Page 64 of The Last Lost Girl

“I can make it work.”

He tosses me a shirt the same forest green hue of his eyes and walks back to the map. I turn around to take my tee off and dive into his, knotting it at the bottom and rolling the sleeves up. It smells like him. Like sea salt, cloves, and iron.

The neckline plunges on my frame, showing a little of my bikini top.

Walking back to him at the map, I look up to find Hudson’s gaze following the shirt’s vee neck into the delicate valley of skin between my breasts. A feral grin tugs at the corner of his lips.

My skin flushes and I tug at the back collar, raising the vee as I walk back to him. “What did Smee mean when he said Seoul is ready?”

“I’m sending him here.” He points to Pan’s stronghold, a strip of dense forest surrounding the homes he’s charted. “He’ll find us when he learns of her presence or absence.”

“That’s insane! What if he’s seen?” I ask, my heart racing at the very thought of him getting near Pan, Wraith, and any others like them.

“If Seoul doesn’t want to be seen, he won’t be.”

“Does he have an invisibility cloak or something?” I try to tease.

“Something like that,” Hudson agrees vaguely.

Another knock at the door and Paris opens them with a flourish only he can pull off and strolls in, careful to avoid the debris on the floor. He leans a hip against Hook’s destroyed desk, crosses his arms, and fixes his attention on me. “Ava, have you told Hudson what you noticed on Evermist?”

Hudson’s brows pinch. “What did you notice?”

“Nothing on the island has a shadow. Not even the vines.”

“Nothing has a…” He stops and swivels his head to Paris. “Nothing?”

Paris nods once to confirm.

The captain is quiet for a long moment. He smooths his fingers over the stubble atop his lip before wetting them. “Pan can’t reach Evermist,” Hook says adamantly, as if the very possibility would break him in ways I’m not sure anyone wants to experience. He still looks like he has this world in his teeth and he’s bearing down on it.

Paris stands up and sighs. “He hasn’t been able to leave Neverland in years, so you are likely right.”

“Likely,” Hook grits.

“But what if he doesn’t have to?” the Frenchman offers. “What if he does not need to reach Evermist to control the shadows cast upon it? His powers have grown significantly since he was a boy. Perhaps they have extended, and our knowledge is outdated.”

The thought sours my stomach because Paris is likely right. Hook even said that Belle wouldn’t know what his magic could do now. Maybe Hook and his crew don’t, either. Maybe Pan has evolved further than they imagined he could.

“Did you notice this lack of shade in town?” Hook asks me.

I shake my head. “No.”

The golden clock ticks rhythmically against my sternum and I wonder if there is any charm that could truly hide us from Pan if his shadow magic is so much stronger than we can possibly wrap our minds around.

Is Pan toying with everyone who has for years thought they were safe from him?

I glance at the journal again before Hook ticks his head toward the door. “It’s time.”

twenty-four

Hudson’s Journal

Ava scribbled in the journal I gave her until ink stained her fingertips and those stains matched the bruises of exhaustion that settled beneath her eyes. Until I strode across the room – she didn’t even notice – crouched down, and dragged it from her fingers.

She watched me blow on the ink until it was dry and wouldn’t bleed onto the rest of her words, then watched as I snapped the book closed. She sat on my bed and stared into my eyes at first, then at my lips.

And when she leaned forward, I told her she needed to sleep.

---