Library of Souls (47 page)

It was impossible not to be affected by it, and as we gave them what comfort we could, we were beset by sniffles and sighs. I could not begin to imagine what my friends had been through, much less those who'd spent weeks or months in Caul's keeping. Compared to that, my bruises and traumas were inconsequential.

The rescued peculiars I'll remember most were three brothers. They seemed in fair health but were so shocked by what they'd experienced that they would not speak. At the first opportunity they retreated from the crowd, found a bit of rubble to hunker on, and stared hollowly around them, the oldest with his arms stretched around the younger two. As if they could not quite square the scene before them with the hell they had accepted as reality.

Emma and I crossed to where they were sitting. “You're safe now,” she said gently.

They looked at her as if they didn't know the meaning of the word.

Enoch saw us talking to them and came over with Bronwyn. She was dragging a barely conscious wight behind her, a white-coated lab worker with his hands tied. The boys recoiled.

“He can't hurt you anymore,” Bronwyn said. “None of them can.”

“Maybe we should leave him here with you awhile,” said Enoch with a devilish grin. “I'll bet you'd have a lot to talk about.”

The wight lifted his head. When he saw the boys, his blackened eyes widened.

“Stop it,” I said. “Don't torment them.”

The youngest boy's hands curled into fists and he started to get up, but the oldest boy held him back and whispered something in his ear. The younger boy closed his eyes and nodded, as if putting
something away, then tucked his fists tightly under his arms.

“No thank'y,” he said in a polite Southern drawl.

“Come on,” I said, and we let them be, Bronwyn dragging the wight along behind her.

* * *

We milled about the compound, awaiting instructions from the ymbrynes. It was a relief, for once, not to be the ones who decided everything. We felt spent but energized, exhausted beyond belief but charged with the crazy knowledge that we had survived.

There were spontaneous bursts of cheering, laughter, songs. Millard and Bronwyn danced across the scarred ground. Olive and Claire clung to Miss Peregrine, who carried them in her arms as she buzzed around, checking on things. Horace kept pinching himself, suspicious that this was just one of his dreams, some beautiful future that hadn't yet come to be. Hugh wandered off by himself, no doubt missing Fiona, whose absence had left a hole in us all. Millard was busy fretting over his hero, Perplexus, whose rapid aging had stopped when we entered Abaton and, strangely, not yet resumed. But it would, Millard assured us, and now that Caul's tower was destroyed, it was unclear how Perplexus would reach his old loop. (There was Bentham's Panloopticon, of course, but which of its hundred doors was the right one?)

Then there was the matter of Emma and me. We were attached at the hip and yet hardly exchanged a word. We were afraid to talk to each other, I think, because of what we had to talk about.

What would happen next? What would become of us? I knew Emma couldn't leave peculiardom. She would have to live inside a loop for the rest of her life, be it Devil's Acre or some other, better place. But I was free to go. I had family and a home waiting for me. A life, or the pale approximation of one. But I had a family here, too. And I had Emma. And there was this new Jacob I had become, was still becoming. Would he survive back in Florida?

I needed all of it. Both families, both Jacobs—all of Emma. I knew I would have to choose, and I was afraid it would split me in half.

It was all too much, more than I could face so soon after the trials
we'd just endured. I needed a few more hours, a day, to pretend. So Emma and I stood shoulder to shoulder and looked outward, throwing ourselves into whatever the ymbrynes needed of us.

The ymbrynes, overly protective by nature, decided we'd been through enough. We needed rest, and besides, there were tasks, they said, that peculiar children had no business taking part in. When the tower fell it had crushed a smaller building beneath it, but they didn't want us combing the wreckage for survivors. Elsewhere in the compound there were ambro vials to be recovered, which they didn't want us going near. I wondered what they'd do with them, or if those stolen souls could ever be reunited with their rightful owners.

I thought about the vial made from my grandfather's soul. I'd felt so violated when Bentham used it—and yet, if he hadn't, we never would have escaped the Library of Souls. So in the end, really, it was my grandfather's soul that had saved us. It was gratifying to know that at least it had not gone to waste.

There was work to be done outside the wights' compound, as well. Along Louche Lane and elsewhere in Devil's Acre, enslaved peculiar children needed to be freed, but the ymbrynes insisted they should be the ones to do it, along with some peculiar adults. As it happened, they would face no resistance: the slavers and other turncoats had fled the Acre the moment the wights fell. The children would be collected and brought to a safe house. The traitors hunted down and brought before tribunals. None of this was our concern, we were told. Right now we needed a place to recuperate, as well as a base of operations from which the reconstruction of peculiardom could begin—and none of us wanted to stay in the wights' fear-haunted fortress any longer than we had to.

I suggested Bentham's house. It had tons of space, beds, facilities, a live-in doctor, and a Panloopticon (which, you never know, might come in handy for something). We moved as dark was falling, loading one of the wights' transport trucks with those of us who couldn't walk, the rest marching behind it. We crossed out of the fortress
with a little help from the bridge hollow, which lifted the truck across the gap first and the rest of us in groups of three. Some of the kids were frightened of the hollow and needed coaxing. Others couldn't wait and clamored for another ride once they'd crossed. I indulged them. My control over hollows had become second nature, which was satisfying if slightly bittersweet. Now that hollows were nearly extinct, my peculiar ability seemed obsolete—this manifestation of it, anyway. But I was okay with that. I didn't care about having a showy power; it was just a party trick now. I'd have been much happier if hollows had never existed.

We traveled through Devil's Acre in a slow procession, those of us on foot surrounding the vehicle like a float in a parade, others riding its bumpers and roof. It felt like a victory lap, and the Acre's peculiars flooded out of their homes and hovels to watch us pass by. They had seen the tower fall. They knew things had changed. Many applauded. Some gave salutes. Others lurked in the shadows, ashamed of the role they'd played.

When we arrived at Bentham's house, Mother Dust and Reynaldo met us at the door. We were welcomed warmly and told the house was ours to use as we needed. Mother Dust immediately began treating the injured, showing them to beds, making them comfortable, anointing them with dust. She offered to heal my bruises and the bite wounds across my stomach first, but I told her I could wait. Others were worse off.

I told her how I'd used her finger. How it had saved my life, and the lives of others. She shrugged it off and turned back to her work.

I insisted. “You deserve a medal,” I said. “I don't know if peculiars give medals, but if they do I'll make sure you get one.”

She seemed taken aback by this somehow, and let out a choking sob before hurrying away.

“Did I say something wrong?” I asked Reynaldo.

“I don't know,” he said, concerned, and went after her.

Nim meandered about the house in a daze, unable to believe
what Bentham had done. “There must be some mistake,” he kept repeating. “Mr. Bentham would
never
betray us like that.”

“Snap out of it!” Emma said to him. “Your boss was a slimeball.”

The truth was a bit more nuanced, I thought, but making an argument for the complexity of Bentham's moral character wasn't going to make me terribly popular. Bentham didn't have to give up that recipe or take on his monstrous brother. He made a choice. In the end he'd damned himself in order to save the rest of us.

“He just needs time,” Sharon said of Nim. “It's a lot to process. Bentham had a lot of us fooled.”

“Even you?” I said.

“Me especially.” He shrugged and shook his head. He seemed conflicted and sad. “He weaned me off ambrosia, pulled me out of addiction, saved my life. There was good in him. I suppose I let that blind me to the bad.”

“He must've had
one
confidant,” Emma said. “You know, a henchman. An Igor.”

“His assistant!” I said. “Has anyone seen him?”

No one had. We searched the house for him, but Bentham's stone-faced right-hand man had disappeared. Miss Peregrine gathered everyone together and asked Emma and me describe him in detail, in case he returned. “He should be considered dangerous,” she said. “If you see him, do not engage. Run and tell an ymbryne.”

“Tell an ymbryne,” Enoch muttered. “Doesn't she realize that
we
saved
them
?”

Miss Peregrine overheard him. “Yes, Enoch. You were brilliant, all of you. And you've grown up remarkably. But even grown-ups have elders who know better.”

“Yes, miss,” he said, chastened.

Afterward I asked Miss Peregrine if she thought Bentham had planned to betray us from the beginning.

“My brother was an opportunist above all else,” she said. “I
think part of him did want to do the right thing, and when he helped you and Miss Bloom, he did so genuinely. But all along he'd been making preparations to betray us, in case that turned out to be advantageous for him. And when I told him where to stuff it, he decided that it was.”

“It wasn't your fault, Miss P,” said Emma. “After what he did to Abe, I wouldn't have forgiven him, either.”

“Still, I could have been kinder.” She frowned, her eyes wandering. “Sibling relationships can be complex. I wonder, sometimes, if my own actions had some bearing upon the paths my brothers chose. Could I have been a better sister to them? Perhaps, as a young ymbryne, I was too focused on myself.”

I said, “Miss Peregrine, that's”—and then stopped myself from using the word
ridiculous
, because I'd never had a brother or sister, and maybe it wasn't.

* * *

Later we took Miss Peregrine and some of the ymbrynes down to the basement to show them the heart of Bentham's Panloopticon machine. I could feel my hollow inside the battery chamber, weak but alive. I felt awful for it and asked if I could take it out, but Miss Peregrine said that for now they needed the machine working. Having so many loops accessible under one roof would allow them to spread news of our victory quickly throughout peculiardom, to assess the damage done by the wights and to begin rebuilding.

“I hope you understand, Mr. Portman,” said Miss Peregrine.

“I do …”

“Jacob has a soft spot for that hollow,” Emma said.

“Well,” I said, a little embarrassed. “He was my first.”

Miss Peregrine looked at me strangely but promised she'd do what she could.

The bite wound across my stomach was becoming too unbearable
to ignore, so Emma and I joined the line to see Mother Dust, which snaked out of her makeshift clinic in the kitchen and down the hall. It was amazing to watch person after person hobble in, battered and bruised, nursing a broken toe or a mild concussion—or in Miss Avocet's case, a bullet from Caul's antique pistol lodged in her shoulder—only to stride out a few minutes later looking better than new. In fact, they were looking so good that Miss Peregrine pulled Reynaldo aside and asked him to remind Mother Dust that she was not a renewable resource, and not to waste herself on minor wounds that would heal just fine on their own.

“I tried to tell her myself,” he replied, “but she's a perfectionist. She won't listen to me.”

So Miss Peregrine went into the kitchen to have a word with Mother Dust in person. She came out again five minutes later looking sheepish, several cuts on her face having disappeared and her arm, which hadn't hung straight since Caul had slammed her into that cavern wall, swinging freely at her side. “What a stubborn woman!” she exclaimed.

When it was my turn to go in and see her, I almost refused treatment—she only had a thumb and forefinger left on her good hand. But she took one look at the zagging, blood-encrusted cuts across my belly and practically shoved me onto the cot they'd set up by the sink. The bite was becoming infected, she told me through Reynaldo. Hollow teeth were crawling with nasty bacteria, and left untreated I would get very sick. So I relented. Mother Dust sprinkled her powder across my torso, and in a few minutes I was feeling much improved.

Before I left, I tried to tell her again how much her sacrifice had meant, and how the piece of herself she'd given to me had saved us. “Really, without that finger, I never would've been able to—”