I was hauled onto my feet and pulled along roughly, then lifted by my arms and thrown onto a metal floor. A door slammed. I seemed to be in the back of a vehicle. I couldn’t see anything through the hood they’d pulled over my head; I could hardly breathe through it. My chin ached where it had been ground into the concrete, and my wrists, bound again, chafed in their tight restraints. A big, many-cylindered engine chugged to life. I heard Emma say something, and one of the goons barked, “Shaddap!” and there was a slap, then quiet, as rage coiled in my chest.
The vehicle juddered and shook. No one spoke. Two things occurred to me as we waited for our fate to reveal itself: that these goons must work for Leo, the only person in New York everyone seemed to be afraid of, and that I’d lost my duffel bag. My duffel bag with Abe’s operations log in it. The only thing he’d bothered to keep locked in his secret underground bunker. Full of sensitive information. A near-full accounting of his years as a hollow-hunter. And I had lost track of it.
I’d last had possession of the duffel going into Frankie’s. The tutor must have taken it off me between there and the abandoned theater. Had he looked inside it? Did he know what he had? What was worse: if he threw it away, or if he read it?
Not that any of that mattered now. If these really were Leo’s guys, and he was as terrible as everyone seemed to think he was, I might not live out the day anyway.
The driver hit the brakes hard. I started to slide across the metal floor when a goon grabbed me by the neck. The vehicle stopped and I heard the doors open. We were dragged out, hustled into some kind of building, down a hall, and through a loop entrance so gentle I almost didn’t realize what had happened. Then we were taken outside again, but now our environment felt and sounded different. It was cold, and the street was bustling. We had passed into an older era. The sound of people’s shoes on the pavement was different—harder, because no one wore sneakers. There were cars all around us, and their engines were rougher-sounding, their horns throatier, their exhaust smokier.
When I stumbled twice on uneven pavement, the man who had my arm warned me not to try anything stupid, then tore off the hood before marching me on again. I blinked against the sudden bright daylight, trying to take in the scene and figure out where I was. I knew that my life might depend on a quick escape later.
It was New York, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century—1930s or ’40s, I guessed. The old cars and buses were unmistakable, and every man wore a suit and hat. My captors blended in perfectly here. They’d felt comfortable taking off my hood because they no longer had to worry about me seeing where I was. They probably controlled the whole place. Shouting for help in this loop would’ve done me no good—the goons would’ve killed any normals who gave them trouble. The only things they bothered to hide, so as not to make a scene, were their machine guns, tucked inside newspapers under their arms.
We walked down the street. Nobody seemed to notice us, and I wasn’t sure if that was just the way of New Yorkers, or if people here were trained to ignore Leo’s men because it was better for their health. I tried to look behind me, to see if my friends were there, but that earned me a slap on the back of the head. I could see my captors in front of me and to each side, and I could hear, somewhere to the rear, Dogface and Wreck, talking low.
We turned down an alley, then walked up a loading ramp, past several men in work coveralls, and into a dark warehouse.
“Leo’s waiting,” one of the workers growled.
We were marched through a kitchen buzzing with chefs and waiters who pressed themselves against the walls to let us pass, careful never to make eye contact. We walked through a ballroom, through a plush bar that was gloomy at midday but nearly half full with patrons, then up a gilded staircase, to an office.
The office was big and fancy, with fine carved wood and touches of gold. At the far end, behind a hulking, mirror-polished desk, a man sat waiting for us. He wore a black pinstriped suit with a loud purple tie and a cream-colored felt homburg that didn’t quite match the rest of his outfit. A tall man stood next to him, looking like an undertaker, all dressed in black.
As I was walked toward him, the man at the desk stared at me. My skin prickled like it was being probed with icicles. He was playing with a letter opener, pushing the point into the green felt of his desk, leaving little divots. His eyes shifted, and in short order Emma, Millard, and Bronwyn were hauled up beside me.
Noor was not among them. I wondered what they’d done with her, a chill of dread going through me. Then Wreck, Angelica, and Wreck’s two flunkies were rushed in, a goon attached to each of them. Dogface was nowhere to be seen; clearly, he’d made his escape.
“Leo, good to see you, been too long,” said Wreck, making a hat-tip gesture though he didn’t wear a hat. His flunkies were silent.
Angelica bowed. “Hello, Leo,” she said, her cloud a polite size and hugged close to her body, as if it, too, were intimidated.
Leo pointed the letter opener at her. “You better not rain in here, angel face. I just had this carpet steamed.”
“I won’t, sir.”
“So.” Leo aimed the opener at us. “This them?”
“That’s them,” said Wreck.
“Where’s the dog boy?”
“He got away,” said the tall man, his voice a snaky slither.
Leo gripped the letter opener a little tighter. “That ain’t good, Bill. People are gonna get the idea that we’re soft on crime.”
“We’ll get him, Leo.”
“You better.” He looked to Wreck and Angelica. “Now, as for you. I heard you were attending an illegal auction.”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” said Wreck. “These peculiars here?” He gestured to my friends and me. “We were trying to hire them. It was a . . . job fair.”
“Job fair!” Leo chuckled. “That’s a new one. You sure you weren’t trading them under the table? Inducing them via threats or intimidation to render services to you free of charge?”
“No, no, no,” Wreck was saying.
“We’d never do that,” said Angelica.
“And what are you supposed to do with outsiders?” said Leo.
“Bring them to you,” said Wreck.
“That’s right.”
“Frankie thought they were nobody special, that’s why—”
“Frankie’s a mental midget!” Leo shouted. “Sorting out who’s nobody and who’s an infiltrator ain’t her department. You bring outsiders to me and I sort ’em out! Got it?”
“Yes, Leo,” they said in unison.
“Now, where’s the light-eater?”
“Cooling her heels in the lounge,” said Leo’s man, Bill. “I got Jimmy and Walker with her.”
“Good. Don’t be rough on her. We want to try and make friends first, remember.”
“Got it, Leo.”
Leo turned to us. Took his feet off the desk and sat forward. “Where you from?” he said. “You’re Californios, ain’t ya? Meese’s people?”
“I’m from Florida,” I said.
“We’re from the UK,” said Bronwyn. Her voice sounded raw.
“We don’t know who Meese is or understand any of what you’re talking about,” said Emma.
Leo nodded. Looked down at his desk. Was quiet for a strangely long moment. When he looked up again, his face had gone ruddy with anger.
“My name’s Leo Burnham, and I run this town.”
“Whole East Coast,” said Bill.
“Here’s how this is gonna work. I ask you questions and you answer straight. I’m not a guy you lie to. I’m not a guy whose time you waste.” Leo raised his hand above his head and brought it down hard, stabbing the letter opener deep into the top of his desk. Everyone in the room jumped.
“Read the charges, Bill,” said Leo.
Bill flipped open a pad of paper. “Trespassing. Resisting arrest. Kidnapping an uncontacted peculiar.”
“Add lying about their identity,” said Leo.
“Got it, Leo,” said Bill, scribbling.
Leo stood up from his tall chair, walked around behind it, and rested his forearms on its golden trim. “After the wights and shadow beasts skipped town and things started to open up,” he said, “I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody tried to make a move on our territory. I figured they’d start by trying to pick off one of the podunk loops on the outskirts. Missy Fineman’s outfit out in the Pine Barrens. Juice Barrow’s joint in the Poconos. But to come after one of the most powerful ferals we’ve seen in I don’t know how long, and to do it right in our backyard in broad daylight—” He straightened as he said it, spittle flying in a flash of anger. “That’s not only brazen, it’s an insult. That’s the Californios saying, ‘Leo’s weak. Leo’s sleeping. Let’s just waltz into his house and steal his piggy bank, because we can get away with it.’”
“You’re clearly quite upset,” said Millard, “and while I certainly don’t want to upset you further by disagreeing with you, we simply aren’t who you seem to think we are.”
Leo came out from behind his chair and stood in front of Millard, who had been forced to wear a striped gown that made it harder for him to slip away unnoticed.
“Are you from here?” Leo asked, his tone even.
“No,” replied Millard.
“Were you trying to remove that feral?”
“What’s a feral, exactly?”
Leo punched Millard in the stomach. Millard doubled over and groaned.
“Stop it!” Emma shouted.
“Bill, tell ’em what a feral is.”
“A peculiar who don’t know they’re peculiar and ain’t yet allied with any particular clan or crew,” Bill said, as if reciting from memory.
“Feral” seemed to be another word for uncontacted—but more derogatory.
“She was in danger,” I said. “We were trying to help her.”
“By taking her out of the five boroughs.” Leo sounded incredulous.
“To our loop in London,” said Bronwyn. “Where she’d be safe from people like you.”
Leo’s eyebrows went up. “London. See, Bill, it’s worse than I thought. Now we got limey peculiars coming after us, not just Los Californios.”
“She’s not one of you, and she’s not yours,” I said. “It was her choice to come with us.”
Leo straightened his collar and came right up to me. His goon’s grip on my arm tightened. “I don’t know if you’re really ignorant or just pretending to be,” he said quietly, “but it don’t matter. The law is the law, and it’s the same law all over this country. That light-eater’s a local, and inducing her to leave is a crime—one you’ve admitted to. I got no choice but to make an example out of you.” He raised his hand and slapped me, and it happened so fast I didn’t have time to prepare myself for the blow. The shock and force of it almost knocked me over.
“Bill, get these punks out of my office. Find out who they are, and don’t be afraid to put the screws on. We’re done looking soft.”
“You got it, Leo.”
I saw Emma’s face as we were being dragged out, and she saw mine. I mouthed, We’ll be okay. But for the first time since we’d left my house in Florida days ago, I really wasn’t sure.
That was the first time I met Leo, but it would not be the last.
I couldn’t tell you how long I spent in that cell. It felt like days, but it was probably less than twenty-four hours. There was no window, no sun, no furniture other than a cot and a toilet. The only light was a bare bulb that never stopped burning, and under those conditions the passage of time becomes harder to gauge, especially when you’re suffering from loop lag and your body hardly knows what time it is in the first place.
They brought me food in a tin bowl, water in a tin cup. Every few hours someone came to interrogate me. Usually a different person each time. At first all they wanted to know was where I was from and who I worked with. They really seemed to believe I was from California but lying about it. That I was a “Californio”—that was the word they kept using. Though I denied it in every possible way, the truth—that I was part of this band of peculiars from Great Britain—sounded so unlikely, given my obvious Americanness and the fact that I came from the modern day and my friends did not. It was very difficult to convince them. My story made no sense. They talked with cruel ease about killing me, and the various terrible penalties for the “crimes” my friends and I had committed. But they didn’t beat me. They didn’t torture me. I think it had something to do with the man down the hall. Every few hours they would take me out of the cell and walk me down to another windowless room, where I would sit across from an owlish man with tight-cropped hair and little round glasses. He would stare at me for long minutes without speaking, leaned way back in his chair, nibbling on pickles.
My theory is that he was trying to read my mind. I don’t know if the pickles were part of his technique or if he just had an addiction to them. Eventually he must have found out whatever it was he wanted to find out—or perhaps they got through to one of my friends’ brains—because my other interrogators suddenly changed their tune. Now they seemed to believe me when I insisted I wasn’t from California, and that I was part of this group of peculiars from across the ocean.
After that they wanted to know all about the European peculiars, about the ymbrynes, about Miss Peregrine. They were convinced the ymbrynes were planning some sort of invasion or attack. They wanted to know how many other peculiars we’d kidnapped from America. How many ferals we’d lured away. I told them none, and that we had acted alone and without the ymbrynes’ knowledge. And I repeated what I’d said to Leo: We’d answered a call to help an uncontacted peculiar who was in danger. We wanted to help her, and that was all.
“In danger from what,” my interrogator asked. He was a big guy with unshaven jowls and chalk-white hair.
I figured there was no harm in telling them, so I described the people who’d been stalking her. The SUVs with blacked-out windows. The helicopter above the building site and the men who’d chased us and shot Bronwyn with some kind of tranquilizer dart.
“I ain’t an educated man,” said my interrogator. “But one thing I know back to front is our enemies. I know what they look like, how they dress, what they eat for breakfast, their mothers’ names. And these people don’t fit none of their descriptions.”
“I swear it’s true,” I said. “The ymbrynes had nothing to do with it. Miss Peregrine had nothing to do with it. This girl was in danger and we just wanted to help.”
My interrogator burst out laughing. “Just wanted to help.” He leaned in so close I could smell his skin, sour like menthol and night sweats. “I seen an ymbryne once. In Schenectady. Old lady, lived in the woods with about twenty kids. They followed her around like little ducks. Slept in the same bed. Followed her to the john.” He shook his head. “Nobody in this world just wants to help. And no wards of no ymbryne ever acted on their own.”
I felt a swell of bitterness and wounded pride.
“My grandfather did.” Why keep it a secret? I couldn’t let them think the ymbrynes were making moves against them. Who knew what sort of consequences that could have. “He ran a crew that fought hollowgast and helped peculiars who were in danger. People knew him as Gandy.”
My interrogator wasn’t laughing anymore. He was writing down everything I said on a little pad.
“He died earlier this year,” I continued, “and he wanted me to take over for him. At least, I think he did. We got this mission from an associate of his.”
The interrogator looked up from his pad. “You say one of Gandy’s associates is still alive?”
The way he was staring at me gave me a chill. I knew then I had made an error.
“No—” I acted like I was confused. “I meant, we got the mission from a machine,” I lied. “One of those teletype printers? The orders just printed out while I was standing near it, like it knew I was there. But I assumed it was from an old associate of my grandfather’s.” I wanted to bury what I’d said about H, but it was too late.
The interrogator closed his pad. “You’ve been very helpful,” he said, and he winked and scraped back his chair.
“We didn’t mean to step on any toes,” I said quickly. “We didn’t know about your territory or laws or anything like that.”
Keys rattled in the door and it opened. The interrogator smiled.
“You have a nice day.”
Twenty minutes later they dragged me in to see Leo. The room was empty but for him, the man holding me, and Leo’s funereal right-hand man, Bill. Leo came at me as soon as I got through the door. Got right up into my face.
“Your grandfather was a murderer. You knew that, right?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. He was clearly unhinged.
“Gandy. Or whatever you call him.”
“His name was Abraham Portman,” I said quietly.
“Kidnapping. Murder. Man was sick in the head. Look at me.”
I raised my eyes to meet his. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. “Bill, get me the file on Gandy.”
Bill went over to a filing cabinet and starting rifling through it.
“He was a good man,” I said. “He fought monsters. He saved people.”
“Yeah, we thought so, too,” said Leo. “Until we found out he was the monster.”
“Got it right here, Leo,” said Bill.
Bill walked over with a brown folder in his hand. Leo took it and flipped it open. He turned a page, and something cracked behind his stony expression. “Here,” he said, and then I saw him wince.
He slapped me hard across the cheek. I stumbled. The man holding me yanked me up again. My head tingled.
“She was my goddaughter,” said Leo. “Sweet as sugarcane. Eight years old. Agatha.”
He turned the file so I could see it. Clipped to the page was a photo of a little girl astride a tricycle. A black knot of dread began to well in my stomach.
“They took her in the night. Gandy and his men. They even had a shadow creature with them. Working for them. It broke the window to her bedroom and pulled her right out—from the second floor. There was a trail of black muck leading right to her bed.”
“He wouldn’t,” I said. “He would never kidnap a child.”
“He was seen!” he shouted. “But she wasn’t. Not ever again. And we looked, don’t you know we looked. He either fed her to that thing or killed her himself. If he’d sold her to some other clan, I woulda heard. She woulda got free, reached out.”
“I’m sorry that happened,” I said. “But I can promise you it wasn’t him.”
He slapped me again, on the other cheek this time, and the room blurred and my ear started to ring. When my vision cleared, he was staring out the window at a gray afternoon.
“That’s just one of about ten kidnappings we can pin on him. Ten kids who were taken and never seen again. Blood on his hands. But he’s dead, you say. So I say that’s blood on your hands.”
He went over to a cart stocked with bottles and poured himself a shot of brown liquor. Downed it in one swallow.
“Now, where is this associate you say is still alive?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I decided to come clean about H; I had let the cat out of the bag already, and it’s not as if I had information that would lead them to him. I didn’t even know where he lived.
Leo’s goon had me by the neck, and I felt his grip tighten.
“You know. You were taking the girl to him!”
“No, to a loop. Not to him.”
“What loop?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. “He hadn’t told me yet.”
Bill cracked his knuckles. “He’s playing dumb, Leo. He thinks you’re a sucker.”
“It’s fine,” said Leo. “We’ll find him. Nobody hides from me in my city. What I really want to know is, what do you do with them? Your victims?”
“Nothing,” I said. “We don’t have victims.”
He grabbed the file off the table where he dropped it, flipped the page, and shoved it in my face. “Here’s one of the kids your grandpa saved. We found him two weeks later. Does he look saved to you? Huh?”
It was a photo of a dead person. A little boy. Maimed. Horrible.
He punched me in the stomach. I doubled over, groaning.
“Is it some kind of sick family business? Is that it?”
He kicked me and I fell to the floor.
“Where is she? Where’s Agatha?”
I was saying, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” or trying to, while he kicked me twice more, until I could hardly breathe, and my nose was leaking blood all over the floor.
“Get him up,” Leo said, disgusted. “Goddamn it, now I gotta get the carpet steamed again.”
I was hauled up by my arms, but my legs wouldn’t take my weight, so I knelt.
“I was gonna kill Gandy,” said Leo. “I was gonna kill that sick son of a bitch with my own hands.”
“Gandy’s dead, Leo,” said Bill.
“Gandy’s dead,” Leo repeated. “Then I guess you’ll have to do, junior. What time is it?”
“Almost six,” said Bill.
“We’ll kill him in the morning. Make a thing of it. Invite the troops.”
“You’re wrong,” I whispered, voice trembling. “You’re wrong about him.”
“How do you want it, kid? Drowning or shooting?”
“I can prove it.”
“How about both?” said Bill.
“Nice idea, Bill. One time for him, one time for dear old Grandpop. Now get him out of here.”
That night they turned off the light in my cell for the first time. I lay aching in the thin dark, wishing my body would disappear, wrestling with my thoughts. I worried for my friends. Were they being beaten, tortured, threatened? I worried for Noor, and what they were planning to do with her. Would she have been better off if I hadn’t tried to help her at all? If I had listened to H and aborted the mission when he told me to?
Yes. Almost certainly yes.
I admit, I worried for myself, too. Leo’s goons had been threatening me since I arrived, but for the first time their promise to kill me felt genuine. Leo didn’t need anything from me anymore. He wasn’t trying to get information out of me. He seemed only to want to watch me die.
And what was all this madness about my grandfather? I didn’t think for a second that any of it could be true—but how could anyone? My one thought was that wights had framed him, staging kidnappings and killings to look as if Abe had committed them, in hopes that Leo’s clan might have killed him and done the wights’ work for them. As for my grandfather being identified at the scenes of some of these crimes (a point Leo had emphasized), the wights were masters of disguise. Maybe one of them had dressed like him, or made a lifelike mask.
There was a sudden, loud banging at my cell door.
This was it. They had come for me. They hadn’t even waited until morning.
The hatch in the door slid open.
“Portman.”
It was Leo. I was surprised, but then it made sense—he wanted to pull the trigger himself.
“Get over here.”
I got up from the cot and stood before the hatch.
“The wights framed my grandfather,” I said, not because I thought he’d believe me, but because I needed to say it.
“Shut your goddamn trap.” He paused to collect himself. “You know this lady?”
He held a photo up to the hatch. I was so thrown off by this unexpected pivot that it took me a moment to react. It was a snapshot of a dyed-blond diva in white gloves and a feathered hat. She was holding a can of Drano, and she was, it seemed, singing to it.
“That’s the baroness,” I said, grateful my memory hadn’t gone blank.
Leo lowered the picture. He observed me for a moment with his brow furrowed. I couldn’t read him at all. Had I passed a test? Or had I said the wrong thing?
“We made some calls,” he said finally. “Your associates told us you stopped through the Flamingo. Naturally, we were concerned, so we put in a call to our friends down there, to see if you’d left anyone alive. Much to my surprise, not only did you comport yourselves as gentlemen and ladies, you also took care of some business I’d been meaning to handle.”
I was floored. “Business?”
“Those idiot road warriors who act like they run things? I’ve been meaning to go to Florida and stomp them. You saved me the trouble.”
“It was, uh, no problem.” I was trying to sound calm and collected, not like someone who was still half expecting to be killed.
Leo chuckled and looked at the floor, as if embarrassed. “You might be wondering why a big shot like me cares about some tourist loop. Well, I wouldn’t, except my sister lives there.”
“The baroness?”
“Her real name’s Donna. She likes the weather down there.” He shook his head and muttered to himself, “She takes a couple opera lessons . . .”
“Are you letting me go?”
“Normally, a good word from my sister would only be enough to get your death sentence commuted. But you got friends in interesting places.”
“I do?”
He slapped shut the view-hatch. A key turned in the lock and the door opened. We were standing a few feet apart, nothing now between us. Then he stepped aside, and there, striding down the hall toward me, was Miss Peregrine.
For a moment I thought I was dreaming. And then she spoke.
“Jacob. Come out of there at once.”
She was angry with me, but her face was so etched with the pain of worry and her eyes so wide with relief that I knew she would open her arms when I ran to her—and she did, and I hugged her tight.
“Miss Peregrine. Miss Peregrine. I’m so sorry.”
She patted my back and kissed me on the forehead.
“Save it for later, Mr. Portman.”
I turned to Leo. “What about my friends?”
“Waiting in the loading dock.”
“And Noor?”
His expression soured instantly. “Don’t push it, kid. And don’t ever come back here. Helping my sister was your get-out-of-jail-free card. But you only get one.”
Leo’s men escorted us down the hallways, through Leo’s club and the kitchen, and out to the loading dock. In the weak light of dawn I saw Emma and Bronwyn waiting, and beside them the white shirt and gray slacks that I knew belonged to Millard. When I saw them whole and standing and unhurt, the shudder of relief I felt was almost like a chill. I hadn’t realized until that moment how dimmed my hopes had become.
“Oh my bird, thank the birds,” Bronwyn sang, clasping her hands as Miss Peregrine and I approached them.
“I told you he’d be fine,” Millard said. “Jacob can take care of himself.”
“Fine?” Emma said, going pale as she looked me over. “What did they do to you?”
I hadn’t seen a mirror in a while, but between my busted nose and other injuries, I must’ve looked fearful.
Emma hugged me. For a moment it didn’t matter what had happened between us, it just felt good to have her in my arms again. Then she hugged a little too tight, and pain ricocheted across my cracked ribs. I sucked in my breath and pulled away.
I assured her I was okay, though my head felt like a balloon that was about to pop. “Where’s Enoch?” I said.
“In the Acre,” said Millard.
“Thank God.”
“He escaped that horrible diner,” said Emma, “then called your house and told Miss P everything that had happened, and they tracked us here.”
“We owe him our lives,” said Millard. “That’s something I never thought I’d say.”
“You can catch up on the way back to the Acre,” said someone with a French accent, and I turned to see Miss Cuckoo standing near the exit with another ymbryne. She wore an electric-blue dress with a tall silver collar, and her expression was flat. Neither she nor the other ymbryne betrayed any trace of happiness at seeing us.
“Come, there is a car waiting.”
Leo’s men watched as we walked out, their eyes and guns trained on us. I thought again of Noor, and the fact that we were leaving her here, in some form of captivity. I felt awful about it. Not only had we failed the mission, I had probably consigned her to a worse fate than if I’d left her alone entirely.
The ymbrynes bundled us out of the loading dock and into a big car. It lurched away from the curb before the doors had even closed.
“Miss Peregrine?” I said.
She turned slightly, her face in profile. “It would be better,” she said, “if you didn’t speak.”