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Thirty seconds later we were out in the open courtyard, and Horace and Hugh were reeling Olive up into the air by a rope around her waist. Right away she became our invaluable eye in the sky, shouting back intel that my ground-bound hollows could never have gathered.
“There’s a couple to the right, past the little white shed! And another on the roof! And some running toward the big wall!”
They hadn’t scattered to the winds but were mostly out beyond the courtyard. With any luck they could still be caught. I called my six remaining hollows back to us. Spread four of them into a phalanx that would march before us and two behind us as a guard against rear attacks. That left my friends and me to sweep the space between and deal with any wights that might breach our wall of hollows.
We began marching, toward the edge of the courtyard. Astride my personal hollow, I felt like a general commanding his troops from horseback. Emma was at my side, and the other peculiars were just behind: Bronwyn collecting loose bricks to hurl, Horace and Hugh hanging on to Olive’s rope, Millard attaching himself to Perplexus, who was unleashing a constant stream of Italian profanities while shielding himself with his Map of Days. At the back, the ymbrynes whistled and made loud bird calls in attempt to recruit winged friends to our cause, but Devil’s Acre was such a dead zone that there were few wild birds to be found. Miss Peregrine had taken charge of old Miss Avocet and the few shell-shocked ymbrynes. There was nowhere to leave them; they’d have to accompany us into battle.
We came to the edge of the courtyard, beyond which was a run of open ground about fifty meters long. In all that space was just one small building, all that stood between us and the outer wall. It was a curious structure with a pagoda roof and tall, ornate doors, into which I saw a number of wights flee. According to Olive, nearly all the remaining wights had taken up positions inside the little building. One way or another, we were going to have to flush them out.
A quiet had settled over the compound. There were no wights visible anywhere. We lingered behind a protective wall to discuss our next move.
“What are they doing in there?” I said.
“Trying to lure us out into the open,” Emma said.
“No problem. I’ll send the hollows.”
“Won’t that leave us unguarded?”
“I don’t know that we have a choice. Olive counted twenty wights going in there at least. I need to send enough hollows to overwhelm them or they’ll just get slaughtered.”
I took a breath. Scanned the tense, waiting faces around me. I sent the hollows out one by one, sliding across the open yard on tiptoe, hoping light footsteps might allow them to surround the building unnoticed.
It seemed to work: the building had three doors, and I managed to place two hollows at each one without a single wight showing his face. The hollows stood guard outside the doors while I listened through their ears. Inside, I could hear someone with a high voice speaking, though I couldn’t make out the words. Then a bird whistled. My blood went cold.
There were ymbrynes inside. More that we hadn’t known were here.
Hostages.
But if that was true, why weren’t the wights trying to negotiate?
My original plan had been to break down all the doors at once and charge inside. But if there were hostages—especially ymbryne hostages—I couldn’t risk such rash action.
I decided to have one of the hollows risk a look inside. All the windows were shuttered, though, which meant I’d have to send it through a door.
I chose the smallest hollow. Reeled out its dominant tongue. It licked the knob, gripped it.
“I’m sending one inside,” I said. “Just one, to look around.”
Slowly, the hollow turned the knob. On my silent count of three, the hollow pushed open the door.
It leaned forward and pressed its black eye to the crack.
“I’m looking inside.”
Through its eye I could see a slice of wall lined with cages. Heavy, black birdcages of various shapes and sizes.
The hollow pressed the door open farther. I saw more cages, and now birds, too, in the cages and out of them, chained to perches.
But no wights.
“What do you see?” Emma said.
There wasn’t time to explain, only to act. I made all my hollows throw open the doors at once, and they burst inside.
There were birds everywhere, startled and squawking.
“Birds!” I said. “The room’s full of ymbrynes!”
“What?” Emma said. “Where are the wights?”
“I don’t know.”
The hollows were turning, smelling the air, searching every nook and cranny.
“That can’t be!” Miss Peregrine said. “All the kidnapped ymbrynes are right here.”
“Then what are these birds?” I said.
Then, in a scratchy parrot voice, I heard one sing, “Run, rabbit, run! Run, rabbit, run!” And I realized: these were not ymbrynes. These were parrots. And they were ticking.
“HIT THE DIRT!” I shouted, and we all dove to the ground behind the courtyard wall, the hollow pitching backward and taking me with it.
I flung my hollows at the doors but the parrot-bombs went off before they could get through them, ten at once, obliterating the building and the hollows in a terrible clap of thunder. As dirt and brick and bits of building flew through the courtyard and rained down on us, I felt the hollows’ signals go dead together, all but one blacking from my mind.
A cloud of smoke and feathers blew over the wall. The peculiars and ymbrynes were streaked with dirt, coughing, checking one another for holes. I was in shock, or something like it, my eyes locked on a splattered patch of ground where a bit of pulped and quivering hollowgast had been flung. For an hour my mind had been stretching to accommodate twelve of them, and their sudden death had created a disorienting vacuum that left me feeling dizzy and strangely bereft. But crisis has a way of focusing the mind, and what happened next had my last remaining hollow and me sitting bolt upright.
From beyond the wall came the sound of many voices shouting together—a great and rising battle cry—and beneath it a thunder of stampeding boots. Everyone froze and looked at me, dread furrowing their faces.
“What is that?” said Emma.
“Let me see,” I said, and crawled away from my hollow to peer around the edge of the wall.
A horde of wights was charging toward us across the smoking ground. Twenty of them in a cluster, running with rifles and pistols raised, their white eyes and white teeth shining. They were unscathed by the explosion, having escaped, I assumed, into some underground shelter. We’d been lured into a trap, of which the parrot bombs were only the first component. Now that our best weapon had been stripped from us, the wights were making their final assault.
There was a panicked scramble as others looked around the wall to see the charging horde for themselves.
“What do we do?” cried Horace.
“We fight!” said Bronywn. “Give ’em everything we’ve got!”
“No, we must run while we can!” said Miss Avocet, whose bent back and deeply lined face made it hard to imagine her running from anything. “We can’t afford to lose another peculiar life!”
“Excuse me, but I was asking Jacob,” said Horace. “He got us this far, after all …”
Instinctively I looked to Miss Peregrine, whom I considered the final authority on matters of authority. She returned my gaze and nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I think Mr. Portman should decide. Quickly, though, or the wights will make the decision for you.”
I nearly protested. My hollows were all dead but one—but I suppose this was Miss Peregrine’s way of saying she believed in me, hollows or no. Anyway, what we should do seemed obvious. In a hundred years, the peculiars had never been so close to destroying the wight menace, and if we ran away now, I knew that chance may never come again. My friends’ faces were scared but determined—ready, I thought, to risk their lives for a chance to finally eradicate t
he wight scourge.
“We fight,” I said. “We’ve come too far to give up now.”
