“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’treal.” 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.Youaren’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 intoher, 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.”
“Corey!” I blink several times, as if I can somehow clear whatever weird vision I’m having at the moment. Corey Glavin lived next door to me in my dorm. He was always hanging around but never talked much. I didn’t even know what he was majoring in besides smoking weed and eating Doritos. “It’s you.”
“It’s me.” He’s holding a plate of food, the steam curling up in front of his face in little tendrils.
“How?” I’m utterly stunned. Can’t move stunned. Brain fried stunned. He even speaks with a British accent now, not that I ever actually spoke to him much at college.
He gestures to a small table. “Come on. Let’s talk.” He sits down and slides his plate in front of him.
I sit across from him and glance at Widow skulking past the window. “What the hell? How did you get here? Did Peter bring you?”
“No,” he says quickly. He fiddles with his fork then drops it onto the table. “I came through the triangle.”
“Huh?”
“The Bermuda Triangle. It’s how I got to the mainland in the first place.” He gives me a sheepish look, his dark hair falling into his eyes before he swipes it away. “Captain told me where to find you and what to do to stay close.”
“Hook … Hook sent you?” I lean back, my chair creaking as I push it away from the table.
“Yeah. He told me to watch you, so I did.”
Ice water trickles along my spine, chilling me to my marrow. “How? I mean, how did you get into the school? No.” I press my palms to my cheeks. “This is wrong. You’re lying. This is just another delusion. It’s likeThe Wizard of Ozwhere I take all the people in my real life and stick them into the fantasy. ‘And you were there, and you were there’. Like, you’re a farm hand, but you’re also the tin man. My brain is totally fucked, but at least it’s a little bit brilliant.” My heart is racing, my mind spiraling. What’s real? What is fuckingreal?
He takes a nervous bite of what looks like rice. “I, um, don’t know what you’re talking about. But yeah, I was sent to watch you. The night you disappeared, I knew what must’ve happened, so I came straight back here to tell the captain.” He takes another bite. “Glad to be back, actually. I missed the sea. Hated everything about school.”
“How did you even get accepted? What did you put on your application? That you’re a grade-A pirate? Top marks in thievery and pillaging?” I laugh, the sound high and admittedly hysterical.
“Oh, no.” He shakes his head, the hair falling into his eyes again. “I didn’t do any of that. I just found the student who was living next door to you and—”
“Youkilledthe real Corey Glavin?” I back up even farther, the chair scraping across the floor.
