Anna Peregrine--Library of Souls

Chapter Two

We boarded the boat and eventually left the dock. I kept on debating if I should jump out. Devil's Acre was part of the horror stories my mother told me when I was a child. To get me to behave, when I wouldn't, she would threaten to take me there. It was what my nightmares were made of . . . along with wights and hollowgasts. My nightmares never revealed the true horrors of what hollowgasts looked like though. I was never prepared when I saw them in war torn London or in the tourist loop.

What would I say to my mother when we found her? "I know you knew my dad when he was a wight and because of that I can see hollows?" Or "how come you never told me about Golan?" Or maybe "Why didn't you ever tell me that Miss Wren and Miss Cuckoo know about me and you?"

There were secrets that I understood why us Ymbrynes kept, but others I never realized. Why didn't my mother ever tell the children about Devil's Acre whilst she told me everything about it and gave me nightmares, along with the other answers I wanted answered.

Her time being gone has led me wanting more and more answers than I ever wanted before. I was going to be nineteen soon, she had to tell me. I wasn't a child anymore. I hadn't been even before she created her loop.

I looked over at my boyfriend. How had he gotten back to the future? He would've needed me or my mother, or her loop. All three were absent. Unless . . . maybe . . . no. My one thought was that maybe she was there somehow. But it didn't make any sense. Unless, because Caul was with him and he shared our blood? But that also didn't make any sense. He may be a Bentham, my mother's surname before finding out her peculiarity, and what would've been mine, and he may be able to turn into a falcon, but he wasn't a Ymbryne.

However, my mum could have possibly been there. She was able to hide from the wights for so many years. She outsmarted them in some way. Was it possible? Maybe.

"So I've been thinking about how you got here. How you got back to the present," I said to my boyfriend.

"Okay . . . What do you think?" Jacob asked.

"There's only one explanation that makes any sense--though not bloody much. The only way to get out of that loop was for you to be in those underground tunnels with the wights. Am I correct?"

"Yeah."

"And you crossed back into the present, the reason you came with the others instead of continuing on in eighteen-whatever-it-was, suddenly alone, was that my mum was there somehow, nearby, and helped you cross without anyone knowing it."

"I don't know, Anna, that seems . . . you think she was hiding in the tunnel?"

"It's possible. I mean, she was able to keep our loop hidden for so many years. Plus, we have no idea where she was."

"The wights have her. Caul admitted it!"

"Since when do you believe anything the wights say?"

"You've got me there. But since Caul was boasting about having her, I figured he was probably telling the truth."

"Maybe . . . or he said it to crush our spirits and make us want to give up. He was trying to convince us to surrender to his soldiers, remember?"

"True," Jacob said with a frown. "Okay. Let's say for the sake of argument that Miss P was with us in the tunnel. Why would she have gone to the trouble of sending me back to the present as a captive of the wights? We were on our way to have our second souls sucked out. I would've been better off stuck in that loop."

I thought for a moment, "Unless you and I are supposed to rescue everyone else. Maybe it was all part of her plan."

"But how could she have known we would escape the wights?"