A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(102)

“Who were they?”

“I still don’t know. They looked like faculty, and the faculty seemed to treat them like they belonged on campus, but no one recognized them. At first they seemed to be watching everyone, but after a while I got the feeling they were looking for me. Then that thing in the auditorium happened, and then I knew for sure.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“We read about it in a newspaper,” said Millard, “but we’d love to hear your version of events.”

“That was the worst day of my life. Well, maybe the second or third worst. I had an episode in the middle of a school assembly. It started out as one of those awful, mandatory things where they drone at you about school spirit, but then it turned into an assembly about me. Except they didn’t know it was me. They said someone had been vandalizing school property, breaking lightbulbs and burning things, and they said if the person was in the room they should stand up and apologize, and they wouldn’t be expelled. Otherwise, they would. And I started feeling sick, like I was sure they knew it was me but they were just messing with my head to see if I would confess. And then this girl in the row behind me—this total witch, Suze Grant—starts whispering that it was probably me since I came from a broken home, la la la, orphan girl from the wrong side of the tracks or whatever, vandalizing the school, and I could feel myself getting angry. Really, really angry.”

“And that’s when it happened?” I said.

“The auditorium has all these theater lights on the ceiling, and they all lit up at once, and then broke, and a ton of broken glass came down on everyone.”

“Damn,” said Lilly. “I didn’t know it was like that.”

“It was bad,” said Noor. “I knew I needed to get out there. So I made it dark, and I ran. And a couple of the fake faculty people started chasing me, and I could tell they were sure it was me, now. They chased me into the bathroom, and I had no choice but to let all the light I had taken out of that big auditorium go, all at once, right in their faces.”

“What did they look like?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew already.

“They’re so normal-looking they’re almost hard to describe,” said Noor.

“Age? Height? Build? Race?”

“Middle-aged. Middle height. Middle build. Mostly men, one or two ladies. A couple white, a couple brown.”

“And how were they dressed?” asked Millard.

“Polo shirts. Button-downs. A coat. Navy-blue or black, always. Like out of a catalog for average people with average jobs and no particular background.”

“After you burned them, what did you do?” I asked.

“I tried running back to my house, but they were waiting for me there, too. So I came here. Lucky for me, I’ve got a lot of experience hiding from people.”

“The more I hear about these people,” said Bronwyn, “the less they sound like peculiars.”

“They don’t sound at all like peculiars,” said Millard. “They sound like wights to me.”

“Like whites?” said Noor, looking confused. “I just told you, some of them were brown.”

“No, no, wights,” said Emma. “W-i-g-h-t. They used to be peculiar, turned themselves into monsters by accident, and have been our enemies for more than a century.”

“Oh,” said Noor. “Well, that’s confusing.”

“They couldn’t be wights,” I said. “There are too many of them. Wights work in small groups, or alone.”

“And there aren’t even that many of them left anymore,” said Emma.

“That we know of,” said Enoch.

“I might have felt a hollow at the school yesterday,” I admitted.

“What?” Emma shouted. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“The feeling only lasted a few seconds,” I said. “I wasn’t sure what it was. But if they were wights, they probably would’ve had at least one hollowgast traveling with them.”

“Fellows, who they are isn’t the most important thing,” Millard said. “Getting Noor to safety is. Once that’s completed, we can argue till we’re blue about who the people in the polo shirts are.”

“Safety?” said Noor. “Where’s that, exactly?”

I looked at her. “A time loop.”

She looked away and passed a hand across her forehead. The light in the corner flickered. “I guess after everything you’ve shown me, I should be ready to believe that, too. But—”

“I know,” I said. “It’s a lot. And it comes at you fast.”

“It’s not just a lot. It’s insane. I’d have to be out of my mind to go with you.”

“You’ll just have to trust us,” Emma said.

Noor looked at us for a few seconds. She started nodding. Then she said, “But I don’t.” She stood up and took a few steps toward the door. “I’m sorry. You seem nice enough, but I’m done trusting people I barely know. Even if they can resurrect dead birds and make fire in their hands.”

I looked at Emma and Bronwyn and Enoch. We were all quiet. I genuinely didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to argue with her, but I knew I had to say something. I couldn’t fail this way. I couldn’t fail her, couldn’t fail my grandfather, couldn’t fail my friends. Couldn’t fail myself. But as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, the building began to shake.