“That sounds like a distinctly out-of-hand situation,” said Millard.
We were already running.
* * *
• • •
“Stay where you are!” Miss Peregrine shouted toward the living room.
I dashed out of the kitchen and down the back hall, Emma just behind, adrenaline sharpening me. I wasn’t sure what to expect when we burst into the garage. Smoke? Blood? It had sounded like an explosion, but I definitely did not anticipate finding my parents and uncles passed out in our car, peaceful as babes. The car’s rear end was wedged into a major dent in the rolled-down garage door, and the concrete around it sparkled with bits of broken taillight. The engine was on and idling.
Bronwyn stood at the front end of the car with the bumper dangling from her hands. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened,” she said, and dropped the bumper with an echoing clang.
Realizing I had to kill the engine before we all suffocated, I peeled away from the others and ran to the driver’s-side door. The handle was locked. Of course it was: My family had been trying to keep Bronwyn out. I’m sure they’d been terrified.
“I can open it,” Bronwyn said. “Stand back!”
She planted her feet and grabbed the door handle with both hands.
“What are you—” I started to say, and then with a mighty heave, she pulled the door open and straight off its hinges. Weight and momentum being what they were, the door kept going, flying out of her hands and across the room before burying itself in the back wall. The noise was like a physical force pushing me backward.
“Oh, fiddlywinks,” Bronwyn said into the ringing silence that followed.
The garage was beginning to resemble some of the bombed houses I’d seen in wartime London.
“Bronwyn!” Emma shouted, uncovering her head. “You might have decapitated someone!”
I ducked into the hole where the driver’s-side door had been, reached across my sleeping father, and snatched the keys from the ignition. My mother was slumped against my father, who was snoring. In the back, my uncles slept in each other’s arms. Despite all the noise, none of them had stirred. I knew of only one substance that could put people into such a deep sleep: a powdered piece of Mother Dust. When I stood up out of the car again, I saw Bronwyn holding a little pouch of the stuff as she attempted to explain what had happened.
“The man in the back,” she was saying, pointing at my uncle Bobby, “I seen him using his, his little—” She pulled Bobby’s phone from her pocket.
“Cell phone,” I said.
“Right—that,” she continued. “So I took it away, which made all of them as mad as a bag of ferrets, and then I did like Miss P showed me—”
“You used the powder?” said Miss Peregrine.
“I blew it right at ’em, but they didn’t fall asleep straight off. Jacob’s dad started up the car, but instead of going forward, he—he—” Bronwyn gestured to the dented garage door, words failing her.
Miss Peregrine patted her on the arm. “Yes, dear, I can see. You handled things just right.”
“Yeah,” said Enoch. “Right through the wall.”
We turned to see the other kids peeping at us from a tight cluster in the hallway.
“I told you to stay where you were,” said Miss Peregrine.
“After that noise?” said Enoch.
“I’m sorry, Jacob,” Bronwyn said. “They got so upset, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t hurt ’em, did I?”
“I don’t think so.” I had experienced the velvety sleep induced by Mother Dust’s powder, and it wasn’t a bad place to spend a few hours. “Can I see my uncle’s phone?”
Bronwyn handed it to me. The screen was spider-cracked but readable. When it lit up, I saw a string of texts from my aunt:
What’s happening?
When will u be home?
Everything ok??
In reply, Uncle Bobby had started to type CALL THE COPS and then probably realized that he could just as easily call them himself. But Bronwyn had taken his phone before he was able to. If she’d been a few seconds slower, we might’ve had a visit from the SWAT team. My chest tightened as I realized how fast our situation could have become dangerous and complicated. Hell, I thought, looking from the ruined car to the ruined wall to the ruined garage door. It already has.
“Don’t worry, Jacob. I’ve handled much stickier situations.” Miss Peregrine was walking around the car, examining the damage. “Your family will sleep soundly until morning, and I daresay we should try to do the same.”
“And then what?” I said, anxious and starting to sweat. The unair-conditioned garage was sweltering.
“When they wake, I’ll wipe their recent memories and send your uncles home.”
“But what will they—”
“I’ll explain that we’re distant relatives from your father’s side of the family, here from Europe to pay our respects at Abe’s grave. And as for your appointment at the asylum, you’re feeling much better now and no longer require psychiatric care.”
“And what about—”
“Oh, they’ll believe it; normals are highly suggestible following a memory wipe. I could probably convince them we’re visitors from a moon colony.”
“Miss Peregrine, please stop doing that.”
She smiled. “My apologies. A century of headmistressing trains you to anticipate questions for the sake of expediency. Now come along, children, we need to discuss protocol for the next several days. There’s much to learn about the present, and no time like the present to start learning.”
She began herding everyone out of the garage while they peppered her with questions and complaints:
“How long can we stay?” said Olive.
“May we go exploring in the morning?” said Claire.
“I would like to eat something before I perish from the earth,” said Millard.
Soon, I was alone in the garage, lingering partly because I felt bad about leaving my family there overnight, but also because I was anxious about their impending memory wipe. Miss Peregrine seemed confident, but this would be a bigger wipe than the one she had performed on them in London, which had only deleted about ten minutes of their memories. What if she didn’t erase enough, or erased too much? What if my dad forgot all he knew about birds, or my mom forgot all the French she learned in college?
I watched them sleep for a minute, this new weight settling upon me. I felt suddenly, uncomfortably adult, while my family—vulnerable, peaceful, drooling a bit—looked almost like babies.