Emma put a hand on his arm. “Hugh, that just won’t work—”

  “Sure it will! We’ve got a helicopter!”

  LaMothe turned around and glared. “This is my helicopter, boy, and the only place it’s going is the nearest loop, so we can save this girl’s life.” His glare shifted to Miss Peregrine. “Get your ward under control.”

  “Please, Hugh, you must calm down,” Miss Peregrine said. “We need to choose our next move very carefully. We’re all upset about this. We’re all worried about Miss Frauenfeld. But this critical moment is the worst time to flail about blindly with no plan.”

  “Fiona’s loop-bound, too,” Hugh muttered. “She’ll age forward, too.”

  “Oh God,” Emma said, going a bit pale. “I forgot.”

  I had forgotten, too. Because Fiona wasn’t at the Library of Souls with us when it collapsed, she hadn’t had her internal clock reset like the others. Which meant she could age forward.

  “It’s likely they took Fiona prisoner after Miss Wren’s loop collapse, months and months ago,” Miss Peregrine said. “She was seen leaping from the cliff’s edge. We can only surmise that she survived the fall and was collected from the woods below.”

  Hugh’s eyes fell shut as he imagined it. “What have they been doing with her? And what do they want with her?”

  “We don’t yet know,” said Miss Peregrine, “but you can be sure they didn’t keep her alive all this time just to let her age forward in the middle of”—Miss Peregrine glanced out the window—“Iowa.”

  “Yeah,” Hugh said miserably. “I suppose.”

  “After we make this one stop,” Miss Peregrine said, “we’ll return to Devil’s Acre, gather all our people and intelligence, and make a proper plan. And we will get her back.”

  He nodded. “If you say so, miss.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  We touched down in a field next to an old barn, trees and bushes whipping in the downwash. The ymbrynes and the Americans were out of the helicopter before the rotors even began to slow. Miss Wren and Miss Cuckoo winged into the barn in bird form, and by the time the rest of us had caught up to them, they were in their human shape and somehow fully dressed again, not a hair out of place.

  We helped LaMothe and his bodyguard carry Ellery up a ladder to the barn loft where the loop entrance was, and after a quick changeover that left my stomach jittery, we carried her down again and out into a warm, foggy morning.

  “Hold it right there!” someone said, and then I saw a man pointing a gun at us.

  He was seated casually in a wooden chair, and he wore a top hat and an odd, mustachioed mask. “Name and clan affiliation!” he barked.

  “Don’t you know who I am?” LaMothe thundered back.

  “Don’t much care, so long as you’re not a Yankee and you got fifty bucks for entry.” Then he tipped his head, sat forward, and muttered, “Wait a dadburn second . . .”

  “That’s right,” said LaMothe’s bodyguard. “This is Antoine LaMothe. And if you don’t want to find yourself in front of a firing squad—”

  Instantly the man tossed away his gun and threw himself on the ground. “Sorry, Mr. LaMothe, sir, I didn’t recognize, I mean, didn’t expect you—”

  Miss Wren stepped forward and pulled the man to his feet. “We need a bed for this poor girl,” she said. “Somewhere we can make her comfortable while we apply a few poultices.”

  “Of course, of course,” the man said, laughing nervously, “there’s an establishment just this way, very accommodating, and no doubt they’ll waive the cost for distinguished persons like yourselves . . .”

  We followed him as he led the way, bowing and scraping, toward a cluster of clapboard buildings. The largest had an awning that read RESTOURANT, spelled just like that. There were three people loafing at the entrance—a waiter in a white jacket and two cooks in matching aprons. The masked man shouted at them to prepare a room, and they straightened and disappeared inside.

  The ymbrynes left us outside. “We won’t be long,” Miss Peregrine said to us. “We just have to make sure the girl is stable, and then we’ll go.”

  Hugh was a bundle of nervous energy. He was struggling to keep his freak-out contained, and it was making a vein on his temple throb. I couldn’t blame him. The love of his life was in the hands of Caul’s most notorious lieutenants, and God knew what was happening—or had happened already—to her.

  But there was nothing any of us could do about it right then, so I looked around the bleak little town for something that might distract him.

  “Wanna know why Karl wears a mask? Bet you do,” trilled a little voice, and then a young girl emerged from around the corner of the restaurant. She couldn’t have been more than six. Her clothes were simple, brown hair cut into a short bob.

  “Why?” Enoch said boredly. “Ambrosia addict?”

  “It’s for anonymonimity,” she said, tripping over the word, then trying it again several times without success. “Whoever’s guarding the entrance always wears a mask. Just in case they have to kill anyone? So people don’t go revengin’ on ’em?”

  “You don’t say,” said Enoch, more interested now.

  “I’m Elsie, and you’re new. You all here with those demi-ymbrynes to change the loop clock’s gears? They been getting stuck lately, causing trouble.” She spoke in rapid singsong, her face intense with curiosity.

  “Those weren’t demi-ymbrynes,” Emma said. “They were real ones.”

  “Ha!” she said. “You folks are funnnnn-y!”

  “We’re not joking,” I said.

  “And the furry guy with them was the leader of the Northern clan,” Enoch said.

  “Serious?” Elsie said, her eyes going wide. “What’re y’all doing here?”

  “Can’t talk about it,” said Enoch. “Top secret.”

  “And we’re not staying long,” Hugh added pointedly, and then his eyebrow shot up. “Unless . . . you didn’t happen to see four men come through here with a girl earlier today, did you?”

  “Nope. Nobody’s come through in months.”

  Hugh’s face fell.

  “Except ol’ hangy there.” She pointed to a desiccated corpse hung from a gallows across the street. “He was a highwayman tried to rob us? So we shot him and hung him up there as a warning? We take a real dim view of thievin’ ever since Brother Ted’s sparkstone got stole.” She eyed us hopefully. “You’re not here about that, are you?”

  “About what?” Enoch said.

  “Brother Ted’s sparkstone. I was hopin’ maybe if such important folks were here it’s ’cause the man who stole it been caught, and you all’s come to return it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emma said, with a note of genuine regret. “We don’t know anything about that.”

  “Oh.” Her unsinkable spirits deflated a little. “You want to meet Brother Ted anyhow? I know it’d cheer him. He ain’t been the same.”

  “We really shouldn’t,” Emma said.

  Elsie’s head hung. “Aww, I understand,” she said, then glanced over at a little house not far away. “Though he lives just over yonder . . .”

  “Why not,” I said. “If it’s close.”

  I met eyes with Emma and nodded at Hugh, and she got the message.

  “Yeah, let’s meet him,” she said, hooking her arm around Hugh’s.

  “Twenty-three skidoo!” the girl yipped.

  Hugh came reluctantly, and we all walked over to the little house while Elsie talked a mile a minute. “It’s been slow, slow, slow lately, nobody around at all. Just some salesman and the loop keeper. Teacher’s supposed to come and give me lessons soon. Other than that, it’s awful boring here. Where do you come from?”

  “London,” Emma said.

  “Oh. I always wanted to go somewhere big like that. Is it nice?”

  Enoch laughed. “Not particularly.”

  “That’s okay, I still want to see it. What time are you from? I mean, when were you born?”

  “You ask a lot of questions,” Hugh said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m famous for. Brother Ted calls me the interrogatrix. Will you take me with you when you go home?”

  Emma looked surprised. “You don’t like it here?”

  “I just want to see someplace besides Locust Gap. I was born in Cincinnati, by the way. But I been here since I was four.”

  “That’s not so long,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I reckon not. I’m only forty-four.”

  We entered the little house.

  It was like stepping into an oven. There was a huge fireplace roaring with flames, a pile of heavy blankets in front of it.

  “Hi, Brother,” said Elsie, and the blanket pile turned slightly in our direction. There was a kid in there, cocooned in the middle of all that.

  “Good Lord,” said Hugh. “He’ll be roasted alive!”

  “Don’t touch him,” Elsie warned. “You’ll get frostbite. He’s got a temperature of minus fifty.”

  “H-h-h-hello there,” the boy said, shivering the words out. His skin was blue, his eyes red-rimmed.

  “Poor thing,” Emma whispered.

  Sweat was already beading on my forehead, but as I approached the boy I could feel waves of cold emanating from him, beating back the heat and the sweat.

  I turned to Elsie. “You said someone stole his—what now?”

  “His sparkstone,” she said, and gave the boy a mournful smile. “He’d tell you himself, but it’s hard for him to talk, his tongue gets so stiff with cold.”

  “Maybe I can help,” said Emma, “if just for a little while,” and she summoned flames in both her hands, stoked them until they were bright, and stood with them held above the boy.

  “That’s n-n-nice,” he chattered. “Th-th-thank you, m-ma’am.”

  The temperature was getting unbearable. The hotter it became, the more I began to notice a strange, acrid smell. Like someone cooking trash. But I tried to forget about it and focus; the boy was warming just enough to form sentences now.

  “I have this c-condition,” Ted said, his skin a shade or two less blue. “Only thing that ever helped me live normal was the sparkstone. A little green stone that was always aflame and never went out, which my ymbryne gave to me long ago.” He looked sad and wistful. “This was back when we had ymbrynes. She’d brought it from far away, she said, ’c-cross the sea. She said if I kept it in my s-stomach it would keep me warm always. And it did for a long, long time.”

  The smell was starting to become even more oppressive than the heat. I pinched my nose closed against it. Strangely, it didn’t seem to be bothering anyone else.

  “And then that man came to town,” the boy went on, his words flowing easily now. “He said he was a doctor. I was always a little cold, never could go without a coat and a sweater—and he said he could fix that for me. If I just coughed up the sparkstone and let him tinker with it.”

  I was listening so intently that I didn’t realize I had been walking toward the corner of the room until I was halfway there. Something was drawing me. The smell. And a queasy feeling.

  “He took it from me,” said the boy. “And when I tried to chase him and get it back, something stopped me. Something strong that I couldn’t see.” He was shaking his head, blinking back tears. “It pinned me to the wall. Stuffed my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I passed out . . .”

  There, in the corner, was a spot on the floor that had been stained black. The source of the smell.

  “Jacob,” Emma said quickly, “that sounds like—”

  “A hollowgast,” I said. “And there’s a drop of its residue right here.”

  The boy nodded. “That’s where it held me.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Five, six months ago,” said Elsie.

  “What did the man look like?”

  “Like anybody,” he said, blinking. “Like . . . nobody.”

  “He had glasses, didn’t he, Ted?” Elsie said. “Dark glasses that he never took off.”

  There was a loud knock on the door, and it opened. Miss Peregrine came into the room and then drew in a sharp breath, overwhelmed by the heat.

  “We’re going,” she said.

  Hugh and Enoch said quick goodbyes and ran after Miss Peregrine.

  Elsie looked at me, pleading. “Ain’t there something you can do? You know fancy people . . .”

  “We have a lot on our plate right now,” I said, “but we won’t forget you.”

  Elsie nodded. Bit her lip.

  “Thank you,” Ted said. “It’s always nice to see friendly faces. Don’t get much of that around here.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Emma said to him. “I wish we could stay longer.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, sighing, and he turned his gaze heavily back toward the fireplace.

  Elsie did, too, and for a moment in the strong light of the fire she looked both young and ancient, and lost.

  Emma slowly closed her hands. She seemed so sad and sorry. We barely knew these people, but her heart was, as I already knew, bigger than France.

  By the time we got to the door, the boy had already started to turn blue again.

  We left Ellery in Locust Gap with LaMothe’s bodyguard. I wanted to see how she was doing, but the ymbrynes insisted that she needed rest and quiet, not visitors. Our fast action had saved her life, but what kind it would be remained to be seen; she had aged most of a normal lifetime in a single evening, and the effect that had on one’s brain was often dramatic. Still, LaMothe seemed grateful for what we’d done. He didn’t say as much, but I could tell. He was quiet on the helicopter ride back to Marrowbone, less quick to snap and grumble, and his raccoons had finally stopped whining and writhing.

  The rest of us didn’t talk much. Enoch fell asleep. Emma talked quietly with Hugh for most of the ride, massaging his balled fists back into open hands.

  I thought about Noor. I’d been doing that a lot, lately, pretty much whenever I wasn’t being distracted by someone less interesting or something life-threatening. In quiet moments, I only had to picture her face and I’d feel 10, 20 percent less stressed. The tension that cleaved my chest nearly all the time would slacken—and sometimes, if I pictured being close to her, if I imagined kissing her, that tension would shift into something else, a clench of pure wanting, of desire.

  If I was being honest, it was something I’d never felt about Emma. What we’d had was so chaste, so Victorian. What I felt for Noor was different. More chemical. More visceral.

  But tender, too.

  She was so brand-new to this world. I wondered how she was feeling, whether she was adjusting. Was she okay? Were they making any progress with Millard’s maps, coming any closer to finding V’s loop? What would that be like, if—no, when—Noor found her?

  Which reminded me: What about finding Fiona?

  Since Ellery and LaMothe’s bodyguards weren’t along for this ride, Miss Wren and Miss Cuckoo had the space to stay in human form, and they talked low and serious with Miss Peregrine for most of the trip. I hoped they were hatching ideas about where the wights had taken Fiona—for Fiona’s sake and for Hugh’s—but I couldn’t be sure. Before all this had happened, Hugh had actually begun to have moments of peace and fun and levity, but now the wound had been ripped open again, and it was twice as wide. I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t rest until she was back among us and safe again, and that if, bird forbid, something happened to her, it would absolutely kill him.

  I shoved that thought away, and in its place a question popped into my head that I’d been dying to ask Miss Peregrine. I couldn’t do it over the headset mic, though. It wasn’t something I wanted LaMothe to hear.

  He seemed to be asleep, his bald head smooshed against the window, but still.

  I couldn’t wait, either.

  “I have to know something.” I leaned over her seat, whispering, and she turned away from the other ymbrynes. “Back in Marrowbone, in the camp, when you found the start of the hollowgast’s trail? It wasn’t just the boot print, was it?”

  Miss Peregrine shook her head. “No.”

  Hugh was listening intently now.

  “I found this outside the tent, amongst the trees.” And she drew from her blouse a pressed purple flower. A dog rose.

  Hugh reached out and touched it, turned it over in his hand. “She was there?”

  “Yes. And the wights never were.” Miss Peregrine got so quiet I was half reading her lips. “It was Fiona who brought the girl to the hollowgast, which had hidden itself a safe distance from the Northern clan’s camp, waiting.”

  “I don’t understand.” Hugh’s brow was scrunched, his eyes darting around. “She was helping them?”

  “Not willingly. I’ve been conferring with Misses Wren and Cuckoo about this, and we believe she was—and likely still is—mind controlled. The bus accident was the result of a lapse in that control. Fiona tried to escape. Perhaps even to kill her captors.”

  Emma gasped. Hugh said nothing; his jaw was clenched so tight I feared for his teeth.

  “Damn, they probably want to kill her,” Enoch muttered, then clapped a hand over his mouth. Emma shot him a poisonous look.

  “No,” Miss Peregrine said. “The wights are too focused, too practical. They’ve kept her alive, and gone to all the trouble of bringing her here from Wales, for a reason. Whatever that reason is, it’s not yet been fulfilled. They won’t kill her.”

  “Not yet,” Hugh said. “Not until they’re done with her.”

  LaMothe was stirring. There was nothing else to say.

  We rode the rest of the way to Marrowbone in tense silence.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆