“Right.”
“Was she a wish, too?”
“I don’t know.”
I glower at her.
She throws her hands up. “I really don’t know. You’d have to ask Peter. The island’s magic isn’t something people like me understand. The fae in my blood is too thin for me to even hear the island speaking. I think maybe the longer I’m near it though, the louder it will become. I can’t say for sure, but I feel a pull to this place. Even when I was over on Blackbeard’s Cay, I could sit on the pier and stare into the mist for hours, just wondering what awaits me here.”
A wish. Peter made it clear I was never allowed to use that word on the island, that wishes were dangerous, especially if they were granted. It would mean you owed someone something. Does he owe the island? It’s all so tangled, and the way Widow describes Neverland, it’s as if it’s a living, breathing person.
“Good chat.” She stands and claps her hands. “I should go and see what Cookson is making for—”
“Wait!” I scoot back and block the door. “I have more.”
“One more.” Now she’s the one with the hands on her hips. “Not because I don’t want to help you. I do. But I can already tell that the person you should be asking these questions isn’t me. It’s Pan or Hook. They’re the two people who know the most about the island.”
“Do you know about the shadows?”
“Only rumors about Peter Pan using his shadow like it’s another one of him.” She shakes out her arms as if the thought unsettles her.
“No, not that shadow. That’s true by the way—it’s how he took me from my dorm room. I’m talking about the shadow children I saw when Hook came for me at Peter’s hideout.”
“Shadow children?” She full-on shudders. “Regular children are awful enough, don’t you think? With all the crying and the needing attention and just … Yick.”
I can’t suppress a smile. “Maybe you’d like them if you had one of your own.”
She pulls a face, a completelydisgustedface. “May I never meet such a fate.”
“So you’ve never seen a shadow child with freaky red eyes?”
“No.” She sidesteps me.
“Wait!”
“I said one more, and you asked one more, and now I’m going to go investigate what’s cooking down in the kitchen.” She inhales sharply, and though I can’t smell anything in particular, she says, “He’s got some fresh rosemary boiling in some sort of oil. Could be olive. Flavoring it. Wonder what that’s for.” She scoots between me and the door and strides to the stairs. “After supper, you need to get to bed. We have to keep working on your fighting in the morning.” She pauses. “Though this place has no morning—but you know what I mean.” She hops down the stairs with nimble steps.
A laugh behind me has me spinning.
“Sally?”
The bird hops into the open window, her gaze raking over my room.
“How’d you follow us?” I walk over to her. “I hope you didn’t go near the whirlpool. That was nuts.”
She lets out a deep squawk and turns to look out the window. I follow her line of sight to where Starkey and Bill Jukes are having a wrestling match on a small patch of greenery in front of one of the cottages.
“Get him in the gut!” one of the pirates yells.
“But not too hard,” adds Skylights who stands to the side with his arms crossed. There are stacks of crates and chests behind him. It looks like the pirates brought all their booty up to their hideout and then got violent for fun. Typical.
I lean out and wince when Starkey lands a hard shot to Bill’s left cheek. But Bill only spits a wad of blood and lashes out with his own vicious right hook. Just watching them makes me wonder how in the hell I’ll ever have a chance against Bill—or anyone, for that matter.
Starkey howls, then backs away, his fists still up. “You going easy on me, big guy?” He thumbs the blood from his lip and circles the giant. “I barely felt that.”
I’m beginning to suspect my self-defense instructor was right. Maybe I should back away from this training thing. Then again, I refuse to be an easy target ever again. Calico Jack was more than enough to show me that. My stomach sours at the thought of the man. Thedeadman. Thanks to Hook.
“Room for one more?”
