“Grab that brat!” A man yelled, pointing toward the door. His dirty, wet shirt stuck to his chest, the victim of spilled ale.
A figure hurtled for the door, sliding between patrons or knocking them aside. A hooded cloak hid their form from behind, but they stopped briefly at the door and looked back to the room.
The air charged and prickled like the moment before a lightning strike. Hook’s breath caught in his throat as the rest of the room blurred.
Tink stared back at him. It was her. It had to be. Nothing else explained the wide-eyed stare or the way one look at her strangled him. The moment vanished as she slipped out the door, mandolin in tow.
She’d pay for stealing from him, cursing him.
Hook bolted toward the door.
Chapter 4
Tink
Tink sprinted across the rope bridge, not caring how it creaked or swayed. Her pulse pounded in her ears, each beat urging her to run faster. Falling onto the beach below would be better than getting caught by that arrogant pirate.
That look—she shivered as she raced through the twilight. No, he certainly hadn’t forgotten that she’d stolen from him. It didn’t matter that she needed the Heart of Fire to earn the merfolk’s trust and get one step closer to her real goal: home. Pirates only valued gold, and she’d taken something worth a heap of it.
Filthy, rotten, no-good pirates.
Her wings ached, straining against the bindings she’d wrapped around her torso. She shouldn’t have come to play at the Crow’s Roost tonight, not with so many ships in port after the storms. But she needed what money she could get, and drunk humans tipped pretty ladies well…when they thought they were human. Sure, she got plenty of unwanted looks and offers too, but those she could deal with. If they knew she was apixie, they’d want the dust she no longer had. She’d had plenty of it once. It came naturally and plentifully in the vale. Here though, she’d managed to make little after she’d shed all she had to save Lily from Blackbeard, and even that little bit of dust was weeks ago. Nothing about her wings worked well outside of the vale.
She stumbled a bit as she left the bridge and veered onto the path running through the edge of town toward the forest. One glance over her shoulder sent her heart racing even faster.
Hook crashed through the bar’s door. His gaze found her in the dimming light without error.Shit. The crimson lining of his jacket fluttered as he lunged onto the bridge after her.
Tink could lose him in the forest. She had to. Of all the rotten luck…
Bad enough it was rumored Blackbeard might be in port soon, and now Captain Hook out of the blue? The very last two pirates she ever wanted to see again.
She propped her mandolin against the back wall of the last building. It wouldn’t aid her flight, and Hook wasn’t after an instrument.
Leaves and underbrush crunched and crashed as she sprinted down various animal paths. When she looked back over one shoulder, the toe of her boot caught on a root, sending her tumbling to the ground. Tink’s arms and chest slammed into the packed dirt. The impact rattled through her bones and knocked the wind from her chest. Beyond the buzzing in her ears, the unmistakable sound of someone hacking their way through the brush reached her. Pain faded in a rush of adrenalin as she pushed to her feet and took off again.
Soon she’d be to safety. It wasn’t the Sylvanna Vale, her real home, but it’d do. For now, at least. If that greedy pirate caught up to her, she might never see the vale again.
Tink nearly cried in relief as rays of moonlight touched her treehouse—ramshackle boards and branches that made a twisting house of connected rooms in and around the massive, near-hollow trunk of the old tree. She could take credit for the retractable rope ladder, a catapult to shoot fireworks, and other defenses her tinkering had conjured. The original structure was someone else’s abandoned creation though, one she’d fixed up and improved.
“Finally!” Tink grabbed the rope ladder and scrambled up one rung at a time. If Hook found her treehouse, he wouldn’t get in. She’d see to that. Worst case scenario, she’d unbind her wings and fly away when he wasn’t looking. They didn’t work well outside the Sylvanna Vale, as if the very air was different and caused them to struggle through it, but they could get her away. Maybe.
Heavy, racing breaths echoed in the dark room as she pulled up the rope ladder and secured it within. She slammed the door shut. Her cloak found a home on the floor before she pulled off her tunic and started to unbind the fabric from around her torso.
Movement in the shadows drew her eye. Tink froze, half-undressed, as she peered into the darkness between stacks of supplies she’d hoarded away. Only a thin slat of light spilled into the room from the lantern she’d left lit in the adjoining one. Her hands froze.
No. She hadn’t left a lantern burning. She wouldn’t. Her wings fought against the remaining fabric, pushing free and sending it sliding to the ground as she entered the room. “Who’s there?” The snapped question was met with silence. Did Hook beat her here? He couldn’t have, could he?
She turned away from the lamp, back toward the room she had vacated.
“Wings?” someone whispered.
“A pixie!” came another voice.
She’d barely turned toward the voices before a blanket cloaked her in musty darkness. Tink screamed and clawed at the cloth.
“Don’t let her go!”
Hands grabbed at her. She screeched as someone yanked a delicate wing.
