A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(71)

“Good. Now I’ll take any money you got.”

My mind was racing, trying to figure out how we could get out of this. Maybe if we could trick him somehow, lure him closer, then jump him. But, no. He’d seen what happened to his friends when they let the girls get near them, and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake.

“Now!” he screamed, and fired his gun into the air. I flinched, my whole body tensing. I hadn’t heard a gun fired in months, and I wasn’t used to it.

I told him I had a few hundred dollars in the car.

“Go git it.”

Slowly, keeping my hands raised, I got up. “I need the keys. The money’s locked in the glove box.”

“Yer a damned liar. I should shoot you right now.” He was inching closer to me, closing the gap between us. “Fact, I think I will.”

Miss Billie put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. The man spun and pointed his gun at her. “Hey, lady, what the hell you think yer—”

And then came a loud, low-pitched panting, and from behind one of the bungalows galloped one of Miss Billie’s poodles—only it was twenty times larger than it had been three minutes earlier, the size of a full-grown hippopotamus.

The man turned, screamed, and aimed his gun at the giant dog. “Shoo! Go on now! Shoo!”

Then the other two dogs appeared, jumping out from between another pair of bungalows and growling like a pair of truck engines. He whirled toward them, and the second his back was turned, the first dog leapt, jaws wide and teeth gleaming, and bit his head off. What remained of him went limp and fell to the ground.

“Good girl! Good girl!” Miss Billie cried, clapping her hands.

Everyone in the Flamingo began to cheer. My friends got up off the ground.

“My bird,” said Bronwyn. “What kind of dogs are those?”

“Colossus poodles,” Miss Billie answered.

One of them trotted toward me with its mouth open, and I put my arms out and fell back a few steps. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I think he’s still hungry!”

“Don’t run, he’ll think it’s a game!” said Miss Billie. “He’s just bein’ friendly.”

The dog’s tongue came at me like a huge pink surfboard and licked my head from neck to scalp. I think I squealed. I was left dripping and grossed out, but grateful to be alive.

Miss Billie laughed. “See? He likes you!”

“Your dogs saved us,” said Emma. “Thank you.”

“It was you ladies who gave them a chance,” she said. “Thank you both for your bravery. And tell H thanks, too, when you see him.”

Adelaide strode across the forecourt pushing Potts in his wheelchair. “Young people, fine work today!”

“Yeah, but who’s gonna clean up this mess?” Potts grumbled.

“I don’t suppose they’ll bother you again,” Emma said, nodding toward the fallen highwaymen.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Miss Billie.

Emma and I took Paul aside.

“Last chance,” Emma said. “Would you consider coming with us?”

He thought for a moment, looking from Emma to Bronwyn to me, then nodded. “I’m overdue for a visit home, anyhow.”

“Yes!” Emma shouted. “Portal, here we come.”

“But where’s he going to sit?” said Enoch. “There’s only room for five!”

“He can sit up front,” said Emma. “And you can ride in the boot.”





I drove slowly into the dark porte cochere, through which we’d had to push the lamed car a few hours earlier. The Aston purred happily now, thanks to Enoch’s know-how and Emma’s welding skills. The sudden gravitational rush came as we rolled through the middle of the short tunnel. I gripped the wheel a little tighter against the sensation that the car was falling off a cliff’s edge, and then we emerged into the wee hours of the present-day night.

I reached to turn on the headlights.

“Wait,” Paul hissed, and I stalled my hand.

He pointed out the windshield, across the wide field. “There. Look.”

At the truck wash, two pairs of headlights were crossed, and silhouetted in them were several men. They’d been waiting, covering the exit. One was holding something near his face that might’ve been a CB radio. It was unclear if they’d seen us.

“Floor it,” said Enoch. “Run them over.”

“Don’t,” said Paul. “They’ve got rifles, and they’re good shots. There’s too much ground to cover to get clear of them.”

“Then back up,” said Emma. “It’s not worth the risk.”

I decided she was right. Like all loops, there was a front way out and a back way out, through the day that was looped. The trouble with going out the back way was that you then had to travel through the past, and the trouble with the past (at least the last hundred years or so) was that it was full of hollows. But that was a problem I was uniquely equipped to handle. So I put the Aston in reverse and rolled us backward through the loop entrance. In a moment we returned to the daylit world of Miss Billie’s motel.

“Back so soon?” she said, walking her dogs toward us. They had already begun to shrink. In a few hours, I guessed, they would be nipping at her heels again.