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

“And what’s that?” asked Emma.

Olive decided to show rather than tell us. Leaving the sidewalk, she went into the crowd, turned to face the building, and called at the top of her lungs, “Hello, Miss Wren! If you’re in there, please come out! We need your—”

Before she could finish, Bronwyn had tackled her, and the rest of Olive’s sentence was delivered into the big girl’s armpit. “Are you insane?” Bronwyn said, bringing Olive back to us under her arm.

“You’re going to get us all found out!”

She set Olive on the sidewalk and was about to chastise her further when tears began streaming down the little girl’s face. “What does it matter if we’re found out?” Olive said. “If we can’t find Miss Wren and we can’t save Miss Peregrine, what does it matter if the whole wight army descends on us right now?”

A lady stepped out of the crowd and approached us. She was older, back bent with age, her face partly obscured by the hood of a cloak. “Is she all right?” the lady asked.

“She’s fine, thank you,” Emma said dismissively.

“I’m not!” said Olive. “Nothing is right! All we ever wanted was to live in peace on our island, and then bad things came and hurt our headmistress. Now all we want to do is help her—and we can’t even do that!”

Olive hung her head and began to weep pitifully.

“Well then,” said the woman, “it’s an awfully good thing you came to see me.”

Olive looked up, sniffled, and said, “Why is that?”

And then the woman vanished.

Just like that.

She disappeared right out of her clothes, and her cloak, suddenly empty, collapsed onto the pavement with an airy whump. We were all too stunned to speak—until a small bird came hopping out from beneath the folds of the cloak.

I froze, not sure if I should try to catch it.

“Does anyone know what sort of bird that is?” asked Horace.

“I believe that’s a wren,” said Millard.

The bird flapped its wings, leapt into the air, and flew away, disappearing around the side of the building.