Page 27 of Tick Tock, Darling

It shot through me like an arrow. Under the ribs first, then out along both arms, into my fingers, down into my feet, and everywhere it went my skin came up in gooseflesh and my hair lifted off the pillow. My heart slammed. My mouth tasted like a struck match.

Then it turned around and did it again.

What was it doing? It was different from mine. Not bound like mine. Free. Stronger. Faster.

I had no control over it. This was inside me and all I could do was lie on the bed with arms and legs stretched out wide.

Something changed. The pain backed off. My skin was closing — slow, but closing, the edges of those holes pulling toward each other while I watched. I'd never done magic that could heal a wound. Not a bruise. Not a scratch. The Christmas Star? It had to be. The magic was in my blood, and it had done something to the scrivens.

If it could do this to me, it could do it to somebody else. That was the first thought I had that wasn't about getting loose.

Caspian was flat on that pavement when they took me. He couldn't move. I don't know what Wendy did to him and I don't know if he got up.

And if he did get up, he had to go tell Angelo Santi he'd lost me.

I've been to Crimson Stakes. I know what's in that room, and I know Angelo doesn't use it for strangers. He uses it for his own.

Maybe the magic would burn through the metal.

Please set me free!

I pulled on the chains, but I was still imprisoned. Nothing had changed. Damn it!

Wendy's eyes flashed back to gray.

The thing inside her was hiding. Scared of me, or scared of what was in me, and I didn't know which and I didn't care. For now, she wouldn’t hurt me.

She backed into the door and fumbled for the knob and got it open and slipped out.

I lay there panting. The scrivens hadn't moved from under the bunk and I was too scared to shut my eyes. What if they came back? What if the magic faded?

The door slammed open.

Pan came in and stopped.

His hand was still on the door. He hadn't finished coming through it. Whatever he'd walked in expecting, this wasn't it.

He looked at me for a long moment. Not at the scrivens on the floor, not at the box Wendy had dropped. At me, and at the light coming off me.

His eyes moved over the glow the way you'd read a page — down my legs, across my stomach, back to my face. Nothing on him. No surprise, no anger. His mouth was slightly open and he'd forgotten to close it.

I set my jaw and kept my mouth shut. My whole body wanted to say something — anything, a curse, a threat, one word — and I swallowed it and lay there and let the silence sit between us.

He came closer to the bed and everything in me pulled tight against the chains. He'd sat on this bed once already. He'd put his hand on my stomach, wiping away the blood. “Are you healing?”

Everything in me tried to get away from his hand, but the chains held me right where I was. Once again, I allowed the silence to stretch between us.

He rubbed his fingers together. “The magic within you is even more powerful than I anticipated. That star is protecting you.”

Every muscle I had locked at once and there was nowhere for it to go. I didn’t want to be tortured and healed over and over again.

Pan wiped my blood on his tights. “I think it would be tiring torturing you and I don’t think that would help me find my shadow.” He drummed his hand on his thigh for several long heartbeats, but then he stopped. That worried me more as than if he hadn’t.

“The star protects you. It doesn’t mean it would protect someone you care about.”

Nononononono

The bastard.