Page 90 of Losing Wendy

“I’ll get Peter,” he says, then goes sprinting down the hallway.

It feels like hours later when the dark silhouette appears. At first I think Peter is in his shadow from, but it’s just a trick of the light. His eyes are the same familiar blue when he kneels down and lifts me into his arms and carries me away.

“No, not me,” I whisper. “Michael. I hurt Michael. You need to help him.”

“John’s taking care of Michael,” says Peter, a softness in his voice I’ve yet to hear. There’s no lighthearted teasing in his tone, nor is there that utter lack of feeling.

“I hurt him. Michael. He’ll never forgive me.”

“You’re his sister,” Peter says. “Of course he’ll forgive you.”

“No.” The word grinds past my teeth. “You don’t know him like I do. He won’t understand when I apologize. I won’t be able to explain to him why I did it. That I didn’t mean to. I can’t tell him it was an accident. All he’s going to know is that I hurt him.”

“He’ll forget.”

A shudder ripples through me. “Michael never forgets.”

Peter carries me into a dark room. I don’t have to glance around to know that it’s his. I can smell the scent of amber and incense—the same scent from the night I snooped in here and Tink attacked me.

I find myself wishing her claws had run deeper. That she had succeeded in her purpose of killing me. Then I never would have killed that man.

I never would have hurt Michael.

The memory of my hands on his throat wrings another scream from mine.

“Wendy,” Peter says, voice uneven. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him sound like he doesn’t know what to do.

There’s someone else in the room. Victor, judging by his softwhispers. He must have waited here for Peter to return. “Can you help her?”

“I—” Peter’s at a loss for words, and when another vision of the man hits me, it’s like he’s here, in the room with us. I writhe my limbs, seeking to free myself from Peter’s grip, because now Peter is the stranger, and he’s going to kill Victor.

“Run, Victor,” I say, shadows whirling around my vision.

“What’s happening to her?” I faintly hear Victor say.

“She’s had a traumatic experience,” says Peter.

“We’ve all had traumatic experiences. None of us started hallucinating,” Victor spits back.

Peter pauses, grabbing my hand as I go to pluck out his eye. His grip feels constricting, makes me lash even harder. Shadows swirl around him, but they’re not his shadows, they’re the shadows from the storehouse where he keeps the faerie dust. They’ve come for me again, come to swallow me in my sleep. They wriggle themselves into my throat and choke me. I start retching, and Victor’s pitch soars. “Peter. You’ve got to do something for her.”

Footsteps as someone else runs into the room. “I heard screaming. What’s—Wendy?”

Simon appears above me, horror plastered on his face. Shadows crawl into his nostrils, turning his beautiful eyes crimson.

I claw at him, too.

And then the shadows take me under.

For a moment, all is dark. And then I see him—a dark figure clutching, overpowering a struggling boy—Thomas. A tendrilled arm shackles his neck from behind as the boy kicks and writhes, then goes limp. Faintly, I think I hear crying, but Thomas is already dead, and his killer is shaking over his body.

“YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING,” someone bellows.

I’m still trying to decipher the killer’s face, when something soft like powdered sugar and sweet like honeysuckles blooms on my tongue, and my entire being is blanketed in the sweet oblivion of light.

Faerie dust is morebeautiful than I’d ever imagined it.

The night I danced in the heavens with Peter, I’d only gotten a taste, the smallest droplet of nectar. He hadn’t wanted to give me too much, and I’d understood as soon as he pressed it to my tongue.

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