Page 20 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 20

I begin meeting Tink in the evenings before dinner.

Peter allows me more freedom to roam about. Perhaps there’s no incriminating evidence left for the wraiths to tell me. Perhaps he’s simply weighed the options, and he’s deemed my simmering bitterness a greater danger than any secrets he might have left.

I like being dangerous.

“BOY,” Tink says, then adds a tile “-S” to clarify.

When we first started meeting, I’d brought Tink a journal to write in, but I’d quickly discovered that though she can write, it isn’t in any language I understand. Even what she can write in Estellian is limited to the words from her tiles, and she’s faster at finding them than she is at recalling how to spell the word.

“You think the Lost Boys know how to get off this island?” I ask.

Tink shrugs, like it’s worth a shot. We’re meeting in a cave deep in the forest. There are stalagmites that grow up from the floor and reach the ceiling, forming a cage on the far side of the cave.

The cage is too perfect to have happened naturally. Then again, the Sister did weave this realm into existence. And she knew just who she’d need to trap here.

“I feel like if Victor knew, he’d have left by now,” I say. “But the others—they’re still devoted to Peter. If they knew, I don’t think they’d leave. I don’t know how they’d know though, except wandering around, which you’ve done plenty of, and you haven’t found a way.”

Tink shakes her head. “NO. NOT FIND EASY.”

“At this point, does it have to be easy?” I ask.

Tink shrugs again, conceding the point.

“I still don’t understand why you can’t produce faerie dust for us to fly away.”

Tink flits her hand, waving me off. She’s attempted to explain this countless times, but her current tiles aren’t adequate to describe it. We’ve tried guessing games, making more tiles for her, but so far all we’ve accomplished is the two of us becoming cranky.

Michael makes train noises on the other side of the cave, pushing the wooden toy back and forth across the ground. I glance across my shoulder and smile at him.

“He never used to do that,” I say. “It was all lining them up and sorting them by size, which he still loves to do, by the way. But he never used to play like that.”

We sit in silence for a moment, me pondering the irony of watching my brother progress in a place like Neverland, when the same realm has taken everything from me and John.

“JOHN LOVE MICHAEL,” Tink says, watching my brother closely.

“Yeah,” I say, a faint smile playing on my lips. If I let myself get sleepy enough, I could imagine John crouching beside Michael, telling him about how the faerie dust powers the engine.

Tink presses tiles into my hand. When I uncurl my fist, I find, “JOHN LOVE WENDY TOO.”

Tears spring up in my eyes, but I blink them closed. I haven’t seen John’s wraith since that first night. I’m not even sure if I would want to. It was one thing, communing with Astor’s wraith. Astor, who’s still alive out there somewhere.

It’s another trying to talk to my dead brother.

“Do you talk to him?” I ask. “His wraith, I mean?”

Tink shakes her head. “NOT JOHN.”

I swallow, because I understand. “You loved John, too, didn’t you?”

Tink squirms, but she doesn’t go for the tiles. Instead, she reaches for a leather-bound notebook. When she opens it, she flips through an assortment of pages. Some contain script, characters I don’t recognize from a language that’s foreign to me. Others include sketches, drawn by a careful hand, too delicate to smudge the ink. When she finds the correct page, Tink folds the journal back around itself, then hands it to me.

It’s a sketch of John, but not. He’s older, his jaw chiseled by age, and he’s standing in a lab, tinkering with metal cogs and wheels. As much as he loved research, he loved tinkering even more. The thought has me thinking of Charlie, how well they would have gotten along.

But then I remember Charlie hasn’t come for me either, and the memory of my friend turns sour. Though, that’s probably not fair. She’d heard from my lips that I was going with Peter. The last choice I was free to make.

“That’s always what he wanted to do the most in the world,” I say, handing the journal back to her. “I guess he talked to you about it.”

Tink nods, then strokes the paper, right at John’s forehead. I wonder if there are more sketches in that notebook she’s not showing me. Futures involving her.

“Did you know?” I ask. “That Peter killed him?”

Tink shakes her head. “BUT THINK.”

I nod pensively. “I don’t understand how it didn’t occur to me before. John even left me a clue. Peter’s name on a tile in his pocket.”

Tink wrinkles her brow. “NOT GOOD.”

I laugh. “Not a good clue?”

She nods.

“Well, to be fair, John didn’t have much time to get a message to me.” It’s possible that John was relying on a wraith being formed in the case of his death, a better way to communicate with me than the tile. He must have not realized he’d already formed a wraith in the cave, otherwise he would have told it his plan.

I don’t know what to think about the fact that hearing about what our parents did to me caused John more pain than being strangled.

My cheeks go clammy. Thankfully, Tink’s still making light of John’s clue-giving skills. She shrugs, like she’s not impressed.

I laugh again, and it’s not altogether feigned. I appreciate Tink’s humor, how she hasn’t lost it amid her suffering. “You gave him a hard time, didn’t you?”

She flashes me a mouthful of teeth that says everything I needed to know. Then she pads over to Michael and takes his other train, sliding tiles at him as she plays. He doesn’t pay any attention to her or the tiles, but it warms my heart even so.

I haven’t stopped plotting, trying to figure out a way to get off this island. I haven’t given up. But if I can’t get myself out, I’ll get Tink out. I’ll get my brother out.

“I’m going to get you out of here.” My statement echoes off the cave walls.

Tink turns to me and frowns. Then, plucking a tile from her bag, she hands it to me.

It says, “US.”

Michael wants to go to the beach on the way back to the Den. I can tell, because he starts to hum a sea chanty. Yet another song I have no idea where he heard. He probably heard it once, then held onto it forever. My brother has his struggles, but I often find myself proud of and the tiniest bit envious of his strengths. I feel as if the details of my life are pebbles, and I’m trying to contain them in a fishnet, half of the pebbles slipping through the gaps with no way for me to catch them.

Not that I tried to catch them for a long while. Some of my memories are erased from my own doing.

I don’t particularly want to go to the beach today. Especially not the one that’s closest. There’s a memory it holds that I’d rather slip through the fishnet, though I know better. This one will linger with me forever, clinging to me like wet linen.

But I’m done letting my sadness seep into Michael’s life, keeping him from living the fullest I can offer.

So Michael pads through the forest toward the sound of the ocean, and I let him lead, his little hand in mine.

As we reach the beach, the wind picks up, bringing in a spray from the ocean. The waters are always more hectic on this side of the ocean, but Michael is more concerned with scouring the sand for perfectly round pebbles than he is with swimming. I watch him closely, pulling my coat tighter around my torso as the wind whips at my hair and threatens to chap my cheeks.

I try not to think about what happened here. I try not to look out at the massive boulder jutting out of the water.

Trying has never done me much good, unfortunately.

The memories assault me—a man climbing up that boulder. Peter, perched on top, unaware of the stranger’s presence. Me screaming, my voice carried away by the wind. The two men wrestling, Peter taking them both to the air. The man slicing his wing, sending them plummeting to the beach. The stranger holding a blade over Peter’s back.

Me getting to the stranger first.

No amount of wind, no amount of time passing, rids the crunching sound from my memories. The feel of the resistance of the man’s flesh against my blade.

I hadn’t known who he was. Hadn’t realized I’d killed off the hero, come to rescue the kidnapped children from the villain, led here by his aching for his sons and the pull of a precious sketch.

My heart stops beating in my chest.

It’s not as though we haven’t considered these gaps in Neverland as a means of escape. But Tink has searched all over Neverland and never found one. Peter once claimed that the gaps are one-way, that they allow entrance, but not a way out.

But as not a word that comes out of Peter’s mouth can be believed, I doubt that.

Still, it’s been no use knowing they’re out there if we can’t find them.

But what if…

“Michael, hold onto my hand.”

My brother, transfixed by a glossy black stone, ignores me. I crouch beside him and take his hand—the one not holding the rock, because I’m not that stupid. He follows me as I trudge across the beach, closer to the spot I’d expected to avoid the rest of my life.

The sound of crunching in my ears grows louder as we draw near, but I drown it out with hope.

Tink’s taken to dunking my face under water every time we meet, pulling my hair back so we get as little of it wet as possible. So there’s no faerie dust in my system.

My heart pounds. I’ve no idea if this will work. When Peter first told me about wraiths, he said they were rare. But they must be more easily made in Neverland, because this island is full of them.

He has to be here. He will be here.

“Hello,” I say, but my voice comes out trembling so much that it’s barely audible over the wind. I clear my throat and speak with more authority this time. “Hello.”

Nothing.

“Sir…” I realize I don’t know his name. “I know you’re here,” I say. “I felt it…your agony when you died. And I know it wasn’t simply from dying. You came here to save your sons. But one was already dead when you arrived. The other—you died having failed to rescue him.”

“Because of you,” snaps a voice. I spin around so quickly Michael almost trips.

The wraith stands before me, the ocean a backdrop behind him. He’s taller, leaner than Victor. I can’t see his black hair, but for the briefest moment I recall it reminding me of his son.

I should have made the connection. How many would still be alive now if I had?

“You sound like him,” I say. “Rather, he sounds like you.”

“Nature, not nurture, I’m afraid,” says the wraith.

“They took you away from your children,” I say. “If I remember correctly, it was because of a debt you’d taken out to feed them. Life…life was cruel to you.”

“Death wasn’t so amiable either,” he says, and his sarcasm is so like Victor’s, it makes my heart ache.

“I am truly sorry for that,” I say. It comes out so monotone, it sounds as if I don’t mean it, though I do, with all my heart.

“Well, now that you’ve apologized, I’m sure we can put all of this behind us.”

A shiver snakes my spine. I squeeze Michael’s hand tighter and instinctively place myself between him and the wraith. Though intellectually I know the wraith has no power to hurt him, I’m not so trusting of my reasoning these days.

The wraith scoffs. “At least you protect your own. That I can respect.”

My cheeks heat with shame. “I’m not so good at that.”

“Then you and I aren’t all that different, are we?”

I shake my head, swallowing. The wind whips my coat open, and I try and fail to button it with my one free hand.

“But that’s why you’re here, ain’t it? To protect him?”

I nod, swallowing. “Amongst others.”

“And is my boy one of them?” My mouth goes dry. I’ve struggled with this every night since discovering John’s killer. It’s been the constant pull between guaranteeing Michael’s safety and attempting to save the Lost Boys as well.

I want to save all of them. But last time I tried that, when I’d told Simon to warn the other Lost Boys we were leaving, I ended up saving no one.

“Until I have your word, I’m afraid I’m of little use to you.”

I nod, crossing my arms. “I’ll keep Victor safe.”

“Hm. Now’s the time I wish I could have you enter into a bargain, but I fear those days are gone with my breath.”

I sigh, squeezing Michael’s hand and my eyes shut at the same time. “Victor’s my friend. I’d want to save him anyway.”

When I open my eyes, the wraith has cocked his head, but without the details of his face, I can’t tell whether he’s mocking me or simply curious.

When he doesn’t respond for a long while, I try again. “Victor took care of Michael while I was…” I’m not sure what word I could possibly find that would be honest. “Otherwise occupied.”

I doubt the wraith misses the shame in my voice, but he doesn’t comment on it. In fact, when he speaks, his voice is tight. “Always was a tender child. You wouldn’t think it, given his temper. But he was the first to stand up to a bully threatening a runt.”

Tears well at my eyes, and I nod, my throat swelling. “He watched out for me. When I couldn’t watch out for myself.”

The wraith nods, as if I’m recounting information he already knows. There’s a pride in the way he takes his son’s virtues as a given that I ache for in my very soul.

Virtue wasn’t exactly a quality my parents thought useful to foster in me, not when they perceived scheming and blackmailing and seducing the only ways to keep me safe. There’s a part of me that knows that had I ever stood between a bully and their victim, my mother would have scolded me for risking getting a black eye and marring my pretty face.

“I’m sorry he—they,” I add, remembering Thomas, whom I never met, “were taken away from you. And that I took you away from Victor.”

“Get him out of here, and it’ll all be forgotten. That’s all I ever wanted for him, anyway.”

“I think you can help me with that,” I say, my arm going taut as Michael grows impatient and tugs on it.

“How do ya reckon that?”

“You got into Neverland through a warping,” I say. “I just need to know where it is.”

The wraith laughs. “I would have thought you’d have figured it out by now.”

“There is plenty I wish I’d figured out on my own, I assure you. But I’ve learned if I’m to get anywhere, I might make use of others’ cleverness as well.”

The wraith turns and points toward the sea, toward the boulder with the waves lapping up against it. “It’s on the other side. There’s a hole in the rock. It’s low, so the tide covers it most hours of the day. You’ll have to time it just right if you want to be able to see it. Otherwise, you’ll be going in blind.”

My cheeks go clammy. I’m used to having my head shoved under water by now, but as I have no way of explaining what’s happening to Michael, I’d rather the way be clear. Especially with the sea being so torrential on this side of the island.

“How long?” I ask.

“I’d say between three and six in the morning.”

I groan, because Peter’s usually in bed with me during those hours.

“You’ll make it work,” says the wraith.

I tip my chin up. “What makes you so confident?”

“Because my son will be with you.”

I nod, feeling ill in a way I can’t risk showing on my face. Because I know deep down that if it’s between Michael’s and Victor’s safety, whose I’ll choose.

“What does my son know?” asks the wraith.

I worry my lip between my teeth. “Not much. He knows Peter can’t be trusted. He knows he had a life before this one, but he doesn’t know about the orphanage or the awful things that happened there. He knows his brother was killed by another Lost Boy, but Peter’s never explained what drove Nettle to madness.”

“But he doesn’t know about me?”

I shake my head. “No. Victor doesn’t know about you.”

“Who do I not know about?”

I jump out of my skin and whirl around.

Victor’s standing at the tree line, shadows seeping under his eyes.

There’s a crossbow on his back.