She glared at the fairy. “Yeah. You didn’t even ask me, you just assumed. Well, screw you, you uptight little bitch. I just don’t want him to die, because he’s my only hope of getting out of here alive. So sue me. But I don’t want anything todowith him!” Storming into the tree, she followed after where they brought Peter. They’d laid him down on a cot, and were unwinding the bandages from his chest.
“Are any of you a doctor?” She highly doubted it.
“No, but I can pretend to be.” One of the boys smiled proudly,picking up what she assumed was an invisible and imaginary doctor’s bag.
“I…don’t think that’s how it works.” She cringed. Peter was so fucked.
“It is in Neverland,” another boy nodded sagely. “In Neverland, if you believe, it’s real. We have whole feasts of food that exists because wemakeit exist.”
She couldn’t tell if they were just gaslighting themselves or if that was literal magic. Hard to tell with a fairy hovering in the air near Peter’s head. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Either way, she wasn’t cut out for this shit. And she wasn’t about to watch a tween stitch a guy’s chest shut with invisible thread. “Cool. Knock yourselves out.” Turning, she walked out of the room, shaking her head. “I’m going to bed.”
Abducted by a book. Meeting demigods. Getting stuck in Peter Pan as Wendy. Flying. Making out with mermaids. Nearly being murdered by said mermaids. Watching her sister almost die from a killer electric crocodile. Almost dying herself from said crocodile. Floating around in a deus-ex-bird’s-nest until dawn.
Yeah.
She needed a fuggin’ nap.
If Peter had made it through the night alive, she was pretty sure he’d make it through “pretend surgery” with a “make-believe doctor.” And even if he didn’t, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to help him. So, she went to the little hut they made for her that was attached to the side of the tree off one of the main gangways, crawled inside on the pile of straw and tattered fabric they’d laid out for her, and shut the door.
And prayed that when she woke up, she’d be in a hotel room with one hell of a cocaine hangover.
But something told her she wouldn’t be that lucky.
This felt wrong.
But what was Sasha supposed to do?
She was following along behind Hook as they crept through the woods, approaching the “secret hideout” of the Lost Boys.
“Howdidyou learn the location of the hideout?” She asked Hook quietly. They were in full sneak mode. Well, as sneaky as a contingent of pirates could be, anyway. Which was more than she’d expected, but less than she’d hoped. “If you don’t mind my asking, and it won’t involve me getting shot,” she added quickly.
Hook smirked over his shoulder at her. “Tinker Bell.”
“Wh—” She sighed. “Right. The jealousy thing. You made a deal to spare Pan if you got rid of Wendy.”
“And I am nothing if not a man of my word.” He placed his palm to his chest. “And we’re skipping past the whole poison bit.” He turned his attention back to where he was going.“‘Clap your hands if you believe’crock of shit. Cheap trick to get the audience on your side.”
She snickered quietly. “Now who’s jealous?”
“Ssh.” He ducked behind a tree. “We’re here.”
Convenient. Suspiciously convenient. She wasn’t sure if he could rearrange the topography of an island to avoid a conversation, but she wouldn’t be shocked. She crouched beside him, looking at a huge tree with a rather odd looking section of wood that was very distinctly door-shaped plugging a section of it.
Like the freaking Keebler Elf tree door. It might as well have a sign on it that readSecret Hideout, No Pirates Allowed.“Seriously?” She arched an eyebrow. “They couldn’t do any better than that?”
“It’s a children’s story. Set your expectations accordingly.” Glancing at her briefly, he tapped a finger on the end of her nose. “And don’t call your sister stupid.”
“I—” She paused. If Sidney got here first, she supposed Sidney would have been the one to dream up the secret hideout. Her shoulders slumped. “I didn’t mean?—”
“I won’t tell her.” He paused. “Immediately.”
She punched the back of his shoulder.
That got a quiet laugh out of him. “Now, now, violence solves nothing, my dear.” He gestured to the pirates to his right. “Remember, men, we capture them now. We can brutally murder them all later, once we lure Peter Pan to the ship.”
The pirates crept to the tree, surrounding the door, setting up a perimeter. When it was clearly safe, one of them whistled like a bird.
