Chapter 16
PETER PAN
I am acutely aware of the leftover energy that has permeated the lath and plaster walls of the old Victorian.
It clings to my skin like smoke. Desperation.
Despair. Hunger and love. The rooms are full of new furniture, the windows draped in new curtains, but the memories and the magic have remained.
There was only so much paint and caulk that could be applied to the house.
If you look closely, you can still see the wards carved into the door frame, or the faint brush strokes of sigils beneath the fresh satin paint.
Darling visibly shrinks and bristles when she walks through the front door and not for the first time tonight, I’m left wondering if we made a mistake coming here. I’m not sure what would have happened if Hansel hadn’t shown up.
But why the fuck did he? Why did he turn against his fellow Witch Killers and then vow to find Merry himself?
There is an alarm bell ringing in the back of my head that I can’t quite seem to shake.
I want to take Darling back to Neverland, but I’m not sure anywhere will be safe now.
I should have seen this coming.
“Get her a drink,” I tell no one in particular. But Vane is already moving into the dining room where we installed a bar cart last we were here. I hear the distinct fwop of the cork coming out of the decanted bottle of whisky and the generous pour he gives her in a glass.
“Come on, Darling.” I guide her in the opposite direction, into the living room.
There’s a large sectional couch that curves in an L around the room with a hand-hewn coffee table in the center.
Kas is turning on lamps and then plugging in the string lights that arch back and forth across the ceiling because there is nothing Darling loves more than string lights.
I flick on the TV and then toss the remote to Bash. Her favorite, I mouth to him, and he nods, queuing up the search function.
“It’s going to be all right,” I tell her as her frazzled energy permeates the air.
She drops onto the sofa and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s wound up tight, but she looks exhausted, as if she could sleep for a day and two.
She says nothing, but then Bash finds her favorite movie and hits the play button and a ghost of a smile appears on her lips.
An old CGI owl flies across the screen as the music starts up.
Vane comes into the room and hands her the glass of whisky.
“You guys are being too much,” she says, but she takes a generous sip of the liquor.
“No such thing.” I bend down and force her chin up. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Why is everything going wrong all of a sudden?”
I’m not sure she intended to so clearly admit the tension and strain pressing down on her. First with Doren and the fae trying to deny her her rightful place by the twins’ sides. Now this, her mother kidnapped, her own life being threatened.
The owl on the TV screen is replaced by a girl acting out her own fantasy in a park. Darling is watching her, but I can’t tell if she’s actually seeing the movie.
“Darling. Look at me.”
Her gaze skitters up as a breath lifts her shoulders in a sigh.
“We have always figured it out. Haven’t we?”
She swallows. “Yes.”
“And we will figure this out too.”
“But why do they want me dead? They should ask Doren. I’m no one.”
That’s where she’s wrong. She is someone to so many. I think that’s why Doren wants her gone. Because he knows with Winnie Darling beside the twins, with me and Vane at her back, we would create an unstoppable force.
And weak men are terrified of powerful women.
“We’re going to handle it,” I tell her again and kiss her. She leans into the kiss, happy to have a distraction. But not now. Not yet.
Vane and I have much too much to discuss.
I nod at the twins and they sink in on either side of Darling. Bash has made a bowl of popcorn, another favorite of Darling’s, and she takes a handful, popping a piece into her mouth.
I meet Vane’s eyes and gesture for him to follow me outside to the back porch.
The crickets are chirping with a few tree frogs filling in the lulls. Vane pulls out a cigarette and offers one to me. The lighter comes to life in his hands, the sharp orange flame hitting the planes of his face.
Smoke fills the night.
“The fuck is going on?” he says evenly.
“Hansel is surprising.”
“No shit.” He leans over the porch railing, forearms on the banister. “You ever run into him before?”
“Sure.” I fall into the chair tucked into the corner.
“Many years ago, on Winterland, in a remote village outside the city. They were hunting one of the woodland witches who supposedly lured children from their beds. I was there looking for one of the Lost Boys that had been taken by a pirate crew. Hansel came over and asked me if I was still taking Darlings, and I said yes. He snubbed his nose, as if that was the most disgusting thing he’d ever heard. ”
Vane glances at me over his shoulder. “So why come to our aid then?”
“I don’t fucking know.”
“You think it’s a trick? He’ll pretend to be on our side and turn on us at the last second?”
“He could have easily done that tonight. Why let us go? Why prolong it?”
“I don’t know.” He takes a hit and exhales into the night. “None of this makes sense.”
“You ever cross paths with him?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And…Jabberwockies are immune to their glowing bone shards.”
“Wait…does that mean the jabberwocky comes out when the Shadow is subdued by the bone shard?”
“No. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Do you think…if you gave up the Shadow—”
“No,” he says, cutting me off.
“It would give us an advantage, Vane.”
He shakes his head and comes over, joining me in the opposite chair.
“I’m not giving up the Shadow. For one, I don’t know what that would do to Win now that we’ve shared it for so long.
And two, if she happens to get separated from us…
” He trails off, the nightmare scenario unsettling us both.
“The Shadow will keep me connected to her. It’s the only thing we have for sure right now. ”
I nod and take a hit. “No, you’re right. Kody will come through on the stones.”
Vane snorts. “I don’t trust that man as far as I can throw him.”
“Well, me either. But again, our alternative options are too few.”
We’re quiet for a beat, the drone of the crickets filling the silence. But a question has been plaguing me for a while and I can’t stop myself from asking it.
“Can you sense where her head is at?”
“She’s overwhelmed.”
“I could tell.”
“And afraid.”
“Yes.”
“But not about dying.”
I spend the cigarette. “Then what?”
“I don’t know. It has the edge of loss to it.”
“Her mother?”
He shakes his head.
“Us,” he guesses. “Something about all of this, Doren, her mother, being here, old wounds splitting open and old fears burbling up.”
“We should reassure her.”
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“It’ll distract her.”
He nods and drops the still burning cigarette in an old flowerpot full of rainwater. “She does love being on her knees.”
“Not as much as I love her on them.”