Kiss Me Deadly Page 18

  It was a golden-haired girl, plump and beautifully dressed.

  Even taking into account the natural distortion of legends over time, Ashley felt this could not possibly be Captain Hook.

  She looked to Peter for help, but Peter was looking perfectly blank.

  “It’s me, Peter,” said the girl. “Only—I’m bigger now.”

  Ashley’s world tilted a little, the story changing beyond all recognition. The Queen’s documents showed a machine that increased an object’s size ten times.

  Not just an object. Anything.

  The machine had not been created for an evil purpose, not at first. But who knew what terrible mixture of science and magic had worked together to enlarge a creature who could only feel one thing at a time—and fix her like that forever, full of rage and hate.

  Creating a villain out of a fairy.

  Ashley whispered, “Tinker Bell.”

  ***

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” said Peter. “Sorry.”

  Tinker Bell went purple with rage. Under the circumstances, Ashley felt she could hardly blame her.

  “Perhaps you’re thinking of a different Peter,” Peter continued helpfully. “Though it would be hard to mistake me for another boy. There is nobody quite like me!”

  “This is no time for crowing,” Ashley said out of the corner of her mouth.

  “He’d have to be really amazingly wonderful,” Peter went on and then Ashley kicked him in the ankle.

  Peter looked surprised and annoyed.

  “Peter,” Ashley said firmly. “We’re on a mission. Now I don’t think she’ll attack you”—though looking at Tinker Bell’s enraged face, she was not altogether certain about that—“so I’ll get her to attack me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Peter said. “I am the spy here. I’ll run her through.”

  “The Queen said she was to be brought back for questioning! And if we can change her back, make her less inclined to be, well, you know, evil—”

  Peter looked around at the high Gothic windows and the white cat in Tinker Bell’s lap.

  “I do see your point.”

  He looked around further and espied a machine that looked a little bit like the offspring of a telescope and a giant spider. “I say, Ashley. I think I’ve come up with a brilliant plan!”

  “Have you indeed,” said Ashley, very dry.

  “You’ll never guess.”

  “I’m not so sure of that, Peter.”

  Peter began to sidle with rather obvious stealth toward the contraption.

  “What are you doing?” Tinker Bell asked sharply.

  Ashley took a hasty step forward. “Why did you want to be big, Tinker Bell?”

  Tinker Bell blushed under the fading purple of her rage. “I forget.”

  Ashley took another step. Tinker Bell’s gaze followed her. “I don’t think you do.”

  “Well,” said Tinker Bell, and shrugged. “It just didn’t seem important afterward, you know. I mean—I realized, Peter is quite ridiculous.”

  “I quite agree,” said Ashley. “Of course, so is world domination.” The white cat was rather abruptly tipped out of Tinker Bell’s lap as she stood up. “You take that back!” she exclaimed, and in her fury, her voice was like the ringing of bells.

  “I will not,” said Ashley. “Jealous other woman, doing it all for love, evil overlord bent on world domination? Don’t you ever get tired of being a cliché, Tinker Bell? Don’t you ever just—Now, Peter, now!”

  For Ashley had broken off in the middle of her sentence and delivered a roundhouse kick to Tinker Bell’s stomach. Tinker Bell fell directly into the path of the machine Peter had just turned on.

  In some ways it was a pity. It had been shaping up to be rather a good speech.

  Ninja Star approved very much, however. Ashley even received some compliments from the other fairies about her style.

  Tinker Bell, the evil genius; Tinker Bell the fairy transformed, was captured in a ray of light and diminished once more, her stolen inches glowing and falling away. It was terrible at first, Tinker Bell’s face locked in a snarl. But then it was different suddenly: like a snake shedding a skin, or a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

  When the light of the machine faded, Tinker Bell was small and shining once again.

  Ashley stood staring, fascinated. Ninja Star took the initiative and imprisoned Tinker Bell in an empty crisp packet.

  “I did it!” Peter crowed, and very nearly hit his head on the ceiling of the evil lair, soaring in triumph.

  ***

  The Queen took being presented with the tiniest evil genius in the world very well. She commended both Peter and Ashley, which left Ashley rather dazed for a while until Peter’s crowing annoyed her again.

  “Oh Peter, do be quiet,” she said crossly, as they flew over Big Ben, badly startling a family of pigeons. “I think it’s rather sad. She did it for love, after all.”

  “Did she?” asked Peter, rather bored. “Who did she love then?”

  Ashley gave him a withering glance.

  “Well, it’s no use looking at me like that,” Peter told her, injured. “How am I supposed to know? I’ve never seen the fairy before in my life!”

  And no matter how she argued, he stuck to that.

  Ashley finally sighed in exasperation and gave up. “You know, considering her, and Tiger Lily, and Wendy ... for someone determined never to grow up, you’re a bit of a playboy.”

  Peter frowned, and then his brow smoothed. “It’s true that I am a boy,” he said. “And I love to play!”

  Ashley forbore from slapping him upside the head. He might have dropped her.

  “What game shall we play next?” Peter inquired eagerly. “I’m sure that with a bit of perseverance, we can 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 her daughter. In which case, Ashley was not going to bother with the pepper spray. She was going to make her child sleep with a Taser.

  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

  Loire Valley, France

  1769

  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.

  Cheshvan.

  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.

  He made a distracted mental note to dismiss the coachman at the new year. Then, swatting away the plumes of dust stirred up by the horses, he limped along the flagstones trailing up to the château.

  Chauncey gave the massive fortress an appreciative once-over. No earthly temptation could look as inviting as it did at that moment. But he couldn’t relax just yet. He had no desire to spend the night haunted by the knowledge that in just over twenty-four hours, it would all begin again. The horrible, maddening sensation—the control of his body peeling away and falling into the hands of the angel. No, before sleep, he needed to think carefully through all the information he’d gathered on this latest trip to Angers.

  ***

  Washed, bandaged, and freshly clothed, Chauncey eased into the chair stationed behind his desk in the library, and tipped his head back, closing his eyes, drinking in the sensation of stillness. He motioned blindly for Boswell, who stood at the door, to bring him up a bottle from the cellar.

  “A particular year, Your Grace?”

  “1565.” For irony’s sake. Chauncey kneaded both fists into his eyes. He had spent two hundred years wishing he could walk backward through time to that year and alter the final hours of that night. He could recall the finest details. The drill of rain, cold and relentless. The smell of mildew, pine, and ice. The wet slate headstones protruding like crooked teeth from the ground. The angel. The frightening loss he’d felt as he’d realized he couldn’t command his own feet to run. The invisible hot poker jabbing every corner of his body. Even his own rational mind had turned on him, letting him believe the pain was real, never guessing it was simply one of the angel’s mind tricks.

  Your oath of fealty, the angel had said. Swear it.