Page 43 of Tick Tock, Darling

“No.”

She looked up.

I didn’t know how I knew. I just did, the same way you know your own name, and I held out my hand and reached for something I’d never reached for in my life.

The air came apart in front of us.

White at the edges, green going through it, and past all that a black hole in the middle that didn’t lead anywhere yet. It opened like it had been waiting for me to ask.

Caspian looked at the portal. Then at me. “Remind me not to make you angry.”

I looked at Alice. “It will take you wherever you want.”

She glanced at Darius. “Colorado. His family’s expecting us.” She gave me a big hug. “Take care.” She handed me the box with the shard. “You should keep this as a souvenir.”

“Thank you,” I said as I took the box. “Merry Christmas.”

Darius and Alice stepped through the portal. They disappeared.

Pine came through after them. Cold pine and clean air and somewhere with trees, and I got one breath of wherever those two called home before it closed up behind them.

They’d come for me. Both of them. They’d crossed an ocean in somebody’s boat and gotten shot at and walked onto Peter Pan’s ship with a sword and a piece of glass. They were family.

But I had other plans.

I looked at Caspian. Healed. Standing there on his own two feet with his back closed up because I’d closed it, and I wanted to get him somewhere with a door I could shut.

“Are you ready to go home?”

He stepped closer. His eyes dropped to my mouth and stayed there. “As long as there’s a bed.”

My cheeks heated and I couldn’t look at the others. I thought I heard Pan chuckle. I didn’t care.

We stepped through and the colors swirled around us, and I thought of my own house the way you’d think of somebody’s name.

Then we were standing in my bedroom.

The bed I’d been dragged out of. The window he came through. Everything exactly the way I’d left it.

I waited to be afraid of it.

I wasn’t. Caspian was behind me with his hand on my back, and the room was just a room.

Home.

“Ah. A bed.” He kissed my neck. “So, Christmas Star. Think I can make you see stars again?”

I smiled. “You’re that good?”

“You’ve no idea.” His gaze went over the dress. “You want to get out of that thing?”

I did. God, I did. Somebody’s hands had put me in it while I sat in a chair and couldn’t stop them, and I’d been in it through all of it — the deck, the whip, every second of Pan looking at me like I was something he’d arranged.

“Yes. Please.”

He turned me around and started on the laces.

That’s when I felt it. My hands were free and my magic was mine and I could have taken this whole house apart, and I stood there and let Caspian Hook undo the back of my dress in the dark.