Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

is something Hugh had gleaned only after years of subtle, nonverbal communication with Fiona, who didn’t speak not because she couldn’t, Hugh said, but “because the things she’d witnessed in the famine were so horrific they stole her voice away.”

Then it was Emma’s turn, but she had no interest in telling her story.

“Why not?” whined Olive. “Come on, tell about when you found out you were peculiar!”

“It’s ancient history,” Emma muttered, “relevant to nothing. And hadn’t we better be thinking about the future instead of the past?”

“Someone’s being a grumplepuss,” said Olive.

Emma got up and left, heading to the back of the car where no one would bother her. I let a minute or two pass so that she wouldn’t feel hounded, then went and sat next to her. She saw me coming and hid behind a newspaper, pretending to read.

“Because I don’t care to discuss it,” she said from behind the paper. “That’s why!”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, but you were going to ask, so I saved you the trouble.”

“Just to make it fair,” I said, “I’ll tell you something about me first.”

She peeked over the top of the paper, slightly intrigued. “But don’t I know everything about you already?”

“Ha,” I said. “Not hardly.”

“All right, then tell me three things about you I don’t know. Dark secrets only, please. Quickly, now!”

I racked my brain for interesting factoids about myself, but I could only think of embarrassing ones. “Okay, one. When I was little, I was really sensitive to seeing violence on TV. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t real. Even if it was just a cartoon mouse punching a cartoon cat, I would freak out and start crying.”

Her newspaper came down some. “Bless your tender soul!” she said. “And now look at you—impaling monstrous creatures right through their leaky eyeballs.”

“Two,” I said. “I was born on Halloween, and until I was eight years old my parents had me convinced that the candy people gave out when I knocked on their doors was birthday presents.”

“Hmm,” she said, lowering the paper a little more. “That one was only middlingly dark. You may continue nevertheless.”

“Three. When we first met, I was convinced you were about to cut my throat. But scared as I was, there was this tiny voice in my head saying: If this is the last face you ever see, at least it’s a beautiful one.”

The paper fell to her lap. “Jacob, that’s …” She looked at the floor, then out the window, then back at me.