“We’ll get there later.” Vile chuckled. “We haven’t finished Pan. And Iloveplaying Hook.”
Threading her hands into her hair, she gripped the strands and tugged, using the sting in her scalp to try to calm herself down. “Tell a unique story, using existing stories and tropes. While you both try to kill us.”
“I won’t be trying to kill you,” Virtue assured her. “I give you my word. And if you try to stop him from killing Sidney, we can work together to try to find a way out of this. Maybe there’s a loophole.” He smiled in that piteous kind of way you smile at someone at a family member’s funeral. “There’s always a loophole in stories like this, right?”
Yeah.Yeah.
Now that was a plan she could get behind. And he was right—there wasalwayssome kind of backdoor in stories like this. Some sort of trick way out of a contract or a seemingly hopeless situation. Right?
There had to be.
Otherwise, there’d be no happy ending in any book, ever.
And the villain always lost. Even in stories where the endings were tragic, downers, or bittersweet, the villain neverreallywon. Which meant that there was a way to beat Vile. There was a way around the game.
They just had to find it.
“We’ll see about that, dear.” He held out his hand to her again. “Who knows. Maybe thisisthe start of a new kind of story. Now, come along, Mr. Smee. We have an island of teenagers to brutally murder.”
“How come she gets to be Wendy and I have to be Mr. Smee?” Sasha grimaced. She didn’t want to go along with this. But she didn’t really know as she had much of a choice. She glanced over at Sidney, who looked like she was on the verge of tears.
Virtue was consoling her, holding her close. The two of them looked…really cute together. A fairytale prince and his princess. A pang of something hit her like a proverbial brick. Jealousy was the wrong word. Sadness, maybe.
Loneliness.
A hand settled on her shoulder. “Because we villains are relegated to the world of insipid sidekicks?*for our companions, my dear. We never deserve love.”
“If you were capable of love, I guess that means you’d be redeemable.”
“Hardly. It would mean we were capable of emotions like anyone else, and therefore we wouldn’t be worthy of vilification.” He hummed. “Indeed, I would argue it is perhaps an abundance of ill-spent love that can lead one to villainy in the first place. But I digress. Perhaps a conversation for another time, should you so decide to humor me.” Vile grinned down at her. “To Neverland?”
“I guess.” She winced. “Can you not drop me again?”
“Pah. You’re no fun at all. As you wish.” He gestured down an aisle. “After you.”
Sasha walked in the direction he gestured, and she made it about five paces.
“Watch out for the—” Virtue tried to warn her.
It turned out that her instinct not to trust Vile was a good one.
The floor opened up beneath her. And once more, she fell into the darkness, screaming, to the tune of his laughter.
* Do you think I choose to be accompanied by greasy little old men everywhere I go? -V
