Unhooked(24)

He’s gone before I can respond, leaving me unguarded. As the silence settles over the cabin, I try to steady my breathing. He’s left me alone, and I have no intention of following his orders.





At first it was such a tiny sound that a leaf might have fallen on it and smothered it. But as it came nearer, the sound became more distinct. And more deadly. The boy fumbled for his mask. . . .





Chapter 13


I DON’T KNOW WHO’S ATTACKING the ship, but as long as they keep the Captain and his boys occupied, I don’t much care. Keeping one eye on the door to make sure no one else is coming, I go to the desk. I know it’s probably futile. Too many strange, unexplainable things have happened for me to really think I’ll find a radio or some other clue about why I’m here, but I have to try. There has to be something.

I’m reaching for the first drawer of the desk, when the ship quakes so violently, I stumble to the floor. The papers once neatly stacked on the desk flutter around me, settling like scattered leaves. Many of the sheets contain notes scrawled in the same narrow, slanting script, but one sheet is a sketch of a girl with a heart-shaped face and a pert, upturned nose.

There is something familiar about her, I realize, searching my memories for some hint of who she is. For some reason, I have the uncanny feeling that I know her. Her doe-shaped eyes stare up from the floor, like she’s been waiting there all along for me to find her.

“Olivia,” I say to myself. The word feels strange on my tongue at first, but also comfortable, like I’ve said it a hundred times before. “Olivia,” I say again, louder this time as I try to remember how I know that word and who the girl in the sketches might be.

I repeat the word—the name, I realize—again and again until, eventually, the fog of memory starts to lift. Until I can almost picture her rolling her eyes as she takes me by the arm and pulls me over to her group of friends. The fogginess in my head clears a bit more, and I see her better now, watching me with concern in a darkened London street.

London. That’s why the blonde on the deck—Fiona—had felt so familiar. She’d been in London too.

That can’t be a coincidence.

“Oh.” My breath rushes out of me. I haven’t thought about Olivia since I first woke up on this ship and got distracted by the Captain’s tales of Neverland.

How is that even possible? How could I have sat in that lonely little cabin for days and never once wondered whether she was kidnapped too? Whether she was in danger or whether she was even alive?

Panic inches across my skin as I realize it’s not just the memory of Olivia that’s hazy—it’s everything. I can hardly picture my life before—I feel like it might be there, buried somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, but I can’t remember it. I can’t recall the color of my old room or the hallways where I went to school. The few images that come to me rise up through the thickness of the past, murky and indistinct, like bubbles coming to the surface of a muddy pond. And then the memories sink down again, below the surface where I can’t reach them.

Maybe I hit my head when I fell out of the sky, because no matter how hard I try, I can’t remember very much of what came before the Dark Ones. But when my fingers brush the cool stones at my wrist, their blue-gray color reminds me of something else. . . .

Eyes. The color of the stones reminds me of the blue-gray of my mother’s always-stormy eyes.

I close my own eyes and try to bring her face into focus, but I can’t quite manage to recall her features or anything else. All I can really remember is the soft, cloudy color of her eyes and the bright red halo of her hair.

The realization makes me goes cold. If I forget about the world I’ve come from, I’ll never get back. I sink down to the floor and pick up the sheet of paper with Olivia’s face on it. I need to feel the paper solid and real in my hand. I won’t let myself forget again.

If he takes the girl’s life, he will be unbeatable, Fiona had said.

She’d said “he,” not “you,” when she was talking to the Captain. Perhaps they hadn’t been talking about me, after all. Maybe Olivia was the girl they’d been discussing. Which means Olivia could be here, in this world, too. And if that’s true, if she’s the girl Fiona was talking about, she’s probably in danger.

“Where are you now?” I say to the picture as the ship rolls beneath me again. Struggling to stay upright, I grasp the desk, but I’m barely on my feet when I hear a sound that makes me go still.

A familiar rustling fills the air, growing steadily as its metallic hum grates against my skin. My throat goes tight as the dark shadows in the corners of the room begin to waver and lurch. They slide from the walls, like they’re melting to the ground, and then they begin to slink, almost snakelike toward the center of the room, where they start to collect and swell.

Ignoring the metallic taste of fear on my tongue, I swallow down my rising panic and tuck the picture into my pocket as I run for the door.

Outside the Captain’s quarters, I’m assaulted by the sights and sounds of the chaos of battle. Two long rowboats have pulled up alongside the ship, and from them, boys are still climbing up onto the main deck. These boys are easy to distinguish from the Captain’s, though—they’re dirty and dressed in an assortment of ragged clothes and shaggy furs that remind me of Fiona’s.