Chapter 12 #2
I don’t know what I expected from this fearsome pirate, but that wasn’t it.
Not the way he sounds like a wounded animal.
Not the way he looks at me with a mix of regret and pain.
My heart—a cloistered and protected thing, soft and untried—suddenly cracks open, revealing lifeblood that mingles with his.
“I’m all right.” I press my palms to his cheeks, the stubble rough under my skin. “I’m right here, James. I’m not hurt.”
He pulls in a deep, shuddering breath, then—as if remembering himself—he blinks and pulls away from my hands.
I let them drop, unsure of what this means or where we go from here.
“Come down for supper. Then rest. You need a break.” He leans closer, so close I think he’ll kiss me again, then he pushes off the wall and strides from my room.
Widow plops down next to me. There’s a roaring fire in the middle of the diamond created by the cottages. Sparks of embers fly up to the half moon, bright as they leave the flames then darkening as the shadows eat them up.
“So, I’m going to need details.” She elbows me lightly as I take a bite of the crispy fish Cookson claims he made just for me.
“No details.” I chew, then have to stifle a moan at how good it is. It’s somehow buttery even though it was cooked over an open flame.
Cookson watches me from across the fire, though he’s trying to pretend to be busy serving the pirates.
I take a bigger bite and give him a thumbs up. He seems to swell with pride, then gives Starkey a generous helping of ribs.
“This is a feast.” I try the vegetables—some of them completely unfamiliar—from a skewer. The thing that looks like a pepper has a little spice, but it’s sweeter, the red meat of it like a treat.
“Don’t change the subject.” She balances her plate on her lap and slices off a piece of her fish and plops it into her mouth.
“Good, right?”
She chews for a moment, then swallows. “I hate to admit it, but Cookson is good at what he does. Not as good as me, of course, let’s not get looney. But he can cook a mean fish. Now spill.”
I keep glancing around for Hook, but I haven’t seen him since he left my room.
I’m still reeling from what happened, from everything he said.
His voice is on constant replay in my mind, and I get chills each time.
I don’t understand him, not completely, but I understood his emotion, the deep well of sorrow in him that I’ve barely seen.
“Moira, come on,” Widow wheedles.
“I don’t know if I can. It all happened so fast. Smee was in there, and he scared me—”
“Yeah, I know. I was bringing the firewood when I heard you scream. Hook took off like someone had shoved a hot poker up his ass.” She shrugs. “I figured he had it handled. But when you didn’t come out, I wanted to make sure—”
“So, you didn’t just happen by to tell me about the food, then?” I give her a playful elbowing. “You were snooping.”
“Absolutely.” She takes another big bite of fish, then talks around it. “I was in service, like I said. I used to deal exclusively in baked goods and secrets. Maybe a gooseberry jam here or there.”
“I wouldn’t know a gooseberry if it bit me on the ass.”
“They don’t bite.” She stops chewing and leans closer, looking around suspiciously. “As far as I know.”
I smile. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Sometimes.” She nods. “I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
I want to thank her, to tell her that I’m so glad I met her.
But I don’t. I can’t. The last time I made a friend on this island, it didn’t turn out so well.
God, I just made out with the man who murdered said friend.
My mind’s muddled with too many feelings.
It’s like I can’t fit them all inside me, and my heart is still sore where Hook ripped it apart. “Because he hurt you.”
“What happened right then? You just sort of … went gray.”
I clear my throat. “Just thinking about things.”
“Like what?”
“About …” Hell, I may as well tell her some of it—the juicy bits are what she’s after. I drop my voice to a whisper. “You saw what you saw.”
“Indeed I did.” She waggles her eyebrows.
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s Hook. He’s a bad guy. He’s told me as much.” He’s a villain.
“Mmhmm.” She spears one of the sweet and spicy veggies and chews it thoughtfully. “Has he been bad to you?”
“Bad to me?”
She points her fork at me. “Has he hurt you?”
No, just the opposite. He’s protected me at all costs. But I can’t same the same for Coy. “Not me. But he killed a friend of mine.”
She nods. “The Lost Boy?”
“Yes.” I drop my gaze, shame washing over me. I kissed Coy’s killer. I kissed him, and I liked it. God, I’m a shitty friend at best.
“Hook will kill any Lost Boy he can get his hands on. Everyone knows that.” She says it so matter-of-factly. As if it’s completely normal to murder on sight.
“Because he hates Peter?” I know from Wendy’s stories that Hook hating Peter is nothing new, but given the rawness of Hook earlier, I think the hate has reached boiling sunspot levels.
“I don’t think so, though I’m sure that plays into it quite a bit.”
“Then why?”
“To set them free.”
I drop my fork onto my plate. “That’s crazy, Widow. Death isn’t setting someone free.”
“It is when it’s a Lost Boy. They aren’t like us, Moira.
They aren’t real.” She says it with utter conviction, and somehow it strikes a slightly wild chord inside me.
Maybe because I can still see the fear and pain in Coy’s eyes and hear his voice telling me to run.
Maybe because the guilt from that night still eats at me whenever I get a moment to be still.
Or maybe because I’m falling under a spell woven by his killer.
All of it. It’s all of it, and Widow has lit a fuse that sizzles and sparks inside me.
I scoff. “Real. What the hell does that even mean?” My voice rises as the image of the cinderblock wall threatens in my mind.
“None of this is real. You aren’t real. A part fairy who was in service in England in what, the 1800s?
And yet you’re here talking to me?” I put my plate down and rub my temples.
“I’m really going insane. I’m her. I’m turning into her, and I can’t stop it. Maybe I never could.”
The voices around the fire are quieter now, and when I look across the flames, I freeze.
Widow reaches for me, lightly gripping my forearm. “Moira, I know it’s hard to hear. I get it, but—”
“Stop!” I jump to my feet.
The man I saw through the orange flames turns and hurries into one of the cottages. “Corey!” I dash around the fire, almost running into Bill Jukes, then manage to sidestep and keep going. “Corey, wait!” I ignore the lingering ache from my mermaid bite and move faster.
When I burst through the cottage door, Corey is standing just ahead of me, his back to me. “Corey!”
He sighs deeply, then turns to me. “Hi, Moira.”