A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,89

about the hollow-hunters,” I said.

“Not even with other peculiars?” said June.

“Nobody.”

“Can’t imagine why,” said Elmer. “They’re heroes to all of us.”

Now that I saw how people reacted to his name, I thought maybe I’d loosen up on that rule a bit.

“How can we be sure they’re telling the truth about who they are?” said Alene. “I don’t mean offense, but we don’t know these people.”

“I can vouch for them,” said Paul.

“And you’ve known them for, what, a day?”

“They killed two highwaymen and ran another one off!” said Paul. “Helped out the Flamingo Manor peculiars down in Starke.”

Elmer pointed again at my grandfather’s photo. “Can’t you see the resemblance?” he said. “This boy’s the spitting image of Gandy.”

Alene’s eyes darted from me to the photo and back, and by the look on her face, I could tell she agreed. “You say his real name was Abraham?”

I nodded.

“How’s he doing?” said Elmer. “He must be getting on in years. We haven’t seen him in quite a while now.”

“Ah,” said Millard. “He passed away several months ago, unfortunately.”

There was a collective murmur of sorrow.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Joseph.

“What got him?” asked Reggie.

Fern scowled at him. “What a thing to ask!”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It was a hollowgast.”

“A fighter to the end,” Elmer said, and raised his glass of tea. “To Abraham.”

The table raised their glasses and chorused, “To Abraham!”

Emma did not join in. “What about the people he traveled with?” she said.

June began to flip pages in the album again. “The fellow with the suits and cigars, that was his associate. He’d been coming through here and helping us for nearly as long as Gandy.” She turned another page and slid her finger across until it came to rest on a portrait of a young H from many years ago. “It’s an old picture,” she said. “But that’s him.”

June was right. The photo was quite old, but it was unmistakably H—he had the same face, the same eyes that seemed to digest you in an instant. He was holding an unlit cigar between his lips. He was a man who had more important things to do than stop for a photo, and was impatient to get back to doing them.

“He was Gandy’s partner,” said Joseph. “Real funny guy. You know what he said to me one time? I had just gotten back from Vietnam, and he came through driving this big old car—”

“What about the girl?” Emma said flatly.

Joseph stopped mid-sentence and suppressed a laugh.

“Uh-oh,” Enoch said, grinning wickedly. “Someone’s on the warpath.”

“The girl,” said Alene. “I remember they called her V. She was a might strange.”

“Real quiet,” said Elmer. “Always watching. At first it seemed like she might’ve been Abe’s protégé, like he meant for her to take over from him one day. But sometimes I got the feeling maybe she was the one really in charge.”

“I heard her say once that she used to be in the circus,” said Joseph.

“I heard she was in the national ballet of Russia,” said Fern.

“I heard she went out west to be a cowgirl,” said Reggie.

“I heard she killed seven people in a bar fight in a loop in Texas and had to run away to South America,” said June.

“She sounds like a con artist,” said Emma.

“Come to think of it,” said Joseph, studying her, “she looked a bit a like you. In fact, first moment I saw you today I thought maybe you were her.”

I half expected fumes to start coming out of Emma’s ears. I leaned over to her and whispered, “I’m sure it’s not what you think.”

She ignored me. “Got a picture of her?”

“Here,” said June, turning to a page she’d marked with her finger.

In her photo, V looked like someone who ate nails for breakfast. Or rode grizzly bears for a living, and had finished doing so just before the photo was taken. She stood with her arms crossed and her chin raised, defiant. And I couldn’t help but agree with Joseph—she did look a bit like Emma. Not that I ever would’ve admitted it out loud.

Emma stared at the photo like she was committing the girl’s face to memory. She said nothing for a moment, then just, “Okay.” I saw her make a conscious effort to swallow whatever she was feeling; I could almost trace the progress of the bile as it descended her throat down into her belly. And then her face cleared, and she smiled a bit too sweetly at June and said, “Thank you very