14 162 Hook
Working for Tinkerbell had gotten boring surprisingly quickly. Hook had needed a little time to get used to his new form and having two hands again, and then he'd had time to explore the great tree from top to bottom and Tinkerbell was still spending all day with her crystal deciding who to steal from Earth for their talents.
The first trip to Earth had been a revelation. About four hundred years had passed and the world was very different. Hook had spent half a day wandering around gaping at things before a band of toughs decided to mug him for his 'pirate costume.' Even confused as he was Hook was more than a match for a bunch of boys and left them groaning in an alley, lightened of their money. That booty had furnished him with modern clothes, after he realized that everybody bought ready made now instead of going to tailors. The young man who sold him the clothes said some inscrutable things—"Historical reenactment huh?"- but had mentioned something called the 'internet' by which anyone could learn any information for free. Hook had been skeptical, but had located a library and discovered it was all true. The 'internet' delivered the location of the young dancer whose talent Tinkerbell wanted to steal, and plenty of videos from which he could learn how to act normal in the modern world.
Hook got a lot of time to practice. Tinkerbell took her time choosing the talents she wanted to steal, and while she judged and compared, Hook took his time on Earth. Money was no problem; one coin from his treasure became a pile of modern currency.
In his one alley brawl Hook had realized that he rather missed having a sharp piece of metal at the end of one arm. Tinkerbell had saved his hook, and he eventually found a blacksmith to forge it into a hooked dagger that would serve the same purpose.
And he went home. The wide green fields of the estate had shrunk considerably but the house was still there, now welcoming tourists. Hook took the tour of his former home, had the portraits of his own ancestors described to him. History did not remember James Hook, delinquent son and runaway, since he'd never had a portrait painted.
His childhood he remembered as a thing to be escaped as quickly as possible. School had taught him that being a child had much to do with flavorless food and playing sports in the rain, and had inspired great enthusiasm for becoming a man and winning some power over his own fate.
So he'd run away to Clew Bay and the sea, propelled out of the house by getting caught in a brief fling with a milkmaid. He'd planned at the time to come back with a fortune of his own and marry her, but there had been no fortune, only hard work—and then the ship had sailed under a moonbow and into another world.
That felt like so long ago. At first they'd briefly thought the ship had arrived in the distant Americas, for where else would they be greeted by a tribe of savages? But the fairies and wild children and sharp-tooted mermaids were not natives of even the most exotic lands so it became quickly apparent they'd sailed into another place entirely. From which they could not return.
And there had been years of trying to escape, discovering just how much treasure was buried in Neverland and finding out that the pirates' code now granted strange magic to those who kept it. Years of fighting with his own personal nemesis, the annoying flying boy who could escape Neverland whenever he wanted but wouldn't help anybody else get out too. Looking back now, Hook wondered if Peter Pan even understood that the pirates wanted to bring treasure home to support their families. To a boy who had no family and probably didn't even know what money was, maybe he hadn't been mocking them. Maybe he just hadn't understood.
And then the boy was gone, flown away to Earth and disappeared, and Tinkerbell had set her heart on stealing all the greatest talents to make herself worthy of him so he'd come back.
Hook thought this a monumentally stupid plan, but he'd go along with it to steal the Spells of Shadow Magic—and something else. He had a relative to protect, according to the pirates' code.
That had been a bit of a shock. The marvelous 'internet' even had information on people's family lines so Hook had investigated his own and then found the young milkmaid he'd once hoped to marry and found she'd had a child just the right amount of time from when their fathers had forcibly ended the relationship. He'd been off on the ocean by then and she'd been married off to someone else. It was all so far in the past that Hook didn't give the matter much thought except that his many-times-great grandchild had a talent Tinkerbell wanted to steal.
He had tried to protect Annabelle and she'd been all right in the end, thanks more to the Winx than to him. That was another revelation: that there was a whole magic dimension and Neverland was only a tiny closet in the mansion of the universe. Neverland would have been enough, then, if he could have ruled the island instead of skulking around the edges of it.
That hadn't worked out, but it had ended here, now, in Magix, with the Spells of Shadow Magic and a Nemesis growing in a bottle in his lair.
It wasn't much of a lair—it was borrowed, which wasn't very lair-ish, but it was more comfortable than setting up in a ruin in Blackmud swamp or something. Not as nice as his cabin on his ship of course, but the room had a bed and a place to store his stuff and cast spells.
The creation of a Nemesis was an intricate and dangerous magical operation, and Tinkerbell's decision to make six of them had been madness to Hook's mind. First the ingredients had to be gathered and bottled with the appropriate ritual. That part he had done in Blackmud swamp, where a circle of candles and lots of chanting wouldn't be noticed. Then the growing monster had to be fed regular infusions of hateful thoughts while it developed.
That was the problem.
The last thing Hook had expected to be a problem! He'd planned to take revenge on the Winx too, and he'd had the perfect idea how. A plan that would be much better than going after the Winx themselves since they obviously had no problems with Nemesis.
A plan that didn't seem so perfect anymore.
Hook was used to having plenty of hateful thoughts, mostly inspired by the boy in green who lived for having fun. The existence of someone who had no worries or responsibilities was irritating beyond belief.
But after his imprisonment in the World of Nightmares Hook found himself with a new appreciation of fun. The evil realm had suited him so well it was rejuvenating, and his rejuvenated self felt less hateful. It was surprisingly pleasant. Confusingly pleasant.
And it left him with a problem. A full grown Nemesis could only be seen by its target and wouldn't effect anyone else. But an immature Nemesis would happily attack whoever was around, and they'd all notice. If anything went wrong in the process of creation the Nemesis would break out of its bottle and go after its creator.
So even if Hook wanted to give up on his revenge, a thought he couldn't believe he was entertaining, he'd have this monster to deal with.
He sat down in his lair's chair and got out the bag of red gems that held the Spells of Shadow Magic. They just looked like red stones—flawed rubies or very, very good garnets—unless held up to light to reveal the spell. He held a few of them up, one at a time. To Reveal a Person's Darkest Secret, To Shadow Travel, To Create an Umbreous Slave, To Poison a Person by Their Shadow. For some reason, he didn't feel like using any of them