“And Pan,” Hook pressed with zero emotion in his voice. His face had taken on a hard, blank cast.
Wendy spoke around the painful constriction in her throat. “Peter Pan is a heartless murderer who—has my brothers captive.” Her voice broke, and tears rushed to her eyes. She had been holding it together until now. The full weight of what could be happening, or might have already happened, to her brothers pummeled the back of her eyes.
A white handkerchief appeared before her.
“Wendy. How do you know that Pan is a murderer?”
She patted at her eyes and discovered Hook kneeling beside her chair. A shaky breath gave her space to find the words. “I saw him kill Sadiq.”
“When?” When Wendy didn’t answer right away, he folded her hand into his and applied gentle pressure. “Wendy, this is very important. When did Pan kill Sadiq?”
A sniffle delayed her answer. “The day before I snuck aboard theJolly Roger.”
“How long were you hiding before Smee found you?”
“A couple hours, maybe.” She gave a watery half-laugh. “Sneaking isn’t my strong suit, I guess.”
“That’s good for me,” Hook teased lightly.
“Pfft.”
Hook surrendered her hand and moved to sit on the couch beside Mirai. Wendy told herself not to mourn the loss. She swiped at her face one last time, feeling somewhat better.
“So, you believe me?” she asked.
Staring across the room in the general direction of the maps above his desk, he shrugged. “More or less.”
Wendy rolled her eyes. “Then you’ll take me to shore?” she pushed.
“No.”
A surprised huff escaped. “What?! Why not?”
Hook rested his right arm across the back of the couch but still didn’t look at her. “I have an appointment to keep and goods to offload before then.”
“Really?!” Wendy knew her eyebrows must be touching her hairline at this point, but she could not believe him.
He turned his face toward her. “Is Pan flying?” he asked with all seriousness.
A full-body shudder shook Wendy as she recalled her headlong flight into the jungle. “Yes.”
“Then I can’t do anything yet,” he said, delivering his words as if remarking on the weather.
She balled up the moist hanky and threw it at his chest. It fluttered unhelpfully to the floor. “Get your own pixie dust, then.”
A halfhearted sneer flashed over Hook’s face. “Pixies have nothing to do with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pixies are good with plants and have the power to grant one boon to a newborn within the first hour of the baby’s life,” he lectured.
“Right.” Wendy waved his condescension away with a flick of her wrist. “Everybody knows that. Peter explained that because the pixies on Neverland never use their power on babies, they can use it to make him fly instead.”
“Did he actually say that?”
Wendy looked at her hands to avoid the sudden intensity in Hook’s eyes. “Y—” But now that she thought about it . . . “No.” He hadn’t said those words exactly. “He implied that the pixies were responsible for his flight. One of the Lost Boys filled in the details.”
“For reasons I haven’t quite grasped yet, Pan cannot lie.” Hook sat forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Pan gains power from every death he causes. According to your timeline, he hasn’t used enough of it to let you go back there on your own.”
