“He clearly knew about the prophecy,” Noor said, bending the light between her fingers. “If he thought that angel-of-the-pit stuff was about him, maybe he assumed it was his fate to get trapped.”

  “What if it was part of his plan?” Millard seemed to be testing out a theory. “To be buried in the Library of Souls . . .”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He didn’t want that to happen. He was furious.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly what he wanted us to think.”

  “Oh, hell,” Enoch said. “You lot have gone around the bend.”

  “Think about it.” Millard’s tone was heavy, serious. “He was always talking about the old powerful peculiars, how they were the most pure expression of peculiarhood, et cetera. That’s why he wanted the Library, to mine it for its powers. But maybe the only way he could really do that was if he was buried in it—then resurrected from it with all the powers of the library at his fingertips.”

  “Born again,” Emma whispered loudly. “As a god.”

  I got chills.

  Miss Peregrine clacked her needles together. “My brother was a power-hungry madman with a poisoned soul. But he was not, and will never be, a god.”

  “But he’s been preparing for this,” Emma said. “They all have.”

  “Even if he has, he isn’t back yet, and we’re not going to let him come back. So there’s no need to spin out terrifying speculations and work ourselves into a lather.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Swenson, why don’t you turn on the radio?”

  The driver snapped on the radio. A pop song began to play. Something about a breakup. I heard Emma sigh.

  Noor pressed her hand to her lips and exhaled a ghostly light against the window, where it spread like rolling fog, evanescent, before dissolving back into the air.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Hopewell had been something once, but in the present day it was hardly a town anymore. We passed the broken-down ruins of an industrial plant, then street after street of empty lots and falling-down houses. It was a Rust Belt town that had died with the industry that made it; there were probably a hundred towns like it within a day’s drive.

  I kept my senses sharp for hollowgast, and we all kept an eye out for any sign of wights or cars they might have driven here and then stashed before going into the loop entrance, or anything strange at all. We didn’t know whether the wights were here, or had already been here and left, or if the Americans’ tip about Hopewell was worthless. So far, we’d found nothing, just piles of wreck and trash, thickets of brush—all easy places to hide vehicles, and much more than we had time to search.

  To my surprise, the entrance to the deadrisers’ loop was not in a cemetery or a funeral home, as one might expect. It was in a little park in the middle of the town, the only well-lit and well-maintained place we’d seen. There was a stone obelisk at the center of it. Behind a door hidden in its base was the loop entrance.

  The rain began to slacken. Our convoy of SUVs parked within sight of the park, idling while the ymbrynes conferred with one another.

  It was decided we should all go in together, so we wouldn’t get separated.

  We ran across the wet grass to the obelisk in a big group. Bronwyn yanked open the door. It was dark inside. Inscribed on the face of the obelisk were rows and rows of names.

  LEST WE FORGET

  The interior was tiny. There was room only for two.

  I went first, to feel out for hollows. Noor came with me.

  “When you get to the other side, stay put,” Miss Peregrine said. “We’ll see you in thirty seconds.”

  The door swung closed. We were briefly engulfed by darkness, then felt a light rushing sensation. We came out to find the world changed utterly. Now it was day—a cheerful summer morning. The formerly decrepit streets were stocked with cute, pocket-sized houses on small lots, and the stone obelisk we had stepped into was not what we stepped out of—instead we exited from one of the houses and emerged onto its front step, edged with blooming flowers.

  “Not what you’d expect,” Noor remarked, surveying our utterly pleasant surroundings.

  We waited. Looked around. The yard was staked with little American flags, and the houses across the street were decorated with red, white, and blue bunting. It looked like the town was getting ready for a Fourth of July parade. Or it had been, on the day the loop was made. Cars from the 1940s and 50s were parked in driveways up and down the block. A dog came trotting out of a bright red doghouse to bark at us.

  “Where is everybody?” Noor said, peering down the street.

  But for the noisy dog, it was eerily quiet. It had all the trappings of a lively and populated little town, but it was as if all the people had been kidnapped in the night.

  Thirty seconds passed. Then a minute.

  No one else came through the door.

  “This is weird,” I said, trying not to let my mounting anxiety show.

  Noor tried the door. It was locked.

  I peered through its little pane of glass. Black inside.

  “Just give it another minute,” Noor said with studied calm. But it was clear we were both getting nervous.

  What else could we do? We waited yet another minute for our friends to arrive through the loop. Noor started, very quietly, to hum. The same song, same melody I’d heard her humming before.

  But no one came.

  “This is bad,” I finally admitted. “I think this is probably really bad.”

  We circled around to the back of the house. There were no other doors or windows anywhere. Just blank walls, like a locked box.

  I was starting to get really freaked out. “They must’ve been locked out somehow.”

  “Or we got locked in,” Noor said.

  We traded an apprehensive look.

  I was starting to feel a little sick.

  No—not sick. The little pinprick I felt in my gut was something else.

  Somewhere in this loop was a hollowgast.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “I figured we weren’t alone,” Noor said when I told her about the hollow. She didn’t seem frightened; things that panicked me tended to focus her. “Can you track it?”

  “Not yet, unfortunately,” I said. “My sense of it isn’t strong enough.”

  Either that, or something was interfering with the directional perception that usually pointed me toward hollows. It seemed to be blanked out, wavering uselessly like a compass needle touching a magnet.

  Noor and I decided we couldn’t just wait for the loop entrance to open again. We were exposed, sitting ducks. And the sooner I found this hollow, the sooner we’d find our wights.

  And, hopefully, Fiona.

  We walked to the end of the block, turned a corner. There was no one around still—not even looped normals. In the distance was a hill, obscured by some trees, and it seemed to be the origin of a long, industrial-sounding whine, high and distant. It faded up and down, then went silent.

  “It’s probably the old plant we passed coming into town,” I said.

  We’d gone halfway down another block when we heard voices coming from one of the nearby houses: a man and woman having an animated conversation.

  We rushed to the house and knocked on the door.

  Nobody answered.

  We were way beyond courtesy at this point.

  I tried the door. It was unlocked, and swung open on a well-oiled hinge.

  I called out hello and stepped into a normal-seeming suburban house from the middle of the last century. Right away, the source of the voices became obvious: a television set. Some old movie was playing. The TV sat on a hutch next to an artificial Christmas tree, oddly out of season, and a rocking chair with a doily pinned to the back. There was something ghostly and mournful about the scene, as if it were the man and woman in the television who lived here, trapped forever in the screen’s black-and-white world.

  I pushed the TV’s knob and the screen went dark, and suddenly all was quiet. Noor tiptoed down a hallway toward the back of the house.

  She stopped at a doorway. “Hello?” she said, then turned to me. “Jacob, there’s somebody here!”

  I rushed down the hall. There was a teenage girl asleep in a bed, covers pulled up to her chin. The walls were plastered with pictures from magazines.

  “Hello?” I said. “Excuse me . . .”

  She didn’t stir. I took a few steps into the room. I glanced at the walls again. Every single photo was of Elvis Presley.

  Noor came in, put her hand on the edge of the bed, and shook it a little.

  We leaned over the girl.

  “Is she even breathing?” I asked, trying to see whether her chest was rising and falling under the sheet.

  A noise came from the front room. We froze.

  “That was the door,” I whispered.

  If a hollowgast had been that close, my gut would’ve felt it. But it was still just the minor, directionless pinpricks I’d felt earlier.

  We went out of the room and back down the hall. “You’ve got visitors,” I called out, not wanting to surprise anyone.

  A white boy in high-waisted pants and suspenders stood in the open front doorway, watching us with cold detachment.

  “Hi,” Noor said, “we were just—”

  “If you have any weapons, drop them now,” he said, calm but firm.

  “We don’t mean you any harm,” I said. “We just want to talk to you.”

  We heard footsteps behind us. I turned to look.

  The girl was out of bed.

  Her eyes were open but glassy, unfocused. She wore a nightgown. In one hand, she held a meat cleaver.

  “No talking,” the boy said. “Now, come with me.”

  “Please,” Noor said, “just listen to—”

  “BE QUIET!” the boy thundered.

  He made two clicks with his tongue.

  Someone on the porch opened the door. Outside, I could see a small crowd of people on the lawn. They stood very still, staring in at us.

  They were all holding cleavers.

  “Come with me,” the boy repeated. “No sudden moves.”

  This time we didn’t argue.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  We were surrounded by dead-eyed, cleaver-wielding suburbanites. They were herding us silently down the street, guided by the strange boy in the suspenders. He would click his tongue and they’d move left or turn right. If we spoke, they would raise their blades. If we moved in a way they didn’t like, they would growl at us like animals.

  The whining sound from the hill wound down, and then there was a loud but distant boom.

  No one reacted.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  A fatherly man in pajamas behind me grunted and raised his cleaver.

  After another few minutes we came to a big Victorian house, older and grander than anything else we’d seen in town. It had a tower and a turret and a wraparound porch with decorative railings. It reminded me of Miss Peregrine’s house, and even in these dire circumstances I felt a pang of nostalgia for that lost place.

  We were made to stand in the middle of the lawn; the pajama people circled around us while the boy in suspenders went up to the house. The front door opened a crack and he had a discussion with someone on the other side, too quiet for us to hear.

  I could see faces peering at us from the windows of the house. All of them kids.

  The front door opened a bit wider. Someone young shouted through it: “What are your names?”

  We told him.

  “Who you with?”

  “The ymbrynes from London,” I shouted back.

  I didn’t want to shout that they were waiting just outside the loop entrance or that we were here to stop the wights, should any wights be listening.

  Suspenders boy came back to the lawn. He said something I couldn’t understand. All the cleaver-wielding pajama people lay down in the grass.

  “Come inside,” he said. “Josep will meet with you.”

  Noor and I exchanged a look.

  It was progress, at least.

  The boy in suspenders led us up to the porch and then inside, where we were greeted by another boy. He was physically no more than eight, and wore a double-breasted coat with a matching cap. He looked like the kind of child grandmothers call “my little man” and love to fawn over. He advanced toward us carefully, his face arranged in what seemed a permanent scowl.

  “My name is Josep. I’m in charge here. What are you doing snooping around our loop?” His voice was lower and more adult-sounding than I’d expected from a person his size, and for a single, dislocating moment, I imagined he was lip-synching.

  “We’re looking for some dangerous people,” Noor said. “Wights. We think they came here.”

  “And they have a hollowgast with them,” I said. “They’re very dangerous.”

  “Yes,” he sniffed. “I know what a hollowgast is.”

  “I can see them,” I added. “And hunt them.”

  Josep’s eyebrows rose slightly, though I wasn’t sure if he was skeptical or impressed.

  “The wights are looking for a skull. A special skull,” said Noor. “Do you have anything like that here?”

  His eyebrows rose a little further. “We’re deadrisers. We have many skulls.”

  I said, “Well, we have a team of people waiting just outside your loop entrance. Friends and ymbrynes. We’ve dealt with these wights before, and we know how to stop them.”

  “You’ve just got to let our friends in,” Noor said. “Before the wights get the—the skull. The alphaskull.”

  Josep coughed dryly, cleared his throat. “Last night, a troop of angry strangers burst in here making demands and threats. Brought with them a monster, which is now terrorizing our peaceful streets. Now you’ve come, telling bizarre stories and having led a small army to our doorstep. I would be mad to let you in. Were I following protocol, I would have you both killed right now.”

  He glanced at the boy in suspenders, as if considering it.

  “But I think we should have a lemonade first.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Josep led us through the house at a plodding pace. It was a place of low ceilings, heavy shadows, murmuring voices, black wood. In every room there were alien-looking plants flowering in near darkness. And standing in the corners, adult men and women: unmoving, quiet as cats.

  “The strangers started arriving late last night,” Josep said. “We sent our deadrisen foot soldiers to kill them, but their creature chewed them all to bits. They went straight up to Gravehill, and we hoped that might be the end of it. But then yesterday they came and snatched Saadi, our most promising student, and dragged him up the hill with them.” A steady stream of children had begun forming a group behind us, following our steps from a safe distance, whispering all the while.

  “That’s when the noises began,” Josep was saying. “Screeches, loud booms. They’re excavating graves.”

  “The alphaskull,” I tried again. “Does that word mean anything to you?”

  “Yes. Gravehill is just what the name implies—a mound of ancient graves. Long before we came along—long before Europeans settled in America, in fact—this area was a settlement for peculiars. They buried their most vaunted leaders deep in that hill, including a very famous chieftain. If any bones up there are imbued with a peculiar power, it would be his. But the graves are old and unmarked, so finding a particular skull would be very difficult.”

  “Then that must be what they’re doing,” I said. “Searching for it.”

  We passed through a pantry stocked with glass jars filled with organs and formaldehyde. The smell was enough to make you light-headed, and it reminded me of Enoch’s old basement laboratory. We came to a sitting room with a bank of windows that looked out on a steeply sloping street. We were at the bottom of the hill.

  There were chairs all around us, but Josep stood. The gaggle of children stayed outside the door, out of respect for their leader, it seemed.

  Josep was starting to look and sound worried, but he hadn’t yet decided what to do with us. I was thinking about our friends waiting outside and the wights up on the hill—but right now it was best not to push this guy too hard.

  Josep snapped his fingers. “Man, fetch our guests a lemonade.”

  A man who’d been standing in the corner, who I only just noticed, straightened and shuffled out of the room.

  “Is that mind control?” asked Noor.

  “Oh no. He’s dead.”

  Noor looked a little ill. I probably did, too.

  “All the adults in this loop are dead,” Josep said. “Only we children are alive.”

  We were astonished.

  This seemed to upset him.

  “You’ve never heard of Hopewell?” he asked, his chin rising a little higher. “This is a conservatory for the very talented. The young come here to hone their craft and practice the most arcane and sophisticated deadrising there is—not to conduct séances, or answer to the beck and call of every bereaved nincompoop who wants to ask dead uncle Harry where he hid the family gold.”

  While he spoke, the reanimated manservant shuffled back into the room balancing a tray of crystal glasses. Josep glanced at a side table and did something with his face—it resembled an involuntary facial tic—and the man pivoted toward the table, bent at the waist, and set down the tray.

  “When most people think of the reanimated, they picture decaying zombies. But not here! Our dead smell good and are dressed neatly. With the right guidance they can do nearly anything a living body can do.”

  The manservant stumbled as he walked, and a flicker of irritation crossed Josep’s face. Josep lifted two glasses from the tray and offered them to us. “Lemonade?”