Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Tinker Bell
I should have warded the house better. Should never have gone to sleep.
I fought his arm and it was a steel band across my ribs, and every time I twisted he let me, the way you let a fish run. Cold air tore up my bare legs. My magic came up hot in my sternum and went nowhere — nothing to aim it at, nothing to stand on, nothing under my feet at all.
Caspian was sprawled on the sidewalk below us, pinned. Dark magic, obviously. I'd told him twice I didn't need his help.
Between the two of us we might have held them off.
"You're not going anywhere, Tink." Pan's mouth was at my ear. "You'll want to be helpful about the shadow. People who aren't helpful don't stay."
Never. It came out of the bandana as noise.
Why did he even need me? He had a witch.
He laughed like I'd said something charming. "There she is. I've missed that."
He climbed. Bourbon Street ran out beneath us, all neon and Christmas lights and people who had no idea, and then Crimson Stakes went by under his boots — Angelo's casino, lit up gold, full of the only men in this city who could have helped me.
If I got loose I'd fall. Onto Bourbon or onto a roof, and either one would probably kill me, and I'd still have the gag in and my hands behind my back.
But somebody down there might look up. Somebody might see a woman drop out of the sky and tell Angelo Santi about it, and Angelo would tell Caspian, and Caspian would come.
That was the whole plan. Fall and be seen. That was what I had.
I threw everything I had against Pan's arm. He tightened his grip and didn't break stride.
My hair whipped across my face and I couldn't see past it. The noise of the Quarter thinned out and then stopped, and it didn't fade the way sound fades when you're leaving it behind. It cut.
The air turned hot. Wet and thick and green-smelling, December gone out of it entirely.
We weren't over New Orleans anymore.
We landed and I fought his arm. He let me go.
I ran. No idea where I was, hair stuck to my face, mud and leaves and sticks under my bare feet, running because running was the only thing left that I could choose.
A hand closed in my hair and yanked me off my feet. I slammed back into his chest.
"Going somewhere, Tink?"
Stop calling me Tink. It came out of the bandana as nothing.
"No one can hear you out here." He pulled the gag down. Took his time about it. "Scream all you like."
Then he pushed the hair out of my eyes, almost gently, so I could see.
I knew this place.
Lumina Glade. And across the clearing, the old Saint Louis Cathedral, still standing the way I'd left it — the rose window blown out, the frame black and empty. I'd stood in there. I'd stood right in there and done what I did to Marsha Cadieux, and I hadn't come back since.
Something pulled at me from across the clearing. Not the loose crawl of magic sitting in an object — this had a direction, and it wanted me to face it. My magic came up and pushed back so hard my teeth ached.
The portal. The one to the Elder Dimension.
I knew where it was without looking. It opened inside the old Saint Louis Cathedral, under the rose window where I fought Marsha and the dark demon Ari. The two of them had been working together.
Peter smiled and gestured toward the cathedral. “Ah, I see you’ve guessed why I brought you.”
I wasn’t going to be one of his women that followed him like a puppy dog. Never happening. Not doing a thing to help this man.
I threaded my fingers through my hair and yanked it out of my face. “I’m not opening the portal.”
Wendy came up alongside him. He kissed her and pulled her against him. She looked at me and her gray eyes flicked to black for a second. Everything in me went still. What was inside her had looked at me as if to study the enemy. I just hoped my magic was strong enough to fight her.
He stopped kissing her. “Wendy can open the portal. But she can’t find my shadow.”
Black magic couldn’t locate something dark? That was a new one on me.
“And you think I can?”
He lifted a lock of my hair and I slapped his hand away. The air snapped where we touched. A spark shocked me. I stumbled backward. “Don’t touch me.”
My mouth ran dry. It was as if our magic had gone to war.
“Even just touching your hair, I can feel it.”
Disgusting. His words made my skin crawl.
“What does that mean?” Hated asking but I had to know.
He walked around me, his gaze flicking over my body. “The shard. You absorbed some of that Christmas Star’s magic. Not only can you find my shadow, but you’ll be able to mend us back together.”
Cold went through me and settled in.
That's what I was. Not bait, not a hostage, not something he'd taken to hurt Caspian with. I was the tool. He'd needed one for however long he'd been sitting in that cell, and I'd walked into a wrecked church and picked one up off the floor and put it in my own hand.
Even if he was right, there was no way I was mending them back together. It would be like bringing back Genghis Khan. I wasn’t going to be responsible for that.
“No.”
He grabbed my hair, twisting his fingers in it. Millions of sparks went off around me and my body shook. “Oh, you will.” His grip tightened. “Wendy, open the damn portal.”
She came forward out of the dark and she didn't look at me once. Her hands went up and her mouth started moving.
"Ianua clausa, aperi te.” Her words were flawless and she spoke in a clear voice. She could open the portal!
Stop. Stop it. Please stop.
But she didn’t.
“Vinculum solvo. Limen frango." Those words were powerful. Forceful.
A loud pop echoed in my ears. Wind gushed around me.
Every hair on my arms came up and my ears popped like I’d dropped a thousand feet.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
The portal was forming.
I gritted my teeth and willed my arms to move. My legs. Anything. Nothing answered. Whatever Pan had put in me had my whole body and I hung there in his fist, awake for every second of it, and that was worse than the flying had been.
Wind came up out of nowhere. The air in front of the cathedral turned and spun and kept going faster, and the pull I'd felt across the grass turned into something with a mouth.
No. No. Not through that.
"Ah." Pan dragged me toward it. "Home."
He said it soft. That was the part that got me — not the grip, not the sparks. He was going home, and he'd been away a long time, and I was the thing he'd stopped to pick up on the way.
Wendy stepped through and was gone.
Pan swung me over his shoulder. My hair fell and all I could see was the ground — mud, leaves, twigs, going by.
Shitshitshitshit
This was my own damn fault. Caspian was pinned to a sidewalk in the Bywater. Angelo didn't know. Keir and Brynn didn't know. Nobody on this side of the world had any idea where I was, and by the time they did I'd be lost in the Elder Dimension.
Then the ground stopped being there.
Brown and blue and red and yellow swam past me, and my stomach turned over and over. I shut my eyes and clenched my fists.
Don’t get sick. Don’t get sick. Don’t get sick.
Everything stopped. I opened my eyes.
Pan put me down on my feet gentler than I thought possible. “We’re here, Tink.”
My legs shook and I swayed. He clasped my arm. I shoved my tangled hair out of my face.
I glanced around. The first thing my gaze locked on was Wendy. She stared at me. There was a blank look on her face as if she were in a trance. Not really seeing me. No emotion. Nothing.
At least her eyes were gray.
My magic stirred inside me—all of it, fast, hot behind my sternum and running down both arms, and for one second I had everything I needed. Thank God, it hadn’t dimmed crossing over. If anything it had woken up.
Pan snapped his fingers. “Wendy.”
She stepped in behind me. I felt her hands come up and I turned as fast as I could, which was not fast at all.
"Vis tua dormiat. Manus ligo. Taceat ignis."
Let your power sleep. I bind the hands. Let the fire be silent.
It went out of me. Not drained — shut, like a door pulled to somewhere behind my ribs, and my magic was still in there, I could feel every bit of it, and I couldn't reach a single thread. I made a sound I'd never made in my life.
Pan pulled me close. “Your powers are just dormant until I need them. Can’t have you escaping, love.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m not your love.”
“For now,” he whispered in my ear.
I shuddered. Crap, he was going to try to do to me what he had done to Wendy.
She was standing three feet off the path with her hands at her sides, watching nothing, waiting.
A woman with a spine like that and years of training in her hands, and she'd cast a portal for him tonight and bound another witch for him and now she stood there like a shovel he'd set down.
I made myself look at something else.
Red and white flowers I'd never seen in my life, growing thick under trees that were almost pine and weren't. The air came sweet and heavy and I couldn't name half of what was in it. Under it all, faint and unmistakable — salt. Somewhere past those trees there was water.
“Welcome to the Elder Dimension, love.” Pan spread his arms like he’d built it. “In case you’re wondering, we are in the Forgotten Forest.”
I said nothing.
He almost seemed a little too giddy for me as if he’d downed a bottle of wine. “Soon, I’ll take you to my home—Never Neverland. It’s across the Grand Sea. Tell me, do you sense my shadow?”
“You just made my powers dormant. How could I?”
He laughed. "So true." He started up the pebbled path and pulled me with him. "There'll be a surprise for you when we reach Neverland."
I didn't have to wonder what it was. It was standing three feet off the path, waiting to be told what to do next.