Page 28 of Tick Tock, Darling

I gazed down at the scrivens still hiding under that bunk and my mind went ahead without me. Not Alice. Not Darius. Caspian, chained where I was chained, with that box tilting over his stomach and Pan waiting on me to say a word.

He wouldn't scream. That's what I knew about him. He'd hold my eyes and take it and act like he was fine, the way he did everything else, and I'd have to sit there and watch him do it.

Tears pushed on the back of my eyelids. No. I couldn't.

He stood and patted my trembling leg. “We have to figure out who would motivate you to find my shadow.”

He grinned. “I’ll tell you a secret. Wendy said that someone else came through the portal. Actually three people.”

Excitement and dread shot through me. Three. Alice would be one — she's the only one who could open that portal. Darius wouldn't let her come alone. And Caspian, if Angelo sent him after me. The image of any of them being tortured in front of me would kill me.

I blurted, “How?”

He looked at me like he’d struck gold. Like an idiot I’d given it to him. Let him know what would hurt me.

He bent over and put his hands on either side of my face. His breath brushed over me —wet earth and something turned, the smell of a jar left shut too long. I tried to turn my head away, but all I could see was his face an inch from mine, and he was smiling. Cold sweat broke across my face and my whole head went light.

“Now that’s our little secret, isn’t it?” He kissed me on my pressed lips and he tasted like spoiled peaches. “If you come on my team, I’ll tell you.”

I spat in his face. Fat chance. I’d find a way to save them.

He wiped the spit off his face. “Fine. If that’s the why you want it.” He headed toward the door and looked over his shoulder. “I’m going to let them. Leave breadcrumbs for them to find us.”

Breadcrumbs? What was he going to leave as a trail?

He picked up the box Wendy had dropped and scooped up the hiding scrivens. The box rattled again. “Once I have one of them, we’ll see how willing you are to listen to them scream.”

Why hadn’t the Christmas Star’s magic killed them? I pulled on the chains and the metal scraped my wrists and ankles raw.

He laughed and patted the box. “I suspect soon you’ll come around.” He winked. “And you’ll find my shadow.”

He left. I wanted to scream I'd never help him. But it was useless. It was a lie.

And it was worse than a lie, because I knew which one of them he wanted.

Pan didn't need three. He needed one, and he'd take the one who'd already come at him once and lost. Caspian had history with him. Pan doesn't forget history. He'd been sitting in the Hollows with nothing to do but keep it warm.

So it wasn't a hostage he was fishing for. It was a reunion.

And Caspian would walk right into it. Of course he would. He'd tear up his own clothes for a woman he barely knew — he wasn't going to sit on a beach somewhere and wait for a better plan.

The only thing I could do to help Alice, Darius, and Caspian was escape.

Chapter Eleven

Caspian

I steered the sloop north. That’s where Darius said Neverland was.

It felt good to be behind the wheel again. Some things were the same. The salt air. The breeze flapping the sails and spraying my face. Close my eyes and I could have been running the Gulf with a hold full of Santi cargo.

But this wasn’t home.

I’d fought Pan once. On Earth, on my own ground, the night he took Wendy, and he’d walked away with her and left me on the floor of my own sister’s house. That was with everything I had going for me. Now I was sailing to his turf, in his water, in a boat I’d bought off a suspicious old man for four gold coins.

And the Kraken was down there somewhere. A hundred feet of it with six clawed hands, and all Pan had to do was call it.

He had Wendy. Now he had Tinker Bell.