Wind shuddered through the branches. In the distance, trees creaked and groaned.
“My shack is that way,” Peter said, pointing into the distance. “There’s a creek up ahead. Maybe we can follow that to go deeper into the woods?” he suggested.
Sure enough, Wendy could hear babbling water off in the distance if she held her breath.
“That way, we can retrace our steps.” He was looking at her—staring, really—a bit too closely. It made her feel like he was carefully gauging her reaction. Peter could push things too far and get distracted, but she was also starting to see that he was a Noticer. And the worst thing about Noticers is that it was hard to hide from them.
“Good idea.” Wendy nodded. She followed Peter another few yards until they came upon the creek. It was a few feet wide, with water tumbling over rocks and fallen branches. They started to follow it downstream, the ground sloping gradually through a ravine.
“How did you even find me, anyway?” Wendy asked, still thinking about the night before. It had been bugging her, sort of nagging at the back of her mind. There was still so much about him she didn’t know or understand. His ability to find her when she was lost in the middle of the woods was a big one. “I feel like as soon as I called your name, you just magically appeared.” Hearing herself, she frowned. Was that it? “Can you still fly?”
Peter laughed, though his smile wasn’t easy. “No, I don’t have enough magic left in me to fly anymore.” He looked down at his hands and Wendy did, too. Was she expecting to see them spark with light again? For the sword made of pixie dust to appear?
“I need to save it to use against my shadow,” he went on. “I could hear you yelling for Alex like a mile away.” He leapt to the top of a fallen tree covered in moss. He followed it down the river, feet easily stepping over knots and through vines without getting tangled. Peter held his arms out at his sides for balance, moving slowly so Wendy could keep up beside him as she tripped over wet rocks.
“So, I ran after you. It was pretty easy to hear your crashing through the woods.” He frowned, glancing over at Wendy. “They’ve been unnaturally quiet at night. No owls, no crickets. I haven’t even heard any animals scurrying around. Anyway, when I caught up to you at the clearing, I saw that the shadows were trying to take you, so I used the only thing I could think of to try to stop it: pixie dust. But if we have to rely on that in order to stop my shadow, I think we’re in trouble.” Peter’s hands went back to his sides as he hopped to the next rotting tree.
“Like I said, my magic is still getting weaker. The longer I’m here, the faster it fades. These shoes could barely stay on my feet yesterday morning,” he said, balancing on one foot and raising the other as evidence. “Now my toes are crammed into them.”
Wendy tried to look at him more closely as he stood perched on the fallen tree. It was hard to tell exactly how much he was changing day by day.
No one could possibly mistake him for a middle school–aged boy now. Indeed, he looked like he could be one of the senior guys on her swim team: tall, toned, and tanned. This was good news, really. It meant it was far less likely that someone from the emergency room or one of the police officers would recognize him.
But the far more dire reality was that they were running out of time. Wendy didn’t want to think about what might happen to Peter if he lost all of his magic. Would he turn into an old man? Disappear? Turn to dust? Something worse?
“Peter, what if that was all part of the shadow’s plan?” she asked.
He jumped down from the tree, landing lightly beside her. “What do you mean?” he asked, eyebrows knitting together as he looked down at her, head canting to the side.
“What if it used Alex to lure me into the woods because it knew you’d come after me and use more of your magic?” Wendy said. “What if it’s just buying time, trying to wait you out until your pixie dust is gone and your magic has been drained out of you?” She didn’t want to think it was possible. Peter gleamed with energy, from his quick smile to his easy laugh. Standing next to him was like being bathed in sunlight. Even now she could feel his warmth on her cheeks. Could the shadow really suck all of that brightness from him?
Peter said nothing for a moment. His eyes stared off into the distance, flickering with intensity and thought. When his face grew pale and his expression fell, Wendy wished she had never brought it up.
“Then I guess we better hurry up and put a stop to it,” Peter said, trying to force a confident smile. He didn’t do a very good job.