Nothing rattles Smee.
I envy her unflappable disposition. I particularly envy her unflappable disposition when I feel so fucking flapped.
“Worrying will get you nowhere,” she tells me.
“I’m not worried!”
She cants her head and a thick loc slides over her shoulder. “What would you call it?”
I upend the glass. I’m already three in. I can’t be drunk when the Crocodile is on the island. But three glasses have barely touched the knot between my shoulder blades or the constant churning in my gut.
I’m going to kill him.
Strategize a plan and then find him and then kill him.
“Jas,” Smee says again.
“What?”
“He’s not here for you.”
“But he’ll make a pit stop, I’m sure of it.” I start pacing again. “Just to terrorize me. Remind me I touched what was his. As if he owned her.”
Smee returns to the open balcony door and leans against the frame, hands in her pockets.
“You did kidnap Wendy Darling,” she reminds me.
“Smee!”
She lifts a shoulder.
I grumble and turn away. “You’re not here to point out my dubious past.”
“Am I not?” She laughs. “I must have misunderstood my job duties.”
I reach the far end of the room and stop.
Hearing Wendy’s name conjures an image of her in my head.
When I look back on the memories, I am never quite sure if I remember them right, because sometimes I get the distinct feeling Wendy Darling played me.
Maybe she played the Crocodile too.
Maybe pitting us all against one another was always her plan.
I’ll never know.
Because Peter Pan took her back to her world and though I have no idea how many years have passed in the mortal realm, I’m quite sure it’s too many to live by.
She’s dead now.
The memories need to die with her.
A flare of pain races from the end of my arm clear up to my bicep.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say there was a storm coming.
“How do we kill him, Smee?” I ask over my shoulder. She’s the magical expert, the traveler of the Isles.
“The hard part will be getting close enough to him and—”
Something pounds on the front door.
Smee and I look at one another. “You expecting anyone?” I ask her and she shakes her head.
I leave my office and follow the hall to the foyer. I have the pirates scouting the hills and several more near the bay. You can never be sure which way a Crocodile might come.
The pounding gets more desperate.
“I’m coming!”
I pull the door open and a body spills inside and slumps to the floor with a loud thud.
Blood splatters over my freshly polished boots and then pools on the hardwood.
“For Christ’s sake!”
The man rolls to his back and my indignation dries up.
If it’s possible for all of the blood to leave a man without a single cut, I suspect it’s happened just now.
I can’t feel my legs.
There is a needling across my shoulder blades, like a thousand pinpricks all at once.
I pull my pistol with a shaky hand.
The Crocodile looks up at me from the floor of my fucking foyer.
“Captain,” he says with a devilish smirk, despite the fact he looks to be on Death’s door. There’s shredded white fabric wrapped several times around his throat, but it’s mostly soaked in blood. More blood has covered the front of him and has run down his arms, coating his fingertips.
“The fuck are you doing here?”
He laughs but it dissolves into a cough and he struggles to his knees, sucking in air.
I cast a glance at Smee. Both her pistols are trained on him. She’s never been trigger happy, but I know she won’t hesitate to pull.
“Funny you should ask,” the Crocodile says and then collapses to the floor again as his eyes roll back in his head.
I kick him. He snaps to.
“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”
“Would you believe me…if…I said…I missed you?”
I stomp him in the fucking dick.
All of the air rushes out of him and he rolls into a fetal position and laughs and chokes and coughs and laughs.
“Alright,” he wheezes out after several long minutes. “Nowhere…else…to go.”
“Surely you have a ship—”
“Peter Pan and his Darling…just killed half the Remaldi royal family.” He rolls to his back again and blinks up at the wrought iron chandelier. “Tried to kill me. But Holt is going to think I set him up.” Another coughing fit takes over and he loses consciousness.