—and then it did. In one swift motion the hollow swiveled its head and pivoted its body to face me.
I went rigid. “Don’t move,” I said, this time aloud, to the others. Addison buried his face between his paws and Emma froze, her arm squeezing mine like a vise. I steeled myself for what was to come—its tongues, its teeth, the end.
Get back, get back, get back.
English, English, English.
Seconds passed during which, astonishingly, we weren’t killed. But for the rising and falling of its chest, the creature seemingly had turned once again to stone.
Experimentally, moving by millimeters, I slid along the wall. The hollow followed me with slight turns of its head—locked onto me like a compass needle, its body in perfect sympathy with mine—but it didn’t follow, didn’t open its jaws. If whatever spell I’d cast had been broken, we’d already be dead.
The hollow was only watching me. Awaiting instructions I didn’t know how to give. “False alarm,” I said, and Emma breathed an audible sigh of relief.
We slid out of the gap, peeled ourselves from the wall, and hurried away as fast as Emma could limp. When we’d put a little distance between us and the hollow, I looked back. It had turned all the way around to face me.
Stay, I muttered in English. Good.
*
We passed through a veil of steam and the escalator came into view, frozen into stairs, its power cut. Around it glowed a halo of weak daylight, a tantalizing envoy from the world above. World of the living, world of now. A world where I had parents. They were here, both of them, in London, breathing this air. A stroll away.
Oh, hi there!
Unthinkable. Still more unthinkable: not five minutes ago, I’d told my father everything. The Cliff’s Notes version, anyway: I’m like Grandpa Portman was. I’m peculiar. They wouldn’t understand, but at least now they knew. It would make my absence feel less like a betrayal. I could still hear my father’s voice, begging me to come home, and as we limped toward the light I had to fight a sudden, shameful urge to shake off Emma’s arm and run for it—to escape this suffocating dark, to find my parents and beg forgiveness, and then to crawl into their posh hotel bed and sleep.
That was most unthinkable of all. I could never: I loved Emma, and I’d told her so, and I wouldn’t leave her behind for anything. And not because I was noble or brave or chivalrous. I’m not any of those things. I was afraid that leaving her behind would rip me in half.
And the others, the others. Our poor, doomed friends. We had to go after them—but how? A train hadn’t entered the station since the one that spirited them away, and after the blast and gunshots that had rocked the place, I was sure there’d be no more coming. That left us two options, each one terrible: go after them on foot through the tunnels and hope we didn’t meet any more hollows, or climb the escalator and face whatever was waiting for us up there—most likely a wight mop-up crew—then regroup, reassess.
I knew which option I preferred. I’d had enough of the dark, and more than enough of hollows.
“Let’s go up,” I said, urging Emma toward the stalled escalator. “We’ll find somewhere safe to plan our next move while you get your strength back.”
“Absolutely not!” she said. “We can’t just abandon the others. Never mind how I feel.”
“We aren’t. But we need to be realistic. We’re hurt and defenseless, and the others are probably miles away by now, out of the underground and halfway to somewhere else. How will we even find them?”
“The same way I found you,” said Addison. “With my nose. Peculiar folk have an aroma all their own, you see—one which only dogs of my persuasion can sniff out. And you happen to be one powerfully odoriferous group of peculiars. Fear enhances it, I think, and skipping baths …”
“Then we go after them!” Emma said.
She pulled me toward the tracks with a surprising burst of strength. I resisted, tug-of-warring our linked arms. “No, no—there’s no way the trains are still running, and if we go in there on foot …”
“I don’t care if it’s dangerous. I won’t leave them.”
“It isn’t just dangerous, it’s pointless. They’re already gone, Emma.”
She took back her arm and started hobbling toward the tracks. Stumbled, caught herself. Say something, I mouthed to Addison, and he circled around to block her.
“I’m afraid he’s right. If we follow on foot, our friends’ scent trail will have dissipated long before we’re able to find them. Even my profound abilities have limits.”
Emma gazed into the tunnel, then back at me, her expression tortured. I held out my hand. “Please, let’s go. It doesn’t mean we’re giving up.”
“All right,” she said heavily. “All right.”
But just as we were starting toward the escalator, someone called out from the dark, back along the tracks.
“Over here!”
The voice was weak but familiar, the accent Russian. It was the folding man. Peering into the dark, I could just make out his crumpled form by the tracks, one arm raised. He’d been shot during the melee, and I assumed the wights had shoved him onto the train with the others. But there he lay, waving to us.
“Sergei!” cried Emma.
“You know him?” Addison said suspiciously.
“He was one of Miss Wren’s peculiar refugees,” I said, my ears pricking at the wail of distant sirens echoing down from the surface. Trouble was coming—maybe trouble disguised as help—and I worried that our best chance at a clean exit was slipping away. Then again, we couldn’t just leave him.
Addison scuttled toward the man, dodging the deepest reefs of glass. Emma let me take her arm again and we shuffled after. Sergei was lying on his side, covered in glass and streaked with blood. The bullet had hit him somewhere vital. His wire-framed spectacles were cracked and he was adjusting them, trying to get a good look at me. “Is miracle, is miracle,” he rasped, his voice thin as twice-strained tea. “I heard you speak with monster’s tongue. Is miracle.”
“It’s not,” I said, kneeling beside him. “It’s gone, I’ve already lost it.”
“If gift inside you, is forever.”
Footsteps and voices echoed from the escalator passage. I cleared away glass so I could get my hands under the folding man. “We’re taking you with us,” I said.
“Leave me,” he croaked. “I’ll be gone soon enough …”
Ignoring him, I slipped my hands beneath his body and lifted. He was ladder-long but light as a feather, and I held him in my arms like a big baby, his skinny legs dangling over my elbow while his head lolled against my shoulder.
Two figures banged down the last few escalator steps and then stood at the bottom, rimmed by pale daylight and peering into the new dark. Emma pointed at the floor and we sank quietly to our knees, hoping they’d miss us—hoping they were just civilians come to catch a train—but then I heard the squelch of a walkie-talkie and they each fired up a flashlight, the beams shining against their bright reflective jackets.
They might’ve been emergency responders, or wights disguised as such. I wasn’t sure until, in synchrony, they peeled off wraparound sunglasses.
Of course.
Our options had just narrowed by half. Now there were only the tracks, the tunnels. We could never outrun them, damaged as we were, but escape was still possible if they didn’t see us—and they hadn’t yet, amidst the chaos of the ruined station. Their searchlights dueled across the floor. Emma and I backed toward the tracks. If we could just slip into the tunnels unnoticed … but Addison, damn him, wasn’t moving.
“Come on,” I hissed.
“They are ambulance drivers and this man needs help,” he said too loudly, and right away the beams of light bounced up from the floor and whipped toward us.