Page 16 of The Last Lost Girl

There’s no room for me to move back. I’m firmly plastered to the trunk. I stretch my legs out to keep him from coming any closer. He stops when his thighs brush the soles of my feet.

I hiss when he bumps my injured foot and move to drape it off the branch to keep him from touching it, or me, again. That, unfortunately, leaves only one foot to hold him off.

He glances down at the puffy joint.

“Peter will take care of you,” he promises. “I’ll carry you back, and he’ll be doubly pleased,” he confidently tells me, swinging one leg over the branch so that he’s balanced on one side. This guy’s hero worship of Pan is disturbing on too many levels to count.

The guy jumps down, landing easily despite the distance to the ground, then turns around and reaches up as if he’s going to clasp my waist and drag me down to him.

I put out a hand and he stops. “Carry me back where?” I ask, my throat suddenly dry.

“You talk too much,” he observes bluntly.

“And you talk more than enough for both of us, but you still haven’t answered my question.” I repeat it, enunciating each word, much to his annoyance. “Back where?”

“Back home – where you belong.” He says it like I’m a complete moron, even shaking his head for good measure.

He speaks like Belle. In a web of nonsensical riddles that somehow make sense to her, but that say nothing and everything and are all true even if they don’t reveal the entire truth.

He reaches for me and my stomach drops. I don’t want to go with him. Don’t want his hands on me.

One of my arms snakes around the tree’s trunk, but I can’t get the other one around it. I won’t be able to clasp my hands and hang on after all.

“We should wait here until sunrise. It’ll be safer,” I suggest, trying to stall him.

He laughs again. “Neverland is never safe. The sun’s light makes no difference at all.”

Wonderful. “And if I don’t want to go with you?”

His smile fades. “I can’t leave you now that I’ve found you. He would kill me – and just when I’ve grown so fond of living.”

“He’s just a little boy,” I argue. “Why are you so afraid of him?”

The Cheshire grin returns. “Wait until you see him. He’s a boy no longer.” He waves a hand to gesture down his body. “None of us are.” When he reaches for me this time, he hooks his hands behind my knees and scoots me to the branch’s edge. “I’ll take you back with me now. You can fight if you like, but you’ll lose.”

I act like I’m going to submit and when he loosens his grip, I draw back the knee of my uninjured leg and kick him in the face, then scramble to my feet and begin to climb higher up the tree.

I make it one… two…three branches before he grabs my injured ankle just as I’m reaching for the fourth.

My scream does not echo. The forest is a sponge that absorbs the sound.

He jerks me down, and my hip cracks against a broad branch. “Stop fighting me! I told you that if I don’t return with you, I’m as good as dead.” When his voice cracks, I see it then. The fear, a wild thing in his eyes. Twisting his features. Strengthening his grip as he wraps a muscled arm around my middle and begins to carry me down. “I won’t die for you, Ava. Not again. Every time we die, we forget everything and have to start over and I… I can’t do that again.”

“Again?” I grit as we reach the ground. “What are you talking about?”

“We all suffered his wrath when he couldn’t find you, especially you…” he admits. “We begged for death and he denied us, but parts of us died anyway. The best parts.”

He is obviously crazy. I’ve never been to Neverland. Never met Peter Pan or this asshole standing in front of me. Is it possible I look like a girl who lived here with them years ago?

“I don’t understand,” I whisper, balancing on my good leg as he prepares to throw me over his shoulder.

“No,” he grunts. “You don’t seem to remember, and I don’t remember, either, but Peter does. He told all of us what you did and how you deserted us. He told us what he had to do to punish us for not watching you close enough.” He flexes his hands like he’s grasping at the memory. Both of his wrists are manacled in thick, puckered scars.

Deserted? What the hell did Pan do to them?

“We were family,” he adds vehemently. “He said we were family.”

The hurt flashing in his eyes is overwhelming, even in the dark.

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