A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(100)

She went to Lilly and hugged her, hard. The top of Lilly’s head only reached Noor’s cheek, and with Noor’s arms encircling her, it looked for a moment like Lilly was wrapped in light.

“Are you okay?” Lilly asked.

“Bored, mostly,” Noor said, and Lilly laughed a little and turned to introduce her friend.

“This is Noor.”

“Hi,” Noor said evenly, still assessing us.

“Noor, this is . . . uh, what do you call yourselves?”

Lilly happened to be looking at Emma.

“I’m Emma,” she said.

“I mean, what are you, again?” said Lilly.

Emma frowned. “Emma’s good enough for now, I think.”

“I’m Jacob,” I said. I stepped toward Noor and offered my hand, but she just looked at it. I lowered it, feeling awkward. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“Sure,” said Noor. “Let me show you to the grand salon.”

Taking Lilly’s arm, she turned and began to walk down a hall. She didn’t seem to mind having her back to us, so it seemed she’d decided we weren’t a threat. I noticed that the light emanating from her had gradually begun to dim, shrinking down into her core so that soon only her torso was glowing, and I caught glimpses of her shine only through her unzipped windbreaker and a rip in her jeans. She had been on guard when we first met but was starting to relax, and the light inside her corresponded somehow to her emotions.

We followed her from a large room with bare concrete walls into a smaller, windowless room with bare concrete walls. A couple of chairs and an old couch had been dragged in and draped with blankets, and there were some paperback books and comics and empty pizza boxes scattered around, evidence of long days and nights spent here. There were no lamps that I could see, but light shone from the room’s four corners, an apparently sourceless glow that was warm and yellow and breathed like firelight.

We sat. We talked. Actually, I did most of the talking—since it was only a few months ago that I was making these same life-altering discoveries myself—while Noor listened, watchful and guarded. I told her how I had grown up knowing nothing about my true nature. How my grandfather’s death had sparked this quest for truth that had led to me finding a time loop and meeting the peculiar children.

She put up a hand to stop me. “I was with you until time loop.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “I’m so used to this stuff now, I forget how bizarre it must sound.”

“It’s a day that repeats over and over again, every twenty-four hours,” Emma explained. “They have sheltered our kind from danger for centuries.”

“Normal people can’t enter them,” Millard said. “Nor could the monsters who used to hunt us.”

“What monsters?” Noor asked.

We explained, as best we could, what a hollowgast looked like, smelled like, sounded like. When we’d finished, Noor seemed puzzled.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Have you been attacked by one?”

“I’m trying to figure you out,” she said. “You talk like crazy people. Time loops. Monsters nobody can see. Shape-shifting.” She went to the couch, picked up a dog-eared comic book, and waved it in the air. “You talk like you’ve read too many of these. And I would one hundred percent have kicked your asses out of here already if not for Lilly, who really seems to like you, and that—well—”

“This.” Emma lit a ball of fire in her hand, then poured it from her right palm into her left, the flames dancing hypnotically.

“Yeah.” Noor dropped the comic book. “That.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the arm of the couch. “And it’s not monsters who’ve been chasing me. At least, I don’t think they are.”

“Why don’t you tell them about it?” said Lilly. “They want to help.”

“You know how many times I’ve heard that in my life? ‘They only want to help. Trust them. What could it hurt?’ Always the same lines.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out sharply. “But I guess, in this case, I’m out of options.”

“You’re hiding in an abandoned building,” Enoch said. “Relying on a blind girl to bring you food.”

Noor leveled a withering stare at him. “So what makes you peculiar, little man?”

“Oh, nothing too interesting,” Emma said quickly, stepping in front of Enoch.

“Excuse me?” Enoch peeked around her. “What, are you embarrassed?”

“Of course not,” Emma said, “I just thought it might be a little . . . soon.”

“If anything, it’s late,” Noor said. “It’s cards-on-the-table time. No secrets.”

Enoch shoved Emma aside. “You heard the lady. No secrets.”

“Fine,” Emma said. “Just don’t go overboard.”

Enoch stood and fished a plastic bag out of his pocket. It swung with the weight of something wet and dark. “Luckily, I saved a cat heart from the school.” He began to search around the room. “Has anyone got a doll or a stuffed animal? Or . . . a dead animal?”

Noor recoiled slightly, but seemed intrigued. “There’s a room full of mummified pigeons down the hall.”