Darling - K. Ancrum Page 0,71

feel their restlessness.

“Are you not allowed to say?” Minsu asked. “We would understand if—”

“It’s not that,” Wendy interrupted. “Peter…,” she started, then stopped.

Ominotago was beginning to look frustrated, and Tinkerbelle was clearly not far behind.

Wendy clenched her hands into fists on her thighs and took a deep breath. “You have to promise you won’t yell or make a big deal about this,” she said anxiously.

“No one will make a big deal,” Fyodor replied softly.

“For Peter, I’m special. He … knew my mom,” Wendy said. “She was a witness to one of his first killings.” She paused, expecting the others to react in some dramatic way, but they just sat there seriously, waiting for her to continue. “When Peter was still an actual teenager, he and his friends lured my mom and some of her friends out to a cemetery. Then later on, he separated one of his friends from the group and killed him. Detective Hook thinks it was Peter’s first time, and he doesn’t know if Peter really remembers my mom at all. But he thinks that if I tell him who I am, he might be so startled or excited that I could maybe get a confession out of him or something … I don’t know.”

The room was dead silent. Fyodor shook his head slowly back and forth. Ominotago and Tinkerbelle were staring directly at each other, clearly having a rapid silent conversation.

“Fuck,” Minsu said, looking properly horrified. “Did you, like … anger a witch?”

“What?” Wendy said.

“You have extremely terrible luck,” Minsu said. “This is supernaturally terrible. For you. I mean, for us also, I guess, since we are A) still here, B) in handcuffs, and C) also know and have to deal with serial killer Peter Pan. But, like, you literally could have missed out on being a part of this situation by a couple of days. If you’d moved here last week, or even next week, it would have been too early for this chain of events, or too late.”

“I know,” Wendy said.

“What did you say when you found out?” Charles asked. He looked just as scandalized as Minsu. His eyebrows were so knotted in confusion and horror that if it weren’t for the situation, she’d have thought he was exaggerating his expression.

“He just showed me a picture of Peter from when he was actually sixteen, and it was the scariest thing on earth,” Wendy replied. “And then he showed me a picture of my mom at fourteen and was all: ‘Do you know who this is?’ like some creep getting off on the drama of a big reveal. I was so shocked; I don’t think I said anything. Plus, I thought the picture of my mom was a picture of me for a second, before I—”

“That’s fucked up,” Minsu interrupted.

“Yes! Thank you! It is fucked up!” Wendy exclaimed hysterically. “Then he started talking about how Peter wants a mom for the boys or whatever.”

“He does,” Ominotago said suddenly, her eyes sliding away from Tinkerbelle’s to Wendy. “He hasn’t always … but he does now. Peter is like a kid in many ways. He needs to be praised and validated constantly. He’s impulsive and self-centered. His concept of ‘rules’ and when to stick to them is … a bit like a third grader’s. He’s sensitive like one, too. It’s not an act for him—he’s not pretending to be like this. It genuinely just is him all the way through.”

Ominotago waited for a moment before continuing. “And … he’s cruel, not mean. There is a difference. He’s cruel in the way kids are cruel before they can really understand that their actions affect others. Peter does things not to hurt other people, but more because they serve his own needs. He picks boys like Curly and Nibs because they’re easy. He kills them because not doing so would make his own life difficult. He started looking for a mother figure because in some way, he realized he needed one to continue having what he wants.”

“And what he wants is to keep killing people,” Wendy said.

But Ominotago shook her head sharply. “No. What he wants is a family. A timeless, perfect home, where no one can tell him what to do. Where there is no bedtime, and you don’t have to eat your vegetables if you don’t want to. Where there is no homework and no rules, except for the rules he makes. Where there is no school and no work, and you survive by being clever and