Chapter 5

Palametto is a thief, but not a very good one. She’s wanted on every island for various crimes, most of them pick-pocketing. Still, I make sure to keep the table between us as she pulls up a chair and sits down.

She’s a curvy girl, on the shorter side, with a long braid of brown hair and a dusting of freckles across her face. She’s the kind of girl that given the right training could be an excellent thief. There’s nothing about her that stands out. She could blend into any crowd.

I catch her eyeing the black rock hanging around my neck and snap my fingers at her. “My eyes are up here.”

She smiles at me looking as innocent as can be. She leans into the table, hunching her shoulders forward affording me, and the Captain, a view of her cleavage.

I may have been lying when I told the Captain I’d fucked her friend, but I’m not above using my body to get what I want. However, I’m not about to fuck Palametto. Not my type. Too many freckles. That saying, that freckles are the mark of the devil? Not entirely untrue.

Besides it’s not my dick she’s after — it’s money.

“Pay the girl,” I tell the Captain.

“What?” He scowls at me. “Is that the only reason you brought me?”

I ignore him and press a thumb into a peanut on the table. The shell cracks.

The Captain fishes out several dukets from his pocket and slides them across the table to the girl.

“That it?” She turns up her nose at the silver.

The Captain looks at me. “Don’t you have more of those⁠—”

I kick him beneath the table. He lets out a dramatic umph.

Palametto raises a brow.

I keep my expression blank. Don’t want the thief knowing I have fairy gold in my pocket.

We stare at each other for several long beats, then she says, “Throw in the rock and we’ll call it good.”

“You lay one finger on my rock,” I tell her, “and I’ll devour you whole.”

“Is that some kind of sexual innuendo?”

The Captain brings his hook up and sets it on the table. The metal clangs loudly against the wood. The girl glances at it before looking up at the Captain’s face, asking a question that I think she already knows the answer to.

“If you’d like my advice, young lady, I wouldn’t tempt him,” he says.

My attention wanders to the Captain, to the grim line of his mouth. I have to suppress a shiver, hearing him talk about me like this: a foe that should not be ignored.

The Captain is sexy AF when he’s flattering me.

Palametto rakes her teeth over her ruby red lips. “Fine. The silver will do.”

“Excellent choice,” I tell her around a mouthful of nuts. “Now, what can you tell us about Wendy Darling?”

Briar comes over and takes the girl’s drink order. The Captain orders a bottle of rum. When I give him a surprised look he screws up his mouth at me as if he’s challenging me to tell him he’s not allowed.

I’m not going to stop him. A drunk Captain is a lot more fun than a sober one. Even if I do get a great amount of joy out of telling him what to do.

“My mamaw used to talk about a girl she spent time with in prison,” Palametto says. “This was a long, long time ago, right? They were in the same cell in the Tower.”

“What was your grandmother in for?” I ask, because details matter and because a bloodthirsty granny is exactly my type. Unless she has freckles.

“Killing a man.”

I raise a brow. “And did she?”

“Of course. Mamaw was a Cutty and she slit the throat of anyone who got in her way.”

“I didn’t think the Cuttys let women into their ranks.”

“You don’t tell Mamaw no.”

“I like this granny of yours. Go on.”

“In prison, she and the girl were in together about a month before the girl, Wendy, was taken for execution.”

Hook’s eyes widen. “What the bloody hell for?”

The girl shrugs. “I think Mamaw said something about Peter Pan? Everland sees anyone with ties to Pan as automatically an enemy of the court.”

There’s no way they went through with it. The timeline wouldn’t match up with Wendy’s pregnancy and later birth.

Briar returns. The Captain wastes no time uncorking his bottle and pouring himself a drink. His heart is beating erratically. I can hear it even over the music, even over the din.

“What happened after that?” the Captain asks.

I grab the bottle from him and take a long draw from it. He scowls at me, but it’s short-lived when Palametto goes on. He’s hungry for any detail about Wendy and I’m a little envious of it.

“They tried to execute Wendy by hanging. But she just dangled there for over an hour, refused to die. The way Mamaw told it, the Viscount at the time stepped in and took Wendy home with him. Real asshole that one was, and he coveted rare treasures. The rumors started then that Wendy was a vermis and the Viscount tried to sell her. Didn’t get very far though.”

The Captain takes the bottle back from me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She leans in conspiringly. “The Viscount passed away.”

I lean in too. “Got himself dead, you mean?”

“Probably. Seems awfully convenient, doesn’t it?”

“What about Wendy?” the Captain asks.

The girl shrugs. “Disappeared after that.”

He collapses against the booth. “You must be joking.”

“Not. Sorry.” Palametto slings back her drink in one long gulp, then runs the back of her hand over her mouth, mopping up the last dregs.

The Captain presses his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose.

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” I ask.

The girl gives me a begging smile. “Perhaps you and I go back to my room and have a little fun and we can see if anything shakes loose.”

The Captain is now glaring at her.

“Please accept my apologies.” I reach across the table and pat her hand. “I plan on fucking him tonight so I must decline.”

The Captain sputters and it takes everything in me not to laugh out loud.

“He is not!” he tells the girl, and then he looks at me. “You are not!”

“Don’t blame you,” she says to me, ignoring Hook while talking about him. “He’s a fine handsome dandy.”

“That he is.”

“I’m right here,” he grumbles.

“If you change your mind…” Palametto adds.

“I’m sure I could find you.” I’m sure I won’t.

She winks and then leaves us.

I drag the bottle of rum back over and take a swig. Pleasureland fae aren’t known for their discerning taste in rum, but it’s serviceable. Sweet, spicy, with a sharp burn on the way down.

“I don’t know if the fairy magic has gotten to your head,” the Captain says, leaning into me, “but you are not—” he lowers his voice “—fucking me tonight.”

“Oh? Did you want to fuck me instead?”

He grumbles to himself and steals the bottle back. “You are a fucking menace, do you know that?”

“Of course I do. I’m very good at it.”

“You think you’re good at everything.”

“Nonsense. I’m very bad at knitting.”

He snorts.

The band takes a request from the growing crowd and an upbeat Winterland tune fills the tavern. Several patrons partner off and swing around in a choreographed dance known as the Allemande. Those gathered around clap in time with the strumming of the giant bass.

The Captain picks up his forgotten bread and rips off a piece. “I thought you wanted to find Wendy.”

“I do.”

“Then why are you sitting here, playing all of this like it’s a game?”

“Everything is a game, Captain. The sooner you pick your game piece, the quicker you can win.”

I sense some of the tension come out of him as he slumps against the bench. “Meeting that girl,” he says. “I don’t feel like she got us anywhere closer to finding Wendy.”

I watch the crowd. Palametto has already disappeared into it. I check that my rock is still hanging around my neck.

“We did get something out of it. Wendy was here. They tried to kill her. They couldn’t.”

“That can’t be right though. Wendy was mortal when she came to the Isles. There’s no way she’d survive an hour of hanging.”

My mind conjures the image of Wendy struggling against a noose, legs kicking at nothing, and it makes me fucking irate. I was hung once. It did not go well for the executioner.

“We need to find out more about the Viscount’s death,” I say, thinking aloud. “If he did take Wendy in, she would have been considered his property at the time of death. We just need to figure out who took his assets.”

The Captain snorts. “Good luck to us.”

“Captain, pessimism does not become you.”

“Oh fuck off.”

I laugh and snatch the rum from him again. “You’re sexy when you’re angry.”

“Shut up. Stop flirting with me.” He avoids looking directly at me. But I notice him surreptitiously readjusting himself.

I slide down the bench, press my body against the Captain’s. He shrinks away, but I grab him by the arm and keep him against me.

There is a moment where all of the tension rushes out of his body and he slumps against me, his thigh pressing against mine. He is warm and soft and hostile. All of my favorite things.

He frowns at me. “Is this also part of the game, beast?”

“Take a deep breath,” I tell him.

“Why?” He regards me warily.

“You’re no good to me if you’re pent up.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I am not pent up.”

“Take a deep breath.”

I want to mold him, make him bend to me. I want to watch him pull away the mask and become something else: himself.

“Go on, Captain.”

He huffs out and then inhales deeply.

“Again,” I tell him.

He takes another deep breath, lungs expanding.

I see the moment the fairy magic seeps into his bloodstream. See the moment the anxiety and the apprehension fades.

“Better?” I ask him.

He looks at me a little starry-eyed. “This is dangerous,” he slurs.

“Why?”

“Because I…” He closes his eyes, swallows hard.

“Because you what?”

“Because I don’t feel afraid right now.” His eyes pop open and focus on me. “I should be afraid of you. I should have my wits about me when you are near.”

“I won’t hurt you, Captain,” I promise him. “I find no pleasure in your pain.”

His hook twists in his lap. “You did once.”

“Sure. A long time ago.”

“What changed?”

Everything, I think. “Now I find pleasure in watching you squirm.”

“A different kind of torture.” His voice is a grumble of annoyance, but I catch the bulge between his legs growing larger.

“Why don’t you give in to me,” I tell him. “And let me repent for what I did to you all those years ago.”

He sucks in another deep breath, this time of his own accord, and lets his eyes stay closed a heartbeat, two, three. I can hear the blood pumping through his veins, the temptation beating at the back of his tongue.

When his eyes pop open again, he’s looking right at me, then at my mouth, at the crocodile teeth tattooed across my neck.

I’m not sure I desire redemption, but the way he’s looking at me, like he’s terrified I’m a lie, a Crocodile hiding beneath the muck, teeth ready to snap, makes me question myself.

I am not a decent man.

But I suppose even a beast such as myself is allowed to do one decent thing.

I laugh and drop his arm and slide away. “You’re drunk,” I tell him. “And I’m hungry. If this is a game, I tire of it. Why don’t we get out of here and find some decent food and rum?”

He deflates.

There is an unfamiliar feeling in my throat, a tightening that spiderwebs across my chest. I am stuck in it and I cannot get out.

“Very well,” he says and takes the rum bottle by the neck. “I know a place better than this. Follow me, beast.”

I slide out of the booth and trail the Captain out the door.