“Because your daughter was giving him a”—I think of how to word it—“treat.” I flash him a smile, but both old men’s eyes go wide. “And as it was particularly defiant of the relational boundaries I thought we were both operating under, I did protest, and I got myself banished.”
I catch eyes with Itheelia, and she smothers a smile with her hand as the man turns to Rye and whispers something angrily. Rye shoots me a look across the table as though he’s annoyed at me, but I shrug. For him to think that I owe his sister my discretion? The gall.
“Where is the boy anyway?” Day asks me, like I’d know.
I gesture to myself. “Banished, remember?”
Jamison squashes a smile.
“Where is he?” Day sighs, looking around the room, but ultimately his gaze lands on me again.
I sigh.
“With a mermaid? Finding treasure? Chasing a squirrel? How am I to know?”
“Shall we start without him?” Itheelia suggests.
Day sighs, and they do.
Everyone shares all the information they have about the uncle and his apparent impending arrival as I sit quietly and listen, and I become no more sure about this man than I was the day when Jamison and Itheelia first mentioned him.
Multiple sightings all across the realm. I didn’t know we were in a realm; I don’t know what I thought we were in. I suppose I thought we were on a planet, just. Probably a bit silly.
Anyway, sightings all over the realm, stories dripping in of people going missing, many of them young, so that’s particularly sad and awful.
Roaming patrols will commence tonight. And killing him on sight is the plan of attack.
Harder than it sounds, I’m gathering.
I did suggest why don’t they just take him to the police, and Jem said, “Oh, why daen we think of that? Oh, because there’re no police here. It’s Neverland.”
Which then elicited a very unimpressed look from me.
“Can he be killed on sight?” Rye asks, eyebrows up.
“Kind of,” Itheelia considers.
“A stab through the heart should do it,” Rye’s dad declares, but Itheelia doesn’t look entirely sure.
“There are rumours that he’s hidden his heart.”
I look over at Jem, completely lost.
“He’s…” Rye’s voice trails. Magic is the word he doesn’t say.
“He harnesses magic,” Jem tells him. “He daesnae hae it innately himself.”
Rye nods, sort of following along. “Any tips?”
“Aim true?” Jem offers with a shrug. “Wherever true is.”
“I’ve heard,” Itheelia starts, “that you can see the location of his heart, pulsing under the moonlight.”
“Why does it have to be through the heart?” I ask, looking between them all.
Jamison looks strained as he thinks on how to explain. “He’s collected some things over time that’ve made him powerful.”
“Oh,” I say, still not really sure what he means. I think that might be his intention.
“Will you see Pan?” Itheelia asks Rye. “Will you relay to him all th—”
“No need, witch,” Peter says, waltzing in with all the Lost Boys in tow, new freckles on each of them.
I feel a funny twinge of relief to see the little ones. They spot me before he does.
“Daphne!” Kinley yells happily.
“Oh, Daphne!” Percival goes to run to me, but Peter puts out a hand and stops him.
“What are you doing here?” Peter asks, scowling at me as he takes a seat. “I banished you.”
Under the table, Jamison’s hand squeezes my knee, but on his face, he gives Peter a grimace.
“I know ye may find this hard to believe, mate, but thon actually means fuck all.”
Peter doesn’t look at Jamison; he doesn’t take his eyes off me. “You shouldn’t be here,” he tells me.
I stare over at him. “Says who?”
“Me,” Peter spits. “I want you off my island.”
“It isn’t your island, Peter,” Itheelia tells him calmly, and he tosses her a dark look.
“Don’t be stupid. We all know it is.” Then his eyes go back on me. “And I want her off it. I’ll drag you back to London myself.”
Jamison stands. “And I will kill ye if ye try.”
Peter matches him, jumping to his feet. “What are you even doing here?” He jumps onto the table and stares down at me as he walks over.
I push back from the table. The chair loudly scrapes over the stone as I move away from him, and Jamison stands between us.
Peter peers around Hook to me, eyebrows furrowed. “This is where you’ve been staying since you left me?”
“Since you banished me,” I correct him.
Peter jumps off the table, eyes wide in a funny way—panicked, almost.
“You can come back now, girl,” he tells me, nodding. “You can stay in my bed.”
I shake my head at him. “I don’t want to stay in your bed, Peter.”
Peter pulls back. “But you’ll stay in his?”
His eyes fall down me like I’m a traitor or a whore, and I open my mouth to defend myself, to say absolutely yes, that it’s a decision I wish I made sooner, that it’s something I’d do every day, again and again, when Jamison jumps in.
“Do ye really think so little o’ her?” he says, and both his mother and I look at him, confused.
Hurt, actually. I don’t understand.
Hook gestures towards me. “She’s my guest.”
“You can’t have her,” Peter spits at him.
“Neither can you,” I tell Peter quickly.
Peter stares down at me in the seat I’m in. His eyes pinch. “You are mine.”
I stand up and step around Hook. “I am banished,” I remind him, and then Peter does a silly thing. Peter often does silly things, and though he wouldn’t have known it at the time because Jamison didn’t make the nature of our relationship known to him, this would prove to be one of the sillier ones.
He grabs me, Peter does. It’s rough, by the arm, and he yanks me over to him.
Within that split second, Jamison’s sword is drawn, Itheelia’s wand (that I didn’t know she had) is drawn, Orson runs in from outside, and Rye starts edging around the table.
“Ye let her go,” Jem tells him, an edge in his eye that makes me feel uneasy.
“Don’t think I will.” Peter shrugs. “She is mine after all.”
Hook pulls a face. “If ye hae to hold on to her thon tightly, is she really?”
Peter’s grip on me loosens, and I snatch my arm away from him, going and standing behind Jem.
Peter nods his chin over at us. “Do you think she’s yours?”
Jamison shrugs with his shoulders and his mouth. “Sure, I think she’s her own, and I’ll fight anybody who says otherwise.”
Peter stands tall. “I say otherwise.”
Jem nods a few times calmly, then gives him an indifferent smile. “Then draw.”
I stare over at him, eyes wide.
Peter scoffs. “Are you challenging me to a duel?”
Jem blows air out of his mouth. “Mate, I’m just trying t’ shut ye up.”
Peter sniffs a little laugh. “Tomorrow. Cannibal Cove.”
“Jem.” I touch his arm, but he shrugs me off.
“When the second sun is a third down the left of the sky,” Peter tells him.
Hook nods. “Okay.”
“To the death,” Peter tells him.
Itheelia’s eyes go wide, but Jamison’s don’t. He just rolls them. “Everything’s so dramatic wi’ ye.” Jem pulls a face, then offers an alternative. “First t’ draw blood.”
Peter shrugs, bored. “Fine.” And then he gives me a glare. “When he bleeds, you’ll come home with me.”