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

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Althea, and she went out.

“Now,” said Miss Wren, turning to Caul. “Here’s what we’ll do. You tell your men to allow us safe passage out of here, or we’ll kill you. If we have to do it, I assure you we will, and we’ll dump your stinking corpse out a hole in the ice a piece at a time. While I’m sure your men won’t like that much, we’ll have a very long time to devise our next move.”

Caul shrugged and said, “Oh, all right.”

“Really?” Miss Wren said.

“I thought I could scare you,” he said, “but you’re right, I’d rather not be killed. So take me to one of these holes in the ice and I’ll do as you’ve asked and shout down to my men.”

Althea came back in with some pants and threw them at Caul, and he put them on. Miss Wren appointed Bronwyn, the clown, and the folding man to be Caul’s guards, arming them with broken icicles. With their points aimed at his back, we proceeded into the hall. But as we were bottlenecking through the small, dark office that led to the ymbryne meeting room, everything went wrong. Someone tripped over a mattress and went down, and then I heard a scuffle break out in the dark. Emma lit a flame just in time to see Caul dragging Althea away from us by the hair. She kicked and flailed while Caul held a sharpened icicle to her throat and shouted, “Stay back or I drive this through her jugular!”

We followed Caul at a careful distance. He dragged Althea thrashing and kicking into the meeting hall, and then up onto the oval table, where he put her in a choke hold, the icicle held an inch from her eye, and shouted, “These are my demands!”

Before he could get any further, though, Althea slapped the icicle from his hand. It flew and landed point-down in the pages of the Map of Days. While his mouth was still forming an O of surprise, Althea’s hand latched onto the front of Caul’s pants, and the O broadened into a grimace of shock.

“Now!” Emma bellowed, and then she and I and Bronwyn rushed toward them through the wooden doors. But as we ran, the distance across that big room seemed to yawn, and in seconds the fight between Althea and Caul had taken another turn: Caul let go of Althea and fell to the table, his arms stretched and grasping for the icicle. Althea fell with him but did not let go—now had both hands wrapped around his thigh—and a coating of ice was spreading quickly across Caul’s lower half, paralyzing him from the waist down and freezing Althea’s hands to his leg. He got one finger around the icicle, and then his whole hand, and groaning with effort and pain, he wrenched it free from the Map and twisted his upper body until he had the point of it poised above Althea’s back. He screamed at her to stop and let him go and melt the ice or he’d plunge it into her.

We were just yards from them now, but Bronwyn caught Emma and me and held us back.

Caul screamed, “Stop! Stop this!” as his face contorted in pain, the ice racing up his chest and over his shoulders. In a few seconds, his arms and hands would be encased, too.

Althea didn’t stop.

And then Caul did it—he stabbed the icicle into her back. She tensed in shock, then groaned. Miss Wren ran