Love in Neverland: Book 2 in The Neverland Trilogy (22 page)

Pan’s reaction was immediate.  His jaw popped, his eyes narrowed once more, his brow furrowed so deeply it nearly covered his eyes. 

“It’s too bad we cannot get along,” Pan said, having a difficult time controlling himself and his voice.  James delighted in its shakiness.  It was like music to his ears.  “We would have made a formidable team.”

“We would not,” James disagreed.  “I tried that, if you remember.  We made a deal, you and I.  But you betrayed me for your own gain.  You have no code.  You have no honor.  The only reason the men follow you is because The Magistrate makes them.  They do not respect you.  No one does.  You are useless, worthless.  A waste of life.  A waste of death.  Why are you here, Pan?  Why waste my time?”

“I am here,” Pan said slowly, enunciating every word, “to kill you and everyone aboard your ship.”

Chapter 22

Magdalena would never admit it out loud, but she was taken by surprise how quickly the ship caught up to the dingy sailboat she and Nick were on.  It had been three days, and currently, they were in the brig of a ship known only as
The Punisher
.  They had not yet met the captain of the ship, and despite Nick’s attempts at parleying a meeting with him or her, his requests went on deaf ears.  They would not even tell them the name of this mystery captain, and quite frankly, Magdalena was frustrated as a result.

Perhaps she was a tad frustrated with Nick as well, and even herself.  They surrendered so fast it was embarrassing.  She knew they did not stand a chance against the ship, especially since it flew black colors – a white skull with red eyes.  The red symbolized no quarter, so if they were daft enough to engage in a battle, they would fight to the death, and death for Nick and Magda would come soon.  It would be pitiful, and perhaps be referred to as a suicide rather than a noteworthy physical engagement.

Immediately, they were taken into custody by men wearing uniforms, despite the piratical flag they flew.  Magda was not familiar with it, but she could have sworn she saw a flash of recognition in Nick’s eyes the instant he saw them, but he kept his mouth shut and would speak no more about it, not even when the two were alone together, sharing the same cell.  Why they did not separate her and Nick, Magda did not know, but she refused to question them lest she give them any unnecessary ideas.

“What’s the plan?” Magda had asked that first evening after the pirates gave them supper that consisted of stale bread and grog.  She forced herself to eat everything, despite the fact that she was not hungry and the food was shite.  She needed her strength, and she wasn’t going to get that, moping around due to her current predicament.  They needed a plan.  They needed to get out of here.

Nick cast her a surprisingly dark look, and Magda had to force herself not to recoil at the sight of it.

“I’m done coming up with plans for now,” he said, his tone nearly as cutting as the look on his face.  “I’d like some solitude, if you don’t mind.”

“We don’t have time for solitude,” Magda replied.  “Why are you being so snippy with me, anyway?”

Nick clenched his jaw but said nothing.  He looked away from her, and instead, focused them on the wall next to him.  There were no windows down here, which meant there was no light seeping in.  She knew they were belowdeck, but she had no idea what time of day it was, or even the day itself.

Magda bit her lip to keep the growl of frustration lodged in her throat. She knew why he was acting like a petulant child. How could she not? She had been acting the same way before Pan came upon them, only she had done so in silence. Her fingers gripped the bars so tight her peachy color turned white. She needed to keep her cool if they were going to get out of there. And, as much as she wanted to, she could not do it alone.

"We should talk about," she said. Her whole body resisted the notion of confronting the kids head on, but it needed to be done if they were ever going to move forward. She did not want him to treat her this way - for whatever reason. Magda did not like to admit it, even to herself, but she did not want to ruin their friendship over a kiss that meant nothing.

Except it meant everything to her.

"I do not think that is a good idea," Nick said in a dark tone. His voice was low again, which meant it was not loud or obnoxious. His eyes were still in front of him and not in her, which frustrated her more than anything.

"You could at least look at me when you speak to me," she growled, although she had not meant to sound so aggressive. However, with his attitude being what it was, she did not have it in her to reach out and apologize for her role. Instead, she met Nick's glare with one of her own, and she realized nothing was going to get resolved if they carried in that way.

As such, Magda knew she would have to be the bigger person. As much as her body resisted the notion of giving in first, of being weak and accommodating to someone she did not believe deserved it, she forced herself to lower its weapons and soften its defenses.

"We need to get past whatever is between us if we are going to escape," Magda said, and though her tone came out strained, tightly controlled, she made a point to have it come out gentle as well.

"There is nothing between us," Nick said, his voice taut, cold. Indifferent. That was probably the worst part about it. It genuinely did not sound as if he cared. As if he felt nothing in the kiss when she had felt everything.

"Nick" -

"You've ruined everything, Magdalena," Nick said, and finally shot his eyes over to her, and they pierced her heart as painfully as a bullet might have. "Do you not understand that?"

"I do not," she said, and her face got hot, the first indication that tears were on the way, but she blinked fast and hard. She needed to make them disappear. She wished she could disappear. "I do not understand why you are upset with me, why you're snapping at me. You kissed me back. And perhaps you don't want to admit it to me or yourself or anybody else, but you kissed me back. You kissed me back."

Magdalena remembered it now, now that she was speaking about it, the picture of them flashed in her mind so vividly she thought she could reach out and touch them.

The way she gripped his face. The way he held onto her waist. The way the front of their bodies crushed together as though they were two pieces of a separate puzzle that came together and somehow fit. No air escaped them; their bodies were too tightly wound, too tightly positioned, that nothing and no one could force them apart.

"You kissed me back," Magda said again, her face heating up at reliving the kiss, but delighted by it all the same. The memory gave her strength, and that strength gave her confidence. "You kissed me back."

"Of course, I kissed you back," Nick said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "How could I not kiss you back? Have you seen the way you look, Magda? Have you been around yourself before? You're beautiful. You remind me of that time just before sunset where the sky is still gold and the sun is still bright, just before it descends in the west. You have this power over me to make me watch you, even when I shouldn't, even when I don't want to. But I can help it because you're captivating and I simply can't take my eyes off of you. I can't! And the way you are - did you know conversing with you is like dancing? You take one step, I take one step, and you know where you're going and I know where I'm going but we're going to get there together because I trust you to do your part and you trust me to do mine. You're my partner. I've never had that with a woman before, do you understand? I don't think you understand. I've always been the one to take charge, to take care of everything and everyone else. But I don't have to do that with you because I know you'll take care of yourself. And that trust scares me. It scares the shit out of me."

Magda blinked back tears because she was feeling everything and nothing at the same time. She didn't know what to feel, to be honest.

"I still," she finally managed to say, "I still don't understand how my kiss ruined everything."

“It does not matter,” Nick said, running his fingers through his hair.  “What’s done is done and there’s no going back.”

“So you’re just going to let us sit here and rot until whomever it is that’s captaining this ship decides to pay us a visit, and it’s hard for me to believe that it will be the jolly good friendly kind,” Magda said.  She knew it did not help that her voice was laced with sarcasm, but she could not help it and did not want to.  Nick was being pouty, and she understood up to a point.  However, now was the worst time to go about feeling sorry for himself.  They needed to get out.  Or, at the very least, figure out who had taken them and why.

“I’d like to see you come up with something,” Nick growled, turning to her.  “Everyone wants me to do everything for them!  Ferry souls, help transition the crew so they can learn their own lesson, save their lives, not save their lives, take them back to earth, pull them from earth and bring them here.  Well, it’s my bloody turn to get what I want, you hear me? 
You
come up with a plan and we’ll see how easy it is for
you
to figure it out.”

“It’s part of being captain, is it not?” Magda asked, tilting her head to the side.  “You asked for these responsibilities when you decided to don the captain hat.  I don’t want to be captain.  It’s not my job to save my crew.”

“You are not my crew,” Nick snapped.

“Then what am I?” Magda asked.  She had not realized how close Nick had gotten until she had to crane her neck back in order to look him in the eyes.  “To you, I mean.  What am I to you?  Because to me, you are the most infuriating person I have ever met.  You’re dirty, you eat like a horse, your hair is unruly, you can’t seem to speak properly, you have gold teeth that I’d like to chuck out into the sea, and I absolutely abhor when you call me Tinker Bell.”  She paused, catching her breath.  “There are times I absolutely think I hate you.  But then you go and do something like smile or you tell me a little bit about yourself that I know you’ve never told me before.  You treat me like your equal, and I’ve never had that before.  Not even with James.  You make me love you when it’s the last thing I want, and that, in turn, makes me hate you.  To me, you’re a frustration I’d rather not deal with.  But you’re also the first man I’ve ever loved.  And I’m sorry that that’s caused a rift between us, because your friendship means a lot to me, even though I never indicated as such.”

To be honest, Magda could not believe she had told him all of that.  But she was too far gone to stop, and she found she did not actually want to.

“I’m not sorry for kissing you,” she said, “but I am sorry for what it’s done to us.”

“How touching.”  A voice interrupted them, a familiar one.  Magda immediately tensed, and her hand went to her left hip, ready to remove her cutlass and fight.  But she was hit with just her hipbone.  She had no weapon.  The Spaniard and his men had removed it when they locked her in here with Nick.  He was weaponless as well.  “Although, I must say, Magdalena, I am surprised to hear that you’ve fallen for a rogue.  I always thought you and Hook would end up together, but I suppose I was wrong.  Although, maybe you
did
end up together, and he simply broke your heart after using you for your body, hmm?”

Magda bit the inside of her bottom lip so hard she drew blood. She wanted to react, wanted to scream, but knew it would not do them any good.  She had to calm down.  She had to keep herself in check if she was to ever get out of here.

“Pan,” Nick said as the voice emerged from the shadows.  “I should have known it was – What are you wearing?”

Peter did not dignify Nick’s comment with a response.  “We’re fast approaching the Jolly Roger,” he informed them.  “Where a Viking came up with something as English as Jolly Roger, I still don’t know.  A battle is about to ensue.  Many will lose their lives forever.  I hope you both will be among the casualties.  The reason I have not killed you just yet is I can use you to get to Hook” - he gestured at Magda – “and The Magistrate wants you personally.”

“If The Magistrate wants Nick, she most certainly wants James,” Magda pointed out.  “You cannot kill him.”

“I cannot,” Peter agreed, “but if he loses his life in the battle due to being stuck here, in the brig, that is not my concern.  Hook will not go without a fight, and I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long while.  I just wanted to come down here and see you all myself before you died or I took you to The Magistrate.”

“What about you?” Magda called to his retreating back.  Her voice caused him to pause, and he craned his neck to look back at her.

“What do you mean?” he asked, genuinely interested in what she said.

“You’re so intent that I will die, or Nick will die, or even James,” she said.  “But you forget, death knows no bounds.  What if you are the one who ends up dead?”

Peter looked taken aback by her suggestion, but he brushed it off.  “No,” he said, his voice firm.  “That will most certainly not happen to me.  Peter Pan will not die.”

“But he can,” Magda called after him.  But he slammed the door and left them alone to do whatever it was they were going to do.

No matter.  Magda wanted to remind him that Peter Pan was not as invincible or as special as he thought.