Two shadows leap from the box in my hand.
Two shadows.
It catches me so off guard that both of them slip through my grip.
One goes left, disappearing into the branches of the Never Tree, and the other goes right.
“Fucking hell. Get them!”
The one on my right knocks over several liquor bottles. They hit the floor with a resounding smash and liquor goes everywhere.
The leaves of the Never Tree rattle and the little pixie bugs blink with frenzied energy.
The twins go left. Vane and I go right.
I follow the shadow—my shadow because I would know it anywhere—out the open balcony doors. It disappears over the stone railing.
Hand to the railing, I leap over it too and hit the ground two stories down with a loud thud. The ground reverberates and the Lost Boys look up from the revelry just as the shadow leaps over the fire pit, embers sparking into the night.
Vane is beside me in an instant. “There,” he says and points to the writhing shadows near the firecracker bushes.
I snap my fingers at the Lost Boys. “None of you fuckers move.”
My skin is crawling and my stomach is twisted into knots. I’ve been waiting decades for this.
The Shadow of Life is mine by right. I have to claim it. I don’t know what’ll happen to me if I don’t.
Vane and I stalk it, trying to cage it in.
The darkness quivers as we draw near. Behind us, the Lost Boys are silent as they watch and somewhere in the distance, the wolves howl.
The island knows the shadow has returned.
“If I miss it, you get ready to catch it,” I tell Vane.
“I know how to handle a shadow,” he says.
“Your black eye says otherwise.”
He scowls at me.
We draw closer.
Closer still.
The hair lifts along the back of my neck and along my arms. I’m less than two feet away. This close to having what is rightfully mine.
Heart drumming in my head, I still my body, ready to leap at the exact right moment.
The shadow is mine. It will be mine. I just have to—
I lunge for it. The shadow dodges me and darts away.
“Fuck!” I yell and Vane and I give chase.
The forest parts for the damn thing, while leaves and branches pull at my hair, my shirt. We follow it to the lagoon, then down the length of the shore, then back into the forest along the path that leads to the road.
My chest tightens as we run. Sweat beads on my forehead and pours down my back.
I’m going to get it. I have to get it.
We burst from the path onto the dirt road and then two miles down and—
“Vane!” I shout. “We’re running out of ground.”
“I know!” he yells back. “I see it.”
We pick up the pace. The shadow must sense us, because it flies through the night as if it were born of nothing but nightmares. And maybe it is. My own personal nightmare. Because nothing matters if I don’t have it.
The window is fucking closing, what is left of my territory shrinking.
“Vane!”
He snatches at it. The shadow springs in the opposite direction, leaps off the trunk of a tree. I claw at the air, feeling the tug of it, the cool rightness of it.
But I’m too late.
So close and yet too far.
The shadow evades me and darts away.
And disappears into the darkness of Captain Hook’s territory.
