A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(99)

I could feel my temper starting to rise. After all we’d done. I couldn’t believe it.

“Was it something we did? Did we screw something up?”

“No, no. Look, son, it’s getting too dangerous. Just do what I say. Abort. Go home.”

I was gripping the phone so tight my hand was starting to shake. We’d come too far to quit now.

“You’re breaking up,” I said. “I can’t hear you.”

“I said GO HOME.”

“Sorry, Boss. Bad connection.”

“Who’s that?” I heard Emma say, and I turned to see her coming out to retrieve me.

I ended the call, then tucked the phone into the duffel bag on my back, where I wouldn’t feel it vibrating.

“Wrong number.”



* * *



? ? ?

We followed Lilly into the building through a doorway with no door, then down a hallway from which the copper wiring had been torn, long gashes striping the walls like black veins. Grit and plaster crunched beneath our feet. Ripped insulation lay everywhere like puffs of pink cotton candy. When Lilly moved she put her feet in almost the exact spots where there were already prints, as if she’d memorized the route step by step. Every so often, I noticed, there was an object that didn’t belong—an old coffee can or a cardboard box turned upside down—that her cane would knock against, and I realized they had been put there as way markers, so she would know how much of the hall she’d walked down, and how much was left to go.

Turning a corner, we entered a stairwell.

“I can do this on my own, but it’s safer if you help me,” she said, and we all knew that you meant Millard.

He was more than happy to give her his arm. We climbed six flights of stairs, then were all a bit winded.

“Now it’s going to get a little weird,” Lilly warned.

We left the stairwell and walked into a hallway that was absolutely pitch-black. By which I mean there was no light at all, not even a minor glow from the stairwell. Rather than soft, gradual falloff of illumination, there was a hard line, like the light had hit some unseen barrier, and once we crossed it we could see the stairwell behind us but absolutely nothing in the other direction.

“Like the auditorium door,” I said, and I heard Emma say, “Mm-hmm.”

I took out my flashlight and shone it into the dark, but the beam was swallowed up. Emma lit a flame in her upturned hand. The glow petered out after only a few inches.

“Noor took the light,” Lilly explained. “So no one can find her but me.”

“Brilliant,” said Enoch.

“Link arms and form a human chain behind me,” said Lilly. “I’ll guide us.”

We followed her down the hall, slow and stumbling in the dark. Two times we passed rooms lit by windows, but the light from outside didn’t pass even an inch beyond the rooms’ doorways. It felt a bit like we were underwater, or in outer space. We made a few turns, and though I tried to make a mental map of our progress, I was soon confused, unsure I’d be able to get out again without Lilly’s help.

The sound of our footsteps changed. The hallway had ended at a large room.

“We’re here!” Lilly called out.

A searing beam of light shone down from above. We shielded our eyes, blinded now by light rather than dark.

“Let me see your faces!” a girl’s voice called down. “And tell me your names!”

I moved my hand away and blinked up into the light, then shouted my name. The others did the same.

“Who are you?” the girl called. “What do you want?”

“Can we talk face-to-face?” I said.

“Not yet,” came the echoing reply.

I wondered how often my grandfather had been in situations like this, and I wished I’d had a little of his vast experience to lean on. All that we’d been through came down to this. If this girl didn’t like what I said next, or if she didn’t believe me, all our efforts would have been for nothing.

“We traveled a long way to find you,” I said. “We came to tell you you’re not alone, that there are others like you. We’re like you.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me,” the girl called back.

“We know you’re not like most people,” Emma said.

“And there are people who are after you,” I said.

“And you’re scared,” said Bronwyn. “I was scared, too, when I first realized how different I was from most people.”

“Yeah?” said the girl. “Different how?”

We decided the best thing would be to show her. Since there wasn’t much I could do that was visibly peculiar, Emma lit a flame in her hands, Bronwyn lifted a heavy block of concrete above her head, and Millard picked up some random objects to demonstrate that he was there, but invisible.

“He’s the one I was telling you about,” Lilly said, and I could practically hear Millard beaming.

“So, can we talk?” I said.

“Wait there,” the girl said, and then the light she had made winked out.



* * *



? ? ?

We waited in the dark while the sound of her footsteps approached. I heard them above us, then coming down stairs, and then I saw her. I drew a sharp, involuntary breath. She was, quite literally, glowing. At first, she looked like a moving ball of light, but as she got closer, and my eyes adjusted, I could see she was a teenager—a tall Indian girl with sharp features, jet-black hair that framed her face, and wide-set eyes flashing with intensity. Every pore of her brown skin was emanating light. Even the hooded windbreaker and jeans she wore glowed slightly from the light that shone beneath.