A Map of Days

by Ransom Riggs

  There was a moment of tense quiet as the clan leaders digested this, then looked at one another.

  “You say she’s new?” said Dogface. “You mean . . . uncontacted?” He leaned back on his heels, his voice rising from a snarl back to normal.

  “That’s right,” said Emma. “What’s it matter?

  Angelica was shaking her head, rainwater dripping off her chin. “That’s bad.”

  “Damn it!” said Wreck. He punched the air. “Damn it, I really wanted the fiery one on my crew.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Bronwyn.

  “Yeah, what just happened?” said Noor.

  Frankie started laughing. “Oh, you’re in trouble,” she said.

  “You shut up,” said Emma.

  “Kidnapping an uncontacted peculiar is a serious crime,” said the tutor. “A very grave offense.”

  “No one’s kidnapping me,” said Noor.

  “You’re outsiders,” said Wreck, “and you’re transporting an uncontacted across territory lines. And that means—” He let out a loud breath and stamped his foot. “I hate this!”

  Dogface stood up and brushed off his hands. “We’ve got to turn you in,” he said. “Or we’ll be accessories to the crime.”

  “Must we?” said Angelica. “I like them more and more.”

  “You must be joking.” Dogface started pacing nervously. “If we don’t report this and Leo hears about it? Our lives are worth nothing. Less than nothing.”

  “I thought you weren’t afraid of ‘nobody, no man, no nothing,’” Angelica said.

  Dogface spun toward her and yelled, “Only an idiot wouldn’t be afraid of Leo!”

  Wreck turned away, and when he turned back he was holding something that looked like a small cell phone. “I hate to do this. I really do. I was looking forward to working with you. But I’m afraid I have no choice.”

  He punched a few buttons on the device. A moment later, a siren began to blare. It seemed to come from everywhere at once—the walls, ceiling, the air itself. My friends and I looked at one another, then at the Americans, who had lowered their weapons and were no longer making threatening moves toward us at all anymore. They just seemed disappointed.

  Emma let go of Frankie. She fell to the floor. “Where’s our friend?” she shouted at the girl. “What did you do with Enoch?”

  Frankie scurried away toward the Americans. “He’s part of my collection now!” She peeked out between Wreck’s knees. “You’re not getting him back, either!”

  With that, there seemed no reason left to stay, and nothing compelling us to. The siren blared. My friends and I looked around.

  “I think we’d better go,” I said.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” said Emma.

  Emma, Noor, and I helped Bronwyn, who seemed almost her old self again but was still a little woozy, and we ran down the stairs and up the aisle toward the back exit as fast as we could—which wasn’t very. Neither the Americans nor their flunkies made the slightest attempt to stop us. We burst through the doors and out into the fading day.

  Running toward us were a half-dozen men in 1920s-era suits carrying antique machine guns. They raised them and shouted for us to stop. A spray of bullets ricocheted off the concrete behind us.

  One of the men kicked my legs out from under me, and then I was lying facedown on the pavement with a shoe grinding into the back of my neck.

  A gruff order was given. “Wink ’em.” A hood was pulled over my head.

  Everything went black.

  I was hauled onto my feet and pulled along roughly, then lifted by my arms and thrown onto a metal floor. A door slammed. I seemed to be in the back of a vehicle. I couldn’t see anything through the hood they’d pulled over my head; I could hardly breathe through it. My chin ached where it had been ground into the concrete, and my wrists, bound again, chafed in their tight restraints. A big, many-cylindered engine chugged to life. I heard Emma say something, and one of the goons barked, “Shaddap!” and there was a slap, then quiet, as rage coiled in my chest.

  The vehicle juddered and shook. No one spoke. Two things occurred to me as we waited for our fate to reveal itself: that these goons must work for Leo, the only person in New York everyone seemed to be afraid of, and that I’d lost my duffel bag. My duffel bag with Abe’s operations log in it. The only thing he’d bothered to keep locked in his secret underground bunker. Full of sensitive information. A near-full accounting of his years as a hollow-hunter. And I had lost track of it.

  I’d last had possession of the duffel going into Frankie’s. The tutor must have taken it off me between there and the abandoned theater. Had he looked inside it? Did he know what he had? What was worse: if he threw it away, or if he read it?

  Not that any of that mattered now. If these really were Leo’s guys, and he was as terrible as everyone seemed to think he was, I might not live out the day anyway.

  The driver hit the brakes hard. I started to slide across the metal floor when a goon grabbed me by the neck. The vehicle stopped and I heard the doors open. We were dragged out, hustled into some kind of building, down a hall, and through a loop entrance so gentle I almost didn’t realize what had happened. Then we were taken outside again, but now our environment felt and sounded different. It was cold, and the street was bustling. We had passed into an older era. The sound of people’s shoes on the pavement was different—harder, because no one wore sneakers. There were cars all around us, and their engines were rougher-sounding, their horns throatier, their exhaust smokier.

  When I stumbled twice on uneven pavement, the man who had my arm warned me not to try anything stupid, then tore off the hood before marching me on again. I blinked against the sudden bright daylight, trying to take in the scene and figure out where I was. I knew that my life might depend on a quick escape later.

  It was New York, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century—1930s or ’40s, I guessed. The old cars and buses were unmistakable, and every man wore a suit and hat. My captors blended in perfectly here. They’d felt comfortable taking off my hood because they no longer had to worry about me seeing where I was. They probably controlled the whole place. Shouting for help in this loop would’ve done me no good—the goons would’ve killed any normals who gave them trouble. The only things they bothered to hide, so as not to make a scene, were their machine guns, tucked inside newspapers under their arms.

  We walked down the street. Nobody seemed to notice us, and I wasn’t sure if that was just the way of New Yorkers, or if people here were trained to ignore Leo’s men because it was better for their health. I tried to look behind me, to see if my friends were there, but that earned me a slap on the back of the head. I could see my captors in front of me and to each side, and I could hear, somewhere to the rear, Dogface and Wreck, talking low.

  We turned down an alley, then walked up a loading ramp, past several men in work coveralls, and into a dark warehouse.

  “Leo’s waiting,” one of the workers growled.

  We were marched through a kitchen buzzing with chefs and waiters who pressed themselves against the walls to let us pass, careful never to make eye contact. We walked through a ballroom, through a plush bar that was gloomy at midday but nearly half full with patrons, then up a gilded staircase, to an office.

  The office was big and fancy, with fine carved wood and touches of gold. At the far end, behind a hulking, mirror-polished desk, a man sat waiting for us. He wore a black pinstriped suit with a loud purple tie and a cream-colored felt homburg that didn’t quite match the rest of his outfit. A tall man stood next to him, looking like an undertaker, all dressed in black.

  As I was walked toward him, the man at the desk stared at me. My skin prickled like it was being probed with icicles. He was playing with a letter opener, pushing the point into the green felt of his desk, leaving little divots. His eyes shif
ted, and in short order Emma, Millard, and Bronwyn were hauled up beside me.

  Noor was not among them. I wondered what they’d done with her, a chill of dread going through me. Then Wreck, Angelica, and Wreck’s two flunkies were rushed in, a goon attached to each of them. Dogface was nowhere to be seen; clearly, he’d made his escape.

  “Leo, good to see you, been too long,” said Wreck, making a hat-tip gesture though he didn’t wear a hat. His flunkies were silent.

  Angelica bowed. “Hello, Leo,” she said, her cloud a polite size and hugged close to her body, as if it, too, were intimidated.

  Leo pointed the letter opener at her. “You better not rain in here, angel face. I just had this carpet steamed.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “So.” Leo aimed the opener at us. “This them?”

  “That’s them,” said Wreck.

  “Where’s the dog boy?”

  “He got away,” said the tall man, his voice a snaky slither.

  Leo gripped the letter opener a little tighter. “That ain’t good, Bill. People are gonna get the idea that we’re soft on crime.”

  “We’ll get him, Leo.”

  “You better.” He looked to Wreck and Angelica. “Now, as for you. I heard you were attending an illegal auction.”

  “Oh no, nothing like that,” said Wreck. “These peculiars here?” He gestured to my friends and me. “We were trying to hire them. It was a . . . job fair.”

  “Job fair!” Leo chuckled. “That’s a new one. You sure you weren’t trading them under the table? Inducing them via threats or intimidation to render services to you free of charge?”

  “No, no, no,” Wreck was saying.

  “We’d never do that,” said Angelica.

  “And what are you supposed to do with outsiders?” said Leo.

  “Bring them to you,” said Wreck.

  “That’s right.”

  “Frankie thought they were nobody special, that’s why—”

  “Frankie’s a mental midget!” Leo shouted. “Sorting out who’s nobody and who’s an infiltrator ain’t her department. You bring outsiders to me and I sort ’em out! Got it?”

  “Yes, Leo,” they said in unison.

  “Now, where’s the light-eater?”

  “Cooling her heels in the lounge,” said Leo’s man, Bill. “I got Jimmy and Walker with her.”

  “Good. Don’t be rough on her. We want to try and make friends first, remember.”

  “Got it, Leo.”

  Leo turned to us. Took his feet off the desk and sat forward. “Where you from?” he said. “You’re Californios, ain’t ya? Meese’s people?”

  “I’m from Florida,” I said.

  “We’re from the UK,” said Bronwyn. Her voice sounded raw.

  “We don’t know who Meese is or understand any of what you’re talking about,” said Emma.

  Leo nodded. Looked down at his desk. Was quiet for a strangely long moment. When he looked up again, his face had gone ruddy with anger.

  “My name’s Leo Burnham, and I run this town.”

  “Whole East Coast,” said Bill.

  “Here’s how this is gonna work. I ask you questions and you answer straight. I’m not a guy you lie to. I’m not a guy whose time you waste.” Leo raised his hand above his head and brought it down hard, stabbing the letter opener deep into the top of his desk. Everyone in the room jumped.

  “Read the charges, Bill,” said Leo.

  Bill flipped open a pad of paper. “Trespassing. Resisting arrest. Kidnapping an uncontacted peculiar.”

  “Add lying about their identity,” said Leo.

  “Got it, Leo,” said Bill, scribbling.

  Leo stood up from his tall chair, walked around behind it, and rested his forearms on its golden trim. “After the wights and shadow beasts skipped town and things started to open up,” he said, “I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody tried to make a move on our territory. I figured they’d start by trying to pick off one of the podunk loops on the outskirts. Missy Fineman’s outfit out in the Pine Barrens. Juice Barrow’s joint in the Poconos. But to come after one of the most powerful ferals we’ve seen in I don’t know how long, and to do it right in our backyard in broad daylight—” He straightened as he said it, spittle flying in a flash of anger. “That’s not only brazen, it’s an insult. That’s the Californios saying, ‘Leo’s weak. Leo’s sleeping. Let’s just waltz into his house and steal his piggy bank, because we can get away with it.’”

  “You’re clearly quite upset,” said Millard, “and while I certainly don’t want to upset you further by disagreeing with you, we simply aren’t who you seem to think we are.”

  Leo came out from behind his chair and stood in front of Millard, who had been forced to wear a striped gown that made it harder for him to slip away unnoticed.

  “Are you from here?” Leo asked, his tone even.

  “No,” replied Millard.

  “Were you trying to remove that feral?”

  “What’s a feral, exactly?”

  Leo punched Millard in the stomach. Millard doubled over and groaned.

  “Stop it!” Emma shouted.

  “Bill, tell ’em what a feral is.”

  “A peculiar who don’t know they’re peculiar and ain’t yet allied with any particular clan or crew,” Bill said, as if reciting from memory.

  “Feral” seemed to be another word for uncontacted—but more derogatory.

  “She was in danger,” I said. “We were trying to help her.”

  “By taking her out of the five boroughs.” Leo sounded incredulous.

  “To our loop in London,” said Bronwyn. “Where she’d be safe from people like you.”

  Leo’s eyebrows went up. “London. See, Bill, it’s worse than I thought. Now we got limey peculiars coming after us, not just Los Californios.”

  “She’s not one of you, and she’s not yours,” I said. “It was her choice to come with us.”

  Leo straightened his collar and came right up to me. His goon’s grip on my arm tightened. “I don’t know if you’re really ignorant or just pretending to be,” he said quietly, “but it don’t matter. The law is the law, and it’s the same law all over this country. That light-eater’s a local, and inducing her to leave is a crime—one you’ve admitted to. I got no choice but to make an example out of you.” He raised his hand and slapped me, and it happened so fast I didn’t have time to prepare myself for the blow. The shock and force of it almost knocked me over.

  “Bill, get these punks out of my office. Find out who they are, and don’t be afraid to put the screws on. We’re done looking soft.”

  “You got it, Leo.”

  I saw Emma’s face as we were being dragged out, and she saw mine. I mouthed, We’ll be okay. But for the first time since we’d left my house in Florida days ago, I really wasn’t sure.

  That was the first time I met Leo, but it would not be the last.

  * * *

  • • •

  I couldn’t tell you how long I spent in that cell. It felt like days, but it was probably less than twenty-four hours. There was no window, no sun, no furniture other than a cot and a toilet. The only light was a bare bulb that never stopped burning, and under those conditions the passage of time becomes harder to gauge, especially when you’re suffering from loop lag and your body hardly knows what time it is in the first place.

  They brought me food in a tin bowl, water in a tin cup. Every few hours someone came to interrogate me. Usually a different person each time. At first all they wanted to know was where I was from and who I worked with. They really seemed to believe I was from California but lying about it. That I was a “Californio”—that was the word they kept using. Though I denied it in every possible way, the truth—that I was part of this band of peculiars from Great Brit
ain—sounded so unlikely, given my obvious Americanness and the fact that I came from the modern day and my friends did not. It was very difficult to convince them. My story made no sense. They talked with cruel ease about killing me, and the various terrible penalties for the “crimes” my friends and I had committed. But they didn’t beat me. They didn’t torture me. I think it had something to do with the man down the hall. Every few hours they would take me out of the cell and walk me down to another windowless room, where I would sit across from an owlish man with tight-cropped hair and little round glasses. He would stare at me for long minutes without speaking, leaned way back in his chair, nibbling on pickles.

  My theory is that he was trying to read my mind. I don’t know if the pickles were part of his technique or if he just had an addiction to them. Eventually he must have found out whatever it was he wanted to find out—or perhaps they got through to one of my friends’ brains—because my other interrogators suddenly changed their tune. Now they seemed to believe me when I insisted I wasn’t from California, and that I was part of this group of peculiars from across the ocean.

  After that they wanted to know all about the European peculiars, about the ymbrynes, about Miss Peregrine. They were convinced the ymbrynes were planning some sort of invasion or attack. They wanted to know how many other peculiars we’d kidnapped from America. How many ferals we’d lured away. I told them none, and that we had acted alone and without the ymbrynes’ knowledge. And I repeated what I’d said to Leo: We’d answered a call to help an uncontacted peculiar who was in danger. We wanted to help her, and that was all.

  “In danger from what,” my interrogator asked. He was a big guy with unshaven jowls and chalk-white hair.

  I figured there was no harm in telling them, so I described the people who’d been stalking her. The SUVs with blacked-out windows. The helicopter above the building site and the men who’d chased us and shot Bronwyn with some kind of tranquilizer dart.