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I shifted my hips and pulled the pendant from my pocket, willing the damned thing to glow to life. When nothing happened, I had to fight the urge to chuck it against the wall.
“Follow me,” I said, grabbing Matty by the wrist.
“What? Where?” he squeaked.
Did he actually think he was safer curled in a ball in a corner while a legendary pirates-versus-lost-boys battle raged across the deck of Hook’s ship? Probably, since he didn’t know the plan.
I leaned in close and pointed, keeping my hand low so it wasn’t glaringly obvious to everyone around us. “Do you see that door? We need to get in there.”
“And then what? Where the hell are we anyway?”
I shook my head. “Later, Matty.” I laced my fingers through his, the way we’d done when we were both much younger. It didn’t feel the least bit strange. “Come on.”
The fighting men seemed to move away from us on instinct as we ran, and maybe they were. Maybe the instinct to keep a buffer around them was so ingrained that they didn’t even realize what or who they were shifting away from. Either way, I was grateful. Well, I would be grateful later. There was still entirely too much adrenaline pumping through my body for me to be anything other than on alert and on edge.
I only had to stab two more frat boys before we reached the door, and both of those were basically warning slices. For every pirate there was a lost boy, and the men were falling and getting back up like toddlers on a playground, minus the high-pitched screaming.
No, wait, that wasn’t entirely true.
A piercing cry filled the air, a woman’s cry of pain. It sounded like she was being tortured in the most horrible way, but I knew better. It was a trap. The demon was trying to use her fake feminine softness to draw Matty back to her, and it was working.
“God, what are they doing to her? Never, we need to help.”
“No, we don’t.” The door was right there, just a few short steps away, and I yanked his arm hard, knocking him off balance as he reeled after me. I swung the door open and shoved him inside before his misplaced chivalry got us both killed.
Life really was an unfair little bitch sometimes. Every single soul on that cursed ship couldn’t die, save for me and my little brother.
Not cool, universe.
I kicked the door shut behind us and shoved him back when he tried to move past me to get back out. “She’s not human, Matty. Did you not see that?”
His resistance faded slowly as recognition dawned on his young features. He was a big kid, big enough to be mistaken for someone old enough to buy beer every now and then, so it was easy to forget sometimes that he was, still, just a kid.
“She’s a demon parading around in a woman’s body,” I said.
He backed away from me and I flipped the latch, locking us inside.
“I saw that.” He shook his head like he was shaking off a nightmare. “I did. Why did I want to…” His voice faded.
“Help her? Because that’s what demons do. They’ll use any trick in the book to lure their victims, even the dirty ones.” I moved back toward the bed and pulled the pendant out again, glaring at it.
“What is that?” Matty edged closer, dipping his head to examine the small, dull stone.
“It’s like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, sort of.”
I think.
I didn’t add that we didn’t have some amazing witch dressed in pink tulle giving us step by step instructions on how to make the damned thing work.
Of course not. That would have been way too easy.
He reached out and touched it with just the tip of his finger, pulling back like the thing might bite him. “It doesn’t look like much.”
He was right. It was as dead as a little rock could be without crumbling to dust. I needed to remember how I made the stupid thing work the first time. I’d had it in my hand, and I was thinking about Matty and it just, came to life.
“Give me your hand,” I said, wiping the blood off my dagger and tucking it in the waistband of my jeans. Something heavy slammed against the locked door, rattling the thick wood barrier on its hinges, and I nearly stabbed myself in the ass when I jumped.
Alarm shined in Matty’s light brown eyes, and he slapped his hand over mine. “What do I do?”
