A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,34

I sat down on one of the cots.

“You couldn’t have known,” Emma said, perching herself next to me.

“No.” I let out a breath. “He told me monsters were coming, but I didn’t believe him. He might still be alive today—but I didn’t believe him. Again.”

“No. Don’t do this to yourself.” She sounded angry. “He didn’t tell you enough—not nearly enough. If he had, you would’ve believed him. Right?”

“Yeah . . .”

“But Abe loved his secrets.”

“Did he ever,” said Millard.

“I think he loved them more than people sometimes,” said Emma. “And in the end, that’s what got him killed. His secrets—not you.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Definitely.”

I knew she was right—mostly. I was angry at him for not sharing more with me, but it was hard to let go of the idea that he might have told me everything, if only I hadn’t pushed him away. So I felt angry and guilty at the same time, but I couldn’t talk to Emma about it. So I just nodded and said, “Well . . . at least we found this place. One less secret for Abe to take with him to the grave.”

“Maybe more than one,” Millard said, and he slid open a drawer in the desk. “Something here you might be interested in, Jacob.”

I was off the cot and across the room in a second. In the drawer was a big metal-ringed binder stuffed with pages. A label on the front read OPERATIONS LOG.

“Whoa,” I said. “Is this . . . ?”

“Just what it says,” Millard said.

The others crowded around as I slid my fingers under it and lifted it out of the drawer. It was several inches thick and weighed at least five pounds.

“Go on, then,” said Bronwyn.

“Don’t rush me,” I said.

I opened to a random page in the middle—a typewritten mission report with two photos stapled to it, one of costumed child on a sofa and one of a man and woman dressed as clowns.

I read the report aloud. It was written in the terse and emotionless language of law enforcement. It outlined a mission to rescue a peculiar child from a wight and a hollowgast who were hunting him, then deliver the child to a safe loop.

I flipped a few pages in the binder, which was full of similar reports stretching all the way back to the 1950s, then closed it.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” said Millard.

“Abe did more than just find and kill hollows,” said Bronwyn.

“Right,” said Millard. “He was saving peculiar children, too.”

I looked at Emma. “Did you know?”

She looked down. “He never discussed his work.”

“But rescuing peculiar children is an ymbryne’s job,” said Olive.

“Yeah,” said Emma, “but if the wights were using the kids as bait, like in that entry, maybe they couldn’t.”

I was hung up on another detail, but for now I kept it to myself.

“HEY!” a voice shouted from the doorway, and we all jumped and turned to see Enoch standing there.

“I told you not to come down here!” said Bronwyn.

“What did you expect? You left me alone for ages.” He stepped into the room and looked around. “So, this is what all the fuss and bother was about? Looks like a prison cell.”

Emma looked at her watch. “It’s almost six. We’d better be getting back.”

“The others are going to kill us,” said Olive. “We’ve been gone all afternoon, and we still haven’t got new clothes!”

Then I remembered Miss Peregrine’s promise. She’d have something to show me at nightfall, she said, which was in just an hour or two. Truth be told, I didn’t much care about whatever it was she had to show me anymore. All I could think about was getting home to my bedroom, closing the door, and reading my grandfather’s logbook from cover to cover.

* * *

• • •

When we got home, the sun was just starting to dip below the trees. The friends we’d left behind complained loudly about our having been gone so long, but when we told them why—and what we’d found—they forgot their anger and hung on Millard’s every word as he recounted the story.

My parents were gone. They had packed their bags and left for a trip to Asia. I found a note in my mom’s handwriting on the kitchen counter. They would miss me lots, the note read, were available by phone or email anytime, and would I please remember to pay the gardeners. I could tell from the breezy and casual tone of the note—Love you, Jakey!—that Miss Peregrine had done a great