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

Millard lifted the man’s sheets from his legs. On the bottom of one of his bare feet was a scar identical to the motionless woman’s.

The nurse gestured toward the writhing woman. “She’s got one too, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Enough of this,” said the folding man. “If that is not torture, then what?”

“Exploration,” said Millard. “These incisions are precise and surgical. Not meant to inflict pain—probably done under anesthetic, even. The wights were looking for something.”

“And what was that?” Emma asked, though she seemed to dread the answer.

“There’s an old saying about a peculiar’s foot,” said Millard.

“Do any of you remember it?”

Horace recited it. “A peculiar’s sole is the door to his soul,” he said. “It’s just something they tell kids, though, to get them to wear shoes when they play outside.”

“Maybe it is and maybe it’s not,” said Millard.

“Don’t be ridiculous! You think they were looking for—”

“Their souls. And they found them.”

The clown laughed out loud. “What a pile of baloney. Just because they lost their abilities, you think their second souls were removed?”

“Partly. We know the wights have been interested in the second soul for years now.”

Then I remembered the conversation Millard and I had had on the train, and I said, “But you told me yourself that the peculiar soul is what allows us to enter loops. So if these people don’t have their souls, how are they here?”

“Well, they’re not really here, are they?” said Millard. “By which I mean, their minds are certainly elsewhere.”

“Now you’re grasping at straws,” said Emma. “I think you’ve taken this far enough, Millard.”

“Bear with me for just a moment longer,” Millard said. He was pacing now, getting excited. “I don’t suppose you heard about the time a normal actually did enter a loop?”

“No, because everyone knows that’s impossible,” said Enoch.

“It nearly is,” said Millard. “It isn’t easy and it isn’t pretty, but it has been done— once. An illegal experiment conducted by Miss Peregrine’s own brother, I believe, in the years before he went mad and formed the splinter group that would become the wights.”