"Not lies exactly, but—"

"Fictions, whoppers, paradiddles—whatever terminology you like. When did you realize Abraham was telling you the truth?"

"Well," I said, staring at the labyrinth of interlocking patterns woven into the carpet, "I guess I'm just realizing it now."

Miss Peregrine, who had been so animated, seemed to fade a little. "Oh my, I see." And then her expression turned grim, as if, in the brief silence between us, she had intuited the terrible thing I'd come to tell her. And yet I still had to find a way to say it aloud.

"I think he wanted to explain everything," I said, "but he waited too long. So he sent me here to find you instead." I pulled the crumpled letter out of my jacket. "This is yours. It's what brought me here."

She smoothed it carefully over the arm of her chair and held it up, moving her lips as she read. "How ungraceful! the way I practically beg him for a reply." She shook her head, wistful for a moment. "We were always so desperate for news of Abe. I asked him once if he should like to worry me to death, the way he insisted on living out in the open like that. He could be so deucedly stubborn!"

She refolded the letter into its envelope, and a dark cloud seemed to pass over her. "He's gone, isn't he?"

I nodded. Haltingly, I told her what had happened—that is, I told her the story the cops had settled on and that, after a great deal of counseling, I, too, had come to believe. To keep from crying, I gave her only the broad strokes: He lived on the rural outskirts of town; we'd just been through a drought and the woods were full of starving, desperate animals; he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. "He shouldn't have been living alone," I explained, "but like you said, he was stubborn."

"I was afraid of this," she said. "I warned him not to leave." She made tight fists around the knitting needles in her lap, as if considering who to stab with them. "And then to make his poor grandson bear the awful news back to us."

I could understand her anger. I'd been through it myself. I tried to comfort her, reciting all the reassuring half-truths my parents and Dr. Golan had spun during my blackest moments last fall: "It was time for him to go. He was lonely. My grandma had been dead a lot of years already, and his mind wasn't sharp anymore. He was always forgetting things, getting mixed up. That's why he was out in the woods in the first place."

Miss Peregrine nodded sadly. "He let himself grow old."

"He was lucky in a way. It wasn't long and drawn-out. No months in a hospital hooked up to machines." That was ridiculous, of course—his death had been needless, obscene—but I think it made us both feel a little better to say it.

Setting aside her needlework, Miss Peregrine rose and hobbled to the window. Her gait was rigid and awkward, as if one of her legs were shorter than the other.

She looked out at the yard, at the kids playing. "The children mustn't hear of this," she said. "Not yet, at least. It would only upset them."

"Okay. Whatever you think."

She stood quietly at the glass for a while, her shoulders trembling. When she finally turned to face me again, she was composed and businesslike. "Well, Mr. Portman," she said briskly, "I think you've been adequately interrogated. You must have questions of your own."

"Only about a thousand."

She pulled a watch from her pocket and consulted it. "We have some time before supper-hour. I hope that will prove sufficient to enlighten you."

Miss Peregrine paused and cocked her head. Abruptly, she strode to the sitting room door and threw it open to find Emma crouched on the other side, her face red and streaked with tears. She'd heard everything.

"Miss Bloom! Have you been eavesdropping?"

Emma struggled to her feet, letting out a sob.

"Polite persons do not listen to conversations that were not meant for—" but Emma was already running from of the room, and Miss Peregrine cut herself short with a frustrated sigh. "That was most unfortunate. I'm afraid she's quite sensitive as regards your grandfather."

"I noticed," I said. "Why? Were they ...?"

"When Abraham left to fight in the war, he took all our hearts with him, but Miss Bloom's especially. Yes, they were admirers, paramours, sweethearts."

I began to understand why Emma had been so reluctant to believe me; it would mean, in all likelihood, that I was here to deliver bad news about my grandfather.

Miss Peregrine clapped her hands as if breaking a spell. "Ah, well," she said, "it can't be helped."

I followed her out of the room to the staircase. Miss Peregrine climbed it with grim resolve, holding the banister with both hands to pull herself up one step at a time, refusing any help. When we reached the landing, she led me down the hall to the library. It looked like a real classroom now, with desks arranged in a row and a chalkboard in one corner and books dusted and organized on the shelves. Miss Peregrine pointed to a desk and said, "Sit," so I squeezed into it. She took her place at the front of the room and faced me.

"Allow me to give you a brief primer. I think you'll find the answers to most of your questions contained herein."

"Okay."

"The composition of the human species is infinitely more diverse than most humans suspect," she began. "The real taxonomy of Homo sapiens is a secret known to only a few, of whom you will now be one. At base, it is a simple dichotomy: there are the coerlfolc, the teeming mass of common people who make up humanity's great bulk, and there is the hidden branch—the crypto-sapiens, if you will—who are called syndrigast, or "peculiar spirit" in the venerable language of my ancestors. As you have no doubt surmised, we here are of the latter type."

I bobbed my head as if I understood, though she'd already lost me. Hoping to slow her down a little, I asked a question.

"But why don't people know about you? Are you the only ones?"

"There are peculiars all over the world," she said, "though our numbers are much diminished from what they once were. Those who remain live in hiding, as we do." She lapsed into a soft regretful voice. "There was a time when we could mix openly with common folk. In some corners of the world we were regarded as shamans and mystics, consulted in times of trouble. A few cultures have retained this harmonious relationship with our people, though only in places where both modernity and the major religions have failed to gain a foothold, such as the black-magic island of Ambrym in the New Hebrides. But the larger world turned against us long ago. The Muslims drove us out. The Christians burned us as witches. Even the pagans of Wales and Ireland eventually decided that we were all malevolent faeries and shape-shifting ghosts."

"So why didn't you just—I don't know—make your own country somewhere? Go and live by yourselves?"

"If only it had been that simple," she said. "Peculiar traits often skip a generation, or ten. Peculiar children are not always, or even usually, born to peculiar parents, and peculiar parents do not always, or even usually, bear peculiar children. Can you imagine, in a world so afraid of otherness, why this would be a danger to all peculiar-kind?"

"Because normal parents would be freaked out if their kids started to, like, throw fire?"

"Exactly, Mr. Portman. The peculiar offspring of common parents are often abused and neglected in the most horrific ways. It wasn't so many centuries ago that the parents of peculiar children simply assumed that their 'real' sons or daughters had been made off with and replaced with changelings—that is, enchanted and malevolent, not to mention entirely fictitious, lookalikes—which in darker times was considered a license to abandon the poor children, if not kill them outright."

"That's awful."

"Extremely. Something had to be done, so people like myself created places where young peculiars could live apart from common folk—physically and temporally isolated enclaves like this one, of which I am enormously proud."

"People like yourself?"

"We peculiars are blessed with skills that common people lack, as infinite in combination and variety as others are in the pigmentation of their skin or the appearance of their facial features. That said, some skills are common, like reading thoughts, and others are rare, such as the way I can manipulate time."

"Time? I thought you turned into a bird."

"To be sure, and therein lies the key to my skill. Only birds can manipulate time. Therefore, all time manipulators must be able to take the form of a bird."

She said this so seriously, so matter-of-factly, that it took me a moment to process. "Birds ... are time travelers?" I felt a goofy smile spread across my face.

Miss Peregrine nodded soberly. "Most, however, slip back and forth only occasionally, by accident. We who can manipulate time fields consciously—and not only for ourselves, but for others—are known as ymbrynes. We create temporal loops in which peculiar folk can live indefinitely."

"A loop," I repeated, remembering my grandfather's command: find the bird, in the loop. "Is that what this place is?"

"Yes. Though you may better know it as the third of September, 1940."

I leaned toward her over the little desk. "What do you mean? It's only the one day? It repeats?"

"Over and over, though our experience of it is continuous. Otherwise we would have no memory of the last, oh, seventy years that we've resided here."

"That's amazing," I said.

"Of course, we were here on Cairnholm a decade or more before the third of September, 1940—physically isolated, thanks to the island's unique geography—but it wasn't until that date that we also needed temporal isolation."

"Why's that?"

"Because otherwise we all would've been killed."

"By the bomb."

"Assuredly so."

I gazed at the surface of the desk. It was all starting to make sense—though just barely. "Are there other loops besides this one?"

"Many," she said, "and nearly all the ymbrynes who mother over them are friends of mine. Let me see: There's Miss Gannett in Ireland, in June of 1770; Miss Nightjar in Swansea on April 3, 1901; Miss Avocet and Miss Bunting together in Derbyshire on Saint Swithin's Day of 1867; Miss Treecreeper I don't remember where exactly—oh, and dear Miss Finch. Somewhere I have a lovely photograph of her."

Miss Peregrine wrestled a massive photo album down from a shelf and set it before me on the desk. She leaned over my shoulder as she turned the stiff pages, looking for a certain picture but pausing to linger over others, her voice tinged with dreamy nostalgia. As they flicked by I recognized photos from the smashed trunk in the basement and from my grandfather's cigar box. Miss Peregrine had collected them all. It was strange to think that she'd shown these same pictures to my grandfather all those years ago, when he was my age—maybe right here in this room, at this desk—and now she was showing them to me, as if somehow I'd stepped into his past.

Finally she came to a photo of an ethereal-looking woman with a plump little bird perched on her hand, and said, "This is Miss Finch and her auntie, Miss Finch." The woman and the bird seemed to be communicating.

"How could you tell them apart?" I asked.

"The elder Miss Finch preferred to stay a finch most all of the time. Which was just as well, really. She never was much of a conversationalist."

Miss Peregrine turned a few more pages, this time landing on a group portrait of women and children gathered humorlessly around a paper moon.

"Ah, yes! I'd nearly forgotten about this one." She slipped the photo out of its album sleeve and held it up reverently. "The lady in front there, that's Miss Avocet. She's as close to royalty as we peculiars have. They tried for fifty years to elect her leader of the Council of Ymbrynes, but she would never give up teaching at the academy she and Miss Bunting founded. Today there's not an ymbryne worth her wings who didn't pass under Miss Avocet's tutelage at one time, myself included! In fact, if you look closely you might recognize that little girl in the glasses."

I squinted. The face she pointed to was dark and slightly blurred. "Is that you?"

"I was one of the youngest Miss Avocet ever took on," she said proudly.

"What about the boys in the picture?" I said. "They look even younger than you."

Miss Peregrine's expression darkened. "You're referring to my misguided brothers. Rather than split us up, they came along to the academy with me. Mollycoddled like a pair of little princes, they were. I dare say it's what turned them rotten."

"They weren't ymbrynes?"

"Oh, no," she huffed. "Only women are born ymbrynes, and thank heaven for that! Males lack the seriousness of temperament required of persons with such grave responsibilities. We ymbrynes must scour the countryside for young peculiars in need, steer clear of those who would do us harm, and keep our wards fed, clothed, hidden, and steeped in the lore of our people. And as if that weren't enough, we must also ensure that our loops reset each day like clockwork."

"What happens if they don't?"

She raised a fluttering hand to her brow and staggered back, pantomiming horror. "Catastrophe, cataclysm, disaster! I dare not even think of it. Fortunately, the mechanism by which loops are reset is a simple one: One of us must cross through the entryway every so often. This keeps it pliable, you see. The ingress point is a bit like a hole in fresh dough; if you don't poke a finger into it now and then the thing may just close up on its own. And if there's no ingress or egress—no valve through which may be vented the various pressures that accrue naturally in a closed temporal system—" She made a little poof! gesture with her hands, as if miming the explosion of a firecracker. "Well, the whole thing becomes unstable."

She bent over the album again and riffled through its pages. "Speaking of which, I may have a picture of—yes, here it is. An ingress point if ever there was one!" She pulled another picture from its sleeve. "This is Miss Finch and one of her wards in the magnificent entryway to Miss Finch's loop, in a rarely used portion of the London Underground. When it resets, the tunnel fills with the most terrific glow. I've always thought our own rather modest by comparison," she said with a hint of envy.

"Just to make sure I understand," I said. "If today is September third, 1940, then tomorrow is ... also September third?"

"Well, for a few of the loop's twenty-four hours it's September second, but, yes, it's the third."

"So tomorrow never comes."

"In a manner of speaking."

Outside, a distant clap of what sounded like thunder echoed, and the darkening window rattled in its frame. Miss Peregrine looked up and again drew out her watch.

"I'm afraid that's all the time I have at the moment. I do hope you'll stay for supper."

I said that I would; that my father might be wondering where I was hardly crossed my mind. I squeezed out from behind the desk and began following her to the door, but then another question occurred to me, one that had been nagging at me for a long time.

"Was my grandfather really running from the Nazis when he came here?"

"He was," she said. "A number of children came to us during those awful years leading up to the war. There was so much upheaval." She looked pained, as if the memory was still fresh. "I found Abraham at a camp for displaced persons on the mainland. He was a poor, tortured boy, but so strong. I knew at once that he belonged with us."

I felt relieved; at least that part of his life was as I had understood it to be. There was one more thing I wanted to ask, though, and I didn't quite know how to put it.

"Was he—my grandfather—was he like ..."

"Like us?"

I nodded.

She smiled strangely. "He was like you, Jacob." And she turned and hobbled toward the stairs.

* * *

Miss Peregrine insisted that I wash off the bog mud before sitting down to dinner, and asked Emma to run me a bath. I think she hoped that by talking to me a little, Emma would start to feel better. But she wouldn't even look at me. I watched as she ran cold water into the tub and then warmed it with her bare hands, swirling them around until steam rose.

"That is awesome," I said. But she left without saying a word in response.

Once I'd turned the water thoroughly brown, I toweled off and found a change of clothes hanging from the back of the door—baggy tweed pants, a button-up shirt, and a pair of suspenders that were far too short but that I couldn't figure out how to adjust. I was left with the choice of wearing the pants either around my ankles or hitched up to my bellybutton. I decided the latter was the lesser of evils, so I went downstairs to have what would likely be the strangest meal of my life while dressed like a clown without makeup.

Dinner was a dizzying blur of names and faces, many of them half-remembered from photographs and my grandfather's long-ago descriptions. When I came into the dining room, the kids, who'd been clamoring noisily for seats around the long table, froze and stared at me. I got the feeling they didn't get a lot of dinner guests. Miss Peregrine, already seated at the head of the table, stood up and used the sudden quiet as an opportunity to introduce me.

"For those of you who haven't already had the pleasure of meeting him," she announced, "this is Abraham's grandson, Jacob. He is our honored guest and has come a very long way to be here. I hope you will treat him accordingly." Then she pointed to each person in the room and recited their names, most of which I immediately forgot, as happens when I'm nervous. The introductions were followed by a barrage of questions, which Miss Peregrine batted away with rapid-fire efficiency.

"Is Jacob going to stay with us?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Where's Abe?"

"Abe is busy in America."

"Why does Jacob got Victor's trousers on?"

"Victor doesn't need them anymore, and Mr. Portman's are being washed."

"What's Abe doing in America?"

At this question I saw Emma, who had been glowering in a corner, rise from her chair and stalk out of the room. The others, apparently used to her volatile moods, paid no attention.

"Never mind what Abe's doing," Miss Peregrine snapped.

"When's he coming back?"

"Never mind that, too. Now let's eat!"

Everyone stampeded to their seats. Thinking I'd found an empty chair, I went to sit and felt a fork jab my thigh. "Excuse me!" cried Millard. But Miss Peregrine made him give it up anyway, sending him out to put on clothes.

"How many times must I tell you," she called after him, "polite persons do not take their supper in the nude!"

Kids with kitchen duty appeared bearing trays of food, all covered with gleaming silver tops so that you couldn't see what was inside, sparking wild speculation about what might be for dinner.

"Otters Wellington!" one boy cried.

"Salted kitten and shrew's liver!" another said, to which the younger children responded with gagging sounds. But when the covers were finally lifted, a feast of kingly proportions was revealed: a roasted goose, its flesh a perfect golden brown; a whole salmon and a whole cod, each outfitted with lemons and fresh dill and pats of melting butter; a bowl of steamed mussels; platters of roasted vegetables; loaves of bread still cooling from the oven; and all manner of jellies and sauces I didn't recognize but that looked delicious. It all glowed invitingly in the flicker of gaslight lamps, a world away from the oily stews of indeterminate origin I'd been choking down at the Priest Hole. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and proceeded to stuff myself silly.

It shouldn't have surprised me that peculiar children have peculiar eating habits, but between forkfuls of food I found myself sneaking glances around the room. Olive the levitating girl had to be belted into a chair screwed to the floor so that she wouldn't float up to the ceiling. So the rest of us wouldn't be plagued by insects, Hugh, the boy who had bees living in his stomach, ate under a large mosquito net at a table for one in the corner. Claire, a doll-like girl with immaculate golden curls, sat next to Miss Peregrine but ate not a morsel.

"Aren't you hungry?" I asked her.

"Claire don't eat with the rest of us," Hugh volunteered, a bee escaping from his mouth. "She's embarrassed."

"I am not!" she said, glaring at him.

"Yeah? Then eat something!"

"No one here is embarrassed of their gift," Miss Peregrine said. "Miss Densmore simply prefers to dine alone. Isn't that right, Miss Densmore?"

The girl stared at the empty place before her, clearly wishing that all the attention would vanish.

"Claire has a backmouth," explained Millard, who sat beside me now in a smoking jacket (and nothing else).

"A what?"

"Go on, show him!" someone said. Soon everyone at the table was pressuring Claire to eat something. And finally, just to shut them up, she did.

A leg of goose was set before her. She turned around in her chair, and gripping its arms she bent over backward, dipping the back of her head to the plate. I heard a distinct smacking sound, and when she lifted her head again a giant bite had disappeared from the goose leg. Beneath her golden hair was a set of sharp-toothed jaws. Suddenly, I understood the strange picture of Claire that I'd seen in Miss Peregrine's album, to which the photographer had devoted two panels: one for her daintily pretty face and another for the curls that so thoroughly masked the back of her head.

Claire turned forward and crossed her arms, annoyed that she'd let herself be talked into such a humiliating demonstration. She sat in silence while the others peppered me with questions. After Miss Peregrine had dismissed a few more about my grandfather, the children turned to other subjects. They seemed especially interested in what life in the twenty-first century was like.

"What sort of flying motorcars do you have?" asked a pubescent boy named Horace, who wore a dark suit that made him look like an apprentice undertaker.

"None," I said. "Not yet, anyway."

"Have they built cities on the moon?" another boy asked hopefully.

"We left some garbage and a flag there in the sixties, but that's about it."

"Does Britain still rule the world?"

"Uh ... not exactly."

They seemed disappointed. Sensing an opportunity, Miss Peregrine said, "You see, children? The future isn't so grand after all. Nothing wrong with the good old here and now!" I got the feeling this was something she often tried to impress upon them, with little success. But it got me wondering: Just how long had they been here, in the "good old here and now?"

"Do you mind if I ask how old you all are?" I said.

"I'm eighty-three," said Horace.

Olive raised her hand excitedly. "I'll be seventy-five and a half next week!" I wondered how they kept track of the months and years if the days never changed.

"I'm either one hundred seventeen or one hundred eighteen," said a heavy-lidded boy named Enoch. He looked no more than thirteen. "I lived in another loop before this one," he explained.

"I'm nearly eighty-seven," said Millard with his mouth full of goose drippings, and as he spoke a half-chewed mass quavered in his invisible jaw for all to see. There were groans as people covered their eyes and looked away.

Then it was my turn. I was sixteen, I told them. I saw a few kids' eyes widen. Olive laughed in surprise. It was strange to them that I should be so young, but what was strange to me was how young they seemed. I knew plenty of eighty-year-olds in Florida, and these kids acted nothing like them. It was as if the constance of their lives here, the unvarying days—this perpetual deathless summer—had arrested their emotions as well as their bodies, sealing them in their youth like Peter Pan and his Lost Boys.

A sudden boom sounded from outside, the second one this evening, but louder and closer than the first, rattling silverware and plates.

"Hurry up and finish, everyone!" Miss Peregrine sang out, and no sooner had she said it than another concussion jolted the house, throwing a framed picture off the wall behind me.

"What is that?" I said.

"It's those damned Jerries again!" growled Olive, thumping her little fist on the table, clearly in imitation of some ill-tempered adult. Then I heard what sounded like a buzzer going off somewhere far away, and suddenly it occurred to me what was happening. This was the night of September third, 1940, and in a little while a bomb was going to fall from the sky and blow a giant hole in the house. The buzzer was an air-raid siren, sounding from the ridge.

"We have to get out of here," I said, panic rising in my throat. "We have to go before the bomb hits!"

"He doesn't know!" giggled Olive. "He thinks we're going to die!"

"It's only the changeover," said Millard with a shrug of his smoking jacket. "No reason to get your knickers in a twist."

"This happens every night?"

Miss Peregrine nodded. "Every single evening," she said. Somehow, though, I was not reassured.

"May we go outside and show Jacob?" said Hugh.

"Yes, may we?" Claire begged, suddenly enthused after twenty minutes of sulking. "The changeover is ever so beautiful!"

Miss Peregrine demurred, pointing out that they hadn't yet finished their dinners, but the children pleaded with her until she relented. "All right, so long as you all wear your masks," she said.

The children burst out of their seats and ran from the room, leaving poor Olive behind until someone took pity and came to unbelt her from her chair. I ran after them through the house into the wood-paneled foyer, where they each grabbed something from a cabinet before bounding out the door. Miss Peregrine gave me one, too, and I stood turning it over in my hands. It looked like a sagging face of black rubber, with wide glass portholes like eyes that were frozen in shock, and a droopy snout that ended in a perforated canister.

"Go ahead," said Miss Peregrine. "Put it on." Then I realized what it was: a gas mask.

I strapped it over my face and followed her out onto the lawn, where the children stood scattered like chess pieces on an unmarked board, anonymous behind their upturned masks, watching billows of black smoke roll across the sky. Treetops burned in the hazy distance. The drone of unseen airplanes seemed to come from everywhere.

Now and then came a muffled blast I could feel in my chest like the thump of a second heart, followed by waves of broiling heat, like someone opening and closing an oven right in front of me. I ducked at each concussion, but the kids never so much as flinched. Instead they sang, their lyrics timed perfectly to the rhythm of the bombs.

Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, RUN!

Bang, bang, BANG goes the farmer's gun

He'll get by without his rabbit pie, so

Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, RUN!

Bright tracer bullets scored the heavens just as the song ended. The kids applauded like onlookers at a fireworks display, violent slashes of color reflected in their masks. This nightly assault had become such a regular part of their lives that they'd ceased to think of it as something terrifying—in fact, the photograph I'd seen of it in Miss Peregrine's album had been labeled Our beautiful display. And in its own morbid way, I suppose it was.

It began to drizzle, as if all that flying metal had riven holes in the clouds. The concussions came less frequently. The attack seemed to be ending.

The children started to leave. I thought we were going back inside, but they passed the front door and headed for another part of the yard.

"Where are we going?" I asked two masked kids.

They said nothing, but seeming to sense my anxiety, they took me gently by the hands and led me along with the others. We rounded the house to the back corner, where everyone was gathering around a giant topiary. This one wasn't a mythical creature, though, but a man reposing in the grass, one arm supporting him, the other pointing to the sky. It took a moment before I realized that it was a leafy replica of Michelangelo's fresco of Adam from the Sistine Chapel. Considering that it was made from bushes, it was really impressive. You could almost make out the placid expression on Adam's face, which had two blooming gardenias for eyes.

I saw the wild-haired girl standing nearby. She wore a flower-print dress that had been patched so many times it almost looked like a quilt. I went over to her and, pointing to Adam, said, "Did you make this?"

The girl nodded.

"How?"

She bent down and held one of her palms above the grass. A few seconds later, a hand-shaped section of blades wriggled and stretched and grew until they were brushing the bottom of her palm.

"That," I said, "is crazy." Clearly, I was not at my most articulate.

Someone shushed me. The children were all standing silently with their necks craned, pointing at a section of sky. I looked up but could see only clouds of smoke, the flickering orange of fires reflected against them.

Then I heard a single airplane engine cut through the rest. It was close, and getting closer. Panic flooded me. This is the night they were killed. Not just the night, but the moment. Could it be, I wondered, that these children died every evening only to be resurrected by the loop, like some Sisyphean suicide cult, condemned to be blown up and stitched back together for eternity?

Something small and gray parted the clouds and came hurtling toward us. A rock, I thought, but rocks don't whistle as they fall.

Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run. I would've but now there was no time; all I could do was scream and dive to the ground for cover. But there was no cover, so I hit the grass and threw my arms over my head as if somehow that would keep it attached to my body.

I clenched my jaw and shut my eyes and held my breath, but instead of the deafening blast I was bracing for, everything went completely, profoundly quiet. Suddenly there were no growling engines, no whistling bombs, no pops of distant guns. It was as if someone had muted the world.

Was I dead?

I uncovered my head and slowly looked behind me. The wind-bent boughs of trees were frozen in place. The sky was a photograph of arrested flames licking a cloud bank. Drops of rain hung suspended before my eyes. And in the middle of the circle of children, like the object of some arcane ritual, there hovered a bomb, its downward-facing tip seemingly balanced on Adam's outstretched finger.

Then, like a movie that burns in the projector while you're watching it, a bloom of hot and perfect whiteness spread out before me and swallowed everything.

* * *

The first thing I heard when I could hear again was laughter. Then the white faded away and I saw that we were all arranged around Adam just as we had been before, but now the bomb was gone and the night was quiet and the only light in the cloudless sky was a full moon. Miss Peregrine appeared above me and held out her hand. I took it, stumbling to my feet in a daze.

"Please accept my apologies," she said. "I should have better prepared you." She couldn't hide her smile, though, and neither could the other kids as they stripped off their masks. I was pretty sure I'd just been hazed.

I felt lightheaded and out-of-sorts. "I should probably head home for the night," I said to Miss Peregrine. "My dad'll worry." Then I added quickly, "I can go home, right?"

"Of course you can," she replied, and in a loud voice asked for a volunteer to escort me back to the cairn. To my surprise, Emma stepped forward. Miss Peregrine seemed pleased.

"Are you sure about her?" I whispered to the headmistress. "A few hours ago she was ready to slit my throat."

"Miss Bloom may be hot-tempered, but she is one of my most trusted wards," she replied. "And I think you and she may have a few things to discuss away from curious ears."

Five minutes later the two of us were on our way, only this time my hands weren't tied and she wasn't poking a knife in my spine. A few of the younger kids trailed us as far as the edge of the yard. They wanted to know whether I'd be back again tomorrow. I made vague assurances, but I could hardly wrap my mind around what was happening at this moment, much less in the future.

We passed into the dark woods alone. When the house had disappeared behind us, Emma held out an upturned palm, flicked her wrist, and a petite ball of fire flared to life just above her fingers. She held it before her like a waiter carrying a tray, lighting the path and casting our twin shadows across the trees.

"Have I told you how cool that is?" I said, trying to break a silence that grew more awkward by the second.

"It isn't cool at all," she replied, swinging the flame close enough that I could feel its radiating heat. I dodged it and fell back a few paces.

"I didn't mean—I meant it's cool that you can do that."

"Well, if you'd speak properly I might understand you," she snapped, then stopped walking.

We stood facing each other from a careful distance. "You don't have to be afraid of me," she said.

"Oh yeah? How do I know you don't think I'm some evil creature and this is just a plot to get me alone so you can finally kill me?"

"Don't be stupid," she said. "You came unannounced, a stranger I didn't recognize, and chased after me like a madman. What was I meant to think?"

"Fine, I get it," I said, though I didn't really mean it.

She dropped her eyes and began digging a little hole in the dirt with the tip of her boot. The flame in her hand changed color, fading from orange to a cool indigo. "It's not true, what I said. I did recognize you." She looked up at me. "You look so much like him."

"People tell me that sometimes."

"I'm sorry I said all those terrible things earlier. I didn't want to believe you—that you were who you said. I knew what it would mean."

"It's okay," I replied. "When I was growing up, I wanted so much to meet all of you. Now that it's finally happening ..." I shook my head. "I'm just sorry it has to be because of this."

And then she rushed at me and threw her arms around my neck, the flame in her hand snuffing out just before she touched me, her skin hot where she'd held it. We stood like that in the darkness for a while, me and this teenaged old woman, this rather beautiful girl who had loved my grandfather when he was the age I am now. There was nothing I could do but put my arms around her, too, so I did, and after a while I guess we were both crying.

I heard her take a deep breath in the dark, and then she broke away. The fire flared back to life in her hand.

"Sorry about that," she said. "I'm not usually so ..."

"Don't worry about it."

"We should be getting on."

"Lead the way," I said.

We walked through the woods in a comfortable silence. When we came to the bog she said, "Step only where I step," and I did, planting my feet in her prints. Bog gases flared up in green pyres in the distance, as if in sympathy with Emma's light.

We reached the cairn and ducked inside, shuffling in single-file to the rear chamber and then out again to a world shrouded in mist. She guided me back to the path, and when we reached it she laced her fingers through mine and squeezed. We were quiet for a moment. Then she turned and went back, the fog swallowing her so quickly that for a moment I wondered if she'd been there at all.

* * *

Returning to town, I half-expected to find horse-drawn wagons roaming the streets. Instead I was welcomed by the hum of generators and the glow of TV screens behind cottage windows. I was home, such as it was.

Kev was manning the bar again and raised a glass in my direction as I came in. None of the men in the pub offered to lynch me. All seemed right with the world.

I went upstairs to find Dad asleep in front of his laptop at our little table. When I shut the door he woke with a start.

"Hi! Hey! You're out late. Or are you? What time is it?"

"I don't know," I said. "Before nine I think. The gennies are still on."

He stretched and rubbed his eyes. "What'd you do today? I was hoping I'd see you for dinner."

"Just explored the old house some more."

"Find anything good?"

"Uh ... not really," I said, realizing that I probably should've bothered to concoct a more elaborate cover story.

He looked at me strangely. "Where'd you get those?"

"Get what?"

"Your clothes," he said.

I looked down and realized I'd completely forgotten about the tweed-pants-and-suspenders outfit I was wearing. "I found them in the house," I said, because I didn't have time to think of a less weird answer. "Aren't they cool?"

He grimaced. "You put on clothes that you found? Jake, that's unsanitary. And what happened to your jeans and jacket?"

I needed to change the subject. "They got super dirty, so I, uh ..." I trailed off, making a point of noticing the document on his computer screen. "Whoa, is that your book? How's it coming?"

He slapped the laptop shut. "My book isn't the issue right now. What's important is our time here be therapeutic for you. I'm not sure that spending your days alone in that old house is really what Dr. Golan had in mind. When he green-lighted this trip."

"Wow, I think that was the record," I said.

"What?"

"The longest streak ever of you not mentioning my psychiatrist." I pretended to look at a nonexistent wristwatch. "Four days, five hours, and twenty-six minutes." I sighed. "It was good while it lasted."

"That man has been a great help to you," he said. "God only knows the state you'd be in right now if we hadn't found him."

"You're right, Dad. Dr. Golan did help me. But that doesn't mean he has to control every aspect of my life. I mean, Jesus, you and mom might as well buy me one of those little bracelets that says What Would Golan Do? That way I can ask myself before I do anything. Before I take a dump. How would Dr. Golan want me to take this dump? Should I bank it off the side or go straight down the middle? What would be the most psychologically beneficial dump I could take?"

Dad didn't say anything for a few seconds, and when he did his voice was all low and gravelly. He told me I was going birding with him the next day whether I liked it or not. When I replied that he was sadly mistaken, he got up and went downstairs to the pub. I thought he'd be drinking or something, so I went to change out of my clown clothes, but a few minutes later he knocked on my bedroom door and said there was someone on the phone for me.

I figured it was Mom, so I gritted my teeth and followed him downstairs to the phone booth in the far corner of the pub. He handed me the receiver and went to sit at a table. I slid the door closed.

"Hello?"

"I just spoke to your father," a man said. "He sounded a little upset."

It was Dr. Golan.

I wanted to say that he and my dad could both stuff it up their asses, but I knew this situation required some tact. If I pissed Golan off now it would be the end of my trip. I couldn't leave yet, not with so much more to learn about the peculiar children. So I played along and explained what I'd been up to—all except the kids-in-a-time-loop part—and tried to make it sound like I was coming around to the idea that there was nothing special about the island or my grandfather. It was like a mini-session over the phone.

"I hope you're not just telling me what I want to hear," he said. That had become his standard line. "Maybe I should come out there and check on you. I could use a little vacation. How does that sound?"

Please be joking, I prayed.

"I'm okay. Really," I said.

"Relax, Jacob, I'm only kidding, though Lord knows I could use some time away from the office. And actually, I believe you. You do sound okay. In fact, just now I told your father that probably the best thing he could do is to give you a little breathing room and let you sort things out on your own."

"Really?"

"You've had your parents and me hovering over you for so long. At a certain point it becomes counterproductive."

"Well, I really appreciate that."

He said something else I couldn't quite hear; there was a lot of noise on his end. "It's hard to hear you," I said. "Are you in a mall or something?"

"The airport," he replied. "Picking up my sister. Anyway, all I said was to enjoy yourself. Explore and don't worry too much. I'll see you soon, all right?"

"Thanks again, Dr. G."

As I hung up the phone, I felt bad for having ragged on him earlier. That was twice now he'd stuck up for me when my own parents wouldn't.

My dad was nursing a beer across the room. I stopped by his table on my way upstairs. "About tomorrow ..." I said.

"Do what you want, I guess."

"Are you sure?"

He shrugged sullenly. "Doctor's orders."

"I'll be home for dinner. Promise."

He just nodded. I left him in the bar and went up to bed.

Falling asleep, my thoughts drifted to the peculiar children and the first question they'd asked after Miss Peregrine had introduced me: Is Jacob going to stay with us? At the time I'd thought, Of course not. But why not? If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.

Chapter 7

Morning brought rain and wind and fog, pessimistic weather that made it hard to believe the previous day had been anything more than a strange and wonderful dream. I wolfed down my breakfast and told my dad I was going out. He looked at me like I was nuts.

"In this? To do what?"

"To hang out with—" I started, without thinking. Then, to cover my tracks, I pretended to have a piece of food stuck in my throat. But it was too late; he'd heard me.

"Hang out with who? Not those rapper hoodlums, I hope."

The only way out of this hole was to dig deeper. "No. You've probably never seen them, they live on the other side of, um, the island, and—"

"Really? I didn't think anyone lived over there."

"Yeah, well, just a few people. Like, sheep-tenders and whatnot. Anyway, they're cool—they watch my back while I'm at the house." Friends and safety: two things my dad couldn't possibly object to.

"I want to meet them," he said, trying to look stern. He often put on this face, an imitation of the sensible, no-nonsense dad I think he aspired to be.

"Sure thing. We're meeting up over there, though, so another time."

He nodded and took another bite of his breakfast.

"Be back by dinner," he said.

"Roger Wilco, Dad."

I practically raced to the bog. As I picked my way through its shifting muck, trying to remember the route of semi-invisible grass islands Emma had used to cross it, I worried that all I would find on the other side was more rain and a ruined house. So it was with great relief that I emerged from the cairn to find September third, 1940, just as I'd left it: the day warm and sunny and fogless, the sky a dependable blue, clouds forming shapes that seemed comfortingly familiar. Even better, Emma was there waiting for me, sitting on the edge of the mound casting stones into the bog. "About time!" she cried, jumping to her feet. "Come on, everyone's waiting for you."

"They are?"

"Ye-es," she said with an impatient eye roll, taking my hand and pulling me after her. I sparked with excitement—not only at her touch, but at the thought of the day that lay ahead, full of endless possibility. Though in a million superficial ways it would be identical to the day before—the same breeze would blow and the same tree limbs would fall—my experience of it would be new. So would the peculiar children's. They were the gods of this strange little heaven, and I was their guest.

We dashed across the bog and through the forest as if late for an appointment. When we reached the house, Emma led me around to the backyard, where a small wooden stage had been erected. Kids were bustling in and out of the house, carrying props, buttoning up suit jackets, and zipping into sequined dresses. Warming up was a little orchestra, made up of just an accordion, a battered trombone, and a musical saw that Horace played with a bow.

"What's this?" I asked Emma. "Are you guys putting on a play?"

"You'll see," she said.

"Who's in it?"

"You'll see."

"What's it about?"

She pinched me.

A whistle blew and everyone ran to claim seats in a row of folding chairs that faced the stage. Emma and I sat down just as the curtain opened, revealing a straw boater hat floating atop a gaudy red-and-white striped suit. It was only when I heard a voice did I realize that—of course—it was Millard.

"Ladieeees and gentlemen!" he crowed. "It gives me the utmost pleasure to present to you a performance like no other in history! A show of such unrivaled daring, of such accomplished magicianship, that you simply won't believe your eyes! Good citizens, I give you Miss Peregrine and her Peculiar Children!"

The audience burst into uproarious applause. Millard tipped his hat.

"For our first illusion, I will produce Miss Peregrine herself!" He ducked behind the curtain and emerged a moment later, a folded sheet draped over one arm and a peregrine falcon perched on the other. He nodded to the orchestra, which lurched into a kind of wheezing carnival music.

Emma elbowed me. "Watch this," she whispered.

Millard set the falcon down and held the sheet in front, screening the bird from the audience. He began counting backward. "Three, two, one!"

On "one" I heard the unmistakable flap of wings and then saw Miss Peregrine's head—her human head—pop up from behind the sheet to even more uproarious applause. Her hair was mussed and I could only see her from the shoulders up; she seemed to be naked behind the sheet. Apparently, when you change into a bird, your clothes don't go along for the ride. Taking the edges of the sheet, she wrapped it chastely around herself.

"Mr. Portman!" she said, peering down at me from the stage. "I'm so happy you've returned. This is a little exhibition we used to tour around the Continent back in the halcyon days. I thought you might find it instructive." And then she swept offstage in a flourish, heading into the house to retrieve her clothes.

One after another, the peculiar children came out of the audience and took the stage, each with an act of their own. Millard removed his tuxedo so that he was completely invisible and juggled glass bottles. Olive removed her leaden shoes and performed a gravity-defying gymnastics routine on a set of parallel bars. Emma made fire, swallowed it, then blew it out again without burning herself. I applauded until I thought my hands would blister.

When Emma returned to her seat, I turned to her and said, "I don't understand. You performed this for people?"

"Of course," she replied.

"Normal people?"

"Of course, normal people. Why would peculiars pay to see things they can do themselves?"

"But wouldn't this, like, blow your cover?"

She chuckled. "Nobody suspected a thing," she said. "People come to sideshows to see stunts and tricks and what-all, and as far as anybody knew that's exactly what we showed them."

"So you were hiding in plain sight."

"Used to be the way most peculiars made a living," she said.

"And no one ever caught on?"

"Once in a while we'd get some knob-head backstage asking nosey questions, which is why there'd always be a strong-arm on hand to toss them out on their bums. Speak of the devil—here she is now!"

Up on stage, a mannish-looking girl was dragging a boulder the size of a small refrigerator out from behind the curtain. "She may not be the sharpest tool in the woodshed," Emma whispered, "but she's got a massive heart and she'd go to the grave for her mates. We're thick as thieves, Bronwyn and me."

Someone had passed around a stack of promotional cards Miss Peregrine had used to advertise their act. It reached me with Bronwyn's card on top. In her picture she stood barefoot, challenging the camera with an icy stare. Emblazoned across the back was THE AMAZING STRONG-GIRL OF SWANSEA!

"Why isn't she lifting a boulder, if that's what she does on stage?" I asked.

"She was in a foul mood because the Bird made her 'dress like a lady' for the picture. She refused to lift so much as a hatbox."

"Looks like she drew the line at wearing shoes, too."

"She generally does."

Bronwyn finished dragging the rock to the middle of the stage, and for an awkward moment she just stared into the crowd, as if someone had told her to pause for dramatic effect. Then she bent down and gripped the rock between her big hands and slowly lifted it above her head. Everyone clapped and hooted, the kids' enthusiasm undimmed though they'd probably seen her do this trick a thousand times. It was almost like being at a pep rally for a school I didn't attend.

Bronwyn yawned and walked off with the boulder tucked under one arm. Then the wild-haired girl took the stage. Her name was Fiona, Emma said. She stood facing the crowd behind a planter filled with dirt, her hands raised above it like a conductor. The orchestra began to play "Flight of the Bumblebee" (as well as they could, anyway), and Fiona pawed the air above the planter, her face contorted in effort and concentration. As the song crescendoed, a row of daisies poked up from the dirt and unfurled toward her hands. It was like one of those fast-motion videos of plants blooming, except she seemed to be reeling the flowers up from their loamy bed by invisible strings. The kids ate it up, jumping out of their seats to cheer her on.

Emma flipped through the stack of postcards to Fiona's. "Her card's my favorite," she said. "We worked for days on her costume."

I looked at it. She was dressed like a beggar girl and stood holding a chicken. "What's she supposed to be?" I asked. "A homeless farmer?"

Emma pinched me. "She's meant to look natural, like a savage-type person. Jill of the Jungle, we called her."

"Is she really from the jungle?"

"She's from Ireland."

"Are there a lot of chickens in the jungle?"

She pinched me again. While we'd been whispering, Hugh had joined Fiona on stage. He stood with his mouth open, letting bees fly out to pollinate the flowers that Fiona had grown, like a weird mating ritual.

"What else does Fiona grow besides bushes and flowers?"

"All these vegetables," Emma said, gesturing to the garden beds in the yard. "And trees, sometimes."

"Really? Whole trees?"

She sorted through the postcards again. "Sometimes we'll play Jill and the Beanstalk. Someone will grab hold of one of the saplings at the edge of the woods and we'll see how high Fiona can get it to go while we're riding it." She arrived at the photo she'd been hunting for and tapped it with her finger. "That was the record," she said proudly. "Twenty meters."

"You guys get pretty bored around here, huh?"

She moved to pinch me again but I blocked her hand. I'm no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I'm pretty sure that's flirting.

There were a few more acts after Fiona and Hugh left the stage but by then the kids were getting antsy, and soon we dispersed to spend the rest of the day in summery bliss: lazing in the sun sipping limeade; playing croquet; tending to gardens that, thanks to Fiona, hardly needed tending; discussing our options for lunch. I wanted to ask Miss Peregrine more about my grandfather—a subject I avoided with Emma, who turned morose at any mention of his name—but the headmistress had gone to conduct a lesson in the study for the younger kids. It seemed like I had plenty of time, though, and the languid pace and midday heat sapped my will to do anything more taxing than wander the grounds in dreamy amazement.

After a decadent lunch of goose sandwiches and chocolate pudding, Emma began to agitate for the older kids to go swimming. "Out of the question," Millard groaned, the top button of his pants popping open. "I'm stuffed like a Christmas turkey." We were sprawled on velvet chairs around the sitting room, full to bursting. Bronwyn lay curled with her head between two pillows. "I'd sink straight to the bottom," came her muffled reply.

But Emma persisted. After ten minutes of wheedling she'd roused Hugh, Fiona, and Horace from their naps and challenged Bronwyn, who apparently could not forgo a competition of any kind, to a swimming race. Upon seeing us all trooping out of the house, Millard scolded us for trying to leave him behind.

The best spot for swimming was by the harbor, but getting there meant walking straight through town. "What about those crazy drunks who think I'm a German spy?" I said. "I don't feel like getting chased with clubs today."

"You twit," Emma said. "That was yesterday. They won't remember a thing."

"Just hang a towel 'round you so they don't see your, er, future clothes," said Horace. I had on jeans and a T-shirt, my usual outfit, and Horace wore his customary black suit. He seemed to be of the Miss Peregrine school of dress: morbidly ultraformal, no matter the occasion. His photograph was among those I'd found in the smashed trunk, and in an attempt to "dress up" for it he'd gone completely overboard: top hat, cane, monocle—the works.

"You're right," I said, cocking an eyebrow at Horace. "I wouldn't want anyone to think I was dressed weird."

"If it's my waistcoat you're referring to," he replied haughtily, "yes, I admit I am a follower of fashion." The others snickered. "Go ahead, have a laugh at old Horace's expense! Call me a dandy if you will, but just because the villagers won't remember what you wear doesn't give you license to dress like a vagabond!" And with that he set about straightening his lapels, which only made the kids laugh harder. In a snit, he pointed an accusing finger at my clothes. "As for him, God help us if that's all our wardrobes have to look forward to!"

When the laughter had died down, I pulled Emma aside and whispered, "What exactly is it that makes Horace peculiar—aside from his clothes, I mean?"

"He has prophetic dreams. Gets these great nightmares every so often, which have a disturbing tendency to come true."

"How often? A lot?"

"Ask him yourself."

But Horace was in no mood to entertain my questions. So I filed it away for another time.

As we came into town I wrapped a towel around my waist and hung another from my shoulders. Though it wasn't exactly prophecy, Horace was right about one thing: nobody recognized me. Walking down the main path we got a few odd looks, but no one bothered us. We even passed the fat man who'd made such a stink over me in the bar. He was stuffing a pipe outside the tobacconist's shop and blathering on about politics to a woman who was barely listening. I couldn't help staring at him as we passed. He stared back, without even a flicker of recognition.

It was like someone had hit "reset" on the whole town. I kept noticing things I'd seen the day before: the same wagon rushing wildly down the path, its back wheel fishtailing in the gravel; the same women lining up outside the well; a man tarring the bottom of a rowboat, no further along in his task than he'd been twenty-four hours ago. I almost expected to see my doppelgänger sprinting across town pursued by a mob, but I guess things didn't work that way.

"You guys must know a lot about what goes on around here," I said. "Like yesterday, with the planes and that cart."

"It's Millard who knows everything," said Hugh.

"It's true," said Millard. "In fact, I am in the midst of compiling the world's first complete account of one day in the life of a town, as experienced by everyone in it. Every action, every conversation, every sound made by each of the one hundred fifty-nine human and three hundred thirty-two animal residents of Cairnholm, minute by minute, sunup to sundown."

"That's incredible," I said.

"I can't help but agree," he replied. "In just twenty-seven years I've already observed half the animals and nearly all the humans."

My mouth fell open. "Twenty-seven years?"

"He spent three years on pigs alone!" Hugh said. "That's all day every day for three years taking notes on pigs! Can you imagine? 'This one dropped a load of arse biscuits!' 'That one said oink-oink and then went to sleep in its own filth!' "

"Notes are absolutely essential to the process," Millard explained patiently. "But I can understand your jealousy, Hugh. It promises to be a work unprecedented in the history of academic scholarship."

"Oh, don't cock your nose," Emma said. "It'll also be unprecedented in the history of dull things. It'll be the dullest thing ever written!"

Rather than responding, Millard began pointing things out just before they happened. "Mrs. Higgins is about to have a coughing fit," he'd say, and then a woman in the street would cough and hack until she was red in the face, or "Presently, a fisherman will lament the difficulty of plying his trade during wartime," and then a man leaning on a cart filled with nets would turn to another man and say, "There's so many damned U-boats in the water now it ain't even safe for a bloke to go tickle his own lines!"

I was duly impressed, and told him so. "I'm glad someone appreciates my work," he replied.

We walked along the bustling harbor until the docks ran out and then followed the rocky shore toward the headlands to a sandy cove. We boys stripped down to our underwear (all except Horace, who would remove only his shoes and tie) while the girls disappeared to change into modest, old-school bathing suits. Then we all swam. Bronwyn and Emma raced each other while the rest of us paddled around; once we'd exhausted ourselves, we climbed onto the sand and napped. When the sun was too hot we fell back into the water, and when the chilly sea made us shiver we crawled out again, and so it went until our shadows began to lengthen across the cove.

We got to talking. They had a million questions for me, and, far away from Miss Peregrine, I could answer them frankly. What was my world like? What did people eat, drink, wear? When would sickness and death be overcome by science? They lived in splendor but were starving for new faces and new stories. I told them whatever I could, racking my brain for nuggets of twentieth-century history from Mrs. Johnston's class—the moon landing! the Berlin Wall! Vietnam!—but they were hardly comprehensive.

It was my time's technology and standard of living that amazed them most. Our houses were air-conditioned. They'd heard of televisions but had never seen one and were shocked to learn that my family had a talking-picture box in almost every room. Air travel was as common and affordable to us as train travel was to them. Our army fought with remote-controlled drones. We carried telephone-computers that fit in our pockets, and even though mine didn't work here (nothing electronic seemed to), I pulled it out just to show them its sleek, mirrored enclosure.

It was edging toward sunset when we finally started back. Emma stuck to me like glue, the back of her hand brushing mine as we walked. Passing an apple tree on the outskirts of town, she stopped to pick one, but even on tiptoes the lowest fruit was out of reach, so I did what any gentleman would do and gave her a boost, wrapping my arms around her waist and trying not to groan as I lifted, her white arm outstretched, wet hair glinting in the sun. When I let her down she gave me a little kiss on the cheek and handed me the apple.

"Here," she said, "you earned it."

"The apple or the kiss?"

She laughed and ran off to catch up with the others. I didn't know what to call it, what was happening between us, but I liked it. It felt silly and fragile and good. I put the apple in my pocket and ran after her.

When we came to the bog and I said I had to go home, she pretended to pout. "At least let me escort you," she said, so we waved goodbye to the others and crossed over to the cairn, me doing my best to memorize the placement of her feet as we went.

When we got there I said, "Come with me to the other side a minute."

"I shouldn't. I've got to get back or the Bird will suspect us."

"Suspect us of what?"

She smiled coyly. "Of ... something."

"Something."

"She's always on the lookout for something," she said, laughing.

I changed tactics. "Then why don't you come see me tomorrow instead?"

"See you? Over there?"

"Why not? Miss Peregrine won't be around to watch us. You could even meet my dad. We won't tell him who you are, obviously. And then maybe he'll ease up a little about where I'm going and what I'm doing all the time. Me hanging out with a hot girl? That's like his fondest dad-dream wish."

I thought she might smile at the hot girl thing, but instead she turned serious. "The Bird only allows us to go over for a few minutes at a time, just to keep the loop open, you know."

"So tell her that's what you're doing!"

She sighed. "I want to. I do. But it's a bad idea."

"She's got you on a pretty short leash."

"You don't know what you're talking about," she said with a scowl. "And thanks for comparing me to a dog. That was brilliant."

I wondered how we'd gone from flirting to fighting so quickly. "I didn't mean it like that."

"It's not that I wouldn't like to," she said. "I just can't."

"Okay, I'll make you a deal. Forget coming for the whole day. Just come over for a minute, right now."

"One minute? What can we do in one minute?"

I grinned. "You'd be surprised."

"Tell me!" she said, pushing me.

"Take your picture."

Her smile disappeared. "I'm not exactly at my most fetching," she said doubtfully.

"No, you're great. Really."

"Just one minute? Promise?"

I let her go into the cairn first. When we came out again the world was misty and cold, though thankfully the rain had stopped. I pulled out my phone and was happy to see that my theory was right. On this side of the loop, electronic things worked fine.

"Where's your camera?" she said, shivering. "Let's get this over with!"

I held up the phone and took her picture. She just shook her head, as if nothing about my bizarre world could surprise her anymore. Then she dodged away, and I had to chase her around the cairn, both of us laughing, Emma ducking out of view only to pop up again and vamp for the camera. A minute later I'd taken so many pictures that my phone had nearly run out of memory.

Emma ran to the mouth of the cairn and blew me an air-kiss. "See you tomorrow, future boy!"

I lifted my hand to wave goodbye, and she ducked into the stone tunnel.

* * *

I skipped back to town freezing and wet and grinning like an idiot. I was still blocks away from the pub when I heard a strange sound rising above the hum of generators—someone calling my name. Following the voice, I found my father standing in the street in a soggy sweater, breath pluming before him like muffler exhaust on a cold morning.

"Jacob! I've been looking for you!"

"You said be back by dinner, so here I am!"

"Forget dinner. Come with me."

My father never skipped dinner. Something was most definitely amiss.

"What's going on?"

"I'll explain on the way," he said, marching me toward the pub. Then he got a good look at me. "You're all wet!" he exclaimed. "For God's sake, did you lose your other jacket, too?"

"I, uh ..."

"And why is your face red? You look sunburned."

Crap. A whole afternoon at the beach without sunblock. "I'm all hot from running," I said, though the skin on my arms was pimpled from cold. "What's happening? Did someone die, or what?"

"No, no, no," he said. "Well, sort of. Some sheep."

"What's that got to do with us?"

"They think it was kids who did it. Like a vandalism thing."

"They who? The sheep police?"

"The farmers," he said. "They've interrogated everyone under the age of twenty. Naturally, they're pretty interested in where you've been all day."

My stomach sank. I didn't exactly have a watertight cover story, and I raced to think of one as we approached the Priest Hole.

Outside the pub, a small crowd was gathered around a quorum of very pissed-off-looking sheep farmers. One wore muddy coveralls and leaned threateningly on a pitchfork. Another had Worm by the collar. Worm was dressed in neon track pants and a shirt that read I LOVE IT WHEN THEY CALL ME BIG POPPA. He'd been crying, snot bubbling on his upper lip.