Page 106 of Freeing Hook

“Very well, then,” he says. “I believe you and I could be mutually beneficial to one another. You see, I’d quite like to havea faerie dust supplier of my own. When you break your Mate’s curse and return to Neverland to secure your happy ending, I want you to turn the faerie over to me. I’ll even be generous and give you an entire year to do it.”

“I doubt I’ll be able to catch her,” I say.

The Nomad shrugs. “Then convince your Mate to do it. Surely with his curse broken, he’ll be so pleased with you, he’ll do whatever you ask.”

I can’t tell if he’s taunting me or not. “Fine, but I want two years,” I say, to which the Nomad grimaces but doesn’t object. “Now how do I break the curse?”

“I myself am ignorant of such matters, but in a few moments, I’m going to call your captain in here and tell him that there’s a dead Seer in the Cave of Endor who knows the spell to remove his Mark.”

“And is that true?” I ask.

The Nomad’s eyes twinkle. “What is it to you?”

I sit back in my chair, listening as the Nomad continues, “What’s relevant to you is that this Seer has the magic to break your Mate’s curse.”

“And how am I supposed to talk to a dead Seer?”

“There’s a spell,” he says, leaning in and whispering it in my ear. I shiver at the sound of the ancient words in my ear, but commit them to memory all the same.

“Now,” he says, holding out his hand. “Do we have a bargain?”

When I take the Nomad’s hand, something stings at the back of my neck. At the same time, he presses a cold object to my hand. “You’ll be needing this,” he says. “A calling stone. You can use it to bind the Seer to this world. Just don’t drop it.” He flashes me a smile that I’m unable to interpret as either sincere or teasing.

Then, as if the Nomad had merely been speaking to himself and not another person inhabiting the room, he returns to the sketches at his desk.

Considering myself dismissed, I make to abscond from the room, but as I rise from my seat, the Nomad addresses me, though without looking up from his papers. “Oh, and do be careful, Miss Darling. Spirits only have a limited amount of magic to offer after they die. What you and the captain want—there won’t be enough magic for both. If I were you, I wouldn’t use the Seer’s magic lightly.”

The contents of my stomach harden to concrete, the pressure of what’s at stake threatening to make me sluggish. A servant soon comes to fetch me, then leads me to a parlor where Astor is waiting, foot perched on his opposite knee, which he’s bouncing erratically. If he greets me with his expression, I’m intentionally ignorant of it, because I turn my attention to a painting on the wall, fixing my gaze on its ghastly depiction of a vast wasteland.

The servant leads Astor out of the room for his meeting with the Nomad. My foot taps against the floorboards. Uneasy as I am being complicit in deceiving Astor, I’m weary of sacrificing for people who aren’t willing to sacrifice for me. Still, when he returns to get me from the parlor, I open my mouth, then quickly shut it, realizing I’d rather my deception be silent than spoken.

On the way out, a servant bumps into me, knocking me into Astor’s arms. His arms grip around my shoulders as he stares into my eyes. I can’t tell if it’s an apology written there, or just resignation.

CHAPTER 41

JOHN

Simon has been dead for all of five seconds before I realize how bad this looks.

My hands are covered in blood. Worse, in my panic, I’d moved the fallen blade out of the way. I don’t even recall touching it, but my handprints stick to the hilt in sticky scarlet blood all the same.

Blood pumps against my forehead, pounding nails into my skull. Simon’s corpse is pale in front of me, but I can’t seem to scrub the image of my parents’ lifeless bodies from my mind.

Caring gets you killed.

Think, John.

I close my eyes, breathe, and banish my parents from my mind. Banish Simon from my mind. Then I walk myself through my next few steps.

One at a time.

First, I have to decide what the chances are that Peter will believe me if I tell him I didn’t kill Simon. Simon’s been acting strange since the night he killed Nettle. It’s not illogical that he killed himself. Especially when he could see shadows, and the shadows had made Wendy violent.

But had Peter known about Simon’s ability to convene with the shadows? Surely if he had, he would have had Simon on a faerie dust regimen like he’d had Wendy.

A cog turns in my brain, but doesn’t quite fall into place. I’ll consider that later.

Task at hand. Will Peter believe me? I work through how this would look to him.

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