A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,45

because I wanted to get away from them—well, not entirely—but because I had spotted someone who looked familiar in a way that made my brain itch, and I had to go and find out who he was.

He was a clerk behind one of the lobby windows. A young man with close-cropped hair, deep brown skin, and soft features. I knew his face from somewhere but couldn’t quite place it. I thought if I spoke to him it might jog my memory. He saw me coming, snatched a quill pen from his ink stand, and pretended to be writing as I arrived at his window.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” I asked him.

He didn’t look up. “No,” the man said.

“I’m Jacob Portman.”

He glanced up at me. Unimpressed. “Yes.”

“We haven’t met before?”

“No.”

I was getting nowhere. Engraved on the window was INFORMATION.

“I need some information.”

“About?”

“An associate of my grandfather’s. I’m trying to get in contact with him. If he’s still alive.”

“We’re not a directory service, sir.”

“Then what sort of information do you give out?”

“We don’t give it. We collect it.”

He reached across his desk, then handed me a long form. “Here, fill this out.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, and dropped it back on his desk.

He scowled at me.

“Jacob!”

Miss Peregrine was walking toward me across the lobby, my friends trailing behind. In a moment I would be surrounded.

I leaned through the window and said, “I do know you from somewhere.”

“If you insist,” said the man.

“Ready to go?” said Horace.

“I’m starving,” said Olive. “Can we have American food again?”

“So, what’s your assignment?” Emma asked me.

As they buoyed me away toward the exit, I looked back at the man. He was sitting very still, watching me go, brow furrowed with worry.

Miss Peregrine took me aside. “We’ll have a talk very soon, just you and me,” she said. “I’m very sorry if your feelings were stepped on in our meeting. It’s very important to me, and all the ymbrynes, that you feel fulfilled. But the American situation is, as we mentioned, a sticky one.”

“I just want you guys to have faith in me. I’m not asking to be the captain of an army, or something.” I’m not asking for anything anymore, I thought, but did not say.

“I know,” she said. “But please be patient. And please believe that if we seem overly cautious, it’s for your own safety. If anything was to happen to you—or any of you—it would be a disaster.”

I had an uncharitable thought: that what she really meant was it would look bad if something happened to me, just like it would look bad if we didn’t help the reconstruction effort in a way that was visible to everyone in Devil’s Acre. I knew that wasn’t her whole rationale. Of course she cared about us. But she also cared about the opinions of people who were strangers to me, and what they thought about how I lived my life—and I did not.

But instead of saying any of that, I said, “Okay, no problem, I understand,” because I knew there was no changing her mind about this.

She smiled and thanked me, and I felt a little bad for lying to her—but not too bad—and then she bid us goodbye.

The clock had just ticked past noon in Devil’s Acre. Miss Peregrine had some business left to take care of here, but ours was done for the day, so we were to meet her at my house later on.

“Go directly there,” she warned us. “Do not loiter, linger, dally, or dawdle.”

“Yes, Miss Peregrine,” we chorused.

We didn’t go directly. I asked the others if we could find a route that avoided some of the thickest crowds, and in the spirit of exploration and mild disobedience, they agreed. Enoch claimed to know a fast way that was almost sure to be deserted, and a minute later we were tracing the banks of the river, Fever Ditch.

This part of the Acre had not been cleaned up like the center had been. Perhaps it was not cleanable. Devil’s Acre was a loop, so the basic environmental facts of the place would reset themselves daily. The Ditch would always be a brown and polluted ribbon of filth. What sun was able to filter down through the pall of factory smoke that hung above us would always be the color of weak tea. The normals who were stuck here, part of the endlessly repeating scenery, would always be the same miserable, half-starved wretches who peered suspiciously at us from the alleys