He bites back a smile. “Yer welcome, by the way.”
Jamison cocks an eyebrow as he leads me off the boat, down into the streets, and something about how the village looks gives me a nervous-excited feeling, like maybe I might love it here. It feels like I’ve fallen into the past and through it into a dream. My grandmothers took me earlier this year to Disneyland. Have you been on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride? It’s rather comparable to what their town is like, but incomparable is Jamison Hook who, unlike the filthy robots on that ride, looks more like he might belong in an art gallery, perhaps right next to the Venus de Milo.
“For what?” I ask him, my eyebrows up again.
He gives me a look as he leads me off the boat. “For saving ye, you hallion.”
I roll my eyes exaggeratively. “Hardly.”
He grabs me by the waist and moves me backwards towards the water. “I can clod you back in if ye’d prefer?” He smirks playfully. “Unsave ye.”
“You wouldn’t!” I tell him, my nose in the air, liking his hands very much on my waist, but hoping he doesn’t know it.
He shrugs. “I make no promises for what I would and wudnae be willing to do to see ye all wet again.” He gives me a cheeky smile, and I smack him in the arm.
He’s fun to touch. Have you ever had a person who just feels fun to touch?
He laughs again. He thinks he’s so suave and so charming* that the only response I consider appropriate is to race ahead of him and make him walk after me—remind him of the sexual revolution that’s taking place on my planet (and that I’m currently losing on this one).
“So yer one of the Darling girls.” He calls as he walks after me, just as I wanted him to.
“Yes,” I tell him, my nose in the air.
“It’s been a wee while since one o’ ye were here,” he tells me, and I keep walking ahead. “What happe—Oh. Morrigan. How ’bout ye?”
I glance back at him, and there’s a rather lovely girl? standing next to him with two loaves of bread in her arms. Long, wavy auburn hair flowing over her shoulders, pale skin that’s freckled like crazy in the sun, and eyes that are watching me coldly, but I imagine they look upon Jamison Hook rather warmly.
She doesn’t say hello back to him.? She just looks from him to me and back to him, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He throws her a sort of lazy, indifferent smile.
She gives me a long look.
“Who’s this?” she asks him and not me.
“Morrigan, this is…” He looks over at me. “This is Daphne Tallulah Bowing-Darling.”
I glare at him because I know he got that wrong on purpose. The way he’s smiling at me, he’s being facetious; he’s done it to annoy me. And unfortunately, it does annoy me.
“Pleasure.” I ignore him and extend my hand to her, but she doesn’t shake it, just eyes it instead, which is quite rude, no? And it’s definitely awkward, me with my hand extended for a good four seconds before Jamison takes it and gives it a merry shake, all pleased with himself, which I, frankly, am grateful for, but I don’t think it endears me any more to his friend.
Her eyes pinch.
“And how do you know each other?”
Jamison opens his mouth, but I cut in.
“I just dropped in.” I shrug breezily. “I got in a spot of trouble, and Jay-muh-son”—I pronounce it wrong intentionally and look at him as I do; he rolls his eyes, but he’s fighting a smile—“was kind enough to help me.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “Pan’s latest?” She nods in my direction though the question isn’t directed at me.
“Aye.” Jamison nods and catches my eye. “Sure, but the fairest one yet, wudnae ye say?”
“If you like skin and bones, I s’pose.”
She tosses me another unimpressed look. A bit like how you might look at a spider in your bedroom if you were particularly unfond of spiders.
And then she walks away.
Hook watches after her before he looks down at me, eyebrows up all amused. “D?nnae mind her.”
“Girlfriend?” I ask nosily.
“Are we together, ye mean?” he clarifies, and I nod. He scoffs like the absolute arsehole I’m positive he is. “Aye, sometimes, but strictly in the biblical sense.”
I give him an unimpressed look, and the way he smiles at me for a second makes me forget that I flew here with a boy who has forgotten me already, who, for all I know, thinks I’ve drowned and isn’t even bothering to search for my body.
And then there’s the sound of glass smashing, and two men tumble out into the street.
A rowdy crowd follows them, and it all happens so quickly.
A fight breaks out, and there’s shoving. Calhoun’s in the middle of it, and Jamison’s on the outskirts looking in, hovering close behind me, and I find myself watching him, not the unfolding mess, and I decide I like how his mouth looks when he goes serious.
And I suppose if you were to ask me what was happening and why I was standing in the middle of a town’s square I’d never been in before with a man I’ve never met before with a brawl raging around us but both of us only holding the gaze of the other with a reverent silence, the best answer I could muster for you is that for the second time in my life (and strangely on the very same day), I saw some kind of future unfolding in front of me. And through me, like a flash, ripped pain and sadness and losing and loss and death and blood and fear and trembling and lust and wonder and love and promise and—
Then one of the men fighting is tossed. Drunk and off balance, he barrels over, and while the rest of the crowd sees it and parts so that he can’t hit them, I don’t see it because I’m back to drowning again, except this time it’s on dry land and in the eyes of a pirate.
The drunkard crashes into me, knocking me clean off my feet, and I almost hit the ground, but Jamison Hook catches me and plants me back on the ground, and then he doesn’t let go.
He ducks his head to meet my eyes. “Are y’okay?”
I nod, a little shaken but happy to have his hands on me again. Why am I happy to have his hands on me again?
He nods once and spins on his heel, and had I known what was about to happen, I’d have stopped him—I swear it!—but he moves quickly. I’ll come to learn that about him—he moves quickly in almost every way but one.
His hand reaches downward, and then a glint of light, a ripple of a gasp through the crowd, and then the man who fell into me falls down dead. Throat cut. Blood spilling everywhere.
My eyes go wide in horror, and I stumble backwards, away from Jamison Hook because I remember with a suddenness that hits me like a train—Jamison Hook is a pirate. A real one. A walk-the-other-way-when-you-see-him-coming pirate, and he sees it on my face, that change. The way I was looking at him before is gone now, smothered in the blood of a dead man.
“Do ye still want to see the town?” Orson asks, coming up behind us, as though he didn’t have to step over a body to get there.
I shake my head. “I’ve seen enough.” I look at Hook. “Just take me to Peter.”