A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,113

that ran between a warehouse and the under-construction building. Halfway down the alley she slowed and started feeling along the wooden fence with her hand. When she reached a particular board, she stopped.

“Here.” She pushed the board and it tipped upward, revealing an entrance to the site. “After you.”

“You guys hang out here?” said Bronwyn.

“It’s pretty safe,” said Lilly. “Not even the bums know how to get in.”

The place looked like a project some shady developer had started a decade ago, then abandoned when the money had run out. It had been left in a state of unfinished decay, both old and new at once.

Lilly got out her phone, pushed a button, and said, “Coming up,” into it, which was translated into a text message and sent.

A moment later the reply came, which her phone read out for us all to hear in an automated voice.

“Stop at the atrium and wait. I want to get a look at them.”

It was Noor. Our peculiar. We were close now.

We were following Lilly through the scaffolding when my phone began buzzing in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked.

Unknown number. Normally I would’ve ignored it, but something told me not to.

“Just a minute,” I said to the group.

I turned back, ducked out into the construction yard, and answered it.

“It’s H.”

My whole body tensed.

“Where have you been? I thought we were going to see you after Portal.”

“No time to explain. Look, I need you to abort the mission.”

I thought I’d misheard. “You what?”

“Abort. Cancel. You heard me.”

“Why? Everything’s going according to—”

“Circumstances have changed. It’s not important that you know the details. Just go home, now. All of you.”

I could feel my temper starting to rise. After all we’d done. I couldn’t believe it.

“Was it something we did? Did we screw something up?”

“No, no. Look, son, it’s getting too dangerous. Just do what I say. Abort. Go home.”

I was gripping the phone so tight my hand was starting to shake. We’d come too far to quit now.

“You’re breaking up,” I said. “I can’t hear you.”

“I said GO HOME.”

“Sorry, Boss. Bad connection.”

“Who’s that?” I heard Emma say, and I turned to see her coming out to retrieve me.

I ended the call, then tucked the phone into the duffel bag on my back, where I wouldn’t feel it vibrating.

“Wrong number.”

* * *

• • •

We followed Lilly into the building through a doorway with no door, then down a hallway from which the copper wiring had been torn, long gashes striping the walls like black veins. Grit and plaster crunched beneath our feet. Ripped insulation lay everywhere like puffs of pink cotton candy. When Lilly moved she put her feet in almost the exact spots where there were already prints, as if she’d memorized the route step by step. Every so often, I noticed, there was an object that didn’t belong—an old coffee can or a cardboard box turned upside down—that her cane would knock against, and I realized they had been put there as way markers, so she would know how much of the hall she’d walked down, and how much was left to go.

Turning a corner, we entered a stairwell.

“I can do this on my own, but it’s safer if you help me,” she said, and we all knew that you meant Millard.

He was more than happy to give her his arm. We climbed six flights of stairs, then were all a bit winded.

“Now it’s going to get a little weird,” Lilly warned.

We left the stairwell and walked into a hallway that was absolutely pitch-black. By which I mean there was no light at all, not even a minor glow from the stairwell. Rather than soft, gradual falloff of illumination, there was a hard line, like the light had hit some unseen barrier, and once we crossed it we could see the stairwell behind us but absolutely nothing in the other direction.

“Like the auditorium door,” I said, and I heard Emma say, “Mm-hmm.”

I took out my flashlight and shone it into the dark, but the beam was swallowed up. Emma lit a flame in her upturned hand. The glow petered out after only a few inches.

“Noor took the light,” Lilly explained. “So no one can find her but me.”

“Brilliant,” said Enoch.

“Link arms and form a human chain behind me,” said Lilly. “I’ll guide us.”

We followed her down the hall, slow and stumbling in the dark. Two times we passed rooms lit by windows, but the light from outside didn’t pass even an inch beyond the