Page 3 of Tick Tock, Darling

“Peter Pan has escaped.”

Shit. Every ward Stefan Gabor put on that cage, and the Fae walked out anyway.

What the hell? Pan should have been locked away forever. Damn, Gabor. He was a reaper and one of the Archangel Michael’s chosen. I gripped the armrests. “How?”

“Your twin sister showed up.”

The name went into me like a hook. Wendy. Fuck. She was still under his spell. Willing to do anything for the bastard.

She was my twin and we’d always been close until he seduced her and turned her into his fucking love slave. Something I would never forgive. Some day I’d rip the bastard’s black heart out.

If he had a heart…

“So you came here to tell me that?” He could have called.

He gave me a curt smile. “That’s not why I came. Apparently, Pan has an agenda. He wants to get his shadow back. It’s in Neverland.”

My fangs came down on their own. It had taken magic to separate Pan from his shadow. If he retrieved it, he would be nearly unstoppable.

I wanted to ask where Wendy was, but I didn’t. I wanted Angelo to hurry up and tell me what this had to do with me—besides me wanting to hunt down Pan and put him out of his misery for what he did to my sister.

“I can’t allow him to retrieve his shadow. Not only could it destroy the Elder Dimension, he would wreak havoc on Earth, threatening my daughter.”

Noelle. Everything always came back to his daughter.

“Since I can’t leave my family, I have contacted Tinker Bell.” Her name in Angelo's mouth. In this room, on a night like this, with Enzo standing in the corner. I kept my face where it was and hoped to God nobody in that room could hear what my heart just did.

“She is retrieving a shard of the Christmas Star at St. Christopher’s Church.”

Tinker Bell somewhere in the dark on her own, doing it alone because she always does it alone. No backup. No help. Jeans and a T-shirt and whatever she could carry in.

She could do it. If anyone could, she could. That wasn't the problem. The problem was she was the one woman I couldn’t have. And she drove me crazy.

I didn’t look at Enzo. That was answer enough for a man who’d made me.

Angelo locked his gaze on mine. “She’ll perform a spell to seal the portal. It has to be done by the Winter Solstice.”

“That’s less than a week.”

He shrugged as if that wasn’t his problem. “Your task is to protect her. The spell must be completed.”

And Pan would come to the portal, because the shadow was on the other side of it. He’d come, and he wouldn’t come alone, because he never has.

Wendy would be standing right there. Maybe Tinker Bell could break the spell linking her with Pan. I wanted to get my sister back.

Angelo hadn’t said her name twice. He didn’t have to. He’d put me between her and the only thing she wants, and he’d waited to see whether I’d notice.

“Done.” A smile spread across my face.

I wanted to see Pan's face when he couldn't get through that barrier. Wanted to watch him stand there with his shadow on the other side of it and nothing he could do about it.

And then I wanted my sister back.

Chapter Two

Tinker Bell

The sun was going down over New Orleans. Cool air came off the river and I shivered. Should have worn a jacket. Red T-shirt, black jeans, and too much of a hurry to think about it.