Their house isn’t ostentatious, but there are some things that speak to wealth. Like the furniture, the bar, all that liquor lined up like trophies.
Some of the house is crumbling with age, but there’s beauty in it, like a cracked marble statue of some ancient Greek goddess.
Pan rests his tumbler of liquor on the arm of the chair and lays his head against the back and closes his eyes.
The twins give me a look that very clearly says, What have you done?
It was Vane. Not me. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have run if he hadn’t turned that power on me.
Bash pulls out another cigarette and lights it, takes a drag. Then he gets up and crosses the room and hands it to Pan.
Pan opens his eyes and takes the offering, pinches the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger as he takes a pull from it.
When he exhales, the smoke clouds above us and ghosts to the exposed beams.
To my left, the tree that has sprouted right up the center of their house lets a few more leaves loose and they flutter like feathers to the ground.
“Here’s what you need to know, Darling,” Pan says, but he’s still looking at the ceiling, his head lolled back against the chair. “The Darlings took something from me a very long time ago and they hid it and I want it back. You’re going to help me find it.”
“I don’t know where—”
“Quiet.” His gaze lands on me. Now in the light of the house, I realize he has eyes so blue they’re almost white and they are ringed in a circle of black.
A shiver dances across my shoulders and I tug my sweater closed.
“I don’t need your permission to root around inside your head and I’m not asking for it.” He sits forward. “But cooperate and we’ll all get what we want much sooner than if you don’t.”
He takes another hit and smoke ribbons around his face.
I think this is the first time I’ve really looked at him. When he showed up at my house, I was too deep in the disbelief to really take him in.
On the beach, he was shrouded in darkness.
The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up to his elbows, exposing black ink that covers both his arms and hands. The silver rings on his fingers glint beneath the light as he holds his glass in a death grip.
The tattoos are distracting and I’m grateful for it. It’s difficult to look him straight in the face.
When I look at him, my belly soars.
There is something about him that is disarming. Unnatural. Haunting. Like a barren tree growing in the middle of a dark lake.
Something that very rarely should be and yet is.
Just the sight of it tells you a story—I am indestructible. Unyielding.
It’s hard to look at him, but harder to look away.
“Do you understand me, Darling?” he says.
I swallow around a lump wedged in my throat. “Yes.”
“Good girl.” He gets up. “Put her back in her room.”
The twins share a look.
“Now.”
They move as Pan disappears from sight.
“Come on, Darling.” Kas pulls me upright as Bash starts down the hall. “We’ll tuck you in and we promise we’ll be nicer than Pan.” He ends this with a laugh that feels like it could be sarcastic.
They lead me down the hall to the back bedroom and chain me to the bed again. Kas is gentle, but I catch his gaze lingering on my body.
It’s an odd feeling, suddenly being held captive in a house full of boys.
A year ago, I’d call this a party.
Now it’s just the sum of a life lived in fear and delusion.
“For your first day in Neverland,” Bash says, “you did all right, Darling.”
“I’m chained to a bed. It isn’t like I had a choice in any of this.”
Kas’s jaw flexes. “We always have a choice.”
“If you need us, we’ll be within shouting distance, Darling,” Bash says and then they leave me in the flickering light of a lantern, the door clicking closed behind them.
8
WINNIE
I spent the summer of my thirteenth year living with Mom in a rundown house that was crammed between two warring neighbors, one a prude and the other a prostitute.
Starla was the prostitute, an acquaintance of Mom’s who helped us get the rental.
Beth Anne was the prude and she hated Starla. “That vile woman,” she used to say when she looked down the stretch of cracked sidewalk to Starla’s cute yellow cottage. “She’s a blight on this neighborhood.”
The most ironic part about that was that Starla’s house was easily the nicest on the block.