Page 100 of The Last Lost Girl

“You never explained how you’re you again,” I remind her gently.

“At home, I was fighting the pull to Neverland. It was incredibly hard not to succumb to it, and finally the shadows took advantage of my weakness. I still feel the urge to return to the island – to Pan.” She clears her throat. “But on the water, I feel more like me and it’s easier to withstand his influence. I think I’m close enough that it eases the feeling a little – unless I’m upset. The shadows are hard to control when I lose my composure, no matter where I am.”

“Understatement,” I scoff.

I wonder if the mark Pan left on me will do the same to me soon. Draw me to him. Threaten everyone in my vicinity. Will both of us be a danger to everyone on this ship, in town, and on the islands before long? Maybe that’s how he plans to get us back on the island – by turning everyone against us so we have nowhere left to hide.

Wendy’s ravaged face enters my mind.

No one is safe from Peter Pan.

The people he brought here against their will have suffered enough for a thousand lifetimes. I don’t want to be another tool that hurts them, some monster Pan manipulates from afar to slowly pick them off as he crows from the shore.

She gestures to the pocket watch, tick-tocking against my sternum. “Did Hudson give you that?”

I nod. “To borrow. Do you know why it ticks backward?”

Belle’s hand darts out to see it for herself. “That’s worrisome.”

Another understatement.

“I’m surprised I didn’t lose it in the sea.”

When the watch falls from my fingers and settles against my shirt, my sister continues to stare at it. Her eyes dart here and there like she can see every gear and cog and how they work together to turn the hands in the wrong direction.

I tell her how all the shadows on Neverland were gone one minute and reappeared the next and confirm Smee’s suspicion that she had nothing to do with that.

Pan’s power reached Evermist, after all.

I tell her what happened to Cairo and Surat. And she nods in agreement when I say Pan was to blame for her necklace breaking.

She confides that he’s waited a very long time to break her.

Belle seethes, “He’s become too powerful.”

“He can even resurrect the dead,” I grouse.

She goes still, and I see her mind whirring.

“Who sent him here?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I was the one who found him, though. He was scared and hungry… lost.”

Belle finds lost things. Second to loving them, it’s what she’s best at.

“Ava, please tell me what you dreamt of,” my sister pleads, her face downcast.

I gather my thoughts and tell her every detail I can recall, then straighten my spine and ask, “I guess I know where I’m from now. Savannah, Georgia?”

She nods.

“How did I go from Savannah to Ava?”

“Hudson and the others called you Ava,” she admitted. “You forgot your name the moment you reached Neverland. It’s always the first thing a person who doesn’t belong here loses.”

I try to smile. “You’ve always said I don’t belong.”

“You have a home, Ava. You belong to the family you were torn from. To people who love you and mourn your absence from their lives every single day. I just don’t know where they are or where that place is, though I did try to find them. The only one who knows is Peter. He has your shadow, and he has the copy of Peter Pan he stole from your room.”

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