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“Matty, no!” The desperation in my voice startled me, but only because I wasn’t used to hearing it. He acted like he hadn’t heard me. “Matthew!”
He paused in the middle of grabbing for a tin plate and looked around. Confusion wrinkled his brow for a moment, then a flicker of something else. Maybe sadness?
One of the boys bumped his shoulder. “Come on, new kid. Get your grub. We’ve got something fun planned for after dinner.”
“Matty!” The air around me shook with the force of my scream, but the other boys had all joined in the conversation, talking over each other and growing louder by the second.
Shaking with fury, I wheeled on Petra. “What did you do to him?”
“To him? Nothing.” She traced the tips of her fingers down her thigh and smiled salaciously at me. “Yet.”
I was so going to cut that psycho bitch, slice her gut open, wrap her toxic intestines around her neck and hang her from a tree until the last little twitches of existence drained from her body. I reached for my blade, but both my arms were wrenched painfully behind my back before I got my fingers around the hilt.
“Do not provoke her.” Leo’s warning was so low I barely heard it, but the intent was clear.
Her silken voice was eerily polite when she responded. “Thank you, Leo. I’m afraid our delightful new guest has just about worn out her welcome.” She leveled me with a condescending scowl that would have made a bitter old nun proud. “You asked to see him and there he is. Happy and healthy.”
“Why can’t he see or hear me?” I snapped back, pulling against Leo’s grip.
“That wasn’t part of your request. Though, even if it were, I wouldn’t have agreed to it. This is a delicate time in the boy’s, hmm, we’ll call it a transition. Interference from someone like you, from his old life…” She narrowed her eyes, dropping the charade long enough to let the deadly black shimmer shine through again. “That could be devastating.”
The threat came through loud and clear, bringing my blood to a boil in the space of a heartbeat. “Fuck you!”
I wrenched and twisted my upper body, trying to break free, but Leo’s hands shifted higher and became hot vices on my upper arms, pinning them in place. I glanced down, saw his bare feet, and acted without an ounce of mercy. Bones broke with a sickening crunch beneath the sole of my boot as I stomped down with all my force.
Leo let out a muffled “humph”, but instead of letting me go, he pushed me away from his body, holding me at arms’ length. I twisted and kicked and bucked, but after a while it became painfully clear that all my fighting was getting me exactly nowhere.
When I finally stopped, Petra looked less than impressed.
“Well, that was unnecessary.” She motioned to Anya and whispered something in her ear.
The wicked pixie sneered gleefully, her wings fluttering with a new, excited energy. The vibration released a fresh puff of turquoise dust that swirled around her. When she straightened and held out a hand, that colorful dust pulled together, creating a concentrated, shimmering mist in her palm.
Petra snapped her fingers once and Leo’s grip fell away, then the glitter bitch rushed forward and blew that shimmering cloud right in my face.
I took a swing at her but hit only air as her body became translucent. Everything around me took on an iridescent hue, and it was only when I looked at my own hand that I realized it wasn’t the pixie that was disappearing. It was me.
27
HOOK
“Anything yet?” I yelled, tilting my head back to look up at William.
He was leaned far out over the edge of the ship’s railing watching the water. Every man still on my ship was on deck, all spread around the rim, with three of them crammed into the little crow’s nest atop the main mast. We were all waiting for the same thing.
“Nothing so far, sir,” he hollered back.
The oar handles were warm in my hands as I fought for a calm I didn’t feel thanks to the heady flow of adrenaline coursing through me.
Please, let me be wrong. That or let me get to her in time.
No matter what else had happened on that island, Never didn’t deserve a fate as cruel as the one that awaited her if Anya did what I thought she would. The pixie might have been creative with her punishment back when, but she’d become predictable in so many ways since. Maybe it was because she’d experimented enough. How else could a malicious creature like her discover her favorite methods for torturing those who crossed her.
I’d seen all of them, but this was the cruelest, even by my standards.
Night had fallen over the island well over an hour earlier and with every second that dragged by, the muscles in my back and neck grew tighter. I was wound so tight I might just snap if I couldn’t get there in time.
No. There was no might about it. No maybe. I’d go on a rampage, slaughter every living thing on that island, and spend the rest of my endless life pulling the demon apart piece by piece, over and over again.
