“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
CHAPTER SIX
One minute, Sidney had been standing in the middle of a library that would have made M.C. Esher dizzy. Then, without warning, it had all simply faded away, and she was standing in the secret hideaway of Peter Pan. It was built into an enormous hollow tree that was somehow alive and seemingly thriving.
It was some two hundred feet tall, the branches stretching out over the rest of the canopy. There were caves down below that the Lost Boys used to pop in and out of other parts of Neverland without having to travel through the jungle. Stairs and rickety rope and wood gangways had been built criss-crossing through the interior structure of the tree, with little hovels for each of the Lost Boys built for them to sleep.
The first thing that she thought of was a Keebler Elf tree from hell. It made her laugh. And also made her suddenly want cookies.
She had appeared standing near the top on a ramshackle balcony, looking out over the island of Neverland. It was a gorgeous tropical paradise. Somewhere out there were mermaids. And a tribe ofextremelyracially insensitively written native people. And magic. And fairies.
But also pirates.
And death.
And evil.
She remembered the book. She knew what was going to happen next. She’d seen the dead bodies in the sand when she’d chased after Peter only an hour earlier. She’d seen the headless corpse of a Lost Boy.
They aren’t real. They’re just…it’s like a video game, right? They’re just NPCs you’re killing. Nobody cares about killing NPCs.But where was the line? Was their suffering real?
Washers?
Tropical fucking island with goddamn mermaids and she was standing there having an internal debate about the nature of the self. She wanted an alcoholic beverage in a coconut with a little paper parasol in it while she got a tan on the beach. Not this.
She stared blankly off into the distance of Neverland. She couldn’t believe it. Really just couldn’t believeanyof it. It felt like an impossible dream, still. The insanity of it all.
But what choice did she have? She had to play along. Thatthingthat her sister was trapped with was going to try to kill her! If she didn’t play along, one or both of them would wind upactuallydead. She didn’t have the luxury of putting her fingers in her ears and going “la la la.” She had to dance the dance.
She shuddered at the memory of Vile. The strange inky darkness with toomany glowing purple eyes.The thing was right out of one of Sasha’s fucked-up comic books or animated shows. It waswrong.And it was going to try to kill her. For real.
“Wendy? Are you all right?”
And now she had to deal with this shit. She turned to see Peter-fucking-Pan watching her, concern in his big brown eyes. His Lost Boys were behind him, dressed in their rags and leaves and whatever flotsam or bits of civilization washed up that they could fashion into clothes.
