A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(35)

We hadn’t gone even ten feet when a sturdy pair of hands stopped me. They belonged to a fast-talking man with a single eye in the middle of his forehead and a hat that read PRESS.

“Farish Obwelo from the Evening Muckraker. How about a quick photo?”

Before I could answer, he had turned me to face a camera—a giant antique that must have weighed a ton. A photographer ducked behind it and held up a flash. “So, Jake,” Farish said, “what was it like to command an army of hollowgast? How did it feel to win a battle against so many wights? What were Caul’s last words before you struck the blow that killed him?”

“Uh, that’s not exactly how it—”

The camera flashed, and for an instant I was blind. Then another pair of hands were on me—this time Miss Peregrine’s, dragging me away. “Don’t speak to the press,” she hissed in my ear, “about anything, but especially not about what happened in the Library of Souls!”

“Why?” I said. “What do they think happened?”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t, because suddenly I was being hoisted up over Bronwyn’s head, where she carried me like a platter, out of reach of the crowd. We made our way like that, Sharon forming a wedge with his arms to part the human sea and pointing up ahead—yes, there, we’re nearly there—to a gate in a tall iron fence. Beyond it rose a building of hulking black stone.

A guard waved us through the gate into a courtyard, and we left the crowd behind us. Bronwyn set me down and everyone crowded around as I brushed myself off.

“I thought someone was going to take a bite out of you!” Emma said.

“I told him he was famous!” said Millard, his tone both teasing and a little jealous.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you meant—”

“Famous famous?” said Emma.

“Flavor of the month,” said Enoch, waving his hand. “Watch, they’ll have forgotten all about him by Christmas.”

“God, I hope so,” I said.

“Why?” said Bronwyn. “You don’t want to be famous?”

“No!” I said. “That was”—I wanted to say terrifying—“a bit much.”

“You handled yourself splendidly,” said Miss Peregrine. “And it will get easier. Once people become accustomed to seeing you, they won’t make such a fuss. You’ve been gone for some time, Jacob, and your legend has grown quite a bit in your absence.”

“I’ll say it’s grown. But what was that about me killing Caul?”

She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “A necessary fiction. The ymbrynes decided it was best that everyone believe him dead.”

“Well, isn’t he?”

“Very likely,” she said, in a tone too casual to be completely believable. “But the truth is, we don’t know what happens inside a collapsed loop. No one’s ever escaped one to tell. Caul and Bentham may be dead, or they may just be . . . elsewhere.”

“Extra-dimensionally inaccessible,” Millard said.

“Permanently, of course,” Miss Peregrine hastened to add. “But we don’t want the public—or the few wights who have managed to evade us—to have any doubt. Or to get any strange ideas about rescuing him.”

“So, congratulations, you killed Caul, too,” Enoch said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Couldn’t it have been one of us who killed him?” Horace whined.

“You mean, you?” Enoch sneered. “Who’d believe that?”

“Keep your voices down!” snapped Miss Peregrine.

I was still grappling with the idea that Caul was only very likely dead, or that anyone, even the super-monster he had become at the end, could survive something as violent as a loop collapse, when a slap on the back from Sharon almost knocked me down.

“My boy, I should be getting back. Please don’t hesitate to call for me if you need another escort.”

Miss Peregrine thanked him. He bowed deeply, then turned and left, his cloak swishing behind him dramatically.

We turned to face the dour building that loomed before us.

“So, what is this place?” I asked.

“It’s the heart of peculiar government, for the time being,” said Miss Peregrine. “Where the Ymbryne Council now holds its meetings and where the various ministries conduct their business.”

“It’s where we get our work assignments,” said Bronwyn. “We turn up here in the mornings, and they tell us what needs doing.”

“St. Barnabus’ Asylum for Lunatics,” I said, reading words carved into stone above the building’s iron doors.

“There wasn’t a lot of vacant real estate to choose from,” Miss Peregrine said.

“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” said Millard, and he laughed and nudged me forward.



* * *



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The institution’s full name was St. Barnabas’ Asylum for Lunatics, Mountebanks, and the Criminally Mischievous, and all the inmates—most of which had been there on a voluntary basis, anyway—had run away in the chaos that followed the wights’ defeat. The asylum had sat empty until the Ymbryne Council, whose building had been encased in ice during a hollowgast raid and rendered uninhabitable, requisitioned it as their temporary headquarters. It was now home to most of European Peculiardom’s government ministries, and its miserable dungeons, padded cells, and dank corridors had been stocked with desks and meeting tables and filing cabinets. They looked no less like torture chambers despite the change in furnishings.