Page 71 of The Last Lost Girl

Grim’s voice doesn’t break when he speaks to Hudson. I swear I can hear a smile in his tone.

“To show his appreciation for you showing Ava home, Peter wants to extend a favor to you and your crew,” Grim breezily replies. But he squares his shoulders as if his body, if not his mind, remembers that Hook is as dangerous as he says. “If you walk out of this cave right now, he’ll grant you and your entire crew free passage back to your ship despite your crimes. Just this once, mind you.”

My heart seizes. Pan obviously knows his crew is on the island despite the charms he said would cloak us. Why wouldn’t he take the bargain? He barely knows me.

Hudson chuckles. “Pan only shows mercy when he’s desperate. It stands to reason that he is desperate for Ava. Why does he need her?”

“His reasons are his own,” Grim says with a demented smile.

“Pity he doesn’t trust you enough to tell you the most basic of things,” Hook says cruelly.

Something slick brushes my leg and I kick frantically to send the fish – or whatever it is – away. With my attention on the water, I missed what was just said and listen to catch up on their conversation.

Grim watches the pirate. “You’d be a fool not to accept.”

Something curls around my ankle and jerks me beneath the surface. I kick it as hard as I can, my sole striking something solid, and swim upward, coughing and twisting to see beyond the obsidian glass surface. It’s impossible. I can’t even see my own hands through the dark water.

“Ava?” Hudson falters.

That sliver of a second of distraction is all Grim needs. He launches at Hudson as the thing that grabbed me before clenches my ankle again, this time dragging me into the brackish water.

My lungs begin to burn. Bubbles spew from my mouth.

I kick at it, unsure of what it is or where it’s taking me. I can’t see anything.

The creature releases me and for a terrifying second, I’m suspended in water and I don’t know which way is up.

When my body starts to rise, I kick to reach the surface, inwardly panicking that my hands will only find rock and I’m trapped in the stony corridor between the cave’s connected lakes.

But instead of a rocky tunnel, I pop up into the maw of an enormous room, gulping in as much air as my strained lungs will allow. I cough and gasp and swim toward the pool’s edge, then scramble to the shallows so the creature doesn’t come after me again.

A single beam of light streams in from a fissure in the ceiling high overhead, letting me see the lifeless space.

Chest heaving, I climb onto a large boulder and consider what to do next. Hudson was in trouble when I was taken under. I’m afraid to leave this room, and afraid not to. I stand, wrestling with my thoughts as I consider diving back under the rocky wall to go after the pirate and save him from the Lost Boy like he did for me.

Then I notice a trail of water that tracks from the lake past the boulder I’m perched on and between several others, deeper into the cavernous room where the single beam of light doesn’t touch.

A rustle comes from behind a massive boulder.

I unlace my shoes so they won’t squelch and step out of them, then carefully ease off the rock and onto the soggy, well-trodden path.

In the book Belle hoarded, the jungle had all kinds of carnivorous creatures, like bears and tigers. I remember an illustration of flamingoes. The pink birds aren’t scary in our world, but this is Neverland, home of sweet-looking bunny mice that like to take chunks out of people who venture too close, and indiscriminately hungry Neverbirds…

I tiptoe across the cave floor, water dripping from my clothes.

I reach the boulder and begin to ease around it with my back to the rock when something hisses and scuttles away. But not before I see two dark eyes that for the briefest of breaths swirl with gold before they turn to obsidian.

My heart lurches toward her just before I do, my hands outstretched to let her know I don’t want to harm her. “Belle?” I heave a relieved breath.

Her shadow wings flare as fear and confusion fight for dominance over her delicate features. “You were in the water,” she accuses.

“Well aware of that, thank you. You could have warned me before pulling me under, you know. Let me take a deep breath first next time,” I grump, wringing out my soaked shirt as best I can. I turn to face her, flinging more water from my hands.

Gold streaks from her pupils, gone as fast as the embers exploding from a firework, dying as it plummets. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“I know. I know I don’t belong here.” My fists ball at my sides. “I also know what you took from Pan, Belle. You have to return the shadows to the people he stripped them from, and we need to get the hell off this island!” Before it’s too late.

Furious, Belle advances on me a step. “Who told you?”

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