Never, Never (12 page)

“Off to the tree house, boys!” he called.

James stalked over to the ship's edge and peered over. The Lost Boys were traipsing off across the beach, frantically following their leader. James laughed angrily. Peter hadn't even allowed the boys to battle. Arrogance. He'd wanted them to come see him do something grand, but no one was allowed to fly into a war with him. So if they couldn't climb, he figured they'd all simply wish to risk their lives in order to watch. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and he stayed the hands of the pirates who were aiming various nasty things at their backs. James had no desire for killing children, his friends. Not ever, really, but certainly not tonight.

After the adrenaline of battle had disappeared, he turned away from Pan and his boys to the pirate lying on the deck. He walked over to him and knelt beside him, then brushed the man's straw-colored hair out of his face, wishing to see it.

“What is this fellow's name?” he called.

No one answered.

“His name, men, his name!”

Bill Jukes stepped forward, eyes downcast, wringing his hat in his hands. “Larsen, Sir. Larsen Griggs.”

Larsen Griggs. James burned the name into his mind. This man deserved to be remembered; he certainly wouldn't be by his killer. But he would by his captain.

James choked, looking at him, and breathed shakily in and out for a while. Then, he left without a word, leaving the pirates to clean up the dead man, resolved to dwell on something other than Larsen Griggs's blood on his hands.

In his cabin, he sat on his bed and pondered darkly, twirling his sword by its hilt. “Tree house,” Pan had said. So, they had a tree house now, did they? Perhaps he would look for it tomorrow. Perhaps he would find it. And perhaps Pan would be inside. And, perhaps, no, for certain—for certain, James would kill him.

I
T WAS A CHALKY SORT OF DAY AS
J
AMES STOOD ON THE
dock. The clouds were pastels, like swaths of cotton candy, and the light chill rose a trail of goose bumps on his skin.

He'd left the ship several minutes earlier, snuck away silently. This mission was not the sort one asks his entire crew to carry out. No, this was the sort a man waits his entire life for, and then he tells his friends to let him do it alone. As it was, James didn't have any friends. So, he simply left.

But now, standing on the mooring and surveying the island, he found he did not know where to start. Neverland was such a vast place, and treacherous, and filled with all sorts of nooks and crannies. Where was one supposed to find the den of a part-fairy and his band of children? He knew for certain that they resided in a tree, but that was no real help at all. He might as well have said that they lived above ground or that they lived somewhere surrounded by air. The trees were innumerable. But, James forced himself not to think such thoughts, and instead, decided to consider the vague clue a real advantage.

James raked a hand through his hair and felt the slight stubble on his defined chin, the new wire in his biceps. Yes, somewhere early in his twenties now for sure. He could be no younger than twenty, by any stretch of the
imagination. The words “old man,” as crowed by Peter, echoed in his head as he stared out at the vast forest.

A sharp pain stabbed through his stomach at that, a needle of worry. He had always wanted to become a man anyway, so the sentiment shouldn't have affected him so. But affect him it did, and as he stood there doing nothing much but getting older bit by bit, he found that he was afraid.

When that fear settled in so snugly that James knew it was to be a stubborn, welcome-overstaying houseguest, he figured there was nothing to do but distract himself from it, and that was when he took his first step onto the beach. After that first step, it was not so difficult to take another, and another. Thus, he made his way across the Spanish Beach (that was what he called it now, in honor of his ship) and entered into the looming forest.

The bramble bit at his calves and the branches on the trees scratched his forearms as he passed them. He wondered, first, if this was somehow intentional, if the island knew what he was after. And second, he greatly regretted his choice of wardrobe—a sort of threadbare, very piratey-looking shirt that rolled up at the elbows, and some thin pants that rolled up at the knees and— goodness—he hadn't even thought to put on shoes. He shook his head and decided that this sort of foolishness proved conclusively that he wasn't full grown yet. And, through the spiteful forest, he pressed on.

Deeper and deeper into the humid wood he moved, until there was a sort of cadence to the trek. Then, he was no longer thinking, no longer the scheming, conniving pirate; he was a predator. He moved lithely, operating only on feeling and instinct and whatever else it is that propels a hunter. He found that, without intending to, he was running, waiting to happen upon the tree he knew he would recognize instantly; he could feel it. But, the
running came to a very abrupt halt when, all of a sudden, he felt an arrow whizz past his nose and stick into the tree to his left.

James stepped back, a surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins, and jerked his head to his right, fiercely searching for whomever had just tried to shoot him. There was a snap of a twig and a flash of color in his peripheral vision, and James was the hunter once again. Abandoning his quest for Peter, he shot off toward the flash, powerful legs carrying him faster, faster. He could feel that someone was near, someone who wanted him dead. Then, he could hear him breathing, and finally, when James's lungs and muscles were on fire, he was right there, upon him.

With all the force he could muster, James rocketed himself at his assailant and careened into him, knocking him to the ground with such force that both of them bounced a little. James snarled and sat on top of the assailant, sweat pouring down his face into his eyes. The person beneath him was refusing to look at him and was covering his face with his hands. The stinging sweat made it difficult enough to see without the cover, and James was not amused. He jerked the boy's arm away from his face, snarling, surprised at how easily he was able to do it, how little resistance with which he was met, and pinned it to the ground.

His eyes cleared, and he sucked in a quick breath and blinked rapidly, immediately befuddled. “I—Tiger Lily?”

She was furious; that much was clear. Her mouth was set in a hard line, hands clenched into fists. The look out of her eyes was made of pure venom and a bit of fear.

“James Hook,” she spat.

James remembered himself then and scrambled to get off her, trying not to focus on the smooth, dark skin of her bare arms, the feel of the soft curves of her body beneath his. He looked away from her for a second, hoping against
hope that his face was not nearly as red as it felt. Then, because he could not ignore her for long at a time, he looked back at her face. She was proud, staring at him unabashedly, looking somehow regal despite the twigs tangled in her long, black hair and the dirt streaked across her cheekbones. She was older, still, than she'd been last he saw her, somewhere between his mother and cousin back in London. Sixteen, he thought. And it showed. Her face was lovelier, eyes large and deep and dark, the lines of her waist and hips and chest more defined; she had quite literally stolen his breath.

“You tried to kill me,” he mustered, having a hard time speaking at all.

“I tried to kill
you
? Excuse me, but I wasn't the one on top of you just now.”

A grin flashed across his face, but he subdued it quickly and made himself focus on the conversation at hand. “You think I just came after you for nothing? You shot an arrow at me.”

She looked away, and James was pleased with himself. He had her there.

“Well, you shouldn't be running through the woods this early in the morning. You should know that's when we hunt. You looked like an animal.” She sniffed, her long angled nose wrinkled, and she looked down at him from the bottoms of her eyelids. “And you smell like one, too.”

James narrowed his eyes. He opened his mouth to protest, but a small breeze made its way to his nostrils and he shut it again. Spending any significant amount of time on a pirate ship, it turned out, did not do good things for a man's scent. He made a mental note to have a bath when he got back onto the
Main
.

He straightened and nodded curtly. “Well, I apologize for manhandling you earlier.”

Tiger Lily stopped picking leaves out of her hair and bristled. “I hardly think you manhandled me.”

The corner of James's mouth turned up. “Really? What would you call it, then?”

“I'd say you surprised a poor girl out of nowhere and tackled her before she had a chance to respond. And I held my own, anyway.”

James could not stop himself from laughing. “Yes. You had me fearing for my life there with your remarkable self-defense.”

She harrumphed and returned to cleaning things out of her hair and brushing several purple and gold leaves off the tawny leather wrapped around her. “I could level you in an instant with my arrows, you know.”

“Oh, I've no doubt of that.” Then, under his breath and leaning just slightly toward her, he said, “You could level me easily without an arrow, I think.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He stared at her, drawn in by her. This was why he'd stayed away from her for so many years—this thrumming of his heart, the heat at his skin, the wickedly delicious thoughts swirling around in his head.

She frowned and looked him over, from head to toe. “So, you've become a pirate, have you?”

He jumped at the sound of her voice. “I have.”

“I never figured you for a pirate.”

“How do you mean that?” James asked, face hovering between a smirk and a frown.

“I didn't think you'd turn into a brute is all.”

Now, it was James's turn to take offense. “I'm no brute. I'm captain of the fiercest ship in the sea.”

Tiger Lily shrugged. “All the same.”

James sat up straight. “Who's told you I'm a brute? Only because I'm a pirate?”

“I saw what you did to the mermaids' lagoon,” she said, leaning in toward him and raising an eyebrow.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the closeness of her. “That's it? And you don't believe the mermaids deserved every bit of it?” he managed.

Tiger Lily tilted her head in a sort of affirmation of that. “Well, Peter, of course, hates pirates dreadfully.”

James had to concentrate on breathing and on not making himself menacing at the mention of that name. He forced his face into a careful blank, muscles in his arms tightening. “Yes, Peter does.”

Tiger Lily raised her eyebrows then, as though she had just recalled that Peter Pan might be an offensive reference to the pirate before her. James was quite sure that his face confirmed that notion.

“I'm sorry. I suppose you don't much care what Peter thinks, do you?”

His mouth flattened into a disappointed line, recalling the time she'd spent with Peter over the years, secret hours away from the rest of the Lost Boys. He suspected that, for Peter, it had never been anything more than play, but for Tiger Lily, well, he'd always figured it was something else. “I suppose you care very much.”

Tiger Lily's brown face flushed brightly. She reached out to his neck, and the touch of her fingertips erased thoughts of anything else. “Your scar's healed well.”

James couldn't form a response. He could barely swallow with her so close. She leaned in to examine the scar, and James realized that she smelled very much like her namesake. Every muscle in his body was tensed, tightly coiled, and he was afraid one of them might actually snap. When she was satisfied, she leaned back, and James relaxed again, glad that she was farther away, but also wishing she wasn't.

“What were you doing in the woods this morning, anyway?” Tiger Lily asked, crumbling a pink leaf between her fingers.

“Looking for something.”

She raised her head. “Did you find it?”

“No. I was too busy getting shot at.”

He made his face very grave then, overly serious, taunting her. Tiger Lily smirked and picked up a handful of dirt, then threw it at him. It coated him in a cloud. He choked.

“Now, now, Princess,” James coughed. “It's not wise to incur the wrath of a pirate.”

“Is that so?”

“Absolutely. We're all scoundrels. There's no telling what I might do if you provoke me.” He smiled wryly and raised an eyebrow.

Tiger Lily stood and brushed herself off. “Well then, I shall have to steer clear of you, won't I?”

He looked sadly at the ground. “I hate to tell you, but that won't work either, I'm afraid.”

Tiger Lily raised her eyebrows. “And why not?”

“That would only make my attentions worse.”

“How so?”

He leaned back easily against the nearest tree, stretching his arms out behind his head, and stared up at her. He thought for a moment that he saw her pupils darken, expand just a little, and he held back a smirk.

“Well, you see, that's the way of pirates. We always want what we cannot have.”

She met his gaze and clenched her arms across her chest. The laughter in both their eyes dissipated.

“Is that so?” she said, and her words sounded as if they came from a dry throat.

“Aye,” said James, staring at her.

“Well, what if I'm not yours for the wanting?”

They both knew to whom she was referring. James didn't look away, didn't let his gaze flicker for a moment. “That makes it worse, Princess.”

They looked at each other for a silent minute until Tiger Lily broke the stare.

“I need to go, James.”

“Can I see you again?” he asked, standing slowly.

She looked off into the trees. “I don't know that that's a good idea.”

“Well then, it's a good thing I'm a scoundrel. We don't require all our ideas to be good ones.”

Tiger Lily tried to hide her smile, but James saw it anyway.

“Perhaps I'll see you again. I don't know.”

“Well, you see, I've been planning to plunder your village anyway—”

She hit him in the arm and smiled.

“So, I'll likely be up and around there for a while. Scouting, you know.”

Tiger Lily smiled and stepped backward. “Well then, see each other we may.”

She picked up her bow and left, looking once back over her shoulder. James smiled to himself and stood when she'd disappeared, and spent the better part of a Neverday meandering around the forest, pace slower than he'd intended, caught somewhere between searching for Peter's tree and reliving every little touch Tiger Lily had given him.