Darling by K. Ancrum

Author:K. Ancrum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Imprint

CHAPTER 10

After Detective Hook’s outburst, it was a bit easier to see the dynamic of the group as a whole. Everyone was on edge and not doing a great job of hiding their emotions. Everyone but Peter, it seemed.

Wendy watched from the back of the group as they made their way toward the train station. Minsu and Charles were doing the least to disguise their hatred and disgust toward Peter, only changing their expressions when Peter looked at them directly. Now that Charles had properly cried out his terror from nearly being arrested, he seemed more serious and way more focused on using his large body to physically block Ominotago from view. Charles looked at Peter the way one would look at a sleeping lion: wary and ready to defend himself. Fyodor refused to look at Peter at all unless directly addressed. So aggressive was his refusal to participate and determination to stay faced away that Peter loudly began pointing out when they were turning, as if he thought Fyodor was about to walk in the wrong direction.

By contrast, Nibs and Curly looked at Peter often, as if waiting for orders he hadn’t given yet. They leaned toward him the same way Tinkerbelle had leaned toward Peter in the alley when they’d first met. Nibs and Curly also moved in lockstep with Peter, like a pack, with Peter at the front. Tinkerbelle and Ominotago walked at the rear of the group. Peter seemed incredibly agitated by Ominotago’s presence, but was putting up with her for reasons Wendy didn’t yet understand. Unlike the rest of the people Wendy had met tonight, Ominotago didn’t seem afraid of Peter at all. Now that she thought about it, Ominotago was also the only person who had seriously disobeyed him and gotten away with it.

I don’t take orders from him, she’d said. Ominotago had stated that like a fact, as resolutely as Wendy would say that there were fifty states in America.

Tinkerbelle, she realized, was mimicking that. Her shouting in the alley was less impactful than Ominotago’s conversational tone. Her rebellion was always followed immediately by cowering and silence. She was fighting back without the right weapons and without durable armor.

The air around the group was thick with tension. Nine different people walking together, wrestling with Peter’s gravitational pull in their own ways while the boy himself gave off nothing at all. No fear, no guilt, no concern. Strolling down the street like the entire neighborhood was the inside of his house. Like it was midday instead of 11:33 p.m.

Wendy noticed that while his right arm swung beside him carelessly, his left hand was dipped into his messenger bag, where she knew he kept his bombs. He seemed nonchalant, but Peter was always ready.

The mood got even more anxious the longer the group walked in silence. It was beginning to feel dangerous, so Wendy decided to throw herself into the fray to ease the tension.

“So, what kind of party is this?” she asked.

To her surprise, Minsu was the one who answered.

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