Library of Souls (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #3)(30)

“They go to their part of the Acre,” Lorraine said, turning her head away from Emma’s hot finger. “Over the bridge.”

“What bridge?” said Emma, holding it closer.

“At the top end of Smoking Street. Don’t bother trying to cross, though, unless you want your head to end up on a pike.”

I reckoned that was all we were going to get out of Lorraine. Now we had to figure out what to do with her. Addison wanted to bite her. Emma wanted to trace an S on her forehead with her white-hot finger, branding her for life as a slaver. I talked them out of doing either, and instead we gagged her with a sash cord from the curtains and tied her to a leg of the desk. We were about to leave her like that when I thought of one last thing I wanted to know.

“The peculiars they kidnap. What happens to them?”

“Mrrrf!”

I pulled down her gag.

“None have escaped to tell,” she said. “But there are rumors.”

“About?”

“Something worse than death.” She gave us a smile dripping with slime. “I guess you’ll just have to find out, won’t you?”





*


The moment we opened the office door, the man in the overcoat charged at us from across the parlor, something heavy raised in his hand. Before he could reach us, a muffled shout of alarm sounded from the office and he stopped, changing course to see about Lorraine. When he’d crossed the office threshold, Emma slammed the door behind him and melted the handle into useless slag.

That bought us a minute or two.

Addison and I bolted for the exit. Halfway there, I realized Emma hadn’t followed. She was banging on the window of the enslaved peculiars’ quarters.

“We can help you escape! Show me where the door is!”

They turned sluggishly to stare, splayed on their chaises and daybeds.

“Throw something to break the glass!” Emma said. “Be quick!”

None moved. They seemed confused. Perhaps they didn’t believe rescue was really possible—or perhaps they didn’t want to be rescued.

“Emma, we can’t wait,” I said, tugging at her arm.

She wouldn’t give up. “Please!” she cried into the tube. “At least send out the children!”

Full-throated shouts from inside the office. The door shook on its hinges. Frustrated, Emma slammed the glass with her fist.

“What’s the matter with them?”

Rattled stares. The little boy and girl began to cry.

Addison tugged the hem of Emma’s dress with his teeth. “We must go!”

Emma let the speaking tube fall and turned away bitterly.

We hit the door running and burst out onto the sidewalk. A thick yellow murk had blown in, bundling everything in gauze and hiding one side of the street from the other. By the time we’d sprinted to the end of the block we could hear Lorraine bellowing behind us but couldn’t see her; we turned one corner and then another until it seemed we’d lost her. On a deserted street by a boarded-up storefront, we stopped to catch our breaths.

“It’s called Stockholm syndrome,” I said. “When people start to sympathize with their captors.”

“I think they were just scared,” said Addison. “Where would they have run to? This whole place is a prison.”

“You’re both wrong,” Emma said. “They were drugged.”

“You sound pretty sure,” I said.

She pushed back hair that had fallen over her eyes. “When I was working in the circus, after I’d run away from home, a woman approached me after one of my fire-eating shows. She said she knew what I was—knew others like me—and that I could make a lot more money if I went and worked for her.” Emma gazed out at the street, her cheeks flushed from the sprint. “I told her I didn’t want to go. She kept insisting. When she finally left she was angry. That night I woke up in the back of a wagon with my mouth gagged and hands cuffed. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think straight. It was Miss Peregrine who rescued me. If she hadn’t found me when they stopped to reshoe their horse the next day”—Emma nodded behind us, to where we’d come from—“I might have ended up like them.”

“You never told me that,” I said quietly.

“It’s not something I like to talk about.”

“I’m very sorry that happened to you,” said Addison. “Was that woman back there—was she the one who kidnapped you?”

Emma thought for a moment.

“It happened such a long time ago. I’ve blocked out the worst of it, including my abductor’s face. But I know this. If you’d left me alone with that woman, I’m not sure I could’ve stopped myself from taking her life.”

“We’ve all got demons to slay,” I said.

I leaned against a boarded window, a sudden wave of exhaustion breaking over me. How long had we been awake? How many hours since Caul had revealed himself? It seemed like days ago, though it couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve hours. Every moment since had been a war, a nightmare of struggle and terror without end. I could feel my body inching toward collapse. Panic was the only thing keeping me upright, and whenever it began to fade, I did, too.

For the merest fraction of a second, I allowed my eyes to close. Even in that slim black parenthesis, horrors awaited me. A specter of eternal death, crouched and feeding upon the body of my grandfather, its eyes weeping oil. Those same eyes planted with the twin stalks of garden shears, howling as it sank into a boggy grave. Its master’s face contorted in pain, tumbling backward into a void, gutshot, screaming. I had slain my demons already, but the victories were fleeting; others had risen up quickly to replace them.