Page 94 of The Last Lost Girl

Her wide eyes blink, and she inclines her head as we float atop a swell.

“What did Pan do to you? How did he change you?”

She answers, but I can’t understand her words. I shake my head.

The mermaid gestures to the sun that’s deftly burning the fog away. She raises her arm, and the hint of a shadow dulls the water’s glassy surface.

“Shadow?” I guess.

She gives a succinct nod. Her lips form two syllables that look like shadow and sound like had-no.

She’s trying to speak it the way I do.

Pan used shadow magic to infect them.

From the ship’s rail, Hudson bellows my name between ragged breaths and hacking coughs. The mermaid’s head swivels toward him; she bares her teeth and snarls.

“What’s your name?” I ask. I press a hand to my chest. “Ava. My name is Ava.”

She presses a hand to hers. “Ny-in.”

“Nyin.”

She nods, then splashes toward me. “Ay-vahhh.” Her jaw folds around the last syllable of my name and stretches it until the sound thickens. But she’s got it.

Hook screams my name again. I look back toward the ship and see Kingston and Milan frozen at the rail, watching us.

She nods toward them, telling me to go. I thank her once more, then turn my back and start swimming.

Nyin loudly gasps and rushes toward me, then grabs both my arms from behind. “Had-no. Had-no, Ay-vahhh!” Her hands shudder like her breath does on my nape as she gently rakes a sharp nail over the place where Peter struck me. She taps it twice as she enunciates, “Had-no.”

“Shadow?” I breathe. I twist my head and bend my shoulder forward, trying to see what she sees, but I don’t see anything but skin. I meet her stare over my shoulders.

Her eyes are wide and full of fear. Her chest heaves as she mouths the word again. Her eyes track the golden chain around my neck. Jerking it out from under my shirt, Nyin holds the watch and taps it with her sharp claw. “Had-no.”

The clock has shadow?

Is that why it’s ticking backward?

She keeps repeating the word shadow, clearly worried.

“I’ll be okay.”

She shakes her head, but releases my arms when I pull away.

I try to offer a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine.”

As if my lie tastes more bitter than the salt she’s used to, her lips thin. Her fin brushes my leg before she dives back down into deeper water.

All I can think as I swim toward the ship is that I’m glad she was close. We would have died in the water today if it wasn’t for Nyin.

I reach the hull and step into the loop at the end of the lowered rope. The coarse fibers press into my skin as the men hurriedly reel me in.

The mermaid resurfaces and watches me from a distance. Nyin doesn’t swim away or disappear into the brine and foam. She just waits, like she’s guarding the ship to which she’d once been nailed.

If she thinks she owes me some sort of debt, she just repaid it. If she’s waiting for me to get the salve, I will. I just don’t know when.

When I wave to her, she returns the motion.

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