“I don’t know—I thought I would find them after I took you back,” Peter said, dismayed. “I thought if you returned to your world, maybe things would go back to normal, but it only got worse. I started growing up.” He visibly shivered. “I could feel the magic in me starting to drain away. I knew I needed to find my shadow—to stop it from taking kids and to get my magic back. I finally tracked it here. I think it was looking for you, since this all started happening when you came to Neverland.” Peter fixed her with a stare. “It’s the shadow that’s been kidnapping the kids in town,” Peter explained. “And I think it’s keeping them in the woods.”

The woods.

Even if it defied all logic—and physics, for that matter— it was still more of an answer to what had happened to her brothers than anyone else had given her.

“When you found me in the middle of the road, I had chased down my shadow. I almost caught it, but I couldn’t keep hold of it and I fell,” Peter told her.

Then he really had fallen out of the sky.

Wendy suddenly remembered what had made her veer off the road in the first place: the black mass. “I…” Wendy frowned, trying to make sense of everything. “Before I found you, something crashed onto the roof of my truck,” she explained slowly. “It was a black thing … It kind of looked like the shape of a person, but it was dark, and sort of … see-through.”

“You saw it?” Peter asked, suddenly lighting up. “You saw my shadow?”

“I don’t know what I saw,” Wendy said quickly. “It could’ve been a bunch of things, really. But … if it is your shadow—and if all of this is real—then it still has John and Michael?” she asked.

Peter said nothing for a moment, but then he nodded.

Wendy let out a strained laugh and finally pulled away from Peter’s grasp. She ran her fingers through her hair and squeezed her eyes shut. “This can’t be real!”

“Wendy.” Something caught his eye behind her and he spoke quickly. “You have to believe me,” he said, catching her wrists in his hands.

“But how can I believe anything you’re saying? Everything you’ve told me is impossible!” Wendy told him. Her head swam with overwhelming desperation. She wanted to believe him, to believe that all of this was possible and real, that he knew where her brothers were. That she could get them back.

Peter let out a frustrated growl. He leaned closer and looked into her eyes. Wendy held her breath. “You’ve gotta help me, or else kids are just going to keep going missing,” Peter said.

“Wendy?”

She whirled around as Jordan stepped through the door to the courtyard.