Hollow City (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children 2)

“I don’t think she is!” Olive said. “I don’t think she is at all!”

But Sam worried only for Esme, not for herself. Once she’d hugged the stuffing out of her, Sam knelt down and held the little girl at arm’s length, scanning for cuts and bruises. “Tell me where it hurts,” she said.

“My ears are ringy. I scraped my knees. And I got some dirt in my eye …”

Then Esme began to tremble and cry, the shock of what had happened overcoming her again. Sam hugged her close, saying, “There, there …”

It made no sense that Sam’s body was functioning in any capacity. Stranger still, her wound wasn’t even bleeding, and there was no gore or little bits of entrails hanging out of it, like I knew to expect from horror movies. Instead, Sam looked like a paper doll that had been attacked with a giant hole-punch.

Though everyone was dying for an explanation, we had elected to give the girls a moment to themselves, and stared in amazement from a respectful distance.

Enoch, however, paid them no such courtesy. “Excuse me,” he said, crowding into their personal space, “but could you please explain how it is that you’re alive?”

“It’s nothing serious,” Sam said. “Although my dress may not survive.”

“Nothing serious?!” said Enoch. “I can see clear through you!”

“It does smart a little,” she admitted, “but it’ll fill in in a day or so. Things like this always do.”

Enoch laughed dementedly. “Things like this?”

“In the name of all that’s peculiar,” Millard said quietly. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“She’s one of us,” I said.

* * *

We had questions. Lots of questions. As Esme’s tears began to fade, we worked up the courage to ask them.

Did Sam realize she was peculiar?

She knew she was different, she said, but had never heard the term peculiar.

Had she ever lived in a loop?

She had not (“A what?”), which meant she was just as old as she appeared to be. Twelve, she said.

Had no ymbryne ever come to find her?

“Someone came once,” she answered. “There were others like me, but to join them I would’ve had to leave Esme behind.”

“Esme can’t … do anything?” I asked.

“I can count backward from one hundred in a duck voice,” Esme volunteered through her sniffles, and then began to demonstrate, quacking: “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight …”

Before she could get any further, Esme was interrupted by a siren, this one high-pitched and moving fast in our direction. An ambulance careened into the alley and raced toward us, its headlights blacked out so that only pinpricks of light shone through. It skidded to a stop nearby, cut its siren, and a driver leapt out.

“Is anyone hurt?” the driver said, rushing over to us. He wore a rumpled gray uniform and a dented metal hat, and though he was full of energy, his face looked haggard, like he hadn’t slept in days.

His eyes met the hole in Sam’s chest, and he stopped dead in his tracks. “Cor blimey!”

Sam got to her feet. “It’s nothing, really!” she said. “I’m fine!” And to demonstrate how fine she was, she passed her fist in and out of the hole a few times and did a jumping jack.

The medic fainted.

“Hm,” said Hugh, nudging the fallen man with his foot. “You’d think these chaps would be made of tougher stuff.”

“Since he’s clearly unfit for service, I say we borrow his ambulance,” Enoch said. “There’s no knowing where in the city that pigeon’s leading us. If it’s far, it could take us all night to reach Miss Wren on foot.”

Horace, who’d been sitting on a chunk of wall, sprang to his feet. “That’s a fine idea!” he said.

“It’s a reprehensible idea!” Bronwyn said. “You can’t steal an ambulance—injured persons need it!”

“We’re injured persons,” Horace whined. “We need it!”

“It’s hardly the same thing!”

“Saint Bronwyn!” Enoch said sarcastically. “Are you so concerned with the well-being of normals that you’d risk Miss Peregrine’s life to protect a few of theirs? A thousand of them aren’t worth one of her! Or one of us, for that matter!”

Bronwyn gasped. “What a thing to say in front of …”

Sam stalked toward Enoch with a humorless look on her face.

“Look here, boy,” she said, “if you imply that my sister’s life is worthless again, I will clobber you.”

“Calm down, I wasn’t referring to your sister. I only meant that …”

“I know exactly what you meant. And I’ll clobber you if you say it again.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended your delicate sensibilities,” Enoch said, his voice rising in exasperation, “but you’ve never had an ymbryne and you’ve never lived in a loop, and so you couldn’t possibly understand that this—right now—is not real, strictly speaking. It’s the past. The life of every normal in this city has already been lived. Their fates are predetermined, no matter how many ambulances we steal! So it doesn’t bloody matter, you see.”

Looking a bit baffled, Sam said nothing, but continued to give Enoch the evil eye.

“Even so,” said Bronwyn. “It’s not right to make people suffer unnecessarily. We can’t take the ambulance!”

“That’s all well and good, but think of Miss Peregrine!” said Millard. “She can’t have more than a day left.”

Our group seemed evenly divided between stealing the ambulance or going on foot, so we put it to a vote. I myself was against taking it, but mostly because the roads were so pocked with bomb holes that I didn’t know how we’d drive the thing.

Emma took the vote. “Who’s for taking the ambulance?” she said.

A few hands shot up.

“And against?”

Suddenly there was a loud pop from the direction of the ambulance, and we all turned to see Miss Peregrine standing by as one of its rear tires hissed air. Miss Peregrine had voted with her beak—by stabbing it into the ambulance’s tire. Now no one could use it—not us, not injured persons—and there was no point in arguing or delaying any further.

“Well, that simplifies things,” said Millard. “We go on foot.”