“Motherfucker,” he says, but there’s a ring of laughter on the edge of his voice. He steals the cigarette back.
“Listen,” I say, “I know what it feels like to try to grapple with being two sides of a bad coin. If there is anyone who understands it, it’s me. So just fucking talk to me.”
The hair lifts along my arms as the twins slow up ahead and a wolf peers out from the woods.
I am connected to Neverland once again, but it's been so long, I don't recognize the syllables of the land's language, the sharp edges of the constants, the softness of the vowels. I have to learn it all over again.
What is that gnawing in the back of my head? The feeling that something is wrong?
I look over at Vane.
Perhaps I’ve pushed him too far. Maybe his dark shadow is chafing against mine.
We have never been side by side in this way, two shadows of different lands.
It annoys me that I didn't consider this.
It terrifies me that it might turn out to be a problem.
“Do you feel that?” I ask.
He nods at me, his violet eye going black.
The wolf trots out to the middle of the path in front of the twins.
Vane and I slowly make our way forward, flanking the princes so that we face the wolf in a formidable line.
“This is unusual,” Kas says, keeping his voice low and even. The wind shifts and his hair billows in front of his face but he doesn’t make a move to fix it.
A very, very long time ago, I would run with the wolves, but the memory is so old it’s more smoke than fire, barely there at all.
I haven’t seen the wolves this close since I lost my shadow.
Bash whistles at him and then says, “Whatchya doing, boy?”
The wolf dips his head. Even hunched, he’s still about half as tall as the twins. His coat is like a dark twilight sky—mostly black with flecks of white and gray.
He looks at us with vivid blue eyes.
“What do we do?” Kas asks.
The wolf is standing between us and the treehouse.
I am impatient to return to my Darling.
I step forward.
That feeling that something is wrong grows.
“Go on,” I tell the wolf. “Back to the woods.”
He straightens his shoulders and lifts his head, pulls back his lips to show gleaming sharp teeth.
“Go on. I won’t tell you again.”
I take another step and he turns around and runs.
But he doesn’t go to the woods.
Instead, he follows the road straight to the treehouse.
2
PETER PAN
I can sense the wolf’s destination immediately.
At my side, Bash says, “Maybe we should—”
But I’m not listening and I’m sure as fuck not waiting.
I bend my knees and push off Neverland earth with all the urgency of a mortal jet plane.
I take to the air in less than a second and I’m breaking the sound barrier not long after that.
The trees rattle beneath the force of my flight.
There’s no time to revel in being midair again.
Panic has my heart thudding in my ears and the blood rushing through my veins.
The wolf is after the house.
I am after the wolf.
When I land outside the treehouse, I find the front door shredded, nothing but splinters, and bile races up my throat.
“Darling!”
I shove what remains of the front door in and it bangs against the wall.
Wet paw prints cross the foyer and disappear up the stairs.
“Darling!”
Some of the Lost Boys shuffle from their rooms scrubbing at their eyes.
"Pan, what is it?" one of them asks.
“Darling!” I shout again and don’t bother with the stairs.
I hear a yelp from the loft, then a growl, and the parakeets take flight from the tree in a rolling wave.
When I land outside Darling’s bedroom, I smell the muskiness of the wolf’s pelt.
A female voice is quivering with fear from the inside.
I slam the door in and find Cherry cowering in the corner of the room and the wolf standing on the end of Darling’s bed snarling at me.
Darling is tucked on her side beneath the thin sheet, fast asleep.
I edge closer. The wolf lets out a warning growl.
I may not speak the same language—yet—but I know he can sense intention, especially mine. If it comes down to the wolf or Darling, I know what my choice will be.
He needs to know it too.
A warning is a warning.
“Out,” I tell him.
But he gives me one more snarl and then turns a circle on the bed and curls into Darling’s side, his eyes open and trained on me, daring me to come nearer.