get you flying.”
“Peter.”
“A little bit of falling hundreds of feet onto bare rock never hurt anybody.”
“Peter.”
“You just need to think some absolutely scrumptious thoughts.”
“Peter,” Ashley said. “I prefer to keep my feet on the ground.”
She looked at the city of London, sprawled huge and glittering far beyond her dangling toes.
“And,” she continued. “I know you haven’t forgotten our bargain. I want to go home.”
Peter is many things: one of them, when reminded, is a boy of his word. He is too proud not to be.
He flew Ashley back to her window. It was lucky that Ashley, as a rather spoiled only child, had a balcony where he could deposit her. Had he flown her into her bedroom, he would have woken her parents, who were, of course, in there waiting for her.
They had also alerted the police for miles around, but the Queen dealt with that later.
Peter stood on empty air about a foot away from the balcony, his head tilted insouciantly back, arms crossed over his chest.
“You’ll grow up,” he threw out at Ashley, as if it was the direst threat imaginable.
“You bet,” Ashley said. “You might, too.”
There was a moment of stillness. Ashley remembered that instant of quiet at the evil fortress, and remembered him dreaming and weeping in Neverland.
“Not yet, Ashley lady,” said Peter. “Not yet.”
“You can’t stay on that island forever.”
“Maybe not,” Peter told her. “I used to live in Kensington Gardens with the fairies. Dreams change. But there’s always another game.”
Ashley raised an eyebrow. “The spy thing?”
Peter beamed at her, beautiful and terrible, young and sweet. The monster her grandmother had feared, with all his first teeth.
“You must admit, Ashley,” he said. “I am perfectly splendid at it.”
“You’re all right,” Ashley said grudgingly.
“You assisted me quite creditably,” Peter told her grandly.
I do not think it will surprise you when I mention that Ashley was not overwhelmed by this tribute.
“I don’t suppose...,” said Peter.
“What?”
Peter smiled his most fascinating smile. “You might want to come on another mission with me?”
Ashley studied the horizon. She shouldn’t. He was a creature of nightmares as well as dreams, and he had kidnapped her, scared her grandmother, driven her great-grandmother mad.
Her great-great-great-grandmother had loved him, left him, and lived.
“I’ll think about it,” Ashley said.
Peter crowed and launched himself into the sky, perfectly and blissfully happy, the bright triumphant sound trailing after him back to the balcony where Ashley stood.
She squared her shoulders and opened the doors that would lead to her parents.
Knowing Peter, the next time he came might be many years later. He might be coming for
Of course, Peter had no sense of time, and he might get bored and decide to arrive next week.
Ashley went into the house smiling slightly. She would have to look into acquiring that Taser as soon as possible.
Across a sky painted with the neon lights of a changing city, headed toward an island being destroyed as dreams grew dark, flew Peter Pan, who never grows up, except now and again—from the fairies’ baby in Kensington Gardens to the boy who ruled Neverland to the greatest spy in the Queen’s Secret Service.
Times change.
There is always another game.
You don’t have to grow up yet.
Dungeons of Langeais
A Hush, Hush Story
BY BECCA FITZPATRICK
It was a vividly black night, the late October moon suffocated by cloud cover, but the road leading up to the Château de Langeais was anything but sleepy. Gravel popped under the spindly wheels of the post chaise, and over the shriek of wind, the sound of the coachman’s whip cracked all four horses into a desperate race. A sharp turn rattled the coach up on two wheels, only to jar it back on all four at the next moment.
Inside, Chauncey Langeais’s hands flew to the walls. He would have slid the window open and barked at his driver, but he’d ordered the man to drive as fast as possible—faster, even. Chauncey’s eyes roved to his lap, and from there to his long legs. He snorted with disgust at the picture he presented: his clothes were soiled and torn. A white linen shirt, strapped around his thigh for a bandage, was soaked through with blood. Every muscle in his body cried out in protest. He was trembling with pain and, alone in the carriage, had given up trying to hide it.
Pressing his elbows into the tops of his knees, he bent his head and clasped his hands behind his neck. He sat that way until the pain returned, proving once again that no manner of shifting or stretching would bring relief. Tugging at his neck cloth, he estimated the minutes until he would be home and able to shut his doors on a long night. Of course, there was no way to shut out the fiery dread in the pit of his stomach telling him nothing could prevent time from marching forward.
The Jewish month began tomorrow at midnight and with it, the brutal ritual Chauncey underwent every year of giving up control of his body for an entire fortnight. He braced himself for the great clench of anger that always followed any thought of Cheshvan or the dark angel who would come to possess him. He’d spent a huge portion of the past two hundred years hunting for a way to undo what had been done. The task had consumed him. He’d pushed large sums of money into the pockets of Paris mystics and gypsy fortune-tellers, looking for hope, then for a loophole, and in the end, finding he was nothing but a swindled fool. They’d all nodded sagely, swearing the day would come when Chauncey would find peace. If he hadn’t already outlived them all, he’d have stretched their necks one by one.
But the disappointment had taught Chauncey a valuable lesson. The angel had stripped him to nothing. There was no hope, no loophole. He only had revenge, and it had grown inside him like one lone seed in a forest burned to ash. He breathed softly through his teeth, letting cold, savage anger swell inside him. It was time the angel learned a lesson. And Chauncey would go to any lengths to teach it to him.
One gaudy tiered fountain streaked past the coach window, then another. Chauncey drew himself up to see his château, candles guttering in the diamond-paned windows. The coachman slowed the horses with a jolt that ordinarily would have escaped Chauncey’s attention. Tonight, he gritted his teeth in pain.
Without waiting for the coachman, Chauncey opened the door with the heel of his boot and swung out awkwardly, unfolding himself to full height. The coachman, who barely came to the top of Chauncey’s rib cage, yanked off his threadbare hat and alternately bowed and scuttled backward, tripping over his feet as if he were facing a monster, not a man. Chauncey watched him, frowning a little. He tried to remember how long the coachman had been in his service, and if he’d reached the point where it was becoming painfully obvious that, with each passing year, Chauncey didn’t seem to age. He’d sworn fealty to the angel at eighteen, freezing him at that age for eternity, and while his manner, speech, and dress made him appear a few years older, it could only go so far. He might be mistaken for twenty-five, but that was the limit.
