cloudberry shakes?”
“They’re out of season,” she answers.
Bash bats his eyelashes, then puffs out his bottom lip.
“Oh fine.” She sighs. “I have some on reserve. But it’ll cost you and none of those fucking leaves. Real money.”
“I’ll take one too,” Kas adds.
“Mais,” Pan says.
Maisie goes still.
“Kody here?”
She blinks, her tongue flicking out nervously as her fist goes to her hip. “Suppose he is.”
“Tell him we’d like to see him.”
With a nod, she slips the notepad into the apron tied around her waist. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then she disappears behind the counter.
Pan spreads his arm out behind me on the back of the booth.
“You think Kody will see us?” I ask.
He shrugs, keeping his eyes on the diner and the people inhabiting it. “Now that we know he’s here, if he denies us, it’ll be suspicious.”
“He’ll see us,” Vane says. “He owes me a favor.”
“Oh yeah? What did you do?”
Vane cuts his gaze to me, that one violet eye, and scarred black eye. “You don’t want to know.”
A shiver prickles at the space between my shoulders and I sink into Kas more, hooking my arm through his, trying to steal some of his warmth.
Most everyone in the diner has returned to their conversation and their meals. But I still don’t feel right. Like they’re all watching us. Almost like they can see the grim reaper hanging over my head and are unsure if they should help, or give me a wide berth.
I still don’t understand why mythical killers would go to the trouble of hunting me down.
Even if the Myth Maker power passed down from Captain Hook to the Darling line and somehow made it to me, it has to be so diluted by now that it would barely register.
Don’t they have bigger fish to fry? Not that I think witches deserve to be fried.
I know the stories from my own world, innocent women accused of witchcraft and burned at the stakes.
I can’t help but feel like the Witch Killers are just modern mythological versions of those accusers from the 1600s looking to take down powerful women.
Maisie returns with a tray, all of our drinks in a circle and takes our order. The twins both get double cheeseburgers and fries. I order fries. Pan and Vane eat nothing.
We make small talk while we wait for the food, pretending that any of this is normal. I’m on edge, but the boys seem fine. It makes me wonder how they deal with anxiety and stress so well, if it’s the centuries they have on me, or the power always in their possession.
If I had been born and raised on Neverland, would I be as unshakable as Peter Pan?
I swirl my straw around my soda watching the bubbles fizz up. The fries are piping hot, crispy and salty, just the way I like them, but I can’t seem to summon an appetite.
It’s when our food is about gone that Maisie returns to our table and says, “Kody can see you now.”
Pan hands her a few hundred dollar bills and she examines them beneath the glow of the diner light.
“They’re real,” Pan tells her.
Maisie squints at them. “With Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, one can never be too sure.”