“Peter was asking Sadiq how much Sadiq loved him. Our oldest Lost Boy assured him that he would do anything for Peter.” Wendy stopped speaking to frown. Peter had been ratherpleased with that statement. She hadn’t understood at the time, but his giant smile had felt weird to her.
“They talked a little longer.” She doubted the sheeries would grasp the nuances of the conversation, and boiled it down to, “Then Peter asked Sadiq to put a knife through his own heart.”
Identical expressions of outrage adorned the mini faces perched in her lap. The cat pinned its ears back for a moment.
“At first, I thought Sadiq was going to do it.” A full-body shudder interrupted her narrative. The sheeries rode the wave, still upset on Sadiq’s behalf. “But at the last second, he couldn’t.”
Two mini cheers floated up to her ears. A sad smile crossed Wendy’s lips. If only the story ended there. Instead, Peter had sighed and said the words that were now engraved in her memory. “He said, ‘I was hoping for a full boost, but it still works this way.’ Then Peter grabbed the knife from Sadiq and stabbed him in the heart.”
Both sheeries gasped. She thought the cat might have growled, but it was difficult to tell over the gust of wind that puffed up the fur along its back.
“Sadiq looked so surprised.” Wendy shook her head. “Then Peter pulled out the knife and just . . .kickedhim off the cliff.” Her voice trembled at the end. The mermaids had thanked Peter for their new treasure and pulled Sadiq’s body under the water.
Wendy had stayed frozen in place for quite some time. When her shock-stilled limbs decided to obey her again, Peter had beenlong gone and the mermaids had left to find sunnier waters. Without their new toy.
A seagull, maybe the same foolhardy one from before, squawked from the railing opposite her. She took a breath and pulled herself back to her situation, curious if the cat would finally chase off the featherbrain. The sheeries, who had been arguing about something she couldn’t make out, stopped talking and stared over her shoulder. A sense of dread washed over Wendy. She turned her head to find a sun-grizzled older man watching her.
With effort, she successfully quelled her first inclination to punch him in the nose. She had been well and truly caught; causing her discoverer to fall to the deck and possibly die would do nothing good for her situation. He might not even deserve that, anyway.
She heaved a gusting sigh, then addressed the man. “I suppose you want me to climb down now.”
His answering grin wasn’t unfriendly, but the missing teeth added a menace Wendy was all too willing to see. She pulled herself up and peered over the rail. A fair number of crewmen roamed the deck, attending to duties Wendy vaguely understood. In addition to the involuntary sigh working its way up from her toes, a groan of epic proportions rumbled from her empty belly.
“This just isn’t my day,” she muttered as she bent to arrange her skirt in more of a pants configuration. The numerous (andgaudy) ribbons aided her. Much as she didn’t want to be seen by the general populace wearing the secondhand abomination, it would be that much worse if her skirt got caught around her armpits as she climbed down.
As soon as she hooked her leg over the wall, the dark, leathery face dropped out of sight. His sparse, pale-blond curls followed. Another rumble rolled through her middle. With a final glance to ensure the sheeries had disappeared, Wendy hoisted herself up and over the rail.
Nausea surged when she maneuvered her legs into position. The movement of the ship seemed to increase drastically as she worked to release her fingers and grasp the ropes below. Wendy blew out a frustrated breath. Heights had never been an issue before.
“You’ve never climbedoutof a crow’s nest and into the jaws of death before, either, ding-a-ling,” she reminded herself. “Left foot, right foot, left hand, right hand.”
The man below was either ignoring her running commentary or didn’t hear it. The shouts from below may have assisted with that. Wendy risked a peek farther down than her next step and saw an unfortunate number of faces pointed her way. Maybe they were friendly merchants who were sneaking in and out of Neverland with the purest intentions and would be delighted to take her to shore.
She snorted.Right. And they’ll feed me and treat me like a pampered pet, ’cause that’s what you do with foreign-looking girls who board your ship without permission.
It didn’t occur to her until she had reached the relative safety of the deck that the old man had almost certainly been moving slowly for her benefit. Cleaning up broken stowaways from the wooden boards was probably annoying. Wendy clung to the ropes for a moment longer, working up the nerve to face her inadvertent captors.
Not entirely sure who she expected the crew to be, the variety of skin tones in the group led credence to her merchant theory. Plenty of folks left their homelands to seek adventure at sea. A couple of the men had the typical Jocestrian dark skin and pale curls the old man possessed, but she saw features and colorings that would fit natives of Desjunon and Fanostrin to the north, and even a few that could have been Pothrynel or Erimevka farther west.
In the jostling bodies before her, she suddenly became aware of a commanding presence. Her eyes latched onto a pair of beautifully deep brown orbs set in a swarthy face. Everyone else fell away as she absorbed the way his coffee-colored hair and trim beard framed his divine features. The crowd parted to allow the dark vision of masculine perfection to step forward unhindered. A dim part of Wendy’s mind told her to stop gushing such romantic nonsense over an unknown entity. The rest of her didn’t care.
“Who are you?”
Even his voice is deliciously deep and mellow.“My name is Wendy.” She thought about dipping into a curtsy but settled for an inclination of her head. Her current attire mocked the idea of social niceties, and she wasn’t sure where he fell in the hierarchy of the ship anyway.
He nodded back, his expression calm but not inviting. “I’m James. Captain of this ship.”
The reality of being caught hiding aboard this man’s boat began overwhelming her awe of his physical presence. Heat rose to her cheeks as she eked out a lame, “Nice to meet you.”
One dark eyebrow arched on the Sharamilan face.
Wendy cleared her throat, now mortified by the exchange.
James lifted his chin a touch. “I’d like to know how this meeting came about.”
“Smee found ’er, Cap’n Hook!” The speaker’s voice broke in the middle, due to either his youth or eagerness.
Dropping her eyes as horror began creeping through her limbs, Wendy noticed James’ Adam’s apple bob, the only outward sign of an emotion she expected to be blasted with at any moment. She pulled her eyes back up to meet his as she tried to keep the apprehension out of her voice. “Hook?”
