Page 123 of The Last Lost Girl

Hudson holds the waterskin out to me. “Eight more homes.”

The episode with Milan this morning flits into my mind. Should I tell Hudson I thought he was reading his journal? Then again, what if he wasn’t? I didn’t see the cover clearly. It could have been another book, or something Hook wrote for pleasure instead of purpose. Possibly something he didn’t pen at all.

“The last house is Wendy Darling’s,” he mentions. “Do you remember visiting her?”

I would ask him how I could possibly forget, but that’s exactly what I’ve tended to do time and time again during my short, second stint in Neverland.

Though it was easy to take all the shadows from Belle, the pain of giving them back to their rightful owners worsens. I return two more before I break out in a sweat that dampens my clothes. A third before my knees begin to feel watery. As we leave the home of the fourth, I slump against one of the walls to catch my breath.

Hudson encourages me to rest for a time. He returns to the ship and brings me something to eat for lunch. When I’m too tired to stand on my own, he says we should stop for the day. But I can’t let up when we’re so close to being done with it.

“Four more,” I tell him as he clasps my hand and pulls me up off the walkway’s edge.

“That’s what I’m worried about,” he replies, steadying me as I teeter.

By the time we get to Wendy’s house, I have to use Hudson for a crutch.

Belle catches back up to us, bouncing on the balls of her feet as I sit against the exterior of Wendy’s home. “I raised another ship and repaired its coral-crushed hull,” she declares proudly. “There will be plenty of room, though I’ll need the help of you and your crew to make sure she’ll hold up on the voyage home. I’ll make sails as soon as we get… back.” Her words slow when she really looks at me. “Oh, Ava.” She scowls at Hudson. “You should have stopped her three shadows ago!”

“No,” I tell her.

Wendy’s door slowly opens. Her glare is a scalpel, precise in its separation, although this time it’s trained on my sister instead of me. Her once-mangled skin peels further, baring every bump and ridge along her exposed gums.

“Tinkerbell,” she fumes darkly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m helping my sister return the shadows. You’re the last one,” Belle answers tersely. “Unless you’d rather rot in Neverland.”

My eyes snap to Belle. How can she say something like that after what Pan did to her?

“Belle, would you be so kind as to return to the ship and wait for us there?” Hudson intervenes.

My sister doesn’t look at Wendy like she wants to eat her. She looks at Wendy like she’s envisioning all the different ways she’d like to kill her.

“Belle!” I snap.

She flashes me a hurt look, glowers at Hudson, and stomps away.

thirty-nine

Wendy watches until Belle is gone, then waits several minutes with her back pressed against the door frame like she expects my sister to return.

“Ava’s come to return your shadow,” Hudson says when the rigidity finally bleeds from her posture.

Wendy looks me over. She searches for a shadow on the ground, but only finds weathered wood and my Chuck Taylors. “Where’s yours?”

Hudson’s back straightens. “Do you want to leave Neverland or not?”

“I do,” she admits hesitantly. “But I don’t know that I trust her to send me home.”

My brows kiss in confusion.

Hudson crosses his arms. “Don’t you remember Ava visiting you before?”

“I remember plenty,” Wendy retorts. “She wasn’t wearing anything of Pan’s the last time she was here.”

Her chin juts toward my chest where vines crawl across one another, because they keep growing and there’s nowhere else for them to stretch but around me now.

His eyes narrow. “How do you know they’re Pan’s?”

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