Page 21 of The Last Lost Girl

Screw. Him.

When I look back toward the sand, Pan and Wraith are gone. Their absence should set me at ease, but it does the opposite. I can’t help but feel like Pan is lurking, watching, and that like the crocs hiding beneath the waves, I won’t see him before he strikes.

“You’re right to fear him,” Hook muses as the skiff slows, then knocks against the hull of an enormous ship. Its dark wood is slick in the places where barnacles haven’t built homes, weaving patterns like lace. Delicate, but sharp enough to cut flesh.

The looped end of an arm-thick rope lands in the bottom of the boat.

Hook stands and places a boot in that loop like it’s second nature. Then he grasps the twisted strands with his hand and holds out his hooked arm expectantly toward me.

I stay in my seat.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he promises.

Just because he saved me from Wraith and then from Pan doesn’t mean he’s all hero and no part villain.

He said he would do whatever it took to ensure Pan couldn’t have me, so why wouldn’t I assume he might kill me to prevent it? Though, I guess he had the chance on the island and didn’t take it.

I decide to get onto the ship. I certainly can’t stay in the damaged skiff. It’s taken on even more water since we left the shore. The puddle that barely touched the canvas of my shoes on the shore is now deep enough to cover them.

I start to stand. The skiff lists with a swell and bumps against the ship’s hull. I catch the rope to steady myself before I splash into the deep blue.

“Easy, Lifeguard. Crocodiles aren’t the only things that prowl these waters.”

I regain my balance and meet his humor-filled eyes. Eyes that bore into me and flash with a heavier, heated emotion for a moment before they work their way up the rope to the man standing at its other end.

“What is he?” I blurt. “Pan, I mean.”

The pirate pauses for a second to answer. “Something so horrible that a proper word to describe him doesn’t exist. Or if there is, I haven’t been able to find or conjure it. And believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to mull it over.” He stretches his arm farther. “Place your uninjured foot beside mine in the loop and hold onto me. Unless you want to sink with the skiff,” he adds with a shrug.

“Sink?” Sea water swirls and the ankle-deep water slowly inches to my knees as the small wooden boat begins to succumb to the waves rocking it violently side to side, battering it against the boat so hard that I limp forward and slide my good foot into the loop without another word. Hook slips his arm around me and pulls me tightly against his body as the men above begin to pull on the rope.

I ignore the way the pirate studies me as we are raised a couple of feet from the tossing waves and sinking skiff. There is confusion among the men above us as they chatter and bark at one another. “What’s taking so long?” Hook shouts.

I stare at the mermaid gracing the ship’s bow. At least I think it’s supposed to be a mermaid.

It looks nothing like Ariel…

There isn’t a feminine curve on her body; every part is painted a different shade of the moody sea. Muted grays, blues, and greens mix with sea foam.

The creature carved into the space between bow and stern is gaunt and so bony, I can make out every rib and spine-tipped vertebrae that peeks from the curve of her back. She has no hair but is covered head to toe in fine scales. Her eyes are too big for her face, two chasms filled to the brim with pain, fury, and indignation. Eyes that suddenly snap to mine.

I jolt. “It…she’s alive!”

Her lips peel back to reveal twin rows of dark, serrated teeth.

Her chest rises and falls, but so shallowly, I missed it before. I finally grasp that she’s trying to keep as still as possible.

“Is she pinned to your ship?”

Hook smiles. “She is.”

The ship’s rocking must be agonizing. My heart races. If he did this to her, what would he do to me?

The mermaid’s fingertips, so sharp they could gut a man with one rake, dig into the wood at her sides to support her weight, wood she’s spent time eviscerating, scratched pale against the darker stained pieces looming over and stretching beside and beneath her.

His demeanor hardens. “She lured one of my men into the depths, then came back for another after stuffing the first into her trove to soften his flesh. Her kind are voracious eaters. One man is rarely enough to sate them for long, but don’t worry. You aren’t in any danger from her.”

Not from her, but definitely from him…

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