A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(28)

So why was I bothering?

“I’m out of ideas,” I said, and stood up.

“You’re giving up?” said Emma.

“Who knows,” I said. “Maybe it’s just a root cellar.”

“You know it’s not.”

I shrugged. “My grandmother took fruit preservation very seriously.”

Enoch let out a frustrated sigh. “Maybe you’re holding out on us.”

“What?” I said, turning toward him.

“I think you know the code but you want to keep Abe’s secrets for yourself. Even though we found the door.”

I took an angry step toward him. Bronwyn put herself between us.

“Jacob, settle down! Enoch, shut up. You’re not helping.”

I gave him the finger.

“Ahh, who cares what’s in Abe’s dusty old hole in the ground,” said Enoch, and then he laughed. “It’s probably just a thousand old love letters from Emma.”

Now Emma gave him the finger, too.

“Or maybe a shrine with a big photo of her and candles all around . . .” He clapped his hands gleefully. “Oh, that would be so awkward for you two!”

“Come here so I can burn your eyebrows off,” said Emma.

“Ignore him,” I said.

She and I retreated to the doorway with our hands in our pockets. He’d gotten to both of us.

“I’m not hiding anything,” I said quietly. “I really don’t know what the code is.”

“I know,” she said, and touched my arm. “I was thinking. Maybe it’s not a number.”

“But it’s a number pad.”

“Maybe it’s a word. Look, the keys have letters and numbers.”

I went over to the door and looked. She was right: Every number key had three letters below it, like the buttons on a telephone.

“Was there a word that would have meant something to the both of you?” she said.

“E-m-m-a?” Enoch said.

I turned toward him. “I swear to God, Enoch . . .”

Bronwyn picked him up and threw him over her shoulder.

“Hey! Put me down!”

“You’re getting a time-out,” said Bronwyn, and she walked him out of the room while he wriggled and complained.

“As I was saying,” said Emma. “Some secret you had between the two of you. Something only you would know.”

I considered it for a moment, then knelt down by the hatch. First, I tried names—mine, Abe’s, Emma’s—but no dice. Then, just for the hell of it, I keyed in the word p-e-c-u-l-i-a-r.

Nope. Way too obvious.

“You know, it might not even be in English,” said Millard. “Abe spoke Polish, too.”

“Maybe you should take the night to think it over,” Emma said.

But now my mind was whirring. Polish. Yes, he spoke it now and then, mostly to himself. He’d never taught me any, except for one word. Tygrysku—a pet name he’d given me. It meant “little tiger.”

I punched it in.

The tumblers inside the lock opened with a clunk.

Holy shit.



* * *



? ? ?

The door opened to reveal a ladder descending into darkness. I swung my foot onto the first rung.

“Wish me luck,” I said.

“Let me go first,” Emma said. She held out her palm and made a flame.

“It should be me,” I said. “If there’s anything nasty waiting down there, I want to get eaten first.”

“How very chivalrous,” said Millard.

I climbed down ten steps onto a concrete floor. It was cooler than the house above by ten or fifteen degrees. Before me was total darkness. I took out my phone and shone its light around, which was only bright enough to show me the walls—curved, gray concrete. It was a tunnel: claustrophobically tight, so low I had to hunch. My phone light was too puny to see what lay ahead, or how far the tunnel went.

“Well?” Emma called down.

“No monsters!” I shouted. “But I could use more light.”

So much for chivalry.

“Be right there!” said Emma.

“Us too!” I heard Olive say.

It was only then, as I was waiting for my friends to climb down, that it hit me—my grandfather had meant for me to find this place.

Tygrysku. It was a bread crumb in the forest. Just like the postcard from Miss Peregrine that he’d tucked into that volume of Emerson.

Emma reached the bottom and lit a flame in her hand. “Well,” she said, looking at the tunnel ahead. “It’s definitely not a root cellar.”

She winked at me and I grinned back. She seemed cool and collected, but I’m pretty sure it was an act; every nerve in me was jangling.

“May I come down?” Enoch called down from the room above. “Or am I to be punished for having a sense of humor?”

Bronwyn had just reached the bottom of the ladder. “You stay where you are,” she said. “In case anyone comes, we don’t want to be caught down here unawares.”

“In case who comes?” he said.

“Whoever,” said Bronwyn.

We gathered in a cluster with Emma at the front, her flame held out to make a light.