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, this time they bring guns?”
“That’s what I’d do,” Enoch said. “Wait till everyone’s asleep and then slide down the chimney like Santa Claus and BLAM!” He fired an imaginary pistol at Emma’s pillow. “Brains on the wall.”
“Thank you for that,” Millard said, sighing.
“We’ve got to hit them before they know we know they’re there,” said Emma, “while we’ve still got the element of surprise.”
“But we don’t know they’re there!” said Millard.
“We’ll find out.”
“And how do you propose to do that? Wander around until you see a hollow? What then? ‘Excuse me, we were wondering what your intentions might be, vis à vis eating us.’ ”
“We’ve got Jacob,” said Bronwyn. “He can see them.”
I felt my throat tighten, aware that if this hunting party formed, I would be in some way responsible for everyone’s safety.
“I’ve only ever seen one,” I warned them. “So I wouldn’t exactly call myself an expert.”
“And if he shouldn’t happen to see one?” said Millard. “It could either mean that there are none to be seen or that they’re hiding. You’d still be clueless, as you so clearly are now.”
Furrowed brows all around. Millard had a point.
“Well, it appears that logic has prevailed yet again,” he said. “I’m off to fetch some porridge for supper, if any of you would-be mutineers would like to join me.”
The bedsprings creaked as he got up and moved toward the door. But before he could leave, Enoch leapt to his feet and cried, “I’ve got it!”
Millard stopped. “Got what?”
Enoch turned to me. “The bloke who may or may not have been eaten by a hollow—do you know where they’re keeping him?”
“At the fishmonger’s.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Then I know how we can be sure.”
“And how’s that?” said Millard.
“We’ll ask him.”