Page 10 of Devour the Dark

I’m used to people hungering for me. I know what I look like. It’s annoying if I’m fucking honest. As if the only thing interesting about me is my appearance. If someone stares too long, I immediately know their measure: shallow, dull,pathetic.

But the girl’s interest isn’t hungry. It’s distantly curious. Lacking that raw edge of hunger. Almost academic.

Almost like she wants to pin me to a board and study me.

That might be worse than lust.

“Whatever my brother has done,” I say, “it has no bearing on me. Whatever you’re here to tell me, I don’t care.” I turn away and expect Winnie to follow.

But she doesn’t.

She takes a step down, then another. “How do you know Roc?” she asks the girl.

I pause beneath the Never Tree. The pixie bugs buzz above me as if they sense the rising tide of tension.

“I don’t know him well,” the girl answers. “I’ve only just met him.”

“So then why are you here on his behalf?”

I hear the girl inhale. It’s a breath of preparation, the kind that proceeds an important detail.

The showman’s reveal.

I turn back.

“To be honest, I’m more so here on behalf of my best friend.”

“And who is that?”

“Wendy,” she says. “Wendy Darling.”

CHAPTER FOUR

VANE

Winnie is demanding we go.

She’s pacing the loft, the Neverland Shadow ribboning around her.

When she is excited, stressed, agitated, or angry, the shadow reacts, trailing her like a cape made of mist.

My shadow never did anything of the sort. It and I were always at odds. There was no sense of collaboration between us. I hunted it down, demanded its swift hand of revenge. It was hungry, so it complied. But everything after that—after I destroyed the Darkland royal family—was fraught with conflict.

It hated being on Neverland. Neverland was not its home.

But this dark shadow claimed Winnie as much as she claimed it.

They were made for one another. When she needs it, it’s there. When it needs something from her, she immediately responds.

Sometimes I feel like the unwitting third party to their symbiotic relationship.

Not that I will complain. Winnie and the shadow saved me, and sharing it means I get to keep an eye on her in a way the others cannot.

“Wendy Darling is my great-great-great grandmother,” Winnie is saying. “I want to meet her. I should have that right.”

Pan is awake. The twins are here. The girl, Asha, is waiting outside on the front porch for our answer.

It seems Roc has devoured something he shouldn’t have. Now he needs me to fix him.

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