Page 39 of The Last Lost Girl

I shrug one shoulder. “I will assume the risk and won’t expect you or any member of your crew to help or intervene. I just don’t want anyone to stop me from freeing her.”

Another smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Another shake of his head. He must believe I’m the stupidest girl to ever enter Neverland, but I don’t care what he thinks of me. All that matters is that I find Belle – and fast. And as far as his argument about the mermaid, I’m fairly certain she won’t be strong enough to hurt me in the shape she’ll be in by the time we reach town, and even less so by the time I remove the nails pinning her to the wood.

“Refusing to assist you would create another problem for me, Precious. I need your help to find Belle, so letting you die would be very inconvenient.”

“It wouldn’t be advantageous for me, either.”

“An amendment seems in order, then,” he purrs, scooting closer and leaning in. “If she tries to harm you, I most certainly will intervene, and you will not say a single word about how I go about it.”

“Fine,” I agree stiffly.

“You want to know about the shadows?” he says, a deep laugh rumbling from his chest. “Does Belle still wear the silver acorn pendant?”

My cinched breath is answer enough for him, coaxing a knowing grin.

He knows about the necklace and that it once held the shadows, but he doesn’t know the acorn cracked and she had no other choice but to absorb the shadows herself.

fifteen

Hook seals our bargain by answering my questions as we sit across from one another on the banquette. The pillows are just as soft as I imagined they would be. I hold one against my chest. “Why did Pan need other people’s shadows to begin with?”

“Pan’s shadow was stripped from him when he was bound to Neverland’s soil by whoever cursed him,” Hook explained. “As far as I know, he’s never told anyone who is responsible. He was only a child when he was brought here, so he might have forgotten.”

Who would be so cruel to a little boy?

Two terrible thoughts strike me, one after the other. The first is that whoever cursed Pan might still be out there somewhere, and capable of equally awful or even worse things. And secondly… what did Pan do to make them believe the only way to handle him was to banish him to an island from which he could never escape?

“Without his shadow, Pan began to age far faster than he wanted. He began looking for ways to slow down the progression or stop it altogether.” Hook rolls his neck and I see the tension he carries in his shoulders. If the movement offers him any relief, it isn’t noticeable.

“He must have been terrified, being left here so young,” I muse.

Hook scoffed. “Pan has never felt fear. He had no trouble surviving the island. Even young, he was smart. Cunning in a way that’s frightening.” He took a long breath and set it free again.

“Pan began testing and learning the bounds of his curse, stretching it to see if it might weaken or break. It remained strong and never broke, but it did bend…” Hook grimaced. “Pan learned that with another person’s shadow, he could leave the isle, but only once, and only during the daylight hours. The moment the Second Star’s light hit him, it enforced the curse and dragged him back to the island.”

“Okay… so why did he keep and collect the shadows when they couldn’t be used again?” My favorite true crime podcast host would say this is the behavior of a serial killer. And he wouldn’t be wrong.

“If Pan possesses a shadow, he doesn’t age, which is why he stayed a boy until Belle stole them all and disappeared, and why he is now a man, the same as the rest of us.”

I don’t know everything about Neverland and probably never will, but… “How did he manage to steal a shadow in the first place?”

Hook looks out the distorted window. “He didn’t. Someone well-meaning stole the first shadow for him so he could test his theory. She left Neverland because she was not bound to the island and stole a shadow from a person who had already lost his memory.”

I clutch the pillow tighter. “What does memory have to do with anything?”

“A shadow is more than light meeting an object and showing its form. It is the stamp of a thousand moments lived; it’s a place where our memories are kept safe.”

“Memories are stored in the brain,” I argue.

The captain tapped the side of his head with his shiny hook. “The brain forgets. Shadow does not.”

If I were anyone else, I would tell him he’s crazy. I would insist that shadows are the product of light rays striking an object and projecting its outline behind it.

But if that is true and that’s all they are, how do you explain why I don’t have one?

The one who did this for him, the woman who robbed a man whose mind was fogged, tried not to harm someone in the process. And while Hook hasn’t said who loved Pan enough to help free him from his curse and this place, I know in my bones it was Belle.

So many other things slide into place, like oddly-shaped pieces of a puzzle.

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