AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Addison walked a circle sniffing the ground, then sat down, perplexed. Subtly, because even in this crowd a talking dog would be shocking, I bent down and asked him what was the matter.
“It’s just … err,” he stammered, “that I seem to have—”
“Lost the trail?” Emma said. “I thought your nose was infallible.”
“I’ve merely mislaid the trail. But I don’t understand how … it leads quite clearly to this spot, then vanishes.”
“Tie your shoes,” Emma said suddenly. “Now.”
I looked down at them. “But they’re not—”
She grabbed my forearm and yanked me down. “Tie. Your. Shoes,” she repeated, then mouthed, wight!
We knelt there, hidden below the heads of the loose-knit crowd. Then came a burst of loud static and a strained voice through a walkie-talkie. “Code 141! All crews report to the acre immediately!”
The wight was close. We heard him reply in a gruff, oddly accented voice: “This is M. I’m tracking the escapees. Request permission to continue searching. Over.”
I exchanged a tense look with Emma.
“Denied, M. Cleaners will sweep the area later. Over.”
“The boy seems to have some influence over the cleaners. Sweep may not be effective.”
Cleaners. He must’ve been talking about the wights. And he was definitely talking about me.
“Denied!” said the crackling voice. “Report back immediately or you’ll spend tonight in the pit, over!”
The wight muttered “Acknowledged” into his walkie-talkie and stalked away.
“We’ve got to follow him,” Emma said. “He could lead us to the others!”
“And straight into the lion’s den,” Addison said. “Though I suppose that can’t be helped.”
I was still reeling. “They know who I am,” I said faintly. “They must’ve seen what I did.”
“That’s right,” Emma said. “And it scared the stuffing out of them!”
I unbent myself to watch the wight go. He marched through the crowd, hopped a traffic barricade, and jogged away toward a parked police car.
We followed him as far as the traffic barrier. I looked around, trying to imagine the kidnappers’ next move. Behind us was the crowd, and in front, beyond the traffic barrier, cars prowled the block for parking. “Maybe our friends came this far on foot,” I said, “then were put into a car.”
Brightening, Addison stood on hind legs to peek over the traffic barrier. “Yes! That must be it. Bright boy!”
“What are you so cheerful for?” said Emma. “If they were taken away in a car, they could be anywhere by now!”
“Then we’ll follow them anywhere,” Addison said pointedly. “Though I doubt they’re terribly far. My old master had a townhouse not far from here, and I know this part of the city well. There are no major ports nor obvious points of exit from London nearby—but there are a few loop entrances. It’s much more likely that they’ve been taken to one of those. Now lift me up!”
I did, and with my help he scrambled over the barrier and began to sniff around the other side. Within seconds he’d found our friends’ scent trail again. “This way!” he said, pointing down the street after the wight, who’d gotten into the police car and was driving away.
“Looks like we’re in for a walk,” I said to Emma. “Think you can make it?”
“I’ll manage,” she said, “so as long as we find another loop within a few hours. Otherwise I may start sprouting gray hairs and crow’s feet.” She smiled, as if this were something to joke about.
“I won’t let that happen,” I said.
We jumped the barricade. I took one last look at the Underground station behind us.
“Do you see the hollow?” said Emma.
“No. I don’t know where it is. And that worries me.”
“Let’s worry about one thing at a time,” she said.
* * *
We walked as fast as Emma could manage, keeping to the side of the street still sunk in morning shadow, watching for police and following Addison’s nose. We passed into an industrial area near the docks, the River Thames revealing itself darkly between the gaps in warehouses, then into a fancy shopping district where glittering stores were crowned with glassy townhouses. Over their roofs I caught glimpses of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whole again, the sky around it clear and blue. The bombs had all been dropped and the bombers were long gone—shot down, scrapped, retired into museums where they gathered dust behind ropes, to be gawked at by schoolchildren for whom that war seemed as distant as the Crusades. To me it was, quite literally, yesterday. Hard to believe these were the same cratered, blacked-out streets through which we’d run for our lives only last night. They were unrecognizable now, shopping malls seemingly conjured from the ashes—and so were the people who walked them, heads down, glued to phones, clothed in logos. The present seemed suddenly strange to me, so trivial and distracted. I felt like one of those mythical heroes who fights his way back from the underworld only to realize that the world above is every bit as damned as the one below.
And then it hit me—I was back. I was in the present again, and I’d crossed into it without the intervention of Miss Peregrine … which was supposed to be impossible.
“Emma?” I said. “How did I get here?”
She kept her eyes trained on the street ahead, always scanning for trouble. “Where, London? On a train, silly.”
“No.” I lowered my voice. “I mean to now. You said Miss Peregrine was the only one who could send me back.”
She turned to glance at me, eyes narrowing. “Yes,” she said slowly. “She was.”
“Or so you thought.”
“No—she was, I’m sure of it. That’s how it works.”
“Then how did I get here?”
She looked lost. “I don’t know, Jacob. Maybe …”
“There!” Addison said excitedly, and we broke off wondering to look. His body was rigid, pointing down the street we’d just turned onto. “I’m picking up dozens of peculiar scent trails now—dozens upon dozens—and they’re fresh!”
“Which means what?” I said.
“Other kidnapped peculiars were brought this way, not just our friends,” said Emma. “The wights’ hideout must be close by.”
“Close by here?” I said. The block was lined with fast food joints and tacky souvenir shops, and we stood framed in the neon-lit window of a greasy diner. “I guess I’d been imagining someplace … eviller.”
“Like a dungeon in some dank castle,” Emma said, nodding.
“Or a concentration camp surrounded by guards and barbed-wire fences,” I said.
“In the snow. Like Horace’s drawing.”
“We may find such a place yet,” said Addison. “Remember, this is likely just the entrance to a loop.”
Across the street, tourists were taking pictures of themselves in front of one of the city’s iconic red phone boxes. Then they noticed us and snapped a picture in our direction.
“Hey!” Emma said. “No photos!”
People were beginning to stare. No longer surrounded by comic conventioneers, we stuck out like sore, bloody thumbs.
“Follow me,” Addison hissed. “All the trails lead this way.”
We hurried after him down the block.
“If only Millard were here,” I said, “he could scout this place without being noticed.”
“Or if Horace were here, he might remember a dream that would help us,” Emma said.
“Or find us new clothes,” I added.
“If we don’t stop, I’ll cry,” Emma said.
We came to a jetty bustling with activity. Sun glinted off the water, a narrow inlet of the murky Thames, and clumps of tourists in visors and fanny packs waddled onto and off of several large boats, each offering more or less identical sightseeing tours of London.
Addison stopped. “They were brought here,” he said. “It would appear they were put onto a boat.”
&nb
sp; We followed his nose through the crowd to an empty boat slip. The wights had indeed loaded our friends onto a boat, and now we needed to follow them—but in what? We walked around the jetty looking for a ride.
“This will never do,” Emma grumbled. “These boats are too large and crowded. We need a small one—something we can pilot ourselves.”
“Wait a moment,” said Addison, his snout twitching. He trotted away, nose to the wooden boards. We followed him across the jetty and down a little unmarked ramp that was ignored by the tourists. It led to a lower dock, below the street, just at water level. There was no one around; it was deserted.
Here Addison stopped, wearing a look of deep concentration. “Peculiars have come this way.”
“Our peculiars?” Emma said.
He sniffed the dock again and shook his head. “Not ours. But there are many trails here, new and old, strong and faded, all mixed together. This is an oft-used pathway.”
Ahead of us, the dock narrowed and disappeared beneath the main jetty, where it was swallowed in shadows.
