I don’t like underestimating people and I suspect I’ve underestimated far too many since landing on Neverland.
I underestimated Peter Pan and Vane and the new Darling.
James is still up in the air.
He’s pacing the barroom, his right hand clamped over his left wrist behind his back, his hook sticking out behind him.
In almost every room, there is a worn path on the hardwood floor where the varnish has worn off. The Captain likes to pace, it would seem.
I crack a peanut shell and pop the innards into my mouth. “Will you sit down?”
“I don’t think when I’m sitting.”
“I can’t think when you’re pacing.”
He stops in the middle of the room and furrows his brow over his green eyes. “What do you have to think about?”
“Strategy, Captain. Because we need one. Like now.”
On a breath, he spins and resumes his course. “You said the Remaldi royals were working with the fae queen? So we need to pick a side—”
“I am never on a side.” I pop another peanut into my mouth and crunch it between my molars. “There is only my side.”
He scoffs at me and waves his hook in the air. “You’re ridiculous and you’re not helping.”
“Mmm well, you’re wasting time. Any minute Holt will come knocking on your door, maybe even with the fae queen in tow, and so you’ll have to know what you plan to say to them. The fae queen will eventually want you dead. Or subservient and while I think you’d wear submission quite well” —the glare he shoots me could roast a chicken— “I suspect being the fae queen’s puppet will not. And Holt will just want to use you and your men as cannon fodder, since the Darling took out several of his.”
I drop the cracked shells of several peanuts into an empty glass on the bartop, then dust off my pants. “Tell me, Captain, what is your preferred outcome?”
He looks at me over his shoulder as he paces to the windows. “I want you dead, Peter Pan dead, and Smee and Cherry safely returned here.”
“Well, you’ll probably get two out of four, so your odds aren’t bad.”
“I will kill you,” he promises.
“I’m sure you will.” I flash him my innocent smile, but I keep my chin up so he can get a good look at the crocodile teeth tattooed on my flesh.
He snorts and comes back around. I head him off between two round tables.
We are not much different in height, but he’s wearing bulkier clothes than I am, all pomp and circumstance with this one. I like it. There’s something about James that reminds me of a crust of dirt on a beautiful vintage timepiece. I want to lick my thumb and smudge it off and see how he gleams beneath.
“If we drew a Venn diagram of your preferred outcome and my preferred outcome, we would have a nice overlapping center,” I tell him.
A wrinkle appears between his brows and his eyes search mine looking for the catch. “Which is what?”
“Peter Pan dead.
“Why do you want him dead?”
“I have my reasons.”
I could tell him about Wendy. It would motivate him even more. But I haven’t decided if I want to compete with him yet.
I am a greedy fuck, after all. And what’s mine is mine.
But I think the feud between Pan and Hook has been going on just long enough he doesn’t really need a sensible reason anymore. History is reason enough.
James isn’t a strategist. He thinks he is. But he’s been misusing his strengths. James has a knack for motivating people to his cause, even if it’s a shitty one.
If he would stop fucking around and use that power, instead of chasing demons, he might shift earth.
“How about we team up and kill Peter Pan together?”
“He’s unkillable,” he says, but I can hear the desire in his voice for that to be untrue.
“Or maybe no one has used the right weapon.”
There is the slightest uptick at the corner of his mouth. I can’t help but sink my gaze to it, to the way his lips curve over one another. A tasty fucking snack.
“You have such a weapon?” he asks.
I give him a light slap to the cheek and he growls in the base of his throat.
“You’re looking at it, Captain. I am, after all, the Devourer of Men.”
Smee returns with Cherry. Both are covered in blood.
I don’t need confirmation from her to know whose blood it is.
I would recognize my brother’s scent anywhere.
“What happened?” James asks.
“I stabbed Vane,” Smee answers and goes around behind the bar to pour herself a drink.
Keeping my expression blank, my emotions indiscernible, I ask, “And how did you manage that?”
“She has a magical sword.” Cherry’s voice wavers. There are wet streaks in the dirt on her freckled face. “I think she killed him.” Fresh tears widen the trails.
I grit my teeth. “Did you?”
“No,” Smee answers and slings back a shot of apple whisky.
My relief is nearly palpable.
“But he’ll need a lot more than a bandage to heal from it,” Smee adds.
The pounding in my head is sudden and sharp. I warned my baby brother. Hell, I had planned to teach him a lesson myself. But that was me, this is her.
“Will he die?” I ask her.
She sets her glass down, puts her hands on the bar and leans over it. “He was going to kill Cherry.”
“They promised to return her!” the Captain shouts.
“It’s my fault.” Cherry’s voice wobbles and she drags her hand beneath her nose. “It was all my fault.”
“What was?” her brother asks.
“Winnie. I cornered her in a room with the Neverland Death Shadow and somehow it got into her.”
Well that’s definitely not how I thought that had gone down.
“Points to you, Cherry Girl. That was bold.”
She rakes her teeth over her bottom lip and shakes her head.
“Bloody hell.” James scratches at the back of his head. “That complicates things.”
“No, it doesn’t.” It does. “It’ll make defeating Peter Pan even easier.” It won’t.
“How do you figure?”
“I saw the Darling in town, remember? She doesn’t have control of the shadow. It’ll be the distraction we need.”
Dubious at best.
But really, I work better when I’m winging it.
“You’ll never get to him,” Cherry says and we all look at her. “Peter Pan. But Winnie and Vane are his weaknesses. If you want to know how to get to him.” And then she turns and leaves the room.
“Looks like your sister is already proving to be an advantage.”
James takes a step like he means to go after her but pauses before he does. “Let’s set up a meeting with the royals. The fae and the Darklands. Let’s be done with Peter Pan once and for all.”
When he’s gone, I return to my peanuts. I’m fucking starving. The little taste of pirate blood was not enough. Not even close.
Smee pours herself another drink and swirls the liquor around in the glass.
“I have a question, Smee. Something that’s been bothering me.”
Her tongue pokes at the inside of her cheek. “Answers cost you a pound sterling.”
I reach into my pocket and produce a coin and flick it across the bar to her. She snatches it easily from the air, but then looks at it in her open palm.
“Go on,” she says.
“Did you know Wendy Darling was pregnant when she left Neverland?”
She pokes again at her cheek, but then runs her tongue along her bottom teeth.
The second coin rings out when I send it sailing down the length of the bar toward her and it hits an abandoned glass.
“Did you know she was on Everland?”
Her gaze meets mine.
“You are widely traveled in the Isles and you have birds everywhere. Of course you knew.”
She straightens, sets the glass aside.
“Does James know there is a Darling girl on the other side of the island that is his great-great–”
Smee reaches across the polished bar top to clamp her hand over my mouth. “Don’t.”
Brave woman, getting near the sharp teeth of a crocodile.
Gently, I take her by the wrist and pull her hand away. “Do you plan to tell him?”
“Why do you care?”
“Answers cost a pound sterling.” I smile at her. She rolls her eyes spectacularly and yanks her hand from my grip.
“Why didn’t you get her out?” I ask. “Why not tell him?”
“Wendy Darling was in an Everland prison. The obstacles and complexities of breaking her out were insurmountable and she was not my mess to clean up. And despite what people say about James, his heart might be the biggest on all of Neverland. He cares, deeply, and if I’d told him about Wendy, he would have gone after her, and then he’d either be dead, or fighting two wars on two islands when the war he already had was already costing him more than he could afford.
“Furthermore, what do you think Peter Pan would have done if he realized the Darling line was now a Hook line? The best-case scenario was to rescue the baby and return it to its world.”
“So did you?”
I may be James’s enemy, and James may be one of Smee’s closest friends, but I’m not Smee’s enemy and Smee is not one to hold grudges. She is a woman of action and she’s always strategizing.
I suspect she’s at least half the reason James has been able to get by all these years without getting his dick chopped off.
I can practically see the wheels turning in her gaze now.
Smee is a walking, talking chessboard and I do love chess.
“I did rescue the baby,” she admits.
“To perpetuate the legacy of Peter Pan and the Darlings?”
“To keep the status quo,” she answers. “And because moving that baby to the mortal realm was the safest place for it to be. I promised Wendy I would hide her daughter and I did. But Peter Pan still found her. Unfortunately, I underestimated his ability to find a Darling.”
“But you’ve been checking up on the Darlings all along, haven’t you.” It’s not a question.
“I did what I could.”
I nod and crack open another peanut. “I wouldn’t tell him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll be angry with you, and then he’ll go after her and then I’d have to kill him.”
I pop the peanut in my mouth, crush it between my teeth and give her a wink.
She scowls at me.
I think if Smee could, she’d be stabbing me next.
