Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

He flew Ashley back to her window. It was lucky that Ashley, as a rather spoiled only child, had a balcony where he could deposit her. Had he flown her into her bedroom, he would have woken her parents, who were, of course, in there waiting for her.

They had also alerted the police for miles around, but the Queen dealt with that later.

Peter stood on empty air about a foot away from the balcony, his head tilted insouciantly back, arms crossed over his chest.

“You’ll grow up,” he threw out at Ashley, as if it was the direst threat imaginable.

“You bet,” Ashley said. “You might, too.”

There was a moment of stillness. Ashley remembered that instant of quiet at the evil fortress, and remembered him dreaming and weeping in Neverland.

“Not yet, Ashley lady,” said Peter. “Not yet.”

“You can’t stay on that island forever.”

“Maybe not,” Peter told her. “I used to live in Kensington Gardens with the fairies. Dreams change. But there’s always another game.”

Ashley raised an eyebrow. “The spy thing?”

Peter beamed at her, beautiful and terrible, young and sweet.

The monster her grandmother had feared, with all his first teeth.

“You must admit, Ashley,” he said. “I am perfectly splendid at it.”

“You’re all right,” Ashley said grudgingly.

“You assisted me quite creditably,” Peter told her grandly.

I do not think it will surprise you when I mention that Ashley was not overwhelmed by this tribute.

“I don’t suppose…” said Peter.

“What?”

Peter smiled his most fascinating smile. “You might want to come on another mission with me?”

Ashley studied the horizon. She shouldn’t. He was a creature of nightmares as well as dreams, and he had kidnapped her, scared her grandmother, driven her great-grandmother mad.

Her great-great-great-grandmother had loved him, left him, and lived.

“I’ll think about it,” Ashley said.

Peter crowed and launched himself into the sky, utterly and blissfully happy, the bright triumphant sound trailing after him back to the balcony where Ashley stood.

She squared her shoulders and opened the doors that would lead to her parents.

Knowing Peter, the next time he came might be many years later. He might be coming for her daughter. In which case, Ashley was not going to bother with the pepper spray. She was going to make her child sleep with a taser.

Of course, Peter had no sense of time, and he might get bored and decide to arrive next week.

Ashley went into the house smiling slightly. She would have to look into acquiring that taser as soon as possible.

Across a sky painted with the neon lights of a changing city, headed toward an island being destroyed as dreams grew dark, flew Peter Pan, who never grows up, except now and again—from the fairies’ baby in Kensington Gardens to the boy who ruled Neverland to the greatest spy in the Queen’s Secret Service.

Times change.

There is always another game.

You don’t have to grow up yet.

Holly Black is the author of the bestselling “The Spiderwick Chronicles.” Her first story appeared in 1997, but she gained attention with her debut novel, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale . She has written eleven “Spiderwick” novels, three novels inher “Modern Faerie Tales” sequence, including Andre Norton Award winner Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie , and “The Good Neighbors” series of graphic novels. She has also edited Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd (with Cecil Castellucci). Black’s most recent books are short story collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, novel White Cat (the first book in “The Curse Workers” series), and anthology Zombies vs. Unicorns (with Justine Larbalestier). Upcoming is new novel Red Glove and anthology Welcome to Bordertown (with Ellen Kushner). She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her husband, the artist Theo Black.

There is a werewolf girl in the city. She sits by the phone on a Saturday night, waiting for it to ring. She paints her nails purple.

She goes to bed early. Body curled around a pillow, fingers clawing at the bedspread, she dreams that she’s on a dating show, a reality television one. She’s supposed to pick one boyfriend out of a dozen strangers by eliminating one candidate each week. After eliminations, she eats the guys she’s asked to leave. In her dream, the boys get more and more afraid as they overhear screams, but they can’t quite believe the show is letting them be murdered one by one, so they convince each other to stay until the end. In the reunion episode, the werewolf girl eats the boy who she’s picked to be her boyfriend.

That’s the only way to get to do a second season, after all.

When she wakes up, she’s sorry about the dream. It makes her feel guilty and a little bit hungry, which makes her feel worse. Her real-life boyfriend is a good guy, the son of a dentist from an ancestral line of dentists. Sometimes,he takes her to his dad’s office and they sit in the chairs and suck on nitrous while watching the overhead televisions that are supposed to distract patients. When they do that, the werewolf girl feels calmer than she’s felt her whole life.

She’s calling herself Nadia in this city. She’s called herself Laura and Liana and Dana in other places.

Despite going to bed early, she’s woken up tired.

Nadia takes her temperature and jots it down in a little notebook by the side of the bed. Temperature is more accurate than phases of the moon in telling her when she’s going to change.

She gets dressed, makes coffee and drinks it. Then goes to work. She is a waitress on a street where there are shirt shops and shops that sell used records and bandanas and studded belts. She brings out tuna salads to aged punks and cappuccinos in massive bowls to tourists who ask her why she doesn’t have any tattoos.

Nadia still looks young enough that her lack of references doesn’t seem strange to her employers, although she worries about the future. For now, though, she appears to be one of a certain type of girl—a girl that wants to be an actress, who’s come in from the suburbs and never really worked before, a girl restaurants in the city employ a lot of. She always asks about flexibility in her interviews, citing auditions and rehearsals. Nadia is glad of the easy excuses, since she does actually need a flexible schedule.

The only problem with her lie is that the other girls ask her to go to auditions.

Sometimes Nadia goes, especially when she’s lonely. Her boyfriend is busy learning about teeth and gets annoyed when she calls him. He has a lot of classes. The auditions are often dull, but she likes the part where all the girls stand in line and drink coffee while they wait. She likes the way their skin shimmers with nervous sweat and their eyes shine with the possibility of transformation. The right part will let them leave their dirty little lives behind and turn them into celebrities.

Nadia sits next to another waitress, Rhonda, as they wait to be called back for the second phase of the audition for a musical. Rhonda is fingering a cigarette that she doesn’t light—because smoking is not allowed in the building and also because she’s trying to quit.

Grace, a willowy girl who can never remember anyone’s order at work, has already been cut.

“I hate it when people stop doing things and then they don’t want to be around other people doing them,” Rhonda says, flipping the cigarette over and over in her fingers. “Like people who stop drinking and then can’t hang out in bars. I mean, how can you really know you’re over something if you can’t deal with being tempted by it?”