It sounded like someone was jackhammering in the house.
“Maybe he’ll get bored and leave,” I said, half joking.
“He’s not going anywhere, except to get reinforcements.” She started pacing the narrow floor. “He’s probably calling for backup right now.”
“I don’t think hollows carry phones. Or need reinforcements.”
“What’s it doing here? Why are a wight and a hollowgast at your grandfather’s house?”
“Clearly, they were expecting us,” I said. “Or expecting someone.”
She leaned against the bunk bed, frowning and frustrated. “I thought Murnau was the last uncaptured wight. And almost all the hollows were dead.”
“The ymbrynes said there were still some in hiding. Maybe there were more than they thought.”
“Well, they’re not in hiding anymore. At least, these two weren’t. Which means someone called them into service. Which means—”
“We don’t know that,” I said, reluctant to follow that line of reasoning. “We don’t know anything.”
She squared her shoulders to me. “Caul’s back, isn’t he? Murnau succeeded. Brought him back from . . . wherever he was.”
I shook my head. Couldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Her back slid down the bed post until she was sitting on the floor, knees hugged to her chest. “I felt him,” she said. “Right before I blacked out. It was like . . . like a blanket of ice covering me.”
And I saw him. Saw his face in the heart of the storm. But still I said, “We just don’t know,” because I couldn’t be certain, and because I didn’t want to admit that such an awful thing was true until the truth of it was inescapable.
She tipped her head to one side, like something had just occurred to her, then jumped up and dug in her pocket. “I found this in V’s hand when I was wrapping her. She must have been holding it when she died.”
I stood up and she extended her hand. She held what appeared to be a damaged stopwatch. It had no hands and no numbers. Around the dial were strange symbols and what might have been runic letters, and the glass face was cracked and partially smoked over, as if it had been dropped into a fire. I took it from her and was surprised by its weight. On the back, in English, was stamped:
SINGLE USE ONLY. 5 MIN COUNTDOWN.
MADE IN EAST GERMANY.
“An eject button,” I said quietly, awe stealing over me.
“She must have had it in her pocket when we showed up,” said Noor. “Maybe she knew something was coming for her.”
I was nodding. “Or maybe she always carried it with her. So she could be ready to escape at a moment’s notice.”
Like a fugitive, I thought sadly.
“But it didn’t work quickly enough. It says right here, five minute countdown. So even if she’d hit the button the second Murnau came in . . .”
Noor looked past me, at the wall, at nothing.
“Fast enough to save us,” I said. “But too slow to save herself.” I handed back the stopwatch. “I’m sorry.”
She drew a shuddering breath, steadied herself, then shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. She was a preparer. A planner. And she’d had years to plan for an invasion. She had that ejector watch. A house full of weapons. Yeah, she got taken by surprise—thanks to me—but I bet she had a plan for that, too.”
“Noor, Murnau shot her in the chest. How do you plan for that?”
“She let it happen. I’m telling you. If she’d managed to dive out a window or something, his next move would have been to kill one of us, then use the other as a hostage. So instead she let him shoot her.”
“But her own heart was on Bentham’s list of resurrection ingredients. She must have known that. I think it’s the whole reason she locked herself in that loop—to keep the wights from stealing her heart. Letting Murnau kill her in order to save us would’ve endangered everyone.”
“We were supposed to stop him.” She wiped a smudge from the stopwatch with her thumb. “But we failed.”
I started to object, but she cut me off. “Look, this is pointless. There’s nothing to do but warn the others. We’ve got to get back to Devil’s Acre and tell them what’s happened. And soon.”
Finally. Something we could agree on.
“I think I know how,” I said. “There’s a pocket loop in the backyard of my parents’ house. It connects directly to the Panloopticon, inside the Acre. It’s on the other side of town.”
“Then we’ve got to go. Now.”
“If it’s still operational,” I added.
“I guess we’ll find out.”
There was a loud metal creak from the periscope. It spun suddenly on its tube, then raced upward and smashed against the ceiling. We dove out of the way as broken glass sprayed across the floor.
“So much for our surveillance system,” Noor said.
“He’s pissed. And he’s not going anywhere.”
“We’ll just have to take our chances.”
“We can afford to take chances with my life,” I said. “But if Caul really is back, we can’t take any chances with yours.”
“Oh, come on—”
“No, hear me out. If there’s any truth to that prophecy—and by now I think we’ve got to believe there is—then you’re the best hope we’ve got. Maybe the only hope.”
“You mean the seven thing.” She frowned. “Me and six others. Which, who knows if they’re even—”
“You’re safe now, and I’ve got to keep you safe. V didn’t sacrifice herself just so you could end up in a hollowgast’s stomach. I don’t know how long we were unconscious. Hours, at least—maybe longer. So please, just wait another couple of minutes, and let’s see whether this asshole gets bored of chewing on sod. Then we’ll make our move.”
She crossed her arms. “Fine. But there’s got to be some way to warn the others while we’re waiting. Is there a phone? A radio?” She scanned the room. “What’s that thing behind you?”
She was talking about the teleprinter. “It’s obsolete,” I said. “Belongs in a museum.”
“Can it talk to the outside world?”
“Not anymore, I don’t think. They used to use them to talk to other loops, but they weren’t secure enough—”