A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(125)

Noor moaned from the corner. I looked over to see her shift on the couch, eyes still closed.

“She’ll be okay,” said H. “She got sleep-dusted pretty good, but she’ll come out of it.”

He winced, and his eyes went a little glassy.

“Water.”

I sprang up to run to the kitchen, but before I could take three steps, a hollowgast tongue was already sliding through the air past me, wrapped around a sloshing glass. I helped H sit up while the hollow’s tongue tipped the glass to his lips, marveling at the strange tenderness of it.

H finished drinking, and the hollow’s tongue ferried the glass away and set it down on the coffee table. On a coaster.

“You’ve got him trained pretty good,” I said.

“Should have by now,” H replied. “Been together forty years. We’re like an old married couple.” He tipped his head to look down at himself. “God, they made Swiss cheese out of me.” He coughed a mist of blood into the air.

The hollow groaned and bounced on its haunches. It had crept out of the kitchen and was crouched nearby, and its black eyes wept oily tears down its cheeks and onto a stained handkerchief tied around its neck.

I looked at H, and suddenly I wanted to cry, too. It’s happening again, I thought, a sob forming in my chest. I’m losing another one.

I swallowed back the sob and managed to say, “What happened?”

“Should’ve been a piece of cake,” he croaked. “A simple extraction. If it weren’t for Horatio, who carried us both out of there, we’d all be Leo’s prisoners now.” He sighed. “Guess I got old.”

“Why didn’t you let me help you?”

“Couldn’t risk you getting hurt,” he said. He looked past me at the ceiling, picturing something. “Abe’s special boy. Baby Moses in the reeds.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

His head turned to Noor. “You can help Miss Pradesh now. I’m dying, so there’s nobody else.”

“What do I do? Where do we go?”

“Out of New York, for starters.”

“We could go to Devil’s Acre.”

“No. The ymbrynes would only send her back to Leo. They don’t know how important she is.” He was fading, starting to mumble. “Neither does she.”

“Why is she important?”

“You know, before she got dusted, she saved my ass about three times today? Thought I was supposed to be saving hers.” He laughed weakly. “Too bad her lightbulb trick can’t stop bullets.”

His thoughts were running away from him. His eyes beginning to close.

I put my hand on his cheek, his rough beard, and forced him look at me. “H, why is she important?”

“I made a vow to your grandfather. Not to involve you.”

“We’re way past that now.”

He nodded sadly. “I guess we are.” He drew a shaky breath. “She’s one of the seven whose coming was foretold.”

Of all the things I thought he might say to me, that was not among them.

“One of the seven. Seven what?”

“They will be the emancipators of peculiardom. So says the Apocryphon.”

“What is that? Some kind of prophecy?”

“Writings from long ago. Her birth signals the arrival of a new age. A very dangerous one.” He grimaced in pain and shut his eyes. “That’s why those people are hunting her.”

“The ones with the helicopter and the black cars.”

“The same,” he said.

“They’re one of the clans?”

“No. Much worse. A very old, very secret society of normals. Who want to subvert and”—he winced, sucking air through his teeth—“control us.” He was losing his breath now, gasping between words. “No time for history lessons. Take the girl to V. She’s the last of us. The last of the hunters.”

“V,” I said, my mind starting to reel. “From Abe’s mission log. The one he trained himself.”

“Yes. She lives in the big wind. Doesn’t want to be found, so be careful. Horatio, the map is in the safe . . .”

The hollowgast grunted, loped over to the wall, and moved a picture aside to reveal a small safe. While Horatio spun the number wheel, I focused on H. I could feel him slackening.

I squeezed his hand. “H, I have to know something.” He was slipping away, and the idea that this last, best link to my grandfather’s secrets was about to be severed shook something loose in me. Something I’d been trying to bury since I heard it.

“Why would someone call my grandfather a murderer?”

H looked at me with new intensity. “Who said that to you?”

I leaned in close. He was shaking. I told him, quickly, about the insane things Leo had accused Abe of. Stealing his goddaughter. Killing people. Not just people—kids.

H might have said, The wights made it all up. He might have said, simply, It’s a lie. But he didn’t say either of those things.

He said, “So you know.”

My vision blurred for a moment. And doubt, like a virus, began to spread through me. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

I had H by the shoulders. I was shaking him. The hollowgast screamed, whipped a tongue around my waist, and pulled me away from H. I was flung halfway across the room, skidding across the floor into the leg of a table.