Her gaze meets mine.
“You are widely traveled in the Isles and you have birds everywhere. Of course you knew.”
She straightens, sets the glass aside.
“Does James know there is a Darling girl on the other side of the island that is his great-great–”
Smee reaches across the polished bar top to clamp her hand over my mouth. “Don’t.”
Brave woman, getting near the sharp teeth of a crocodile.
Gently, I take her by the wrist and pull her hand away. “Do you plan to tell him?”
“Why do you care?”
“Answers cost a pound sterling.” I smile at her. She rolls her eyes spectacularly and yanks her hand from my grip.
“Why didn’t you get her out?” I ask. “Why not tell him?”
“Wendy Darling was in an Everland prison. The obstacles and complexities of breaking her out were insurmountable and she was not my mess to clean up. And despite what people say about James, his heart might be the biggest on all of Neverland. He cares, deeply, and if I’d told him about Wendy, he would have gone after her, and then he’d either be dead, or fighting two wars on two islands when the war he already had was already costing him more than he could afford.
“Furthermore, what do you think Peter Pan would have done if he realized the Darling line was now a Hook line? The best-case scenario was to rescue the baby and return it to its world.”
“So did you?”
I may be James’s enemy, and James may be one of Smee’s closest friends, but I’m not Smee’s enemy and Smee is not one to hold grudges. She is a woman of action and she’s always strategizing.
I suspect she’s at least half the reason James has been able to get by all these years without getting his dick chopped off.
I can practically see the wheels turning in her gaze now.
Smee is a walking, talking chessboard and I do love chess.
“I did rescue the baby,” she admits.
“To perpetuate the legacy of Peter Pan and the Darlings?”
“To keep the status quo,” she answers. “And because moving that baby to the mortal realm was the safest place for it to be. I promised Wendy I would hide her daughter and I did. But Peter Pan still found her. Unfortunately, I underestimated his ability to find a Darling.”
“But you’ve been checking up on the Darlings all along, haven’t you.” It’s not a question.
“I did what I could.”
I nod and crack open another peanut. “I wouldn’t tell him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll be angry with you, and then he’ll go after her and then I’d have to kill him.”
I pop the peanut in my mouth, crush it between my teeth and give her a wink.
She scowls at me.
I think if Smee could, she’d be stabbing me next.
27
HOOK
It doesn’t take much to locate Cherry.
I find her in her old room scanning the pictures tacked up on her wall. She used to love cutting pictures out of the illustrated fairytales and homemaking books.
“You left everything the way it was,” she says when she spots me in the doorway.
“Of course.”
She makes a turn around the room.
When I built this house, I let her pick which room she wanted. She went with one on the lower level, far away from the pirates and the drinking and cavorting. I was glad she did.
I had never intended to bring her on this trip. The one fateful trip that saw a wrong turn somewhere, landing us in the Isles.
I had meant to sail to the Caribbean.
I never made it.
When I discovered Cherry hiding in the ship’s hold, I had a thought to turn around and return her home. But then I remembered why I was leaving, why I was so desperate to escape.
I couldn’t leave her alone with our father.
Cherry sits on her bed now and a cloud of dust kicks up. She waves it away. The sun isn’t up yet so there is only the amber glow of the glass sconces on the wall.
I sit beside her and try to search the vastness of my guilt and my shame for an apology that doesn’t sound contrite.
She leans her head against my shoulder and there is a stinging deep in my sinuses.
I take her hand in mine.
“Why do we continue to love those who hate us, Jas?” she asks.
I think she means to speak of Vane, but we both hear the unsaid name—Commander William H. Hook. Our father.
When I was a young man, I hated him and yet wanted his admiration in equal measure. I can still hear his voice in my head on frequent occasions telling me when I’ve fucked up.