We milled around my backyard, waiting for Miss Peregrine. It was seven twelve, and the light had mostly gone out of the sky. I glanced at the potting shed, a neglected shack made from latticed wood that stood against the oleander hedges. My mother had gone through a gardening phase a few years back, but these days the shed was just a shelter for weeds and spiders.
Then, at precisely seven fifteen, there was a snap of static electricity in the air that we all felt—it made Horace go “Ooooh!” and Claire’s long hair rose and stood on end—and then the shed lit up from the inside. It was a brief, bright flash, the hundreds of holes in its latticed walls turning white before fading to shadow. Then we heard Miss Peregrine’s voice from inside the shed.
“Here we are!” She strode out onto the grass. “Ahh,” she said, taking in a lungful of air. “Yes, I much prefer this weather.” She looked around at all of us. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Only by thirty seconds,” said Horace.
“Mr. Portman, you look a bit confused.”
“I’m not super clear on what just happened,” I said. “Or where you were. Or . . . anything?”
“That,” she said, pointing to the shed, “is a loop.”
I looked from her to the shed. “There was a loop in my backyard?”
“There is now. I made it this afternoon.”
“It’s a pocket loop,” said Millard. “Miss P, that’s brilliant! I didn’t think the council had approved any yet.”
“Only this one, and just today,” she said, grinning with pride.
“Why would you want a loop of this afternoon?” I asked.
“The time you loop isn’t the point of a pocket loop. The advantage is their extremely small size, which makes them a snap to maintain. Unlike a normal loop, these only need to be reset once or twice a month, as opposed to daily.”
The others were grinning and trading excited looks, but I was still baffled.
“But what good is a loop the size of a potting shed?”
“None as a place of refuge, but they are extraordinarily useful as a portal.” She reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a slim brass object that looked like an oversized bullet with vents cut into it. “With the shuttle—another of my brother Bentham’s ingenious inventions—I can stitch this loop back into his Panloopticon. And voilà! We have a door to Devil’s Acre.”
“Right here,” I said. “In the backyard.”
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” she said, holding her hand out toward the potting shed. “Go and see for yourself.”
I took a step toward it. “Really?”
“It’s a brave new world, Mr. Portman. And we’ll be right behind you.”
Forty seconds: That’s all the time it took for me to travel from my backyard to a nineteenth-century time loop in London. Forty seconds from reaching the back of the potting shed to stepping out of a broom closet in Devil’s Acre. The sensation left me dizzy, my head and stomach no longer accustomed to the sudden lurch of loop travel.
I stepped out of the broom closet and into a familiar hallway: long, lushly carpeted, and lined with identical doors, each bearing a small plaque. The one across the hall read:
DEN HAAG, NETHERLANDS, APRIL 8, 1937
I turned to look at the door behind me. There was a piece of paper fixed to the wall:
JACOB PORTMAN HOME, FLORIDA, PRESENT DAY.
A. PEREGRINE AND WARDS ONLY
I was in the heart of Bentham’s reality-bending Panloopticon machine, to which my house was now connected. I was still trying to wrap my mind around that when the door opened and Emma walked out. “Hello, stranger!” she said, and kissed me on the face. She was followed by Miss Peregrine and the rest of my peculiar friends. They were chattering excitedly, unfazed by their instantaneous journey across an ocean and a century.
“This means we don’t have to sleep in Devil’s Acre ever again, if we don’t want to,” Horace was saying.
“Or make that long drive to the swamp just to reach Jacob’s house,” said Claire. “I get carsick.”
“The best part is the food,” Olive said, shoving her way through the pack. “Just think, we can have a proper English breakfast, pizza at Jacob’s house for lunch, and mutton chops fresh from Smithfield Market for supper!”
“Who knew such a little person could eat so much,” said Horace.
“Eat enough and maybe you won’t need those lead shoes!” said Enoch.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Miss Peregrine said, taking me aside. “Now you see what I meant about a solution. With this pocket loop, you can live in one world without cutting yourself off from the other. With your help, we can continue to expand our knowledge of present-day America without shirking our duties here in Devil’s Acre. There are loops to be rebuilt, traumatized peculiars to be rehabilitated, captured wights to be dealt with . . . and I haven’t forgotten my promise to you. You shall have very engaging work to do here. How does that sound?”
“What kind of work did you have in mind?” I said, my head spinning with the possibilities that had just opened up before me.
“The Ymbryne Council gives out the assignments, so I don’t know just yet. But they’ve told me they have something very interesting for you.”
“What about the rest of us?” said Enoch.
“We want assignments of consequence,” said Millard. “Not just busywork.”
“Or cleaning up,” added Bronwyn.
“You’ll have important work to do, I promise,” said Miss Peregrine.
“I thought learning to pass as normals in the present was the important work,” said Enoch. “So why are we wasting our time in this dump?”
The headmistress pursed her lips. “While you build your knowledge and skills in the present, you can simultaneously aid the reconstruction effort here in the Acre. We’ll commute back and forth, just like modern people. Isn’t that fun?”
Enoch shook his head and looked away. “It’s politics. That’s what you won’t admit.”
Miss Peregrine’s eyes flared.
“You’re being rude,” said Claire.
“No, go on, Enoch,” said Miss Peregrine. “I want to hear this.”
“Someone high up on the food chain decided it doesn’t look good, us hanging around Jacob’s house in the present while everyone else is stuck here, living like refugees and cleaning up the wights’ mess. But I don’t care what anybody thinks about it. We deserve a holiday, damn it!”
“Everyone here deserves a holiday!” Miss Peregrine snapped. She shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, as if battling a sudden headache. “Think of it this way. It will be inspiring to the other children to see you, the heroes of the Battle for Devil’s Acre, working alongside them for the common good.”
“Bah,” Enoch said, and started cleaning his fingernails.
“Well, I’m excited,” said Bronwyn. “I always wanted a real job with real responsibilities, even if it means cutting into our normalling lessons a bit.”
“Cutting into?” said Horace. “We haven’t had a single one yet!”
“Not even one?” Miss Peregrine looked at me. “What about the shopping trip?”
“We, uh . . . got a little sidetracked,” I said.
“Oh,” she said with a frown. “No matter, there’s plenty of time. Just not today!” And then she was tromping down the hall, waving at us to catch up.
As we followed Miss Peregrine down the long hall, people came and went through the Panloopticon’s many doors. They were all very serious-looking and busy, and they wore vastly different outfits suited to very different purposes. There was a lady in a blue bustle dress that ballooned around her so widely that we had to fall into single file and squeeze against the wall to get by her. There was a man in a heavy white snowsuit and a round fur hat, and another man in seven-league boots that reached his mid-thigh and a naval coat that shone with gold buckles. I was so distracted by all the wardrobe that when we rounded a corner I nearly smacked into a wall—or what I thought was a wall until it began speaking to me.
“Young Portman!” a voice boomed, and I looked up, craning my neck to take in the man’s full height. Seven feet tall, in a heavy black robe, he was both a vision of death incarnate and an old friend I’d found myself missing from time to time.
“Sharon!”
He bowed and greeted Miss Peregrine, then reached out and shook my hand, his long, icy fingers wrapping so far around mine that they met his thumb on the other side.
“Finally come to greet your fans, have you?”
“Ha-ha,” I said. “Right.”
“He isn’t joking,” Millard said. “You’re a celebrity now. When we go outside, watch out.”
“What? Seriously?”
“Oh yeah,” said Emma. “Don’t be surprised if you get asked for autographs.”
“Don’t get a big head about it,” said Enoch. “We’re all a bit famous now, after what we did in the Library of Souls.”
“Oh, really!” Emma said. “You’re famous?”
“A little,” Enoch said. “I get fan letters.”
“You got one. Singular.”
Enoch shuffled his feet. “That you know of.”
Miss Peregrine cleared her throat. “In any case! The children are to receive their reconstruction assignments from the council today. Sharon, if you wouldn’t mind escorting us to the ministries building?”
“Of course.” Sharon bowed to her, and the scent that wafted from his cloak was one of mildew and wet earth. “For esteemed guests like yourselves, I’m happy to carve some time out of my busy schedule.”
As he walked us down the hall, he turned to me and said, “You see, I’m the majordome of this house, as well as the general overseer of the Panloopticon and its many portals.”
“I still can’t believe they put him in charge,” muttered Enoch.
Sharon turned to look straight at him, and a demented smile gleamed out of his dark hood.
Enoch shrank behind Emma and tried to disappear.
“We have a saying around here,” said Sharon. “‘The pope is busy and Mother Teresa is dead.’ No one knows this place better than me—except perhaps old Bentham, who is, thanks to young Portman, permanently indisposed.” His tone was carefully neutral; it was impossible to tell whether or not he regretted the death of his former employer. “So I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
We turned another corner and came into a wide hallway. It was as busy as an airline terminal at the holidays: Travelers laden with heavy bags came and went through doors that lined both walls. Long lines trailed away from podiums where uniformed clerks checked documents. Gruff border guards kept watch over everyone.
Sharon barked at a nearby clerk. “Keep that door shut! You’re letting in half of Helsinki, Christmas of 1911!”
The clerk snapped up from his chair and slammed a door that had been open a crack, out from which snowflakes had been drifting.
“We’re making sure people travel only to loops they’ve been approved to visit,” Sharon explained. “There are over a hundred loop doors in these halls, and the Ministry of Temporal Affairs has declared fewer than half of them safe. Many have not been sufficiently explored; some haven’t been opened in years. So, until further notice, all Panloopticon trips must be cleared by the ministry—and yours truly.”
Sharon snatched a ticket from the hand of a mousy fellow in a brown trench coat. “Who are you and where are you going?” He was clearly delighted to have been given some authority, and couldn’t help showing it off.
“My name’s Wellington Weebus,” the man lisped. “Destination Pennsylvania Station, New York City, June 8, 1929. Sir.”
“What’s your business there?”
“Sir, I’m a linguistical outreach officer assigned to the American colonies. I’m a translator.”
“Why would we need a translator in New York City? Don’t they speak the King’s English?”
“Not exactly, sir. They have a rather odd way of speaking, actually, sir.”
“Why the umbrella?”
“It’s raining there, sir.”
“Have your clothes been vetted for anachronisms by the Costumers?”
“They have, sir.”
“I thought all New Yorkers of that era wore hats.”
The man pulled a small cap from his trench coat. “I have one here, sir.”
Miss Peregrine, who had been tapping her foot for some time now, reached the end of her fuse. “If you’re needed here, Sharon, I’m sure we can find our own way to the ministries building.”
“I won’t hear of it!” he said, then handed back the man’s ticket. “Look sharp, Weebus, I’m watching you.”
The man scurried off.
“This way, children. It isn’t far.”
He cleared a path for us through the crowded hall, then led us down a flight of stairs. On the ground floor we passed Bentham’s grand library, where the furniture had been cleared away to make room for a hundred or more cots.
“That’s where we used to sleep, until we came to live with you,” Emma said to me. “Ladies in that room, men in this one.”
We passed what had formerly been a dining room, now crowded with even more cots. The whole bottom floor of Bentham’s house had been turned into a shelter for displaced peculiars.
“Were you comfortable there?” I asked.
A dumb question.
Emma shrugged; she didn’t like to complain. “It’s certainly better than sleeping in a wightish prison,” she said.
“Not much better,” said Horace—who loved to complain and had sidled up to me the moment he sensed an opportunity. “Let me tell you, Jacob, it was awful. Not everyone takes their personal hygiene as seriously as we do. Some nights I had to plug my nose with camphor sticks! And there isn’t any privacy, nor any wardrobes nor dressing rooms nor proper washing-rooms, even, and not an ounce of creativity coming out of the kitchen”—we were passing it now, and through the door I could see a battalion of cooks chopping things and stirring pots—“and so many of these poor devils from other loops have nightmares that you can hardly sleep at night for all the moaning and screaming!”
“You’re one to talk,” said Emma. “You wake up screaming twice a week!”
“Yes, but at least my dreams mean something,” he said.
“You know, there’s a girl in America who can remove nightmares,” I heard Millard say. “Perhaps she could be of assistance.”
“There is no one in the world qualified to manipulate my dreams,” Horace said testily.
Emma’s letters to me had been so breezy and cheerful, always focused on the happy times and the little adventures they were having. She had never mentioned the living conditions here or their daily struggles, and I felt a surge of new respect for her resilience.
Sharon threw open the huge oaken door at the end of the hallway. Street noise and daylight flooded in.
“Stay together!” Miss Peregrine shouted, and then we were outside, plunging into the flow of bodies on the sidewalk.
If Emma hadn’t grabbed my hand and pulled me along, I might’ve stayed frozen where I stood. I hardly recognized the place. When I had last seen Devil’s Acre, Caul’s tower was a pile of still-smoking bricks, and wights were fleeing through the streets pursued by angry mobs. There were riots as addicts looted stashes of unguarded ambrosia and the wights’ collaborators burned buildings filled with evidence of their crimes. But that was a while ago, and it looked like the place had made great progress since then. It was still a hellhole at heart—the buildings were caked with grime and the sky was the same poisonous yellow it had always been—but the fires had been put out, the debris cleared away, and there were uniformed peculiars directing horse-and-buggy traffic in the crowded street.
More than the place, though, it was the people who had changed. Gone were the prowling, hollow-eyed addicts, the dealers in peculiar flesh displaying their wares in shop windows, the ambrosia-enhanced gladiators with light beaming from their eyes. Judging from their eclectic and era-spanning costumes, these peculiars hailed from loops across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East—and from many different time periods, as well.
In their hunt for peculiar souls the wights had not discriminated, and their reach had extended much farther than I had realized.
What struck me more than their costumes was the dignity with which they carried themselves, in spite of their circumstances. They had come seeking refuge from damaged and destroyed loops. They had lost their homes, seen friends and loved ones killed before their eyes, suffered unimaginable traumas. But there were no shocked and vacant stares. No one dressed in rags. Each one of them had had a giant hole blown through their lives, but the street pulsed with determined energy.
Perhaps they simply did not have time to mourn. But I preferred to believe that, for the first time in nearly a century, peculiars could do more than just hide in their loops and hope. The worst had come to pass. Having survived it, there was much to do: They had a world to remake. And they could make it better.
For a block or two, I was so absorbed in staring at all of them that I didn’t notice how many of them were staring back. But then someone did a double take, and someone else pointed at me, and I could have sworn I saw my name form on their lips.
They knew who I was.
We passed a young boy hawking newspapers, and he was shouting: “Jacob Portman to visit the Acre today! Hero returns to Devil’s Acre for first time since his victory over the wights!”
I felt my face go hot.
“Why does Jacob get all the credit?” I heard Enoch say. “We were there, too!”
“Jacob! Jacob Portman!” Two teenage girls were following me, waving a piece of paper. “Would you sign this for us?”
“He’s late for an important meeting!” Emma said, pulling me on through the crowd.
We hadn’t gone even ten feet when a sturdy pair of hands stopped me. They belonged to a fast-talking man with a single eye in the middle of his forehead and a hat that read PRESS.
“Farish Obwelo from the Evening Muckraker. How about a quick photo?”
Before I could answer, he had turned me to face a camera—a giant antique that must have weighed a ton. A photographer ducked behind it and held up a flash. “So, Jake,” Farish said, “what was it like to command an army of hollowgast? How did it feel to win a battle against so many wights? What were Caul’s last words before you struck the blow that killed him?”
“Uh, that’s not exactly how it—”
The camera flashed, and for an instant I was blind. Then another pair of hands were on me—this time Miss Peregrine’s, dragging me away. “Don’t speak to the press,” she hissed in my ear, “about anything, but especially not about what happened in the Library of Souls!”
“Why?” I said. “What do they think happened?”
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t, because suddenly I was being hoisted up over Bronwyn’s head, where she carried me like a platter, out of reach of the crowd. We made our way like that, Sharon forming a wedge with his arms to part the human sea and pointing up ahead—yes, there, we’re nearly there—to a gate in a tall iron fence. Beyond it rose a building of hulking black stone.
A guard waved us through the gate into a courtyard, and we left the crowd behind us. Bronwyn set me down and everyone crowded around as I brushed myself off.
“I thought someone was going to take a bite out of you!” Emma said.
“I told him he was famous!” said Millard, his tone both teasing and a little jealous.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you meant—”
“Famous famous?” said Emma.
“Flavor of the month,” said Enoch, waving his hand. “Watch, they’ll have forgotten all about him by Christmas.”
“God, I hope so,” I said.
“Why?” said Bronwyn. “You don’t want to be famous?”
“No!” I said. “That was”—I wanted to say terrifying—“a bit much.”
“You handled yourself splendidly,” said Miss Peregrine. “And it will get easier. Once people become accustomed to seeing you, they won’t make such a fuss. You’ve been gone for some time, Jacob, and your legend has grown quite a bit in your absence.”
“I’ll say it’s grown. But what was that about me killing Caul?”
She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “A necessary fiction. The ymbrynes decided it was best that everyone believe him dead.”
“Well, isn’t he?”
“Very likely,” she said, in a tone too casual to be completely believable. “But the truth is, we don’t know what happens inside a collapsed loop. No one’s ever escaped one to tell. Caul and Bentham may be dead, or they may just be . . . elsewhere.”
“Extra-dimensionally inaccessible,” Millard said.
“Permanently, of course,” Miss Peregrine hastened to add. “But we don’t want the public—or the few wights who have managed to evade us—to have any doubt. Or to get any strange ideas about rescuing him.”
“So, congratulations, you killed Caul, too,” Enoch said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Couldn’t it have been one of us who killed him?” Horace whined.
“You mean, you?” Enoch sneered. “Who’d believe that?”
“Keep your voices down!” snapped Miss Peregrine.
I was still grappling with the idea that Caul was only very likely dead, or that anyone, even the super-monster he had become at the end, could survive something as violent as a loop collapse, when a slap on the back from Sharon almost knocked me down.
“My boy, I should be getting back. Please don’t hesitate to call for me if you need another escort.”
Miss Peregrine thanked him. He bowed deeply, then turned and left, his cloak swishing behind him dramatically.
We turned to face the dour building that loomed before us.
“So, what is this place?” I asked.
“It’s the heart of peculiar government, for the time being,” said Miss Peregrine. “Where the Ymbryne Council now holds its meetings and where the various ministries conduct their business.”
“It’s where we get our work assignments,” said Bronwyn. “We turn up here in the mornings, and they tell us what needs doing.”
“St. Barnabus’ Asylum for Lunatics,” I said, reading words carved into stone above the building’s iron doors.
“There wasn’t a lot of vacant real estate to choose from,” Miss Peregrine said.
“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” said Millard, and he laughed and nudged me forward.
The institution’s full name was St. Barnabas’ Asylum for Lunatics, Mountebanks, and the Criminally Mischievous, and all the inmates—most of which had been there on a voluntary basis, anyway—had run away in the chaos that followed the wights’ defeat. The asylum had sat empty until the Ymbryne Council, whose building had been encased in ice during a hollowgast raid and rendered uninhabitable, requisitioned it as their temporary headquarters. It was now home to most of European Peculiardom’s government ministries, and its miserable dungeons, padded cells, and dank corridors had been stocked with desks and meeting tables and filing cabinets. They looked no less like torture chambers despite the change in furnishings.
We strode through a gloomy entrance hall buzzing with bureaucrats and office workers, most wearing formal waistcoats and loaded down with papers and books. Built into the walls were an array of windows, each manned by a receptionist and marked with a department name: Temporal Affairs, Anachronisms, Normal Relations, Phono- and Photographic Records, Micro-management and Pedantry, Reconstruction Dept. Miss Peregrine marched us to the last window and announced herself.
“What-ho, Bartleby,” she said, rapping on the desk. “Alma Peregrine to see Isabel Cuckoo.”
A man looked up and blinked at her. Squeezed between his temples were five eyes, and pinched in the central one was a monocle. “She’s been expecting you,” he said.
Miss Peregrine thanked him and started back.
“What are you staring at?” he said to me, blinking with four of his eyes.
I hurried after the others.
There were several doorways leading off the entrance hall, and we passed through one into a smaller room. Inside were several rows of chairs and half a dozen peculiars sitting in them, filling out forms.
“Aptitude tests,” Emma said to me. “To see what sort of work you’re best suited for.”
A woman came striding toward Miss Peregrine, arms outstretched.
“Alma, you’re back!”
They traded kisses on the cheek.
“Children, this is Miss Isabel Cuckoo. She’s an old, dear friend of mine, and she also happens to be the ymbryne in charge of high-level reconstruction assignments.”
The woman had shining dark skin and a smooth French accent. She wore a dazzling suit of blue velvet with wide, winglike shoulders that narrowed to a fitted waist and was trimmed with bright gold buttons. Her hair was short, parted, and metallic silver. She looked like a rock star from the future, not a Victorian lady from the past.
“I’ve so looked forward to meeting you all,” she said warmly. “Alma has been telling me about you for so long, I feel like I already know you. You must be Emma, the spark. And Hugh, the auto-apiarist?”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Hugh.
She knew most everyone, and went around shaking their hands. Then she came to me.
“And you’re Jacob Portman. Your reputation precedes you!”
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“He does not sound thrilled?” Miss Cuckoo said, turning to Miss Peregrine.
“He was caught off guard by all the attention,” Miss Peregrine replied. “He’s just come off a rather quiet time in the present.”
Miss Cuckoo laughed. “Well, his days of quiet are over now! If you’re willing to do a bit of work for a good cause, that is.”
“I want to help however I can,” I said. “What have you got for me?”
“Ah-ah!” She wagged her finger. “All good things in time.”
“I’d like to request something more than just day labor,” said Millard. “I think my voluminous talents are better suited elsewhere.”
“You’re all in luck. There are no unimportant assignments here, and there is no peculiar talent, however unusual, that cannot be made useful to the cause. Just last week I assigned a boy with adhesive saliva to a job fashioning unbreakable leg restraints. Whatever your talent, I’ve got the task for you. Yes?”
Enoch had his hand raised. “My talent is hypnotizing ladies with my good looks. What have you got for me?”
Miss Cuckoo flashed him a sharp smile. “Enoch O’Connor, dead-riser, born to a family of undertakers.” She smiled. “And has a cheeky sense of humor. I’ll remember that.”
Enoch grinned at the floor, his cheeks going red. “She does know me,” I heard him say.
Miss Peregrine looked like she was going to murder him. “I’m so sorry, Isabel—”
She waved it off. “He’s silly, but he’s brave. That could be useful.” She looked around at the rest of us. “Anyone else got a joke for me?”
No one said a word.
“Then let’s put you to work.”
She linked arms with Miss Peregrine and they strode together toward the exit, looking like sisters from different centuries. We followed them up a flight of stairs.
“Enoch, what’s gotten into you?” I heard Millard say. “She’s a hundred years your senior, and an ymbryne!”
“She said I was brave,” Enoch said, a dopey look on his face.
Suddenly he didn’t seem to mind having a job in the Acre.
“I thought I’d never understand boys,” said Bronwyn, shaking her head. “But now I think I’ve got it. They’re all idiots!”
We followed the ymbrynes down a gloomy corridor flickering with gaslights. “This is where the sausage gets made,” Miss Cuckoo was saying, walking backward to face us as she spoke. “The ministry offices.”
Every few yards there was a door, and each was labeled two ways: Signs original to the asylum were carved into the wood in bold block letters, and above those the ministries had tacked signs of their own, stenciled on paper. Through an open door that read both MISCREANTS and MINISTRY OF TEMPORAL AFFAIRS, I saw a man clacking away at a typewriter with one hand while holding an umbrella in the other, the ceiling dripping so badly I thought for a moment it was raining inside the room. Through the next door (PERVERTS/DEPT. OF INHUMAN AFFAIRS) a woman was using a broom to defend her lunch from a small horde of rats. Emma, who was unterrified of most things but despised rodents, grabbed my arm.
“I’m surprised you chose this particular building for the ministry offices,” Emma said to Miss Cuckoo. “Are you comfortable here?”
Miss Cuckoo laughed. “Not at all, but that is intentional. None of our displaced wards are comfortable in Devil’s Acre, so neither should we be. This way, everyone is motivated to keep the reconstruction effort moving along efficiently, so we can get out of here and back to our loops as quickly as possible.”
I wasn’t sure how efficient a workforce could be if it had to spend half its time battling rats and dripping ceilings, but it was a noble sentiment. If the ymbrynes and officials had set themselves up in some golden palace, it would have looked bad. There was a certain honor in the rat battles.
“Now, as you can imagine, there is plenty of reconstruction work right here in London,” Miss Cuckoo was saying, “and in this peculiar labor market of ours, you are all very hot commodities. We need cooks, guards, people who can lift heavy things.” She pointed to Bronwyn. “There are several departments clamoring for Miss Bruntley’s help. Salvage and Demolition, the Wardening and Guardening force . . .”
I glanced quickly at Bronwyn, and I could see her smile fading.
“Come now, Bronwyn,” said Miss Peregrine. “That’s certainly better than clearing rubble!”
“I was hoping to be assigned to the expeditionary force in America,” Bronwyn said.
“There is no expeditionary force in America.”
“Not yet. But I could help create one.”
“With ambition like that, I don’t doubt you will,” said Miss Cuckoo. “But we must season you a bit before we send you to the front lines.”
Bronwyn looked as if she wanted to say more, and she might have if it were only Miss Peregrine she was talking to. But in front of Miss Cuckoo, she held her tongue.
Miss Cuckoo pointed to the space beside me, where Millard’s coat and pants bobbed along in the air. “Mr. Nullings, you have a plum job offer from Peculiar Intelligence—invisibles always make top field agents.”
“Wouldn’t the Ministry of Mapping be a better fit?” Millard replied. “Any invisible can sneak around and overhear secrets, but I’d wager my cartographic expertise is equal to anyone’s.”
“It may be, but Intelligence is understaffed and Mapping is full up. I’m sorry. Now, please go report to Mr. Kimble in Intelligence, room three-oh-one.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Millard said, the excitement in his voice gone.He turned and walked the other way down the hall.
Miss Cuckoo indicated a large, high-ceilinged office we were passing where half a dozen men and women were combing through stacks of mail. “Mr. O’Connor, I’m sure the Dead Letters Office would appreciate your help.”
Enoch looked crestfallen. “Sorting undeliverable mail? What about my talent?”
“Our Dead Letters Office doesn’t handle undeliverable mail. It deals with correspondence to and from the dead.”
One of the workers held up an envelope smudged with grave mud. “Their handwriting is rubbish,” the man said. “And their grammar is even worse. It takes a regular scientist to sort out who these letters are meant for.” He tipped the envelope, and a small pile of worms and bugs poured out of it. “Now and then we’d like to go back to the source and ask them, but none of us can dead-rise.”
“The dead write letters to one another?” Emma said.
“They’re always asking after people and wanting to send news to old friends,” Enoch said. “They’re right gossips, half of them. If I have time, sometimes I’ll let ’em write a postcard before they go back in the ground.”
“Think about it!” the man said. “We’re always shorthanded.”
“I’m not!” said a worker in the back, and he raised one freakishly long arm, brushed the ceiling with his fingers, then began to cackle as we walked away.
Miss Cuckoo was waving at us to hurry up.
“Miss Bloom, I could easily place you in the Warden’s office. You would make an excellent prison guard for our most dangerous wights. But Miss Peregrine tells me you’ve developed another interest of late?”
“Yes, miss. Photography. I’ve already got a handheld flash . . .”
She held up her palm and sparked a flame. Miss Cuckoo laughed.
“That’s very good. We will surely want qualified photographists to document things as we reestablish contact with the American colonies. For the moment, though, your pyrogenic skills are still most useful to us as a weapon, so I’d like to keep you on call for security emergencies.”
“Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed but trying to hide it.
Emma gave me a resigned look, like she’d been foolish to expect more. Her abilities with fire were so powerful that it put her in a box, peculiarly speaking, and I could see the limits of it beginning to gnaw at her.
After a few minutes, everyone had been given a task that sounded, if not always super cool or vital to the cause, at least relevant to their peculiar skills. Except me. One by one, my friends peeled off to consult with whichever ministry official they’d been assigned to, and I was alone with Miss Cuckoo and Miss Peregrine. We came into a large conservatory, the walls a puzzle of windows suffocated from the outside by vines. The room was dominated by a huge black conference table embossed with the ymbrynes’ official seal—a bird with a watch dangling from its mouth, one talon pinning down a snake. This was the chamber of the Council of Ymbrynes, where they held their meetings and decided our futures, and I felt a strange sort of reverence, being there, even if it was only a temporary space. The only bit of decoration in the room was a series of maps tacked onto the lower windows.
“Please,” Miss Cuckoo said, gesturing to the chairs arranged around the big table. “Sit.”
I pulled back a chair—modest, upholstered in simple gray fabric—and sat. There was no gold anywhere in the room, nor any thrones, scepters, robes, or other such trappings. Even the ymbrynes’ decor choices were humble, meant to demonstrate that they didn’t think of themselves as better than the rest, and that the leadership roles entrusted to them were a responsibility, not an entitlement.
“Please give us a moment, Jacob,” said Miss Peregrine, and she and Miss Cuckoo walked together to the other side of the room, each step of Miss Cuckoo’s heels a hammer blow on the stone floor. They spoke in hushed tones, glancing back at me now and then. Miss Peregrine seemed to be explaining something, and Miss Cuckoo was listening, brow furrowed.
She must have something really big for me, I thought. Something so important, so dangerous, that she’s got to persuade Miss Cuckoo to let me do it first. Someone so young, so inexperienced—it’s unprecedented, I imagined Miss Cuckoo saying. But Miss Peregrine knew me, knew what I was capable of, and she would have no doubt that I could do it.
I tried not to get too excited. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. But my eyes began wandering the room, and when they landed once again on the maps, an idea began to form about what Miss Peregrine had in mind for me.
They were maps of America.
There was a modern one, several older ones from before Alaska and Hawaii were states, and even one so old that the country’s border traced the Mississippi River. That one was divided into several big swaths of color: The Southeast was purple, the Northeast green, most of the West orange, and Texas was gray. There were fascinating symbols and legends inscribed here and there—reminiscent of the ones I’d seen on Miss Peregrine’s Map of Days, and I started to lean out of my seat to get a better look.
“A thorny problem!” said Miss Cuckoo.
“What is?” I said, spinning to look at her.
“America,” she replied, crossing the room toward me. “It has for years now been a terra incognita. A Wild West, if you will, its temporal geography no longer well understood. Many of its loops have been lost, and many more are simply unknown.”
“Oh?” I said. “Why is that?”
I was getting excited now. America—of course. I was the perfect peculiar to tackle a dangerous mission in America. It was my turf.
“The biggest problem is that America has no centralized peculiar authority, no governing body. It is fractured and split between a number of clans—only the largest of which we maintain diplomatic relations with. But they are locked in a long-simmering conflict over resources and territory. For years the hollowgast menace acted as a lid on that pot, but now that it’s been lifted, we are concerned that old grudges could boil over into armed physical conflict.”
I straightened my back and looked Miss Cuckoo in the eye. “And you want me to help put a stop to it.”
When I looked up, Miss Cuckoo had the funniest look on her face, like she was trying not to laugh, and Miss Peregrine looked pained.
Miss Cuckoo put a hand on my shoulder. Sat down next to me. “We had . . . another idea.”
Miss Peregrine sat down on my other side. “We want you to share your story.”
My head swiveled from one to the other. “I don’t understand.”
“Life in Devil’s Acre can be hard,” said Miss Cuckoo. “Draining, demoralizing. The peculiars here need inspiration, and they love to hear the story of how you bested Caul.”
“The Battle for Devil’s Acre is what the little ones all want to hear at bedtime,” said Miss Peregrine. “It’s even being adapted for the stage by Miss Grackle’s troupe of thespians—and set to music!”
“Oh my God,” I said, mortified.
“You’ll start here, in the Acre,” said Miss Peregrine, “and then travel to some of the outer loops, the ones hit hard by the wights but still occupied—”
“But . . . what about America?” I said. “Your thorny problem?”
“At the moment, we’re primarily focused on rebuilding our own society,” said Miss Cuckoo.
“Then why did you tell me all that?” I asked her.
Miss Cuckoo shrugged. “You were staring at the maps with such longing.”
I shook my head. “You said America was full of unknown loops. And there was fighting and trouble.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m an American. I can help. So can my friends.”
“Jacob—”
“We could all help, once I teach them how to pass as normal. Hell, Emma’s ready now, and with most of them I’d only need a few days, maybe a week of focused lessons—”
“Mr. Portman,” said Miss Peregrine, “you’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“Isn’t that why you want them to learn about the present? Isn’t that why you brought them to live with me?”
Miss Peregrine sighed sharply. “Jacob, I admire your ambition very much. But the council doesn’t think you’re ready yet.”
“You only just learned you were peculiar a few months ago,” said Miss Cuckoo.
“And you only decided you needed to help the cause this morning!” Miss Peregrine added.
It almost sounded like she was poking fun at me.
“I’m ready,” I insisted. “So are the others. I want us to work for you in America, like my grandfather used to.”
“Abe’s group didn’t take orders from us,” said Miss Peregrine. “They were entirely self-directed.”
“They were?”
“Abe did things his own way,” Miss Peregrine said. “Our world has changed a lot since then, and we can no longer function in such a manner. In any case, the way Abe conducted business does not affect this conversation. All that matters is that the situation in America is still developing. Right now that’s all we can tell you. When we need your help there—and when the council thinks you and your friends are ready—we will ask for it.”
“Yes,” said Miss Cuckoo. “But until then—”
“You want me to be a motivational speaker.”
Miss Peregrine sighed. She was starting to get exasperated with me, and I was starting to get angry. “You’ve had a hard day, Mr. Portman.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “Look, I just want to do something that matters.”
“He wants maybe to be an ymbryne?” Miss Cuckoo said, smirking.
I pushed my chair back and stood up.
“Where are you going?” asked Miss Peregrine.
“To find my friends,” I said, and started toward the door.
“One step at a time, Jacob!” Miss Peregrine called after me. “You have the rest of your life to be a hero.”
My friends were still elsewhere in the building, discussing the details of their work assignments, so I sat on a bench in the busy lobby and waited, and while I was waiting, I decided something. My grandfather had never asked the ymbrynes’ permission to do his work, and I didn’t need their permission to continue it. That Abe had left his logbook for me to find was permission enough. I needed a mission. And to get one of those—
“Omigod.”
“Uhhhhhh. Are you Jacob Portman?”
Two girls had sat down next to me. I tore myself away from my train of thought to look over at them, and was surprised to see only one girl. She was Asian, a bit younger than me, dressed in seventies-era flannel and bell-bottoms—and most definitely by herself.
“I’m him,” I said.
“Would you sign my arm?” she said, holding out one arm. Then she held out the other and said, in a deeper voice, “And mine, too?”
She saw my confusion. “We’re a binary,” she explained. “Sometimes we’re confused for a dual-personality person, but we actually have two hearts, souls, brains—”
“And voice boxes!” said her other voice.
“Wow, that’s cool,” I said, genuinely impressed. “It’s great to meet you. But . . . I don’t think I should be signing body parts.”
“Oh,” they said together.
“Are you excited about Miss Grackle’s production?” said the deeper voice. “I can’t wait. She did one about Miss Wren and her animals last season. The Grass Menagerie.”
“It was far out. Very groovy.”
“Who do you think they’ll get to play you?”
“Uh, wow, I really don’t know. Hey, would you guys excuse me?”
I stood up, apologized again, and started quickly across the room. Not because I wanted to get away from them—well, not entirely—but because I had spotted someone who looked familiar in a way that made my brain itch, and I had to go and find out who he was.
He was a clerk behind one of the lobby windows. A young man with close-cropped hair, deep brown skin, and soft features. I knew his face from somewhere but couldn’t quite place it. I thought if I spoke to him it might jog my memory. He saw me coming, snatched a quill pen from his ink stand, and pretended to be writing as I arrived at his window.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” I asked him.
He didn’t look up. “No,” the man said.
“I’m Jacob Portman.”
He glanced up at me. Unimpressed. “Yes.”
“We haven’t met before?”
“No.”
I was getting nowhere. Engraved on the window was INFORMATION.
“I need some information.”
“About?”
“An associate of my grandfather’s. I’m trying to get in contact with him. If he’s still alive.”
“We’re not a directory service, sir.”
“Then what sort of information do you give out?”
“We don’t give it. We collect it.”
He reached across his desk, then handed me a long form. “Here, fill this out.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, and dropped it back on his desk.
He scowled at me.
“Jacob!”
Miss Peregrine was walking toward me across the lobby, my friends trailing behind. In a moment I would be surrounded.
I leaned through the window and said, “I do know you from somewhere.”
“If you insist,” said the man.
“Ready to go?” said Horace.
“I’m starving,” said Olive. “Can we have American food again?”
“So, what’s your assignment?” Emma asked me.
As they buoyed me away toward the exit, I looked back at the man. He was sitting very still, watching me go, brow furrowed with worry.
Miss Peregrine took me aside. “We’ll have a talk very soon, just you and me,” she said. “I’m very sorry if your feelings were stepped on in our meeting. It’s very important to me, and all the ymbrynes, that you feel fulfilled. But the American situation is, as we mentioned, a sticky one.”
“I just want you guys to have faith in me. I’m not asking to be the captain of an army, or something.” I’m not asking for anything anymore, I thought, but did not say.
“I know,” she said. “But please be patient. And please believe that if we seem overly cautious, it’s for your own safety. If anything was to happen to you—or any of you—it would be a disaster.”
I had an uncharitable thought: that what she really meant was it would look bad if something happened to me, just like it would look bad if we didn’t help the reconstruction effort in a way that was visible to everyone in Devil’s Acre. I knew that wasn’t her whole rationale. Of course she cared about us. But she also cared about the opinions of people who were strangers to me, and what they thought about how I lived my life—and I did not.
But instead of saying any of that, I said, “Okay, no problem, I understand,” because I knew there was no changing her mind about this.
She smiled and thanked me, and I felt a little bad for lying to her—but not too bad—and then she bid us goodbye.
The clock had just ticked past noon in Devil’s Acre. Miss Peregrine had some business left to take care of here, but ours was done for the day, so we were to meet her at my house later on.
“Go directly there,” she warned us. “Do not loiter, linger, dally, or dawdle.”
“Yes, Miss Peregrine,” we chorused.