Library of Souls (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #3)(56)

“So there’s … another one?” I said.

Bentham nodded. “Mine is the original and theirs is the copy,” he said. “The two are linked, and there are doorways in each that lead to the other.”

Emma sat up straight. “You mean, we can use your machine to get inside theirs?”

“Correct.”

“Then why haven’t you?” I said. “Why didn’t you do it years ago?”

“Jack broke my machine so irrevocably that I thought it could never be fixed,” Bentham said. “For years, only one room has remained functional: the one that leads to Siberia. But though we’ve searched and searched, we haven’t found a way through it into Jack’s machine.”

I remembered the man we’d seen peering into the crevasse—looking for a door, it seemed, deep in the snow.

“We need to open other doors, other rooms,” Bentham said, “but to do that I need an adequate replacement for the part Jack stole—the dynamo at the heart of my Panloopticon. I’ve long suspected there’s something that might work—a very powerful, very dangerous item—but though it exists right here in Devil’s Acre, getting one has never been possible for me. Until now.”

He turned to me.

“My boy, I need you to bring me a hollowgast.”





*


I agreed to, of course. I would’ve said yes to almost anything then if I thought it might help free our friends. It occurred to me only after I’d said it, though, and Bentham had clapped his hands around mine and shook them, that I had no idea where to get a hollowgast. I was sure there were plenty inside the wights’ fortress, but we’d already established that there was no getting inside. That’s when Sharon stepped out of the shadows that had been growing at the edges of the room to give us a bit of good news.

“Remember your friend who got smashed by a falling bridge?” he said. “Turns out he’s not quite dead. They pulled him out of the Ditch a few hours ago.”

“They?” I said.

“The pirates. They’ve got him chained and caged down the end of Oozing Street. He’s causing quite a stir, I hear.”

“That’s it, then,” Emma said, tensing with excitement. “We’ll steal the hollow and bring him back here, restart Mr. Bentham’s machine, open a door to the wights’ fortress, and get our friends back.”

“Simple!” Sharon said, and he let out a barking laugh. “Except for that last part.”

“And the first,” I said.

Emma stepped close to me. “Sorry, love. I volunteered your services without asking. Think you can handle that hollow?”

I wasn’t sure. True, I’d been able to make it perform a few spectacular moves in Fever Ditch, but bringing it to heel like a puppy and leading it all the way back to Bentham’s house was asking a great deal of my rudimentary hollow-taming skills. My confidence, too, was at an all-time low after my last disastrous encounter. But everything hinged on me being able to do it.

“Of course I can handle it,” I took too long to say. “When can we go?”

Bentham clapped his hands. “That’s the spirit!”

Emma’s gaze lingered on my face. She could tell I was faking.

“You can leave as soon as you’re ready,” Bentham said. “Sharon will be your guide.”

“We shouldn’t wait,” Sharon said. “Once the locals have had their fun with that hollow, I reckon they’ll kill it.”

Emma picked at the front of her poufy dress. “In that case, I think we should change.”

“Naturally,” said Bentham, and he sent Nim to find us clothes more befitting our errand. He returned a minute later with thick-soled boots and modern work pants and jackets: black, waterproof, and with a bit of stretch to them.

We retreated to separate rooms to change and then met in a hallway, just Emma and me dressed in our adventure clothes. Rough and shapeless, they made Emma look slightly mannish (though not in a bad way), but she didn’t grumble—she just tied back her hair, snapped her head to attention, and saluted me. “Sergeant Bloom, reporting for duty.”

“Purdiest soldier I ever did see,” I said, drawling out a terrible John Wayne impression.

There was a direct correlation between how nervous I was and how many dumb jokes I made. And right now I was practically quaking, my stomach a leaky faucet dripping acid all over my insides. “You really think we can do this?” I said.

“I do,” she said.

“You never doubt, ever?”

Emma shook her head. “Doubt is the pinprick in the life raft.”

She stepped close and we hugged. I could feel her trembling ever so slightly. She wasn’t bulletproof. I knew then that my shaky faith in myself was starting to dig a hole in hers, and Emma’s confidence was what held everything together. It was the life raft.

I’d come to regard her faith in me as somewhat reckless. She seemed to think that I should be able to snap my fingers and make hollowgast dance at will. That I was allowing some inner weakness to block my ability. Part of me resented that, and part of me wondered if maybe she was right. The only way to find out for sure was to approach the next hollow with an unshakable belief that I could master it.

“I wish I could see myself the way you do,” I whispered.