The Never King (Vicious Lost Boys #1)(2)

“I’ll get you something to eat,” Mom says. “What do you want?”

“It’s okay. I can—”

“No! I’ll get it. You stay in the room. Stay in the room, Winnie!”

She races back down the hall, her gauzy white dress billowing behind her, making her look like a specter. A few seconds later, pots and pans bang around our kitchen even though I’m absolutely positive we have nothing that can go in a pot.

This is the nineteenth house we’ve lived in.

I know the number of houses, but I can’t remember most of them. And when your walls blur together, it’s hard to ever feel like you’re home.

Mom said she thought maybe she could lose him—Peter Pan—if she kept us moving. We travel light. I have two bags and one trunk that I inherited from my great-great grandmother Wendy. It’s smaller than it looks from the outside and about twice as heavy as it should be.

I can’t seem to get rid of it.

It’s about the only thing we own that holds any value, the only thing that feels real.

Our current house is an exhausted Victorian with crumbling plaster walls, worn and nicked hardwood floors, and lots of empty rooms. We don’t even own a couch. Furniture is too hard to move.

I collapse on the inflatable bed shoved into the corner of my special room and stare up at the ceiling where the curling graffiti has been done in blood. That was the witch from Edinburgh, said only blood would do.

And it had to be mine.

Maybe we’re all mad, in our own way.





Mom makes me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and brings a glass of tap water.

She watches me eat it, jerking every time the house creaks.

“Tell me about him,” I ask her as I peel the crust from the top of the sandwich and eat it like a length of spaghetti.

Mom winces. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

She taps her index finger at her temple.

From what I’ve gathered, she thinks some kind of magic keeps her from talking about him in detail so I only get bits and pieces. She tells me the magic wanes on new moons, but we’re halfway to a full moon.

It’s the tide and the full moon that brings all of the monsters out. The wolves and the fairies and the lost boys. That’s what she said.

“What can you tell me?” I ask her.

Huddled in the corner of the room on her cot, knees drawn to her chest, she considers this for a few seconds. I imagine she was beautiful once, but I don’t know her as anything other than crazy. Her hair is dark and coarse like mine, but it’s started to thin because of all the medication she’s on. Her skin is ruddy, her cheeks hollow.

There are layers of cracks in her fingernails and circles beneath her eyes. She doesn’t work anymore. She’s on disability, but it barely pays the bills. And the more isolated she is, I think the worse she gets.

“I remember the sand,” she says and smiles.

“The sand?”

“It’s an island.”

“What is?”

“Where he’ll take you.”

“And you were there?”

She nods. “Neverland is beautiful in its own way.” She wraps her arms around her legs and folds into herself. “All of it is magic, so much of it you can feel it on your skin, taste it on the tip of your tongue. Like honeysuckle and cloudberries.” She lifts her head, eyes wide. “I do miss the cloudberries. He misses the magic.”

“Who? Peter Pan?”

She nods. “He’s losing his grip on the heart of the island and he thinks we can fix him.”

“Why?” I tear off a corner of the sandwich and mush the bread between my fingers, flattening it into a pancake. Jelly squirts out the edge. I’m trying to prolong it, trick my belly into thinking it’s getting a five-course meal.

Mom lays her cheek to her knees. “They broke their promise,” she mutters. “They broke their promise to me.”

“What promise?”

“I don’t know how to stop him,” Mom whispers, ignoring me. “I don’t know if it’s enough.”

“It’ll be okay,” I assure her. “I’m not worried.”

None of this is real.

Except for the madness.

That I am worried about.

Will it be like a light switch? One minute I’m sane, the next I’m not?

The thought of losing my mind terrifies me more than some boogeyman.





When Mom falls asleep, I slowly slip out of the room.

A storm has rolled in and lightning flashes through the window, lengthening the shadows of the old Victorian.

I go to the bathroom in the hall and stare at myself in the mirror.

I don’t recognize myself. It’s like looking at a stranger. Some days I worry that if I reach out for my reflection, there will be nothing there.

I’m starting to look like her.

Carved clean. Exhausted.

I don’t want to be mad.

And I’m just so fucking tired.

My cardigan slips off the bone of my shoulder and I catch a glimpse of a puckered scar. One to match the runes drawn on the ceiling.

I pull the collar back up.

The medicine cabinet is missing half a door, so the left side is open revealing several rows of pill bottles.