At this, Nim went a bit red and puffed out his cheeks. “Wasted?”
“What Jacob meant,” Emma said, “is that we have another pressing engagement elsewhere in the Acre that we’re already late for.”
“Mr. Bentham insists upon meeting you properly,” Nim said. “As he always says, the day there’s no time for manners, the world’s lost to us anyway. Speaking of which, I’m to make sure you’re dressed appropriately.” He went to the wardrobe and swung open its heavy doors. Inside were several racks of clothes. “You may choose what you like.”
Emma pulled out a frilly dress and curled her lip. “This feels so wrong. Playing dress-up and having tea while our friends and ymbrynes are forced to endure bird knows what.”
“We’re doing it for them,” I said. “We only have to play along till Bentham tells us what he knows. It could be important.”
“Or he could just be a lonely old man.”
“Don’t talk about Mr. Bentham that way,” Nim said, his face puckering. “Mr. Bentham is a saint, a giant among men!”
“Oh calm down,” Sharon said. He went to the window and pulled open the blinds, allowing a weak, pea-soup daylight to dribble into the room. “Up and at ’em!” he said to us. “You two have a date.”
I threw back my covers and Emma helped me out of bed. To my surprise, my legs took my weight. I glanced out the window at an empty street enveloped in yellow murk, and then, with Emma holding my arm, went to the wardrobe to pick out a change of clothes. I found an outfit on a hanger tagged with my name.
“Can we have some privacy to change, please?” I said.
Sharon looked at Nim and shrugged. Nim’s hands flapped. “It wouldn’t be proper!”
“Ahh, they’re fine,” Sharon said, waving his hand. “No monkey business, all right?”
Emma turned beet red. “I wouldn’t have any idea what you mean.”
“Sure you wouldn’t.” He shooed Nim out of the room, then paused at the doorway. “I can trust you not to run away again?”
“Why would we?” I said. “We want to meet Mr. Bentham.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Emma said. “But why are you still here?”
“Mr. Bentham asked me to keep an eye on you.”
I wondered if that meant Sharon would stop us if we tried to leave.
“Must be a pretty big favor you owed him,” I said.
“Massive,” he replied. “I owe the man my life.” And bending himself nearly in half, he squeezed out into the hallway.
* * *
“You change clothes in there,” Emma said, nodding toward a small connecting bathroom. “I’ll change in here. And no peeking until I knock!”
“Okayyy,” I said, exaggerating my disappointment in order to hide it. While seeing Emma in her underwear was an undeniably appealing prospect, all the life-threatening peril we’d endured lately had put that part of my teenage brain into a kind of deep freeze. A few more serious kisses, though, and my baser instincts might start to reassert themselves.
But anyway.
I shut myself in the bathroom, all gleaming white tile and heavy iron fixtures, and leaned over the sink to examine myself in a silvered mirror.
I was a mess.
My face was puffy and crosshatched with angry pink lines, which were healing quickly but still there, reminders of every blow I’d suffered. My torso was a geography of bruises, painless but ugly. Blood was caked into the hard-to-clean folds of my ears. The sight of it made me dizzy, and I had to grip the sink to stay upright. I had a sudden nasty flashback: fists and feet thrashing at me, the ground rushing up.
No one had ever tried to kill me with bare hands before. That was something new, much different than being hunted by hollows, which ran on instinct. Different, too, than being shot at: bullets were a quick, impersonal way to kill. Using your hands, though—that took work. It required hate. It was a strange and sour thing to know that such hatred had been directed at me. That peculiars who didn’t even know my name had, in a moment of collective madness, hated me enough to try to beat out my life with their fists. I felt shamed by it, dehumanized somehow, though I couldn’t exactly understand why. It was something I’d have to reckon with, if one day I ever had the luxury of time to reckon with such things.
I turned on the tap to wash my face. The pipes shuddered and groaned, but after a big orchestral flourish, they produced only a hiccup of brown water. This Bentham fellow might’ve been rich, but no amount of luxury could cocoon him from the reality of the hellish place where he lived.
How had he ended up here?
More intriguing still: how did the man know, or know about, my grandfather? Surely that’s who Sharon had been referring to when he said Bentham was looking for an old man who could speak to hollows. Perhaps my grandfather had met Bentham during his war years, after he’d left Miss Peregrine’s house but before he’d come to America. It was a defining period of his life which he’d spoken about only rarely, and never in detail. Despite all I’d learned about my grandfather in the past few months, in many respects he remained a mystery to me. Now that he was gone, I thought sadly, perhaps it would always be so.
I put on the clothes Bentham had given me, a preppy-looking blue shirt and gray wool sweater combo with simple black pants. It all fit perfectly, as if they’d known I was coming. As I was slipping into a pair of brown leather oxford shoes, Emma knocked on the door.
“How’re you faring in there?”