The young cop let out a single sharp laugh—“Ha!”—but the other two were speechless. Before their brains could unfreeze, there was a loud, shattering crash behind us. We spun around to look, and there was Bronwyn standing at the edge of the driveway. She’d thrown a potted palm tree through the animal control van’s windshield.
“Come get me!” she taunted them, and I had not even a second to appreciate the joyous fact of her being alive, or to wonder what she was doing here, because she took off running behind the house, and Rafferty shouted at her to stop and chased after her. The other two cops dropped their poles and did the same.
“To the pocket loop, friends!” Addison cried, and he shook the poles off his collar and started to run.
We chased him into the backyard. I looked for the potting shed by the oleander hedge, but the storm had carried it into Lemon Bay, and where it had been there was now just a rim of splintered boards.
Bronwyn barreled into view around the opposite corner of the house. “Jump in! Jump in where you see the shiny place!”
Addison led us to the spot where the shed had been. In the middle of it, in the dark heart where the pocket loop entrance was, a strange and shimmering distortion hung in midair. “It’s a loop in its most elemental form,” Addison said. “Don’t be afraid—just go.”
The cops were twenty steps behind Bronwyn, and I had no doubt that if they reached us, there would be nightsticks and tasers and Bronwyn would have to seriously injure them, so without stopping to warn her, I shoved Noor into the mirrored air. In a flash of light, she disappeared.
Addison jumped in after her, and with another flash was gone.
“Go, Mr. Jacob!” Bronwyn yelled, and because I knew she could hold her own against any normal ever born, I did.
Everything went black, and for the second time in as many hours, I was weightless.
We tumbled out of the broom closet in a tangle of flailing limbs and sprawled across thick red carpet. I caught an elbow on the chin and felt a wet dog nose swipe my face, then narrowly missed getting punched by Bronwyn as she thrashed free of the pile. “Unhand us, you animal-torturing bastards!” she was shouting, her eyes wild and unfocused, and she pulled back her fist and was about to knock one of us unconscious when Addison tackled her with his forepaws and pushed her backward.
“Get ahold of yourself, girl, we’re back in the Panloopticon!”
He licked her face. Bronwyn’s arms went limp at her sides. “We are?” she said meekly. “It all happened so quickly, I lost track of where I was.” She took us in. A smile bloomed across her face. “My goodness. It’s really you.”
“I’m so happy to see you guys, I can’t even—” Noor started to say, but the rest was muffled by the folds of Bronwyn’s homemade dress.
“We thought we’d lost you for good this time!” Bronwyn cried, hugging us both. “When you disappeared again without telling anyone we thought for certain you’d been kidnapped!” She stood without letting go, hauling Noor and me up with her. “Horace had a dream you’d gotten your souls sucked out through your feet! And then the desolations began, and—”
“Bronwyn!” I shouted into the sandpapery fabric of her dress.
“For heaven’s sake, let them breathe,” said Addison.
“Sorry, sorry,” Bronwyn said as she released us.
“It’s nice to see you, too,” I wheezed.
“So very sorry,” she said. “I get carried away, don’t I?”
“It’s fine,” Noor said, and she gave Bronwyn a light side-hug as proof there were no hard feelings.
Addison chided Bronwyn, “Don’t apologize so much, it makes you seem timid.”
Bronwyn nodded and said “Sorry” again, and Addison clicked his tongue, shook his head, and turned to Noor and me. “Now, where have you been?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said.
“Never mind then, we’ve got to get you to the ymbrynes,” Addison said. “They need to know you’ve been found.”
Noor asked if they were okay.
“They’ll be better now that you’re back,” Bronwyn allowed.
“Everything’s still here?” I cast a wary glance down the hall.
“Yes . . .” Bronwyn began to look worried.
“There hasn’t been an attack?” Noor said.
Addison’s ears pricked up. “An attack? By whom?”
A tightness that had been building in my chest began to loosen. “Thank God.”
“There’s been no attack,” Bronwyn said, “though honestly, we’ve been so preoccupied with finding you that we might not have noticed if bombs started falling.”
“I want to know what you mean by all these strange questions,” Addison said, raising up on his hind legs to squint at me.
Noor glanced at me, uncertain.
“Maybe nothing,” I said, rubbing my face. “It’s been a long night. I don’t mean to be mysterious, but I think you’re right, we should talk to Miss Peregrine first.”
I didn’t want to spread panic. And there was still a small part of me that hoped I was wrong about Caul. That he was still where he belonged, condemned to spend forever trapped in the Library of Souls.
“At least tell us where you’ve been,” Bronwyn pleaded. “We’ve been working day and night to find you. The ymbrynes have had us patrolling every loop where you two might conceivably have disappeared to. Emma, Enoch, Addison, and me have been on rotating shifts of your house in Florida since yesterday evening.”
“Even in that tempest!” said Addison. “And then those sadistic, pole-wielding constables surprised us—”
“Since yesterday?” Noor said. “That can’t be right . . .”
“How long have we been gone?” I finally thought to ask.
Addison’s furry brows pinched together. “These are odd questions indeed.”
“Two days,” said Bronwyn. “Since the afternoon before last.”
Noor fell back a step. “Two days.”
That’s how long we were falling, I thought, and for a moment I felt that weightless, bodiless sensation come over me again. Two days.
“We went to find V,” I said, “that much I can tell you.”
“And we did,” Noor added, which was more than I wanted to say.
Bronwyn gasped, but didn’t interrupt.