There’s a long pause. “All right,” Wendy says at last. Jane crosses the room to lift the glass dome, and Holly slips onto the sofa next to her grandmother. Wendy is very old but very beautiful. Her skin is glowy, as if she’s eaten a candle and the light is still shining inside, and she smells good.
Jane brings the book to her mother, but she doesn’t sit on the other side of the sofa. Instead she stands by the door, arms crossed. Waiting. For the story to start? Holly’s waiting too. But Wendy doesn’t open the old book.
“Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea after all.”
“Please,” Holly says.
Wendy sighs again. “What has your mother told you? About our family and Peter Pan?”
That’s one of those questions that can make the lightning come out, so Holly thinks carefully before answering. “He’s a boy,” she says. “And you had adventures together. People think he’s just a story, but he’s not.”
Her grandmother looks out the window. “Yes, I suppose that’s true enough.”
“Will you tell me about them? Your adventures?” Holly isn’t certain if she wants to have her own adventures with this boy when she’s older. But she knows her mother does.
“It was all very long ago,” Wendy says softly. She glances at Jane, still by the door. “But I’ll try.”
Grandmother is a very good storyteller. Not like Jane, who skips ahead and only talks about the exciting bits, like flying through the sky and fighting pirates. Grandmother Wendy starts at the proper beginning, which Holly hasn’t heard before.
“Once upon a time, a very long time ago, when I was just a girl, I was in the nursery with my brothers, John and Michael. It was just after bedtime.”
“What were you doing?” Holly has always wanted a brother or sister to play with.
“Oh, dreaming. Telling stories.”
“Were you sad?”
Holly tells herself stories at night in the nursery when she’s all alone and her parents have gone out and her nanny is sleeping. The stories keep the shadows away. Most of the time.
“Yes, I was,” her grandmother says, a glimmer of surprise in her eyes.
“Why?”
Wendy shakes her head. “That’s not the story. And it was a very long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.” She smooths the fabric of her blue dress across her lap, though Holly can’t see any wrinkles. And then she tells Holly about the boy who came to visit.
When Wendy gets to the part about Tinker Bell, Holly can’t help it. Excitement wells in her. The yellow daffodils on the side table, the last of the day’s sunlight streaming through the library’s heavy curtains, all catch and reflect the dust motes, flaming them into gold. Into pixie dust.
“I see her! I see Tinker Bell!” she shrieks, pointing to the window where the gold specks are thickest.
Jane is there before either of them can move, pulling back the curtains, opening the window wide and peering outside. She shakes her head, disgusted. “It’s only pollen. Only dust.”
Jane doesn’t notice the shadow that winds its way past the curtains and over the cornice, like a thick black snake. But snakes don’t have the shape of a young boy, don’t have arms and legs. Holly shivers, moves closer to her grandmother. Holly doesn’t like shadows.
Grandma Wendy notices. Holly can’t tell if she sees the shadow too, or if she just feels it, but she tells Jane to come away from the window. Holly’s mother doesn’t move, so Wendy says it again, this time with enough force that Jane obeys and slams the window down, then glares at Holly.
“I’ve told you a dozen times,” Jane says brusquely, “Peter Pan only comes at night.”
Holly thinks of the shadow. But her mother is already too angry to ask. So she whispers to her grandmother, “Is that true?”
Wendy doesn’t answer right away. Instead she tells Jane to lock the window. And then, when Holly’s mother is occupied, she whispers back.
“It used to be,” she says. “It used to be that night was the only time he could escape.”
* * *
“Mom?”
Holly blinks, lets Jack’s voice pull her back to the present. “Sorry. I was woolgathering.” She shivers, rubs her arms. “What did you say?”
“I asked if this was an original copy of Peter Pan. It must be worth a fortune.”
“Yes, it is. It’s signed as well. Don’t let your grandmother catch you handling it, please. And speaking of your grandmother, would you ask her to call me when she arrives? I need to go out for a little while.” Where is Jane? Holly would rather talk with her in person, but she can’t wait anymore.
“I want to go with you.” Jack closes the book and slides it back onto the stand, covering it with the cloche.
“No,” Holly says sharply. He looks startled. She softens her tone. “Someone needs to be here for your grandmother,” she says. “She’ll be hurt if she comes back to an empty house—you know how she is. Besides, I have some preparation to do for a meeting later this week—boring stuff. You’d hate it.”
He flops down on the couch. “I’m bored now.”
“Life will get much less boring when your grandmother arrives,” Holly says unsympathetically. “She’ll have something planned. She always does. She likes to show you off.”
She gets her bag, makes him come out to the hall. “Lock the door behind me. And don’t go out. You don’t know this city well enough. Understood?”
He nods sulkily. “Don’t forget to look for a lacrosse field.”
“I won’t,” she lies, then pulls the door shut behind her. She waits to descend the stairs until she hears the snick of the lock.
She finally has an idea of where to start her search, though it’s not one that she likes. Once, years ago, she was walking to the Tube in Soho when she got turned around into one of the seedier sections. The walls were papered with stickers advertising prostitutes and porn shows. It was getting dark, but the streetlamps weren’t lit yet and the glances she was getting made her uneasy. She kept her head down and was trying to find her way back when she caught a glimpse of golden hair. A handsome young man with a wide-eyed innocent look—well muscled and very, very familiar. It had been a few years since he’d crept through her open window, but his face was older than it should have been, pockmarked and scarred. He was standing on the curb, talking to a man in a BMW.
Holly’s breath caught, although she wasn’t certain. She took a few steps closer. The man in the car handed over a roll of bills. As the streetlamps winked on, Peter smiled, and in that second his face changed from innocent to predatory.
She’d stopped, frozen, any thoughts of calling out forgotten, and in the next instant he’d gotten in the car and was being driven away.
She’d been stupid enough, in the beginning, that she’d gone back once or twice, half hoping to see him, telling herself the whole time that she was doing it for Eden. Not because she was curious. Not because she wanted to know what had happened to the strange boy her mother loved, the one determined to never grow up. The boy whose smile filled her with dread. In any case, she hadn’t found him.
Still, Soho is the only link she has. So that’s where she’ll go. She’s taken one of Jack’s baseball caps, and now she pulls her hair into a ponytail and slips the cap over it. She’s brought her sunglasses as well. It’s a bit ridiculous, like she’s playing at being a spy.
But when she gets to Soho, it’s changed. It’s been years since she visited, and it’s not as disreputable as she remembers. There are still a few rock and roll clubs, some dodgy-looking pubs, and at least one shop with a window full of leather chaps, whips, and masks. But the streets are clean—no puddles of urine to dodge, no piles of trash. And the grottier pockets are surrounded by industrial-chic coffee shops selling fair-trade coffee, vintage record stores, and clothing boutiques where the T-shirt prices start at triple the minimum wage. The people she sees don’t have that hungry, covert look, either.
Holly spends two hours walking around, looking for something, anything, that could lead to him. She asks after him at a few of the seamier-looking pubs. “Boyfriend done a runner, eh, love?” one of the bartenders says sympathetically. “Leave you with bills to pay or kids?”