“If it’s you she’s asking for,” Miss Blackbird said, “I’d imagine there’s a hollowgast involved.”

  I swallowed hard. That old tightness in my chest again. “Just let me get dressed.”

  “There’s no way we’re letting him go alone,” Noor said. She had slipped in beside me without my noticing, and when I glanced at her in surprise, she squeezed my hand.

  “I would never have advised that Jacob go alone,” said Miss Blackbird, “but you’re much too inexperienced, Miss Pradesh. And besides, Leo Burnham and his men will be there, and seeing you would be like kicking a nest of angry hornets.”

  “I know that,” Noor said, frowning. “I wasn’t going to suggest myself . . .”

  I was secretly glad; the idea of taking Noor anywhere near a hollowgast—voluntarily—made my stomach hurt.

  “Choose two friends,” said Miss Blackbird, ignoring Noor. “Get dressed and meet me outside in three minutes.”

  And then she swept outside in a dramatic flourish and slapped the door closed behind her.

  I needed no time to think about it: I asked Emma and Enoch to come with me. Even though Enoch was a pain in the ass and things were a little tense with Emma at the moment, they were brave, resourceful, and good under pressure. I knew I could count on them.

  “I’ll get my things,” Emma said, her face hardening with resolve, and she dashed up the creaky stairs.

  Enoch grinned. “Oh, fine, I’ll save your arse again . . . Let me get a few pickled hearts.” And he ran after Emma.

  Then we all went upstairs. I put on the new clothes and boots I’d gotten the day before and said goodbye to everyone. My friends filed past me in the hall, wishing me luck and whispering advice: “Give ’em hell, Jacob,” said Hugh; “Watch your back!” worried Horace; “Do what Miss Peregrine tells you,” said Claire. I pretended to be unafraid, but something icy was building in the pit of my stomach.

  For a moment, Noor and I found ourselves alone.

  “Are you really the only one who can do this?” she asked me. “Don’t the ymbrynes have, like, adults who can handle things like this for them?”

  “Not this kind of problem,” I said, “if it’s what I think it is.”

  “I know,” she said. “Just had to ask.” She was trying to put on a brave face, but couldn’t hide her worry. I hoped I was hiding mine.

  “I wish you could come, but I think Miss Blackbird is right.”

  “I have too much to do here, anyway.” She paused, looking uncertain, then said, “I remembered something else last night. From when I was a little kid with Mama. It was a road sign I could see from our driveway. I don’t know if it’s a big deal or not. But I need to find out.”

  “It could be something,” I said. “Are you sure you’ll be okay here?”

  “You’re the one to worry about. I’ll probably just be combing through old books with Millard and company.”

  It was sweet to hear her refer to my peculiar friends by name so easily. She was fast becoming one of us.

  “I know you’ll find her,” I said. “And I’d really like to be there when it happens.”

  “I’d like that, too,” Noor said.

  She attacked me with a hug. “Take care of yourself,” she said into my chest. “I need you in one piece.”

  We stood there holding each other for a long moment. I didn’t want to move.

  “I’ll be fine. Promise.”

  “You better be.”

  “And I’ll be back soon.”

  I kissed the top of her head. She smelled like shampoo and books, and the ice that had been forming in my stomach began, ever so slightly, to melt.

  “Ahem.”

  Enoch was standing on the stairs, arms folded.

  And then there was a knock at the door and I heard Miss Blackbird shout, “That’s three minutes, Mr. Portman!”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Miss Blackbird was silent as she led Emma, Enoch, and me across the Acre. The sunrise had not quite broken yet, and home guard soldiers were still out enforcing the new curfew.

  We reached Bentham’s house. A few Temporal Affairs minions stood watch outside, and on the roof I could see more guards peering out into the distance. Everyone was on high alert.

  We went inside and up the stairs, but instead of stopping at one of the usual floors, we kept climbing. The door to the loop where the conference was being held wasn’t in the main Panloopticon hallway, but in Bentham’s dusty attic, surrounded by his old, glass-encased curiosities.

  At the far end of the room was a beautiful old elevator. This, Miss Blackbird told us, was the loop entrance. It was new, she explained, connected by the ymbrynes especially for the conference. She pressed a small brass button on the door and the elevator slid open. The interior was all rich, oiled wood. There was a panel on the rear wall with a large lever attached and three words stamped around it in art deco lettering: UP, DOWN, and LOOP.

  “Please watch yourselves over there. America,” she muttered, shaking her head, “is no place for children.”

  “Sounds like you’re ready to start planning our funeral,” Enoch said as we filed into the elevator.

  “Not at all!” Miss Blackbird said, then tried to smile encouragingly. “Best of luck, hey?”

  Here goes nothing, I thought, and threw the lever all the way to LOOP. The door slid closed by itself. The elevator car descended a foot, then jolted to a stop.

  Enoch looked irritated and said, “What the devil—”

  And then we began to free-fall.

  My feet floated off the floor and my last meal threatened to come up.

  “What . . . is . . . happening?” Emma managed to say, though I could hardly hear her over my popping ears.

  And then everything went black, and we lurched suddenly and dramatically to the left and were thrown against the wall. A few seconds later, a pleasant chime sounded—ding!—and the lights flicked on again. We came to a shuddering stop.

  I was swaying on my feet, battling nausea, when the door slid open to a wall of darkness. We were hit by a rush of hot, damp air, which felt like being bear-hugged by a big, sweaty man.

  “Where are we?” said Enoch, and I felt a wave of dread pass over me.

  Emma lit a flame in her hand as she took a tentative step out of the elevator, and the glow showed us a long, rugged tunnel hewn from rock, not much taller or wider than me.

  I was slammed with a flood of awful sense memories, and my skin puckered despite the heat. The last time I was in a place like this, I was shot with a gun, and a giant tree-creature had nearly killed everyone I cared about.

  Emma must have been feeling something similar. “Oh God,” she said, “you don’t think we got sent to the—”

  “Don’t be daft,” Enoch said. “That place got flushed down the interdimensional loo.”

  “You’re in a gold mine, a half mile underground.”

  It was Miss Peregrine’s voice, doubling, tripling with echoes, and with it came an instant relief. This wasn’t a nightmare. We hadn’t been sent back to that hell-maze.

  A gleam of light appeared and she came around a corner, a lantern shining in her hand.

  “Miss P!” Emma cried. “Are you okay? What’s happening?”

  We rushed toward her and she toward us. Emma gave her a quick, hard embrace.

  “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “But you and Mr. O’Connor shouldn’t have come. This is a dangerous place.”

  “Figured that,” said Enoch. “Which is exactly why we came.”

  “Miss Blackbird told me to bring friends,” I said in their defense, “and I asked them.”

  It was clear Miss Peregrine didn’t approve, but she knew trying to send them back would be useless. It amazed me: After everything we’d all faced together, she was still underestimating her charges.

  “All right,” she said, shaking her head. “So long as you stay quiet, stay behind me, don’t talk to Americans, and don’t wander off on your own. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, miss,” they said in unison.

  She nodded. “Welcome to Marrowbone, children. We have quite a mess on our hands.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Whose crackpot idea was it to hold the peace conference down a mine?”

  Enoch had to shout his question at Miss Peregrine’s back—she was walking so fast we were practically chasing her through the tunnels.

  “This is just the entrance. The talks are being held in the town above us, at the surface. I wish you were costumed in era-appropriate clothes.” She gestured to a sign pointing down another spur of the tunnel that read COSTUMING. “But there isn’t time, and the normals in this loop have mostly been rounded up anyway.”

  “Rounded up?” I said.

  She didn’t answer me.

  We came to another elevator, much more primitive and scary-looking than the last. We crowded into its wire cage and Miss Peregrine pulled a lever on the floor. A giant engine roared to life somewhere, and the elevator began to screech upward. It was a claustrophobe’s nightmare: All we saw for a while, on all sides of us, was passing rock.

  “It’s a long ride,” Miss Peregrine said, her voice rising over the noise, “so now’s a good time to tell you a few things. Besides which, it’s hard to find a place in Marrowbone where an American spy isn’t trying to overhear what you’re saying.”

  I couldn’t help but notice how tired Miss Peregrine seemed. Her hair was disheveled and her blouse was tucked in crookedly—the kinds of details she never overlooked.

  “There was a kidnapping earlier today. The victim was an important peculiar in the Northern clan, and it appeared she was taken by someone from the Californio clan, so a posse of Northerners was assembled, and despite the ymbrynes’ strident objections, they rode into the Californios’ camp and took a prisoner. Fighting broke out, but thankfully we were able to stop it before anyone was killed.”

  “But that’s not the whole story, I’m guessing,” Emma said.

  “No. The ‘evidence’ of the Californios’ guilt is too perfectly obvious—almost constructed. It stinks of the wights. Not to mention it occurred only a few hours after the wights’ prison break. I believe they snuck in and took the girl, and did it in a way that implicated the Californios—practically guaranteeing a conflict between clans that would destroy our attempts to make peace. It took an immense amount of persuasion on our part to prevent a battle in the middle of town today. I’m afraid we’ve only managed to delay one, unless we can prove beyond a doubt that wights were responsible.”

  “And you think a hollowgast might have been involved,” I said. “And that’s why you called for me.”

  “Yes,” the ymbryne said.

  “You want me to find evidence,” I said. “Something only I can see.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You want Jacob to prevent a war,” said Enoch, twisting a finger in his ear as if he hadn’t heard correctly. “By giving the Americans evidence they can’t see?”

  “You’ll have to figure out a way to make them see it,” Miss Peregrine said, and she laid her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, my boy. But you’re the best hope we have right now.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  We came out of that black hell into a cool bright day, and I could breathe for the first time in a while. Miss Peregrine led us quickly past three men with guns. One looked like a mountain man, decked in raggedy furs. The second was dressed like a cowboy in a wide-brimmed hat and a long leather duster coat. The third, in a suit and tie, had to be one of Leo Burnham’s guys. They were staring one another down with such intensity that they barely registered our presence.

  “One sentry from each of the American clans,” Miss Peregrine said under her breath. “Best not to make eye contact.”

  And then we came to our ride. I’d been expecting something along the lines of a stagecoach. Instead, there was a horse-drawn, glass-enclosed hearse waiting for us.

  “It was all they had on short notice,” Miss Peregrine said by way of apology. “Climb in.”

  Enoch oohed. Emma made a sour face but made no comment.

  There was no time to debate.

  The hearse’s attendant held the back door open for us, and we climbed inside. There was just enough headroom to sit upright.

  “How fancy!” said Enoch, running a hand over the black velvet curtains.

  It was the second time in three days that I’d taken up space normally reserved for a dead body. It seemed like the universe was trying to tell me something, and not in a terribly subtle way.

  Miss Peregrine said something to the driver, a long-bearded man with a flat aspect. He flicked the reins and we took off, leaving the attendant behind with the three armed men.

  A landscape of forests and hills rolled by, and those hills not covered in trees were littered with mining machinery: narrow-gauge train cars heaped with excavated rock; machines belching steam and smoke into the air; heaps of slag. There were a few actual miners here and there, smoking, leaning tiredly on shovels—looped normals from the period, I assumed.

  Miss Peregrine pointed out the clans’ camps as we rode: That collection of buffalo-hide tents at the forest’s edge was where the Northern delegation camped. The Californios’ delegation occupied Poverty Flat, the shacks at the edge of town. And Leo’s Five Boroughs clan stayed in the Eagle Pass Hotel, the best (and only) accommodations in Marrowbone.

  “Where do the ymbrynes sleep, then?” I asked.

  “In trees,” she said simply.

  We rode into town through Poverty Flat, a depressing collection of hovels that looked like they might blow away in a strong breeze.

  A few blocks later, we were in the center of Marrowbone—and it was a proper Old West town, the first I’d seen with my own eyes. The streets were lined with the usual assortment of saddle shops, gunsmiths, and saloons I’d come to expect from watching cowboy movies. Only one thing seemed off: There was no one around.

  The horses slowed, then stopped. Miss Peregrine called out to the driver and asked what the matter was.

  “I ain’t goin’ one foot farther,” he said. One of his horses let out a high, nervous whinny.

  “Looks like this is our stop,” Miss Peregrine said, and we climbed out.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  Miss Peregrine gestured up the street. “Just ahead.”

  I squinted, then saw them—dozens of people standing in the shadows of awnings, crouched behind barrels and wagons, on opposite sides of the street. The Northerners on our left, facing the Californios on our right. As we walked toward them—yes, toward them—it became quickly apparent the two clans were in some kind of silent standoff, like the armed men at the mine entrance.

  “Neutral party!” Miss Peregrine shouted as we approached. “Hold your fire!”

  “Hold fire!” shouted someone on the Northerners’ side of the street.

  “Hold fire!” came the reply from the Californios’ side.

  Another ymbryne stole out of a storefront and hurried down the wooden sidewalk toward us. It was Miss Cuckoo, her metallic silver hair and dark skin vivid against Marrowbone’s chalky, sun-bleached streets.

  “Alma!” She was anxious, short of breath. Her eyes flicked toward me. “Good, you’ve got him. They are all waiting.”

  “Have there been any aggressions?” asked Miss Peregrine. “Any shots fired?”

  “Not yet, by some miracle,” said Miss Cuckoo.

  We followed her quickly back the way she’d come, our shoes ringing hollowly against the wooden sidewalk. I couldn’t imagine what Miss Cuckoo was talking about until I saw, among the Northerners, a sallow-faced woman armed with a giant log—a foot thick and twenty long, at least—held over her shoulder like a javelin she might toss. Not far from her stood a pair of men with dead birds hanging from their belts and shotguns in their hands, and near them was a young girl rolling a boulder from side to side on the ground in front of her, using just the tip of one finger to move it. On the Californio side, a boy in a cowboy hat was glaring across the street while kneading his hands, and I could see electric sparks coursing between his fingers. An even younger boy stood at fearless attention with a bandolier of bullets strapped across his chest and a sombrero on his head so big it smooshed down his ears a little.

  Both sides of the street bristled with people brandishing weapons—peculiar and conventional—and it was clear just one act of violence could set off a bloody battle.

  Miss Peregrine stopped and turned to us. “We’re about to meet the clan leaders,” she said. “Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.” And then she turned and went through a doorway, and we followed her into what I gathered was a saloon—bar, tables, the sour smell of spilled beer.

  There were maybe ten people inside, clustered around a couple of the tables near the bar, and as soon as we walked in, they all fell silent and turned to stare at us. Miss Cuckoo blocked our way and hissed, “Wait,” while Miss Peregrine approached a gentlemanly fellow in a wheelchair.

  “That’s Mr. Parkins,” Miss Cuckoo whispered to us, “leader of the Californio clan.” Across the room, a man in a voluminous buffalo coat was staring bullets at Parkins while rolling a coin between the knuckles of one hand. “Antoine LaMothe, head of the Northern clan,” Miss Cuckoo added. Flanking the two leaders were men I took to be their personal guards—one was dressed like a fur trapper, the other like John Wayne—and a small, elegant older woman I recognized as Miss Wren was speaking to LaMothe in an undertone.

  “And over there is Leo Burnham,” said Miss Cuckoo, “who I believe you already know.”

  It was him, all right. Unmistakable in his pinstriped suit, cream-colored homburg, and purple tie, one elbow up on the bar, watching the proceedings with a vaguely amused look while sipping a drink. I resisted a powerful urge to go punch his ugly face.