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

Then everything went dark for a second in my head, and when I came to again, I felt such a gut-punch of pain in my belly that I dropped the phone.

Addison jerked his head up to look at me. “What is it?”

That’s when I saw a long, black tongue pressing against the outside of the booth’s glass. It was quickly joined by a second, then a third.

The hollow. The unfrozen hollowgast. It had followed us.

The dog couldn’t see it, but he could read the look on my face easily enough. “It’s one of them, isn’t it?”

I mouthed, Yes, and Addison shrank into a corner.

“Jacob?” My dad’s tinny voice from the phone. “Jacob, are you there?”

The tongues began to wrap around the booth, encircling us. I didn’t know what to do, only that I had to do something, so I shifted my feet under me, planted my hands on the walls, and struggled to my feet.

Then I was face to face with it. Tongues fanned from its gaping, bladed mouth. Its eyes were black and weeping more black and they stared into mine, inches away through the glass. The hollow let out a low, guttural snarl that turned my insides to jelly, and I half wished the beast would just kill me and be done with it so all this pain and terror could end.

The dog barked in Emma’s face. “Wake up! We need you, girl! Make your fire!”

But Emma could neither speak nor stand, and we were alone in the underground station but for two women in raincoats who were backing away, holding their noses against the hollow’s fetid stench.

And then the booth, the whole booth with all of us in it, swayed one way and then the other, and I heard whatever bolts anchored it to the floor groan and snap. Slowly, the hollow lifted us off the ground—six inches, then a foot, then two—only to slam us back down again, shattering the booth windows, raining glass on us.

Then there was nothing at all between the hollow and me. Not an inch, not a pane of glass. Its tongues wriggled into the booth, snaking around my arm, my waist, then around my neck, squeezing tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe.

That’s when I knew I was dead. And because I was dead, and there was nothing I could do, I stopped fighting. I relaxed every muscle, closed my eyes, and gave in to the hurt bursting inside my belly like fireworks.

Then a strange thing happened: the hurt stopped hurting. The pain shifted and became something else. I entered into it, and it enveloped me, and beneath its roiling surface I discovered something quiet and gentle.

A whisper.

I opened my eyes again. The hollow seemed frozen now, staring at me. I stared back, unafraid. My vision was