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

I did.”

“Which means they’ll be looking for us even harder,” Millard said. “And they’ll want more than the bird now— they’ll want revenge.”

“Which is why we can’t stand here much longer,” Emma said, tapping me on the leg. “Are you almost finished?”

My focus slipped. I lost my place in the crowd. Began again.

“One more minute,” I said.

Personally, it wasn’t wights that concerned me most, but hollows. I’d killed two of them now, and each encounter had nearly been the end of me. My luck, if that’s what had been keeping me alive thus far, had to be running out. That’s why I was determined never to be surprised by another hollow. I would do everything in my power to sense them from a distance and avoid contact altogether. There was less glory in running away from a fight, sure, but I didn’t care about glory. I just wanted to survive.

The real danger, then, wasn’t the figures on the platform, but the shadows that lay between and beyond them; the darkness at the margins. That’s where I focused my attention. It gave me an out-of-body sort of feeling, to cast my sense out into a crowd this way, prodding distant corners for traces of danger. It wasn’t something I could’ve done a few days ago. My ability to direct it like a spotlight—this was new.

What else, I wondered, was left to discover about myself?

“We’re okay,” I said, stepping down from the trunk. “No hollows.”

“I could’ve told you that,” grumbled Enoch. “If there had been, they’d have eaten us by now!”

Emma took me aside. “If we’re to have a fighting chance here, you’ve got to be faster.”

It was like asking someone who’d just learned to swim to compete in the Olympics. “I’m doing my best,” I said.

Emma nodded. “I know you are.” She turned to the others and snapped her fingers for attention. “Let’s head for that phone box,” she said, pointing to a tall, red phone booth across the platform, just visible through the surging crowd.

“Who are we calling?” Hugh asked.

“The peculiar dog said that all of London’s loops had been raided and their ymbrynes kidnapped,” Emma said, “but we can’t simply take his word for it, can we?”

“You can call a time loop?” I said, flabbergasted. “On the phone?”

Millard explained that the Council of Ymbrynes maintained a phone exchange, though it could be used only within the boundaries of the city. “Quite ingenious how it works, given all the time differences,” he said. “Just