A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,59

penetrated his skull but not quite entered his brain, then came at us twice as fast. I wished we could run outside and face him in the parking lot, but the exits were jammed with fleeing diners. We clambered behind the long counter and ran to the far end, by the cash register. I kept shouting at him, trying different variations of the same phrases. Be still! Sleep! Sit down! Don’t move! But I could hear the hollow wrecking the place as it got closer to us. Tables and chairs were flying, people screaming bloody murder. I risked a peek over the counter and saw the hollow lasso a waiter around the waist and throw him through a plate-glass window.

Emma stood up quickly and grabbed a heavy bottle full of green liquid. She unscrewed the top, then began to tear her dress.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“Making a Molotov cocktail,” she said, stuffing the torn cloth into the bottle.

The bottle said Bubble Up! “It won’t work—that’s soda!”

She swore, then lit the cloth and lobbed it over the counter anyway.

My compass needle shifted. The hollow was drawing near.

“This way,” I hissed. We scrambled on hands and knees toward the other end of the counter. A moment later the hollow’s tongues raked the wall above where we’d been crouched, and fifty glass bottles came crashing down at once.

I heard a woman scream. People were being hurt, maybe even killed. Looped people, who would never know what had happened to them and had no tomorrows to miss out on—but still. There was no escape, no better way. I had to face the beast, now or never.

I stood up from behind the counter and shouted at the thing. It had a lady in pink hair curlers by the neck, and she was screaming so hard the curlers were shaking loose. When it saw me it let her go. She fell on her side, then scurried off to hide under a booth. And then it came at me, muttering and gibbering. I stood my ground and began to imitate it, noise for noise, repeating what it said, though I didn’t know what it meant.

It paused to knock a table out of its path. My tongue, which was beginning to pick up the tonalities of this hollow’s speech, seemed to start on its own . . .

STOP! LIE DOWN!

It hesitated, then dropped to the ground.

SHUT YOUR MOUTH.

It reeled its three tongues back into its mouth. I picked up a steak knife from a pile of silverware on the floor. Emma approached with her flame high and hot.

DON’T MOVE.

I could see the thing squirming, trying to break free from my commands, but it was frozen now and all we had to do was—

“That’s quite enough!”

The voice was loud and familiar. I spun around to see who it belonged to. It was an older man in a tan suit, seated calmly at a booth in the corner—Abe’s booth—his body angled toward me, one elbow propped casually on the table. He was the only other person left in the restaurant, and he didn’t seem the least bit afraid.

“My goodness,” the man said. “You really do have your grandfather’s gift.”

He slid to the edge of the booth and stood. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind letting go of Horatio . . .” He muttered under his breath in hollowspeak, and I felt my control over the beast vanish. “I promised him a hot meal if he was good today. Didn’t I, fella?”

The hollow reeled in its tongues, scampered over to him, and sat down by his feet like a big puppy.

* * *

• • •

The man plucked a steak off his table and tossed it to the hollow, who caught it in its jaws and swallowed it in a single gulp. The man began to slide out of the booth and stand up, but Emma took a step toward him with her flame high and shouted, “Stay where you are!”

He stayed seated. “I’m a friend, not a wight.”

“Then why do you travel with a hollowgast?”

“I don’t go anywhere without Horatio anymore. I’d rather not end up like this boy’s grandfather, if I can help it.”

I said, “You’re H, aren’t you?”

“The very same.” He gestured to the empty seat across from him. “Would you join me?”

“You’re completely mad!” said Emma. “Your hollowgast nearly killed us!”

“You were never in real danger, I assure you.” He gestured again. “Please. We have five minutes until the police arrive and a lot of ground