Hollow City (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children 2)

While the others talked, I turned my focus inward, trying to sense the hollows. They weren’t running anymore. The Feeling had stabilized, which meant they weren’t getting closer or farther away, but were probably sniffing around nearby. I took this as a good sign; if they knew where we were, they’d be coming straight for us. Our trail had gone cold. All we had to do was keep our heads down for a while, and then we could follow the pigeon to Miss Wren.

We huddled on the bathroom floor listening to bombs fall in other parts of the city. Emma found some rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet and insisted on cleaning and bandaging the cut on my head. Then Sam began to hum some tune I knew but couldn’t quite name, and Esme played with her duck in the tub, and ever so slowly, the Feeling began to diminish. For a scant few minutes, that twinkling bathroom became a world unto itself; a cocoon far away from trouble and war.

But the war outside refused to be ignored for long. Antiaircraft guns rattled. Shrapnel skittered like claws across the roof. The bombs drew closer until their reports were followed by lower, more ominous sounds—the dull thud of walls collapsing. Olive hugged herself. Horace put his fingers in his ears. The blind boys moaned and rocked on their feet. Miss Peregrine wriggled deep into the folds of Bronwyn’s coat and the pigeon trembled in Melina’s lap.

“What sort of madness have you led us into?” Melina said.

“I warned you,” Emma replied.

The water in Esme’s tub rippled with each blast. The little girl clutched her rubber duck and began to cry. Her sobs filled the little room. Sam hummed louder, pausing to whisper, “You’re safe, Esme, you’re safe in here,” between melody lines, but Esme only cried harder. Horace took his fingers out of his ears and tried to distract Esme by making shadow animals on the wall—a crocodile snapping its jaws, a bird flying—but she hardly noticed. Then, the last person I’d expect to care about making a little girl feel better scooted over to the tub.

“Look here,” Enoch said, “I have a little man who’d like to ride on your duck, and he’d just about fit, too.” From his pocket he took a clay homunculus figure, three inches tall, the last of those he’d made on Cairnholm. Esme’s sobs abated as she watched him bend the clay man’s legs and sit him on the edge of the tub. Then, with a press of Enoch’s thumb against the clay man’s tiny chest, he came to life. Esme’s face glowed with delight as the clay man sprang to his feet and strolled along the lip of the tub.

“Go on,” said Enoch. “Show her what you can do.”

The clay man jumped up and clicked his heels, then took an exaggerated bow. Esme laughed and clapped her hands, and when a bomb fell close by a moment later, causing the clay man to lose his balance and fall into the tub, she only laughed harder.

A sudden chill rolled up the back of my neck and prickled my scalp, and then the Feeling came over me so swiftly and sharply that I groaned and doubled over where I sat. The others saw me and knew instantly what it meant.

They were coming. They were coming very quickly.

Of course they were: Enoch had used his power, and I hadn’t even thought to stop him. We might as well have sent up a signal flare.

I staggered to my feet, the pain attacking me in debilitating waves. I tried to shout—Go, run! Run out the back!—but couldn’t force the words. Emma put her hands on my shoulders. “Collect yourself, love, we need you!”

Then something was beating at the front door, each impact echoing through the house. “They’re here!” I finally managed to say, but the sound of the door shaking on its hinges had said it for me.

Everyone scrambled to their feet and squeezed into the hall in a panicked knot. Only Sam and Esme stayed put, baffled and cowering. Emma and I had to pry Bronwyn away from the tub. “We can’t just leave them!” she cried as we dragged her toward the door.

“Yes, we can!” said Emma. “They’ll be all right—they aren’t the ones the hollows are after!”

I knew that was true, but I also knew the hollows would tear apart anything in their path, including a couple of normal girls.

Bronwyn struck the wall in anger, leaving a fist-shaped hole.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the girls, then let Emma push her into the hall.

I hobbled after them, my stomach writhing. “Lock this door and don’t open it for anyone!” I shouted, then looked back to catch a last glimpse of Sam’s face, framed in the closing door, her eyes big and scared.

I heard a window smash in the front hall. Some suicidal curiosity made me peek around the corner. Squirming through the blackout curtains was a mass of tentacles.

Then Emma took my arm and yanked me away—down another hall—into a kitchen—out the back door—into an ash-dusted garden—down an alley where the others were running in a loose group. Then someone said “Look, look!” and, still running, I swiveled to see a great white bird fluttering high above the street. Enoch said, “Mine—it’s a mine!” and what had seemed like gossamer wings resolved suddenly and clearly into a parachute, the fat silver body hanging below it packed with explosives; an angel of death floating serenely toward earth.

The hollows burst outside. I could see them distantly, loping through the garden, tongues waving in the air.

The mine landed by the house with a gentle clink.

“Get down!” I screamed.

We never had a chance to run for cover. I’d only just hit the ground when there was a blinding flash and a sound like the earth ripping open and a shock wave of searing hot wind that knocked the air from my lungs. Then a black hail of debris whipped hard against my back and I hugged my knees to my chest, making myself as compact as I could.

After that, there was only wind and sirens and a ringing in my ears. I gasped for air and choked on the swirling dust. Pulling the collar of my sweater up over my nose and mouth to filter it, I slowly caught my breath.

I counted my limbs: two arms, two legs.

Good.

I sat up slowly and looked around. I couldn’t see much through the dust, but I heard my friends calling out for one another. There was Horace’s voice, and Bronwyn’s. Hugh’s. Millard’s.

Where was Emma?

I shouted her name. Tried to get up and fell back again. My legs were intact but shaking; they wouldn’t take my weight.

I shouted again. “Emma!”

“I’m here!”

My head snapped toward her voice. She materialized through the smoke.