Pan's Revenge (18 page)

What did he just say?

He
wants to seduce you onto his ship. So he can steal you back to
Neverland
, Peter’s words ring in my ears.
Like under shock therapy, my common sense awakens. I yank myself
free from Hook’s embrace. “You’re a pirate.
You
are the liar, not
Peter,” I hiss. “I’ll go nowhere with you. Forget it! And now you
better leave or I’ll scream murder in this room pointing a finger
at you.”

For an immeasurable moment, he just stares at
me as though he’s gauging how much of it I really meant. Then one
of his eyebrows arches up in a challenging way. Just when I’m sure,
I lost this battle and really have to scream, he takes my hand and
lifts it to his lips, breathing a kiss onto the back. “Until we
meet again, Angel.”

Then he turns and leaves the ball.

I take a minute to catch my breath. And when
that isn’t enough, I take another. Finally feeling steady enough to
carry my own weight, however little gracefully, I stumble back to
the table my friends occupy. My hands find solid support on the
backrest of Peter’s vacated chair.

“Angel, what’s the matter with you?” Carla
Norris asks, shooting a worried glance my way. “You look like
you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Make that a pirate,” I mumble, knowing no
one heard that. “I’m coming down with a migraine.” Lame excuse, all
right, but what better thing was there to say? “Do you guys know
where Peter went?”

“Said he saw a few friends of his and that he
will be gone for a while,” Sebastian explains.

Great. Just great. “I think I’ll call my dad
and ask him to pick me up. When Peter comes back, can you tell him
I went home?”

“Sure. But there’s no way you’re calling your
dad out for a ride home,” says Shawn Chennings, stands up and rakes
a hand though his straight brown hair. “I can take you.”

Shawn has been hitting on me for the past
couple years, but since he lives just down my street and I’ve sort
of known him my entire life, I can’t see us being anything other
than friends. He knows it, and that’s the only reason I’m giving in
to his offer now. Well, that and the fact that I want to get home
as fast as possible without running into James Hook again. He’s a
totally different case in matters of rejecting a kiss.

In Shawn’s car, rubbing my forehead at my
pretend headache saves me from any conversation. He just
concentrates on the road. Then again, not all of the migraine is
pretended. He lets me out in front of my house and says, “See you
at school on Monday.”

I nod,
secretly thinking only if I happen to keep out of Hook’s way until
then. Inwardly, I kick myself for that thought, because it adds a
shiver to the chill that the night already gives me. My gaze is all
over the place as I head up to our door. Damn, if meeting a
fairytale figure comes with these creepy feelings, I take back all
the times I wished myself into the story of Snow White or even to
Middle Earth.

Luckily, nothing happens on the way through
our front garden. Pushing out an audible sigh of relief, I let
myself in. The house is silent. Mom and Dad must have gone to bed
early. They sure didn’t expect me back until thirty seconds before
curfew, which would have been at two o’clock in the morning on
weekends. According to the grandfather clock in our living room
it’s barely midnight.

I hit the
shower, dress in my comfy short black sweats and a white tank top
and head to my room, turning on the light. There’s no need to
worry. I’m safe inside, I tell myself. And once Peter hears that
I’ve gone home, he’ll come here and protect me like he
promised.

As if on clue, there’s a tap on the French
door. My bed can wait for another short while. I need to talk to
Peter first. I rush to the French door and pull it open. But Peter
isn’t outside. In fact, no one is. There’s just a single gold coin
lying on the ground.

The
moment
I pick it up, another coin is
being tossed on my balcony. They look weird, heavy and not smoothly
round. There’s an island on one side of the coin, and a digit on
the other. The word Doubloon is imprinted in a circle along the
edge.

“Peter?” I whisper, scanning the back of the
garden where the second piece of gold came flying from. “Is that
you?”

“Come out,” he hisses back. “We need to
talk.”

Scratching my head, I wonder why he doesn’t
just fly over here and we talk inside. Then it dawns on me that it
has something to do with what happened at the dance. Maybe he feels
bad for leaving me alone and is now shy to come up here.

Silent like a
mouse, I tiptoe downstairs and slip out through the back door. The
grass is cool, but not yet cold. Too much sunshine for that today.
Keeping close to the house for safety, I whisper Peter’s name again
into the darkness. This time he doesn’t reply, but from above
another gold coin lands in front of my bare feet. I pick it up,
when another one drops a few feet ahead. And then another ahead of
that one. It’s almost like he’s leading me away from the house with
those coins. What kind of game is he playing?

Then again, with Peter out here, I should be
safe enough, so I take a deep breath before I follow the trail of
coins.

With a small heap of treasure in my hands, I
reach the back of our garden, standing inside a triangle of aged
oaks, lifting my gaze to the sky. Everything is silent for a
minute. I think even the wind holds its breath. Then suddenly, a
gentle rain of gold falls.

Coin after coin drops from above and lands in
the long grass that caresses my feet. Every time one lands on top
of the other, a quiet chime sounds. More and more of the treasure
rains down on me, turning into a romantic melody of gold clinking
against gold.

I cannot describe the beauty that I find
myself in the center of, but with my hands raised up and my face
tilted skyward, I smile as I dance in the mysterious rain. Whether
it comes from the sky, the clouds, or from the top of the trees—I
can’t tell. But soon the ground fills up with gold shining in the
moonlight.

If this is Peter’s way to make up for leaving
me at the ball, he sure just broke back into my heart. All the
way…

At a rustle
in the treetops, I shift my gaze then turn around. Anticipation
washes over me like the drizzle of gold before. “Come down, Peter,”
I whisper. “You’re forgiven.”

In front of
me, he drops from what seems to be the highest branch of the tree
and lands in a crouch, bracing his hands on the gold covered
ground. The first thing I notice is his fair hair—not brown. Then
the white shirt. And when Hook finally lifts his chin to look into
my eyes, I freeze.

AT THE SHOCK in Angel’s eyes, she sure didn’t
expect me here, and there’s only so much a girl can take, I guess.
I decide to take it slow with her this time. She’s a hairbreadth
away from screaming her head off.

“
Hook.” The
name is a whisper on her lips—an insult. I hate that she doesn’t
call me Jamie tonight. Peter has taken that last bit of happiness
away from me too. All I want to do is skewer him for it, but now is
not the time to plot his death.

With a little more coordination in my
movements than last time we met, I rise from the ground. There’s no
way I’ll let Angel out of my sight and I think that’s the one thing
that keeps her contained and from shrieking.

I don’t know if it’s safe to walk toward her
yet…safe for her and for me, too, because as my eyes roam the
length of her body, the ravenous pirate inside me struggles to get
free. She’s barely wearing anything, short pants and a strange top
unsuitable for a young woman, but these are for sure the most
alluring clothes I’ve seen her in yet.

“What are you doing here?” Angel hisses at
me, her body rigid.

That’s better
than screaming for help I guess and lift my shoulders in a helpless
shrug. “I was hoping we could talk.”

Her beautiful
ebony hair falls forward as she lowers her chin and forces a frown
on me. “Did
you
do this?” she snaps and, with her arms, she
weakly gestures around her. “The gold, the treasure? Did you throw
all that down on me?”

It escapes me how she’s doing this all the
time. Look at me in a certain way or say something, and totally
send the pirate in me running. “You looked happier about it a
couple of minutes ago,” I answer in a small voice.

“That was because I thought Peter did it. You
tricked me out here. Why?”

My tiny step forward scares her back a couple
of big ones, so I stop again and take a deep breath, placating her
with my hands lifted. “To prove something to you.” It’s obvious
that all the lies Peter told her about me had taken hold. She lost
the trust in me that I’d worked so hard to earn when she’d been
with me on the Jolly Roger. “Peter told you I wanted to use you to
get to him and so to the treasure. Right?” At least that’s what she
accused me of at the ball earlier.

She chews my words over for a moment,
obviously not understanding where I want to go with this.

“Well, here it is,” I say and swipe my arms
sideways, pointing out that we’re standing right in the middle of
my treasure. “Or part of it. The rest is still on my ship, but I
thought it’s enough to convince you there’s no need for me to use
you for anything. I do have my gold.” After a pause, my voice drops
a notch. “What I don’t have is you, Angel. And it’s been killing me
ever since you left me.”

“I left you?” Angel laughs but it sounds more
outraged than amused. “How could I have left you? When I was in
Neverland I was”—her brows knit together and there’s uncertainty in
her voice now—“with Peter?”

“Is that what he told you? That you were
together like a couple?”

A reluctant
nod from her gives me hope that she’s at least considering what I’m
going to tell her next. “Peter was a boy when you were in
Neverland. About three years younger than you are.” The gold clings
under my feet as I dare take another small step toward her. “Does
falling in love with him that young really make sense to
you?”

The doubt in
her eyes now is genuine. She shakes her head. “But none of all this
makes sense to me. And Peter isn’t a boy. He must be at least
twenty, not fifteen like you say.”

“
He looks
twenty now.” I let go of a sigh that’s rather painful. “And that is
my fault. Peter Pan was the boy who wouldn’t grow up. I tried to
catch him for a hundred years and then some, because he stole my
treasure. I probably would have killed him too, if I got a chance.”
Abandoning the new edge to my voice, I continue, “But when you came
to Neverland, weird things happened. To him, to me…to
us
.” At the
last word, I tilt my head and give her what I hope is a convincing
and maybe seductive look, pointing out the space between us.
“Spending time with you was the best thing that happened to me in a
long time.” A really long time. Now I wonder how I could live all
these years and not go insane. “But in the end we had to find a way
to bring you back to London. So you could be with your family
again. It was the first time Peter and I worked on something
together. And it was”—I grimace—“nice.”

Angel is
silent for a long moment. Damn, I hate it when I don’t know what’s
going on in that pretty head of hers. Finally, she shifts her mouth
to one side. “Last night, you said you were brothers?”

Blow me down! There it is, that typical sweet
lift of her chin when her true spirit comes out to play. A shiver
of joy zaps through me. I can barely hold back a smirk. “Aye.”

“And you buried the hatchet?”

“We did. For your sake. You did this to
us.”

The shimmer
of trust that was on the rise before disappears completely now.
“Why are you lying to me, Hook? Peter hates you with all his heart.
Why else would he warn me to stay away from you?” Her breath
freezes in her lungs as though she’s only now realizing something
terrible. Her voice is cold next, and very low. “Where is he Peter?
What did you do to him at the ball?”

“Peter is all right. My men took care of
him.”

“Did you hurt him?”

I hate to see the fear in her eyes for my
brother when she obviously doesn’t remember at all who I was to
her. “No. I’m just making sure he’s keeping his nose out of this so
you and I can have this conversation alone. It wasn’t nice of him
to interrupt us last night.” That came out in an irritated growl,
unfortunately. No chance to take it back, but I don’t want to scare
her. This time I take two steps toward her, which she immediately
mirrors in the opposite direction. What she doesn’t know is that
only one more step and she’ll bump into the tree behind her. My
chance. She’ll be trapped.

I walk on, ignoring her gasp when she hits
the dead end. “You’re right,” I tell her and keep my voice soft as
I lift my hand to her face and stroke my knuckles down her cheek.
“He hates me now. In order to get to you, I had to force him to do
something that changed him. I made him break the spell.”

“What spell?”

“
Hmm?” I know
she said something, but I completely missed it because I’m sucked
into the beauty of her eyes and stunned by the fact that she lets
me touch her.
Blow me
down
, she didn’t even flinch.

“
You said he
broke the spell.
What
spell?”

“The spell that stopped time in Neverland,” I
answer absently. It’s suddenly so hard to concentrate. She’s too
beautiful. Does she even know? The wisp of her hair I rub between
my fingers feels soft like the rainbow-essence the fairy extracted
from my clothes. I hook the strand behind her hear, dipping my head
just a little to breathe in her amazing scent that intoxicated me
the first time I carried her in my arms.