Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #1) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,83

around the room, but she rebuffed all questions and marched off to secure the doors. I ran after her in a panic. If there really was something dangerous on the island, it might kill me the minute I set foot outside the loop. But if I stayed here, I’d be leaving my father defenseless, not to mention worried sick about me. Somehow, that seemed even worse.

“I need to go,” I said, catching up to Miss Peregrine.

She pulled me into an empty room and closed the door. “You will keep your voice down,” she commanded, “and you will respect my rules. What I said applies to you as well. No one leaves this house.”

“But—”

“Thus far I have allowed you an unprecedented measure of autonomy to come and go as you please, out of respect for your unique position. But you may have already been followed here, and that puts my wards’ lives in jeopardy. I will not permit you to endanger them—or yourself—any further.”

“Don’t you understand?” I said angrily. “Boats aren’t running. Those people in town are stuck. My father is stuck. If there really is a wight, and it’s who I think it is, he and my dad have almost gotten into one fight already. If he just fed a total stranger to a hollow, who do you think he’s going after next?”

Her face was like stone. “The welfare of the townspeople is none of my concern,” she said. “I won’t endanger my wards. Not for anyone.”

“It isn’t just townspeople. It’s my father. Do you really think a couple of locked doors will stop me from going?”

“Perhaps not. But if you insist on leaving here, then I insist you never return.”

I was so shocked I had to laugh. “But you need me,” I said.

“Yes, we do,” she replied. “We do very much.”

* * *

I stormed upstairs to Emma’s room. Inside was a tableau of frustration that might’ve been straight out of Norman Rockwell, if Norman Rockwell had painted people doing hard time in jail. Bronwyn stared woodenly out the window. Enoch sat on the floor, whittling a piece of hard clay. Emma was perched on the edge of her bed, elbows on knees, tearing sheets of paper from a notebook and igniting them between her fingers.

“You’re back!” she said when I came in.

“I never left,” I replied. “Miss Peregrine wouldn’t let me.” Everyone listened as I explained my dilemma. “I’m banished if I try to leave.”

Emma’s entire notebook ignited. “She can’t do that!” she cried, oblivious to the flames licking her hand.

“She can do what she likes,” said Bronwyn. “She’s the Bird.”

Emma threw down her book and stamped out the fire.

“I just came to tell you I’m going, whether she wants me to or not. I won’t be held prisoner, and I won’t bury my head in the sand while my own father might be in real danger.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” Emma said.

“You ain’t serious,” replied Bronwyn.

“I am.”

“What you are is three-quarters stupid,” said Enoch. “You’ll turn into a wrinkled old prune, and for what? Him?”

“I won’t,” said Emma. “You’ve got to be out of the loop for hours and hours before time starts to catch up with you, and it won’t take nearly that long, will it, Jacob?”

“It’s a bad idea,” I said.

“What’s a bad idea?” said Enoch. “She don’t even know what she’s risking her life to do.”

“Headmistress won’t like it,” said Bronwyn, stating the obvious. “She’ll kill us, Em.”

Emma stood up and shut the door. “She won’t kill us,” she said, “those things will. And if they don’t, living like this might just be worse than dying. The Bird’s got us cooped up so tight we can hardly breathe, and all because she doesn’t have the spleen to face whatever’s out there!”

“Or not out there,” said Millard, who I hadn’t realized was in the room with us.

“But she won’t like it,” Bronwyn repeated.

Emma took a combative step toward her friend. “How long can you hide under the hem of that woman’s skirt?”

“Have you already forgotten what happened to Miss Avocet?” said Millard. “It was only when her wards left the loop that they were killed and Miss Bunting kidnapped. If they’d only stayed put, nothing bad would’ve happened.”

“Nothing bad?” Emma said dubiously. “Yes, it’s true that hollows can’t go through loops. But wights can, which is just how those kids were tricked into leaving. Should we sit on our bums and wait for them to come through our front door? What if rather than clever disguises,