Page 125 of Freeing Hook

My entire world shifts with one story. One memory. The words of one wraith to another.

My father, my idol, torn down.

And then the captain speaks. “You shouldn’t have told me that.”

Wendy’s confused. Hurt. But then the captain explains. “I mean you shouldn’t have told me that. Not if you ever wanted me to feel a twinge of guilt about spilling your sorry parents’ blood.”

And for a moment, the flicker of time, the ticking of the second hand on a pocket watch, I agree. I’m back in the ballroom, corpses of guests strewn about me, and there are blades to my parents’ throats.

But it’s not their own hands holding them.

It’s mine.

Anger sluices over me as I’m the one who cuts into their flesh, spills their blood. I’m the one standing over them as their bodies crumple.

My father reaches for me, hand over his throat as he tries to hold the blood in. I don’t reach for him back, though even now, I want to. Want nothing more than to erase the truth from my mind, place my father back up on his pedestal, forget what happened.

It’s as if I’m a navigator who’s just been told that North never existed.

I fragment. Every value I stand upon crumbles from underneath me.

“You have no right to be angry with them,” says a voice. I snap my head up, toward the wraith of the captain, still as deathon the floor. “You knew. You overheard what happened that night, and you never told a soul. Think of all the times you could have saved your sister from her fate had you not been such a coward.”

No. It’s just a wraith. Not even the captain. But his words ring true, nevertheless.

“I should have killed you that night, too. Your sister would be better off. You tell yourself your mission is to protect her, but so did your father. You’re the same, just like you’ve always wanted. You thought you didn’t measure up to him, but you do. You allow harm to befall the ones you love. And then you retreat into books and tell yourself you’re doing it for their good. Finding a way to save them. But really, you’re just as much of a coward as your father. He trained you well. Better than you ever realized.”

I fumble for words, for a response. It’s irrational to argue with a wraith at all, but I can’t seem to find a valid counterargument.

“I’ll find her,” I say. “I’ll protect her from now on.”

The captain only laughs. “Protect her? How? You’re not capable. Not because you don’t have the knowledge, but because you don’t have the courage. How many times could you have saved her, but you didn’t? Do you even realize how many times she was assaulted in that parlor after you knew it was going on? How many encounters you could have prevented?”

“No,” I say. “I didn’t know it was happening routinely. I thought…I thought…”

Even though I can’t see the face of the captain’s wraith, the air tilts upward with his cruel smile. “I hope you rot like your father, John Darling. I hope you meet his same Fate.”

The sand isheavy underneath my feet, weighing me down as I trudge back toward the Den. Every step, it’s as if lead has filledmy legs. It’s filling me up, almost to my lungs, ready to snatch the breath out of me, suture my airway so I can’t steal any more of it.

My mind is flitting about, landing every which way. The whimpering Wendy made that night I overheard her in the parlor. The constant backtrack to every memory of my father and me.

I’d spent years poring over books in the library, trying to save Wendy from the monster in the window.

When all along, the monsters were in the house.

And I was one of them. Complicit.

All at once, the grief I never let near me becomes too strong, washing over me in waves, drowning me. And I know I’m not strong enough to bear it. Too much of a coward.

But then the grief rinses away, leaving nothing but a plan in place.

One last thing I can do to protect my sister. To protect Michael.

Better off, is what I remind myself.

And I know what I have to do.

My sister is surrounded by monsters who claim to love her. The best I can do for her is rid her life of one of them.

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