A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,110
said. He sounded panicked.
We’d been asleep for a couple of hours, and there wasn’t much time left before we were supposed to meet Millard’s contact. He gave me the name of the café. I typed it into my phone.
“It’s only a mile away,” I said. “We’ll be there in plenty of time.”
“I hope so,” he said. “First impressions are everything!”
“Wow, you must really fancy her,” Enoch said. “Caring how you smell? That’s almost love.”
I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. Only then, as I was about to merge onto a busy road, did Millard say, very casually, “By the way, while you were sleeping I deduced the location of loop ten thousand forty-four.”
“What?” I said. “Really?”
He held up one of Abe’s postcards. I could only glance at it, but on the front was an illustration of an enormous bridge that spanned a river and a long, skinny island, which looked even narrower than Needle Key. I came to a stoplight, which gave me a chance to look a little closer. Written across the top was Queensboro Bridge and Blackwell’s Island, New York City.
“Blackwell’s Island,” I said. “Never heard of it.”
“Read the back.” Millard flipped the postcard over.
I started to read aloud the note from my grandfather, but Millard said, “No, here. The postmark, Jacob.”
The postmark was a bit smudged and incompletely stamped, but you could just make out the date—twelve years ago—and at the bottom of the little black circle, a number.
10044.
“I’ll be damned,” I said.
I passed the card to my friends in the back, who were clamoring to have a look. With one hand on the wheel and the other gripping my phone, I thumb-typed a search for the number 10044. Right away, a map popped up: a red line drawn around a long, skinny island in the middle of the East River, between Manhattan and Queens.
The loop number wasn’t a secret code at all. It was a zip code.
* * *
• • •
We drove the rest of the way to the café with the windows down to air the formaldehyde smell out the car, then freshened up in the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant. Millard cleaned himself from head to toe with faucet water and soap from the hand dispenser, and when he was feeling sufficiently presentable—which I found funny, considering his condition—we walked to the café. It was a dark, cozy place that felt like someone’s living room, with old couches and Christmas lights strung between rafters and a bar at one end where a big coffee grinder was whirring away. The room was half empty, and I noticed the girl immediately, sitting at a table in the corner. She had wavy brown hair and wore a black beret and army pants. An arty type, I thought. She was nursing a giant coffee and listening to something on her phone with one earbud. When we came through the door, her head cocked in our direction.
Millard led us over to the table.
“Lilly?”
“Millard,” she said, and looked up—but not quite at—Millard.
“These are my friends,” Millard said. “The ones I was telling you about.”
We traded hellos and sat down. I was trying to figure out why she didn’t seem perturbed that a voice was emanating from thin air.
“What are you listening to?” Millard asked her.
“See for yourself.”
The second earbud, which had been lying on the table, began to float as Millard inserted it into his ear. While he listened, two things came to my attention: the thin white cane that was leaning against her chair, and Lilly’s eyes, which never came to rest on any of our faces.
Emma nudged me and we traded surprised looks.
“He did say he hadn’t been seen,” she murmured.
“Ahh!” Millard said, with what must have been a look of rapture. “I haven’t heard this piece in years. Segovia, yes?”
“Very good!” said Lilly.
“That,” Millard said, “is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.”
“It’s not every day that I meet another classical guitar geek. Nobody my age knows anything about real music.”
“Me, neither. And I’m ninety-seven.”
Emma scowled at Millard and mouthed, WHY?
Lilly chuckled and ran her fingers along Millard’s forearm. “Pretty smooth skin for a nonagenarian.”
“The body is young, but the soul . . .”
“I know exactly what you mean,” she said.
It was starting to feel like we were intruding on a date.
“Hey,” Enoch more or less shouted, “you’re blind!”