The explosion we’d heard was a bomb they’d set off in the Panloopticon hallway.

  “What about Miss Peregrine?” I asked.

  “She traveled back to the conference via the Panloopticon shortly before this all happened,” Millard said. “One of Sharon’s Panloopticon minions confirmed it for me.”

  “Thank goodness,” said Olive.

  “Someone had better go fetch her,” Emma said. “She needs to know about this.”

  “That could be a problem,” said Millard.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because the wights took the hollowgast who was powering the Panloopticon with them. And now the entire apparatus is shut down.”

  The air seemed to go out of the room. Everyone was stunned.

  “What?” I said. “How?”

  “Well, the wights and the hollows are natural allies—”

  “No, I mean how did they use the Panloopticon to escape if they stole the hollow powering it?”

  “There must have been a few minutes’ reserve power remaining in the lines. Just enough for them to make an escape.”

  I felt my stomach drop.

  “What does any of that mean?” Noor said.

  “It means that wherever they went, we can’t follow them,” said Emma, shaking her head.

  “It means,” Millard said, “we’re stuck here for a while.”

  “And Miss Peregrine is stuck at the conference,” Claire said miserably, “along with several of the other ymbrynes.”

  Just then, there was a loud rapping on the window—which was strange, since we were on the third floor of the house.

  Emma rushed over and slid the window open. I heard her say, “Yes?” and a moment later she turned back with an odd expression and said, “Jacob, it’s for you.”

  I went over to see a dour young man standing on the second-floor roof. “Jacob Portman?” he said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Ulysses Critchley,” he said. “I work for Miss Blackbird at the Ministry of Temporal Affairs. She wants to see you. Instantly.”

  “What’s this about?” I said.

  Ulysses gestured vaguely at the smoke rising from the other side of the Acre, now easily visible. “The fracas.”

  Then he turned, walked calmly off the edge of the roof, and fell out of view at about half-normal speed.

  “You’d better go,” Emma said insistently. “But I’m coming with you.”

  “Me too,” said Enoch and Millard at the same time. Then Millard said to Bronwyn: “If you wouldn’t mind carrying me? I’m a bit shagged out.”

  She insisted he put on a shirt and trousers before she scooped him up.

  Then I remembered Noor and the prophecy and everything we were supposed to do today, and I turned to her. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Today was supposed to be all about—”

  She cut me off with a wave. “It’s okay. This is clearly something serious. But by the way, I’m coming, too.”

  I smiled. “If you insist.” Then turned and shouted out the window to Ulysses: “We’ll take the stairs!”

  The others wished us luck, and we went out.

  Ulysses Critchley had a gravity-defying peculiarity not unlike Olive’s, though his unnatural buoyancy wasn’t so extreme that he seemed in danger of floating uncontrollably into the sky. He resembled a sped-up version of an astronaut walking on the moon, each little leap he took matching three or four of our steps.

  We followed him across the Acre. Clusters of worried peculiars congregated here and there in the streets, glancing darkly at the smoke rising in the sky. I kept hearing the word wight murmured. Even if they all didn’t know exactly what had happened yet, they knew it was something bad. Our defenses had been breached. Our enemies were not as vanquished as we had hoped.

  As we crossed Smoking Street, we saw Rafael the bone-mender and an assistant walking alongside two men carrying a stretcher, grim expressions all. We stopped at a respectful distance and waited for them to pass.

  “I wonder who it was,” Enoch whispered. “Hopefully no one good.”

  “I heard some of the other guards talking,” Millard said quietly. “I think it was Melina Manon, the telekinetic.”

  “Ah, too bad,” Enoch said. “She was a bit mad, but I rather liked her.”

  “Have some respect!” Emma hissed.

  “She’s a hero,” Bronwyn said, and I saw her wiping away tears.

  A jet of smoke vented up from a crack in the street, the sad parade disappeared from view, and we continued on. I didn’t know where Ulysses was leading us until I saw Bentham’s house.

  We were going, of course, to the Panloopticon.

  Some of the upper-floor windows had been blown out. A small crowd had gathered around outside a perimeter of caution tape. It seemed the building had been evacuated. Farish Obwelo the journalist was there, interviewing people while scribbling furiously in a notepad.

  Ulysses paused at the entrance, looked up the side of the building as if he’d rather just pull himself up, then glanced back at us and sighed. “Come on, you groundbounds,” he said, and led us inside.

  We headed for the stairs. Before we could reach them, I saw Sharon coming toward us, his long arms extended. “Young Portman and friends!” he boomed. “Not a moment too soon.”

  Sharon’s giant form was blocking the stairs.

  “I’m taking them to Miss Blackbird,” said Ulysses, annoyed.

  “She can wait,” Sharon said, and with a dismissive sweep of his hand, he pushed the boy aside and took us down a connecting hallway.

  “Look here,” Millard said, “Jacob has important business with Miss—”

  “Our business is the same!” Sharon said so loudly Millard stopped talking.

  We descended into the basement as Ulysses followed, scowling, then passed through rooms crowded with machines that had been rumbling and filling the air with noise the last time I’d seen them, but were now silent.

  Then we were hurried through a room I’d never been in before, crammed with what looked like telegraph and radio equipment. Several people were sitting together wearing headphones and looks of deep concentration, and in the corner was a knock-kneed man who wore a tuxedo wrapped in radio wires, with antennae poking up from the top of his hat. A loud warbling whine was emitting from an electronic box hung from his neck. (Or was that sound coming from the man himself?)

  “Monitoring secret channels for wight communications,” Sharon said to me.

  Ulysses cleared his throat nervously. “It’s nothing of the kind!” he said. “Ignore all this, you’ve seen nothing!”

  He rushed us out of the room, muttering to himself.

  Finally, we came to the heart of Bentham’s machine, a room dominated by gears and valves and intestinal-looking tubes that crawled over the walls and ceiling to converge on the roof of a box in the corner. It was about the size and shape of a telephone booth, but it was windowless, forbidding, and cast from iron.

  “I wanted you to see firsthand what was done,” Sharon said, gesturing to the box. It was, of course, the battery chamber. The huge lock that had secured its door lay smashed on the floor.

  Sharon opened the door. The inside was empty. The leather straps were stretched out and worn ragged from the hollow’s long struggle against them, and the chamber’s interior walls were stained and splattered black with a residue only I could see: the hollow’s tears.

  “Your little friend is gone,” Sharon said.

  “He wasn’t my friend,” I said, surprised at the sudden wave of guilt I was feeling. Hollowgast were monsters, but they could feel pain and fear, and I remembered vividly the howls it made after it was strapped in and the chamber door closed.

  “Regardless,” Sharon said, “he is gone, and we have no more. Travel is impossible; operations here have ground to a halt.”

  “And? What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I don’t suppose,” said a high voice from behind us, “you could get us another one?”

  We turned to see a dour woman hunched in the doorway dressed all in black. She had a strange growth between her eyes.

  “Miss Blackbird,” Ulysses said, and bowed smartly.

  I couldn’t quite believe my ears. “You want me to . . . get another one?”

  She forced her dour expression into a smile. “If it isn’t too much trouble?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, struggling for words. “I don’t know where I’d find one . . .”

  “Oh.” Her smile collapsed. “Too bad.”

  Emma stepped in front of me. “Miss Blackbird, with all due respect, Jacob nearly lost his life getting the one you had. It isn’t fair to ask him—”

  She waved her hand. “No, no. You’re absolutely right. It isn’t fair. Now”—she pinned Emma with a sharp look—“who precisely are you?”

  Emma straightened. “Emma Bloom.”

  She nodded quickly. “Of course, yes. Alma Peregrine’s brood.” Her eyes traveled quickly over my friends. “I’ve heard you’re feisty. And you must be la Lumiere,” she said, turning to Noor, then blinking as if she couldn’t properly see her.

  “Eyes bothering you, miss?” asked Ulysses.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. They’re next to useless some days. But I can still depend on Number Three . . . Wake up, lazybones!” She tapped the growth on her forehead, and it split open to reveal a large, red-rimmed eyeball.

  “What’s that?” Bronwyn said, then looked mortified at her own rudeness.

  “My third eye, and lucky for me he’s still sharp as a tack.” Her two milky eyes were staring straight at Noor, but the big one in the center of her head was looking at me. “Anyhow, not to worry about the hollowgast,” she said. “They’re a pain to deal with, and the cleanup is frightful. We do have a backup in the works; we suspected the hollowgast battery wouldn’t last forever, so we’ve spent these past few months developing an alternative.”

  All three of her eyes now gazed expectantly at Sharon.

  “May be a little while before we can bring it into operation, madam,” Sharon said. “It isn’t quite ready yet.”

  “A few days at most,” Miss Blackbird said, her voice and smile cracking with stress. “Come, Portman, there’s something else I want to discuss with you.” She looked at my friends. “Alone.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  As we climbed the stairs to the Panloopticon’s first floor, Miss Blackbird talked at me fast and close in a Scottish lilt that was sometimes hard to decipher. She briefed me on what had happened, most of which I’d already heard from Millard, while keeping one clawlike hand on my arm always, like she was afraid I might run away if she let go.

  When we reached the second landing, the bitter stink of burned carpet hit my nose. Halfway down the hall I could see where the bomb had gone off—the walls and floor were blackened and a half dozen loop doors had been splintered and blown off their hinges. Another ymbryne was conferring with a girl in a black suit and matching apron—Ulysses’s same outfit, a uniform for Temporal Affairs people—and various adults were buzzing around the still-smoking blast zone, collecting bits of debris in bags and taking measurements. It was, after all, a crime scene.

  “I didn’t really expect you to go off and capture us another hollowgast, Portman, that was just a bit of fun. Eh?” She smiled apologetically, as if imploring me not to share her bizarre request with Miss Peregrine.

  “Sure,” I said, and smiled back. I won’t tell.

  “One moment,” she said, and she went to speak with the other ymbryne—a tall black lady in a wide-collared blazer and knit tie—and I pretended not to notice them glancing at me while they talked. Instead I turned to study the loop door next to me, which was hanging crooked in its frame. Its brass nameplate was scratched but still readable: YASUR VOLCANO, ISLAND OF TANNA, NEW HEBRIDES, JANUARY 1799.

  Curious, I nudged the door with my foot. It swung open to reveal the usual bedroom common to most Panloopticon gateways—three walls, a floor, a ceiling—but the missing fourth wall did not, as promised by the plaque, lead to a vista of some tropical island volcano. It was simply blank.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Miss Blackbird returned with the other ymbryne in tow. “This is Miss Babax, my co-chair of Temporal Affairs.”

  Miss Babax’s face widened into an ethereal smile and she extended her hand to shake mine. “Such a pleasure to meet you, Jacob,” she said in a smooth English accent. “We sent for you this morning because you might be our best hope.”

  Her gaze was intense and unwavering. I felt a tightness grow in my chest, the same one I got anytime people expected big things from me.

  “We don’t know what these wights aim to do,” said Miss Blackbird. “But we need to recapture them before they hurt anyone else.” Her third eye blinked rapidly.

  “We’ve already lost one peculiar child,” Miss Babax said. “It ends there.”

  “I’m with you,” I said. “How can I help?”

  “We know they have a hollowgast with them,” Miss Blackbird said. “That makes ’em more dangerous. But it also . . .”

  Her head tilted and she raised her thick eyebrows.

  “Makes them trackable,” I said. “By me.”

  She smiled. “Precisely.”

  “Your talents could prove invaluable here,” said Miss Babax.

  “I’m happy to help any way I can.”

  “Don’t say yes just like that,” Miss Babax said sharply, holding up a finger. “I want you to know what you’re getting into.” Miss Blackbird frowned; Miss Babax went on. “These aren’t just any wights—they were the worst we had. Dangerous, devious, and depraved. Have you heard of Percival Murnau?”

  “Caul’s lieutenant?” I said.

  “That’s right,” said Miss Babax. “He and his three butchers. They alone are responsible for at least half the destruction and mayhem the wights have visited upon us in recent years.”

  “If we were to read a list of their crimes, it would make your hair curl,” said Miss Blackbird.

  “I’m sure they’re awful,” I said, “but I’ve faced worse.”

  That tightness in my chest began to dissipate. Sometimes I forgot myself, and what I had already done and accomplished.

  “Caul himself,” Miss Blackbird said with a touch of awe, “and a whole army of his wights.” She winked at me. “Which is the only reason I asked about you-know-what.”

  “But then Mr. Portman had an army of hollowgast under his command to fight them with,” said Miss Babax. “Hollows are suddenly a rather endangered species.”

  “I think I can handle it,” I said. “I know the hollow they took pretty well, too, which could help.”

  Miss Babax nodded seriously. “That is just what I was hoping you’d say.”

  “As soon as we get this damned Panloopticon contraption operational again,” said Miss Blackbird. “Expect a call to action.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Miss Blackbird showed me out, her hand gripping my arm again—a gesture that now struck me as more for her comfort than mine. I had become a lifeline of hope, and she was reassuring herself of my realness.

  I’d left my friends down in the Pantloopticon’s guts, and I wondered where they were. I asked Miss Blackbird, and she waved vaguely at the end of the entrance hall she was hurrying me down, and its big door, flanked by two burly guards.

  “Elders help me,” she muttered. “They’re all here.”

  Outside the building, the crowd had grown huge. Peculiars from around the Acre had converged on the Panloopticon, looking for answers. The moment Miss Blackbird and I came out the front door, they began shouting.

  In the very front of the scrum were Farish Obwelo and another reporter. The big eye in the middle of Farish’s forehead stared fiercely at the one in the center of Miss Blackbird’s, and the other reporter was sketching a picture of Miss Blackbird and me so quickly that his hand was just a blur.

  “Madam, can you tell us how exactly the wights managed to escape?” Farish shouted.

  “We’re still conducting our investigation,” Miss Blackbird said.

  The other reporter bounced forward. “Is the prison you built secure? Could it happen again?”

  “Very secure, and we’re doubling our guards and reinforcing the battlements around it as we speak. Be assured, the rest of the wights aren’t going anywhere!”

  “Do you think they had help?” said Farish.

  “Help?” She gave him a withering glare.

  He tried another: “What’s Jacob Portman got to do with all this?”

  I felt my face go hot.

  “No comment!” Miss Blackbird shouted.

  “Do you think you’ve allowed yourselves to be too distracted by the situation in America to properly manage things here?”

  Miss Blackbird’s mouth dropped open, so shocked was she by the audacity of the question.

  Sharon loomed behind us—I could feel his coldness at my back—and then he thundered in his overwhelming basso voice, “QUIET!”

  The crowd noise faded to a murmur.

  “The ymbrynes will address the crisis very soon! You’ll be given all the facts! But right now we must CLEAR THIS AREA!”

  The power of his voice alone might’ve been enough to achieve it, but the appearance of his gallows-rigging cousins from around the side of the building sealed the deal, and the crowd began to disperse.

  “Keep away from those vultures,” Miss Blackbird said, and she gave my arm a sympathetic squeeze before disappearing back inside the building.

  I saw Noor waving to me from the thinning crowd—she was riding on Bronwyn’s shoulders. I pushed toward them, and found Emma and Enoch, too, and Horace, who had apparently ventured across the Acre on his own to join us.