Bronwyn returned with a decanter of coca-wine and another flask of brandy. Miss Peregrine sent her away and set about mixing them together in a teacup. Then she began to pat Miss Avocet gently on her blue-veined cheek.
“Esmerelda,” she said, “Esmerelda, you must rouse yourself and drink this tonic I’ve prepared.”
Miss Avocet moaned, and Miss Peregrine raised the teacup to her lips. The old woman took a few sips and, though she sputtered and coughed, most of the purplish liquid disappeared down her throat. For a moment she stared as if about to sink back into her stupor, but then she sat forward, face brightening.
“Oh, my,” she said, her voice a dry rasp. “Have I fallen asleep? How indecorous of me.” She looked at us in mild surprise, as if we’d appeared out of nowhere. “Alma? Is that you?”
Miss Peregrine kneaded the old woman’s bony hands. “Esmerelda, you’ve come a long way to see us in the dead of night. I’m afraid you’ve got us all terribly worked up.”
“Have I?” Miss Avocet squinted and furrowed her brow, and her eyes seemed to fix on the opposite wall, alive with flickering shadows. Then a haunted expression stole across her face. “Yes,” she said, “I’ve come to warn you, Alma. You must be on your guard. You mustn’t allow yourselves to be taken by surprise, as I was.”
Miss Peregrine stopped kneading. “By what?”
“They could only have been wights. A pair of them came in the night, disguised as council members. There are no male council members, of course, but it fooled my sleep-dazed wards just long enough for the wights to bind them and drag them away.”
Miss Peregrine gasped. “Oh, Esmerelda ...”
“Miss Bunting and I were awoken by their anguished cries,” she explained, “but we found ourselves barricaded inside the house. It took some time to force the doors, but when we did and followed the wights’ stink out of the loop, there was a gang of shadow-beasts lying in wait on the other side. They fell upon us, howling.” She stopped, choking back tears.
“And the children?”
Miss Avocet shook her head. All the light seemed to have gone out of her eyes. “The children were merely bait,” she said.
Emma slid her hand into mine and squeezed, and I saw Miss Peregrine’s cheeks glisten in the firelight.
“It was Miss Bunting and myself whom they wanted. I was able to escape, but Miss Bunting was not so fortunate.”
“She was killed?”
“No—abducted. Just as Miss Wren and Miss Treecreeper were when their loops were invaded a fortnight ago. They’re taking ymbrynes, Alma. It’s some sort of coordinated effort. For what purpose, I shudder to imagine.”
“Then they’ll come for us, too,” Miss Peregrine said quietly.
“If they can find you,” replied Miss Avocet. “You are better hidden than most, but you must be ready, Alma.”
Miss Peregrine nodded. Miss Avocet looked helplessly at her hands, trembling in her lap like a broken-winged bird. Her voice began to hitch. “Oh, my dear children. Pray for them. They are all alone now.” And she turned away and wept.
Miss Peregrine pulled the blanket around the old woman’s shoulders and rose. We followed her out, leaving Miss Avocet to her grief.
* * *
We found the children huddled around the sitting-room door. If they hadn’t heard everything Miss Avocet had said, they’d heard enough, and it showed on their anxious faces.
“Poor Miss Avocet,” Claire whimpered, her bottom lip trembling.
“Poor Miss Avocet’s children,” said Olive.
“Are they coming for us now, Miss?” asked Horace.
“We’ll need weapons!” cried Millard.
“Battle-axes!” said Enoch.
“Bombs!” said Hugh.
“Stop that at once!” Miss Peregrine shouted, raising her hands for quiet. “We must all remain calm. Yes, what happened to Miss Avocet was tragic—profoundly so—but it was a tragedy that need not be repeated here. However, we must be on watch. Henceforth, you will travel beyond the house only with my consent, and then only in pairs. Should you observe a person unknown to you, even if they appear to be peculiar, come immediately and inform me. We’ll discuss these and other precautionary measures in the morning. Until then, to bed with you! This is no hour for a meeting.”
“But Miss—” Enoch began.
“To bed!”
The children scurried off to their rooms. “As for you, Mr. Portman, I’m not terribly comfortable with you traveling alone. I think perhaps you should stay, at least until things calm a bit.”
“I can’t just disappear. My dad will flip out.”
She frowned. “In that case, you must at least spend the night. I insist upon it.”
“I will, but only if you’ll tell me everything you know about the creatures that killed my grandfather.”
She tilted her head, studying me with something like amusement. “Very well, Mr. Portman, I won’t argue with your need to know. Install yourself on the divan for the evening and we’ll discuss it first thing.”
“It has to be now.” I’d waited ten years to hear the truth, and I couldn’t wait another minute. “Please.”
“At times, young man, you tread a precariously thin line between being charmingly headstrong and insufferably pigheaded.” She turned to Emma. “Miss Bloom, would you fetch my flask of coca-wine? It seems I won’t be sleeping tonight, and I shall have to indulge if I am to keep awake.”
* * *
The study was too close to the children’s bedrooms for a late-night talk, so the headmistress and I adjourned to a little greenhouse that edged the woods. We sat on overturned planters among climbing roses, a kerosene lantern on the grass between us, dawn not yet broken beyond the glass walls. Miss Peregrine drew a pipe from her pocket, and bent to light it in the lamp flame. She drew a few thoughtful puffs, sending up wreaths of blue smoke, then began.
“In ancient times people mistook us for gods,” she said, “but we peculiars are no less mortal than common folk. Time loops merely delay the inevitable, and the price we pay for using them is hefty—an irrevocable divorce from the ongoing present. As you know, long-term loop dwellers can but dip their toes into the present lest they wither and die. This has been the arrangement since time immemorial.”
She took another puff, then continued.
“Some years ago, around the turn of the last century, a splinter faction emerged among our people—a coterie of disaffected peculiars with dangerous ideas. They believed they had discovered a method by which the function of time loops could be perverted to confer upon the user a kind of immortality; not merely the suspension of aging, but the reversal of it. They spoke of eternal youth enjoyed outside the confines of loops, of jumping back and forth from future to past with impunity, suffering none of the ill effects that have always prevented such recklessness—in other words, of mastering time without being mastered by death. The whole notion was mad—absolute bunkum—a refutation of the empirical laws that govern everything!”