Chapter 19
WINNIE
As morning approaches, Pan says goodnight to me and retreats to his room in the basement.
Vane leaves to check the house’s perimeter and adjacent streets.
Exhausted and a little tipsy from the whisky, the twins and I go to bed somewhere around five a.m. but both Kas and Bash are quickly out leaving me staring up at the ceiling.
There is a tiny little flame of anxiety burning in my chest, unwilling to gutter out.
It’s not enough to send me spiraling, but just enough to keep me up.
I toss. I turn. I can’t stop wondering about Hansel.
Even setting aside the fact that he is a Witch Killer who not only helped us escape the others, but killed them on our behalf, the way he said my mother’s name…
Almost like he knew her. Like he had said her name a hundred times before and knew the shape of it, every syllable.
But I don’t want to think about Hansel or the Witch Killers. What I want, is to sleep.
I curl into Kas’s side and bury my face in his hair. It smells like Neverland. A little sweet, a little salty from the ocean air. I can smell cloudberries, too.
I’ve never felt homesick before. I was never given the chance to fall in love with a home before we were moving again, always trying to cover our tracks and hide from Peter Pan.
But I am suddenly, achingly desperate to return to Neverland.
Shifting to my back, tucked between Kas and Bash, I let myself drift up from the mattress, weightless by Shadow and magic.
I hang there for a moment, halfway between the bed and the ceiling.
A few years back, before Pan and Neverland, when I was just an ordinary girl, I came down with an ordinary case of the flu. I have this clear memory from the middle of the night, of floating on the ceiling and looking down at myself.
Sometimes I think about that and wonder if I was dying, only to be yanked back into my frail, mortal body.
Righting myself, I clear the side of the bed and float back down until my bare feet hit the hardwood.
Sunlight is breaking through the trees and shining through a crack in the curtains. Looking out, mist is burning off the dewy grass and turning the sleepy street into a daydream.
I make a cup of instant coffee and go out to the front porch, curling into one of the wicker chairs with a knit blanket wound around my shoulders. When Mom and I first moved into this house, I thought it was possible it would change everything.
The street was cozy, lived in. The kind of street I’d always wanted to have as a kid growing up without all the things that mattered.
Looking at it now, having spent enough months on Neverland, it no longer stacks up.
Across the street, a girl comes out of her house with a guy wrapped around her. They’re kissing each other shamelessly as they make their way down the overgrown lawn to the SUV parked at the curb.
I pull the blanket further up, shielding my face. I went to school with the girl who lived in that house. Ella Sorenson. I wouldn’t call us friends. Casual acquaintances, maybe.
Ella presses the guy into the front fender, kissing him deeper.
When he comes up for air, his gaze flicks to me, and I turn away, trying to remain inconspicuous.
No such luck.
“Winnie?” he calls. “Winnie Darling?”
Oh god.
He extracts himself from Ella’s arms and jogs over, taking the porch steps two at a time. “Winnie fucking Darling. Where the fuck did you come from? Everyone thought you were dead!”
“Hi, Tad,” I say.
The night Peter Pan showed up and stole me away, I had just been hooking up with Anthony hours earlier and the day before that, I had been hooking up with Tad.
It wasn’t a coincidence that they were best friends and also not a coincidence that I was hooking up with both of them, not-so-secretly.
They were constantly in competition with each other to the point I questioned whether or not they were actually best friends or just best rivals.
Towards the end, as my birthday approached and my mom got more and more neurotic, and I buried my terror deeper and deeper at the thought of turning out just like her, I know I used Tad and Anthony as a distraction.
Ella joins Tad on the porch and makes a show of collecting his hand in hers. She had a huge crush on him when we were hooking up, and I would sometimes find her peeking through the curtains of her bedroom window when he dropped me off.
I’m glad she got the guy she wanted, but Tad was always kind of an idiot. She deserves better, to be honest.
“Seriously.” Tad shakes Ella loose and then runs his hand through his hair like he’s losing his damn mind. “Winnie. Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry I left without telling you. I had family stuff going on.”
Understatement of the fucking century.
Still have family stuff going on.
When will it ever end?
Tad leans his ass into the porch railing. “I feel like I’m seeing a ghost.”
Ella crosses her arms over her chest.
“Hi, Ella.”
“Are you back for good?”
“No,” I say too quickly.
“Wait.” Tad narrows his eyes at his girl. “Did you know she was back?”
Ella shrugs innocently. “I’ve seen her here a few times but it’s been a while.”
“Ella! I asked you!”
“No you didn’t!”
“Yes I did!”
“Well I wasn’t the only one! Anthony saw her months ago at the tea house! Why don’t you ask him why he didn’t tell you?”
Oh crap. I’m really regretting coming out here now. I just wanted some fresh air.
“You guys, I’m sorry. Tad, it’s not Ella’s fault. I should have let you know I was okay.”
Ella looks wounded and embarrassed, and Tad is just flustered and pissed.
“I can’t believe you kept it from me. I was worried about her. I was worried about you!” he says to me now. “I even filed a police report!”
“You did?” Ella and I say in unison.
“Yes!”
I sense Vane approaching the front of the house from the backyard. I sense him like a rising tidal wave about to swallow me whole.
Goosebumps run down my forearms.
I’m not sure if I want to shoo these two away to save them the intensity of Vane’s attention or keep them here so I can show off Vane, proving just how far I’ve come.
Ella and Tad keep arguing, mostly about Anthony now, when the Dark One, the jabberwocky with a thirst for blood and a scowl that melts iron, steps onto the porch.
His steps are intentional as he crosses the porch and comes to stand beside me, half his body leaning casually against the house.
Ella and Tad go silent.
Vane puts a cigarette in his mouth and pulls out his lighter, the case clicking open loudly with a quick snap of his fingers.
They watch him as the flame is pulled to the end of the cigarette and Vane inhales.
The lighter snaps shut.
Vane exhales smoke.
“Holy shit,” Ella mutters and Tad scowls at her before quickly looking back at Vane, as if he’s a spitting snake who could lunge at any moment.
My face warms, and I huddle back into the blanket, hiding the smile on my face.
Vane knows what he’s doing, and I think he’s doing it mostly for me. He won’t ever admit to taking on the role of my show pony, but whether he admits to it or not is beside the point. Because he is and I am enjoying it.
Ella’s astonished expression, mouth in an O, eyes wide, sends a flare of pleasure deep down in my belly.
“Who are you?” Tad asks with the shaky unease of a man who might have just crossed paths with a monster.
“Who are you?” Vane parrots back, and Tad blinks as if he’s unsure if it’s a question or an insult.
“I’m a friend of Winnie’s,” Tad answers.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. And I thought she was missing.”
Vane gestures to me. “Here she is.”
“I thought…Winnie…” Tad sighs, unsure of which direction to take. I start to feel bad for him and jump to his rescue.
“They were just leaving,” I say.
“Come on.” Ella hooks her hand again in Tad’s and pulls him toward the stairs.
“We’re having a party,” Tad blurts at me.
Ella grimaces.
Vane takes another hit from his cigarette.
“Tonight,” he adds. “At Ella’s. You should come.”
“Should we?” Vane says.
Tad glances at Vane again. It’s hard to say if the invitation included Vane or was solely for me. But with Vane staring at him down the bridge of his nose, Tad can only nod vigorously.
“You have room for three more?” Vane asks easily. He’s playing with Tad now.
“There’s more of you?” Tad asks.
Ella continues to fidget beside him.
“Oh yeah.” Vane laughs and then takes a hit from his cigarette.
“The more the merrier,” Tad answers in a tone of voice that says the opposite.
“Then maybe we’ll stop by.”
Ella finally gets Tad moving and down the stairs. “Bye, Winnie,” she says and Tad waves over his shoulder. They leave together in the SUV.
I make a face at Vane.
“What?” he says as if he does not already know.
“In case you’ve forgotten, we’re being hunted by Witch Killers.”
“And?” He takes the chair on the other side of me.
“And we put them in harm’s way by going over there.”
“They look like they could use some excitement in their very boring mortal lives.”
“I’m not sure they’d agree with a Witch Killer knife in their back.”
Vane laughs. The cigarette disappears. We both stare out at the empty street.
“You fuck that one?” he asks after a minute and my belly soars.
“Why, are you jealous?”
There was a time, not that long ago, when the thought of Vane being jealous of anyone having anything to do with me would have sent me sailing straight to the moon.
I was so desperate for his attention. I would have taken anything.
Jealousy. Cruelty. Even contempt. But I’m more mature about it now. Just barely though.
“Jealous of that little shit? No,” he says and I frown, disappointed.
The connection between us hums and Vane adds, “But I will make sure he knows who you belong to now.”
A flush of warmth. I smile.
“Stop being so pleased with yourself,” he says and looks away, but I catch a hint of laughter in his voice and the connection reignites, flush with warmth.
Some of the chill of the morning subsides and the goosebumps on my arms fade, and I close my eyes to savor it. Every little drop.