Discovering the Future

Chapter 25- Chapter 10 (Part 2)

Disclaimer: I don't own Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

------------------------------START OF CHAPTER-----------------------------

"I need to go," I said, catching up with Miss Peregrine.

She pulled me into an empty room and closed the door. "You will keep your voice down," she commanded, "and you will respect my rules. What I said applies to you as well. No one leaves this house."

"But-"

"Thus far I have allowed you an unprecedented measure of autonomy to come and go as you please, out of respect for your unique position. But you may have already been followed here, and that puts my wards' lives in jeopardy. I will not permit you to endanger them-or yourself-any further."

"Don't you understand?" I said angrily. "Boats aren't running. Those people in town are stuck. My father is stuck. If there really is a wight, and it's who I think it is, he and my father have almost gotten into one fight already. If he just fed a total stranger to a hollow, who do you think he's going after next?"

"It could be anyone, really," Bronwyn stated.

Her face was like stone. "The welfare of the townspeople is none of my concern," she said. "I won't endanger my wards. Not for anyone."

"It isn't just the townspeople. It's my father. Do you really think a couple of locked up doors will stop me from going?"

"Perhaps not. But if you insist on leaving here, then I insist you never return."

I was so shocked I had to laugh. "But you need me," I said.

"Yes, we do," she replied. "We do very much."

Victor sighed. "Now it's gonna go to his head."

I stormed upstairs to Emma's room. Inside was a tableau of frustration that might've been straight out of Norman Rockwell, if Norman Rockwell had painted people doing hard time in jail. Bronwyn stared woodenly out the window. Enoch sat on the floor, whittling a piece of hard clay. Emma was perched on the edge of her bed, elbows on knees, tearing sheets of paper from a notebook and igniting them between her fingers.

"You're back!" she said when I came in.

"I never left," I replied. "Miss Peregrine wouldn't let me." Everyone listened as I explained my dilemma. "I'm banished if I try to leave."

Emma's entire notebook ignited. "She can't do that!" she cried, oblivious to the flames licking her hand.

Fiona smiled. "That happens often."

"What?" Emma asked. "No it doesn't."

"She can do what she likes," said Bronwyn. "She's the Bird."

Emma threw down her book and stamped out the fire.

"I just came to tell you I'm going, whether she wants me to or not. I won't be held prisoner, and I won't bury my head in the sand while my own father might be in danger."

"Then I'm coming with you," Emma said.

"You ain't serious," replied Bronwyn.