Page 72 of The Last Lost Girl

“Hudson,” I tell her. “Hook. Whatever you called him. He’s on the other side with Grim. We should go see if he’s okay,” I tell her, starting toward the water, deciding she and I can hash this out later.

She grabs my arm, stopping me. “Grim recognized you.”

“He and Wraith knew my name when they came to ‘collect’ me for Pan. How did they know who I was, Belle?” I can’t keep the accusation out of my tone.

“You think I told them?” she yells. Then she clutches her stomach and looks sick. She’s still wearing the plaid pajama bottoms she left the house in and her favorite ratty t-shirt. But when I look past her soaked, dripping clothes, she looks… bad. “I will protect you with my life, Ava. I would rather die than see you anywhere near Pan! He’s a monster.” She sits on a rock, deflated. “I didn’t mean for you to come with me. They just took you.”

“The shadows?”

She nods. “I didn’t think it was possible. They must have cloaked you from the Star so it didn’t see you were shadowless and block your entrance.”

“There’s no point worrying about how it happened. The past happened and the present is happening.” I glance in the direction of the clock ticking against my chest, wondering if it’s possible here. “You came back to return the shadows so the people trapped here can leave, so can you do that? Can you just do that so we can go home?”

“It’s not that simple!” she hisses.

I fight to control my rising panic. “Pan is hunting us. He wants those shadows back. I don’t want him to find you, Belle. I don’t want him to hurt you.”

Her eyes darken into obsidian at the sound of his name. Her lip curls and she snarls, “What if I want him to find me?”

I crouch down so that we’re almost the same height. “Then you wouldn’t be hiding in a cave. You would’ve flown right to him.” I reach into my pocket and nearly cry as water streams from my cell phone. I strike the home key, but it won’t turn on. I want so desperately to remind her of what our lives were like before the shadows took over and doused her light.

She rips the phone out of my hand and cracks it against a rock. Glass shatters and the inner workings of the phone spill onto the ground beside us.

My mouth falls open. “Why did you do that?”

“It’s ruined, but everything on it is automatically saved to the cloud. You didn’t lose anything but the device,” Belle informs me with a sniff. “I learned that lesson the hard way once.”

“There’s probably rice on Neverland, you know. I could’ve drawn the water out.”

Belle just shrugs, then adds, “And I wasn’t hiding in this cave. I was following you, to protect you.”

My mouth gapes as I process what she said.

We sit in the quiet for several long moments.

“Remember the necklace you used to wear? The one with the silver acorn pendant?” I ask.

Her eyes lift to mine.

“I remember last year when it broke. Probably because it was such a pivotal moment. I remember your beautiful golden eyes swirled with darkness the first time. That’s the farthest back that I can recall, and I’m not sure what I’ve forgotten between then and now.”

“I tried to remind you,” she rasps.

“I know, and I love you for it. Without you, I can only remember the most recent things that happen in my life. Like the sleeping pills I was so mad at you for stealing and then taking. The fire you set in our living room. The rooftop.” I curse and fold my hands at the back of my neck, pressing my heavy hair down. “Mrs. Jennings.”

“Hag,” Belle tosses.

I smile. “Garfield.”

“Dinner.” She grins, then her chin begins to tremble.

She’s shattering again, so I rush to tell her, “I don’t remember much before that, and without you I wouldn’t remember anything at all. You tell me all the time about the day you found me, of random moments in our lives and the happiness we carved from nothing, because I can’t remember anything farther back than the day the pendant cracked. And I know that one day, I won’t remember that necklace or how you sacrificed yourself to save the shadows.” Belle swallows thickly. “You reminded me of so many things because you didn’t want to lose me, but I am losing you, Belle, to the slivers of darkness you were never meant to bear. And if something happens to you, I will forever be lost.”

I stare into my sister’s eyes. Golden with only a small burst of shade as a tear trickles down her cheek.

Water sloshes behind me and a dripping wet, furious-looking Hudson trudges out of the lake. I stand and take him in. He’s not hurt. He’s soaking wet… and are his nipples pierced?

“Tinkerbell,” he says between heaving breaths. “What happened? You promised you’d be right back.”

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