(A/N): Hi, like I wrote in chapter 1, I'm taking a little poetic license here because in the novel Jacob visits the island in June and I switched it a few weeks back into May so it works better with my storyline. Now go read my chapter.

Though both V and Abe had been trained to take down armed agents, they hadn't learned how to beat one with two guns. Especially when one of them was bleeding from their head. Instead of telling X where the twins were, V opted to tell her about the book.

"It's simple: the book tells you the future."

"Wrong answer," Madame X replied. "It allows you to write the future." She clicked the safety on the pistol and shot at the floor, making V jump.

Sarkisan stepped forward, holding her gun to V's forehead. "I'm not an imbecile; that was a test, and you failed it. So if you don't want a bullet in your head, tell me something that I do not know. For example, why is the book empty? Why isn't it writing itself yet?"

In stepping forward, X's position had become advantageous to Abe. She was not only looking away from him, but blocking him from the other soldiers and their weapons. Seeing that he looked well enough to fight, V told Sarkisan a truth that would distract her for long enough.

"It needs a title, X. And once we give it one, we can do whatever we want with it."

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    It wasn't so much that something happened as it was something not happening as usual; all day Wednesday, Martin, the museum curator, was missing. (Y/N) hadn't talked to him much when they had gone on the tour, but he seemed like someone who believed in privacy, so she wouldn't have thought much of it if there wasn't a whole thing going on with wights and hollows. And besides, everyone on the island was adamant that something was wrong from the minute they realized he'd missed his daily bar visit. They spent all day looking for him but to no avail.

Throughout the day (Y/N) kept typing, trying her best to work through her backup plan, though her sister kept insisting that they should just send the book to the author. (Y/N) handed her off to Jake for him to babysit, but when Elise started yelling at him to go tell Miss Peregrine that someone was missing, even he got tired of her and left for a walk. In the meanwhile, (Y/N)'s parents stayed inside to gossip with the villagers because their family sympathy calls had finally dried up.

Finally, on Thursday, the search party radioed in the news that they had found the poor man's body. It was sometime after midday when people flocked to the pub to hear the fisherman who found him. He took the beer he was offered, and during the moment of silence it seemed as if everyone was sitting on the edge of their seats.

He began by explaining how his daily fishing run started out normally until his boat caught onto something large. When he looked to see what it was, he found Martin's half-eaten carcass floating among the fish. The fact that he had been wearing pajamas made the situation all the more puzzling, but for (Y/N), Elise, and Jacob—who shared a nervous glance—it meant that the real danger had just begun. To made matters worse, Jake's dad had recently seen the sketchy ornithologist wearing sunglasses at night.

Since the stormy weather was projected to get worse, all of Cairnholm was on lockdown, much like the version inside the loop. For once, the weatherman was right, meaning that everyone had to stay inside and away from the high winds. So while Martin's dead body sat in the fishmonger's ice trough, (Y/N), Elise, and Jacob were supposed to sit inside and do nothing about it. Yeah right.

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    Abe got up slowly, trying not to draw attention. While the bleeding had slowed, he had to make sure every movement was worth the pain. Although X hadn't been distracted long enough for him to make a move, she still wasn't paying much thought to him.

    "You know what," she said gleefully. "I know just what to do with it." She holstered her gun and took back the book. She held it book to her chest, smiling wickedly and chanting in Old Peculiar, the words clashing with her malicious voice and odd accent. "Emm mi—"

    She got cut off as Abe tackled her to the ground, rolling over and tossing her into the group of soldiers before V could even blink. While the soldiers fell unconscious from their impact with the library wall, Sarkisan, unfortunately, barely missed a beat, finishing her spell just as Abe pinned her to the ground and cocked his gun.

    "It's too late," she sneered. "That book is bound to you now. As long as you're holding it, I'll know where you are. If you ever give it to the twins, I'll find them. Wherever you take it, I'll be there waiting. You know what this means? You can never go back to the friends you love. You can make up whatever excuses you want—even give yourself a 'family,' but you'll be stuck with the bitter truth. If you even step one foot in that loop, we'll know, and we'll hunt you down," she gloated.

    Before she could speak any more, Abe brought the gun down onto her temple, the connection giving off a CRACK! V pulled a coil of rope out of their shared supply pack, replacing it with the book they'd stolen. They quickly secured it to the radiator underneath a window, which Abe forced open, letting in the freezing winter air.

    Frigid air burst in as the footsteps of Nazi reinforcements came their way. As V slid down onto the busy street below, Abe took a log out of the fireplace and threw it on the pile of fallen books before jumping out the window as well (honestly, whomever put a fireplace in a library that already had a radiator is a book endangerer and deserves to have their headquarters burnt down (but not the books)).

    They both reached the ground and quickly blended into the ground as they heard soldiers shouting within the mansion...

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While Jacob had to wait until nightfall before sneaking out of the inn, (Y/N) and her sister made their parents a Netflix account and rushed out as soon as they'd eaten lunch. The wind and rain had barely started up when they left, and the fine droplets that hit their faces were more like mist than anything else. They snuck into the loop and found the twins—who were doing their rounds in the forest—and asked them where their building material was. Together, they grabbed whatever materials they could without being noticed and hurried back into the present. On their way through the woods, they made sure to pick up as many large branches as they could.

Although the twins never talked, their telepathic abilities allowed them to be extremely coordinated. (Y/N) concentrated her powers into a laser field that she could use to cut the spare boards and branches. Elise teleported to hard-to-reach places where they could toss her a hammer and nails. Both twins were able to come up with ideas and point out places that could be fixed. Between the four of them they built a lookout in only twenty minutes. It sat on a tree at the edge of the woods and looked down onto the whole island—even most of the cliffs were visible there.

    (Y/N) shone a beacon of light from her hands. "See, we can spot people from across the bog and they'll have nowhere to hide. This way, if our suspicions are correct, we can warn Miss Peregrine before anything happens."

    "Yeah," Elise said. "But shouldn't we like, tell her that—"

"Nice work," Millard's voice came from behind them.

(Y/N) jumped. "Millard! What are you doing here?"

    "Did you take me to be an ignorant and horrible boyfriend? What wouldn't I be doing here?" Millard retorted.

    "BLEH!" Elise gagged obnoxiously, doubling over as if she were about to vomit.

    "Um," (Y/N) paused. "Well, how did you..." they kissed for a moment, not having seen each other for days (and also because grossing out little siblings is fun).

    "Wow," (Y/N) said. "It was so nice of you to appear after we finished," she teased Millard.

    "What?! I wasn't—" Elise slapped her hand over where she thought his mouth was (but it was actually where his eyes were) and he threw her arm away annoyedly.

    (Y/N) nearly yelled at her sister, but then she saw the two rapper kids who were accused of killing the sheep—Worm and Dylan (or something). They had their mouths wide open and were staring at the peculiars in horror. "Freaks!" one of them (wearing a LAST 2ND shirt) screamed, pointing an accusing finger at them. The other got up out of the muddy ditch they'd been hiding in, his "I LOVE IT WHEN THEY CALL ME BIG POPPA" shirt stained with dirt and grass.

    "What?" (Y/N) asked, trying to keep it cool.

    "Don't lie to us! We've got it on camera!" the neon-clad one with the muddy shirt yells.

    "What? Me talking to my friends?" (Y/N) scoffs.

    "Not just the floating clothes, the weirdo light show, dawg! They're gonna send you creeps right offa the island, you hear me?!" the other kid yells back.

    "Oh, okay." (Y/N) smiles nonchalantly. "Well, I guess we'll have to get rid of you then," she says calmly, pulling the twins in front of her. "I don't even know what these two can do yet, but I can assure you that you'll be the first to find out," she says as sadistically as possible. The shaking in her voice would've ruined her bluff if the two hadn't just seen her lasering wood in half.

    "No! No! Alright, we'll delete it!" Worm ((Y/N) finally notices that his nickname is on his gold chain necklace) promises frantically.

    "Not only that," Elise says. "You're going to help us with something."

    During that time, Millard had shrunken back into the forest and circled around the two. At the moment that Elise finished speaking, he slipped the phone out of Dylan's hand, grinning triumphantly (though only (Y/N) could see him. He scrambled forward, trying to get it back, but Elise tsk tsked before saying: "We'll give it back after you help us."

    (Y/N) started to get a sense of why non-peculiars were so afraid of people like her; fear gave them more power than their peculiarities could. She wasn't interested in breaking her promise to Millard—that things would get better between "normals" and peculiars—and she felt bad for the kids, so she gave her sister her best "tone it down" look.

    Elise rolled her eyes, but the next time she spoke she was less harsh. "Can  either of you hack a publishing group's schedule?" she asked.

    The two looked at each other, extremely confused. "Well, lika song publisher? 'Cuz sometimes we uh, borrow some beats before they uh, officially come out."

    "No, a book publisher," Elise clarified. "We just need to know when a certain book will come out, and then you two can go back to making your music or whatever."

    "Well yeah, but we need the computer that's in the museum. It's the only one on Cairnholm," Worm explained.

    "Alright, let's go," Elise said. With only an hour until dinner, they tried to pick up the pace. As they reached the museum, the wind picked up even more, flinging the raindrops into their faces. Without Martin there, they didn't  have any trouble when they walked inside and crossed into a back room.

    Dylan impatiently stabbed the power button and started jabbing the space bar impatiently as the computer started up, its blue glow falling on everyone's faces and illuminating the room. In the dark, every second lasts longer and the creaking of the building has them all convinced it'll cave in on them.

    Both the twins and Millard looked curiously at the "new" piece of technology, which seemed at least ten years old to (Y/N). It finally loaded and Dylan started typing furiously, flipping through pages of publishing content, author messages, and scheduling, writing sloppy code until reaching a page titled Riggs, Ransom: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. He opened it up and scrolled through information, finally landing on the date: June 7.

    "That's tomorrow!" Elise screeched. "What are we going to do now?!" she cried, frantically scrolling through more pages.

    "We have to call him!" (Y/N) ran out of the museum, disappearing into the tempest. Dylan and Worm took advantage of the chaos to escape, and the other four ran after (Y/N). Before she could reach the bar, Millard took her arm.

    "Please, (Y/N), tell me what's going on? What's about to happen?" His eyes pleaded with her, wrenching her heart.

    "I can't," she said, tears stinging at her eyes. Even if he could see the book, how could he help her get it to Riggs?

    "Who even cares anymore?" Elise huffed. "Bring 'em in."

    They opened the door and snuck up the stairs as quietly as they could. Fortunately, all the people inside were too drunk to notice anything—even the storm that meant they couldn't get home that night. Still, (Y/N) ushered the twins up the stairs because of their strange attire, which was arguably more conspicuous than Millard's "disembodied" clothing.

Elise opened the door to her room and sat on her bed while (Y/N) brought in some of the chairs out of her room. After everyone had sat down, Elise announced that she had found Ransom's phone number and was about to call him.

"Wait!" Millard exclaimed with a confused voice. "Who is this individual, and why are you making a phone call on that...slab of metal?" he inquired quizzically.

"It's a phone, Ghost-Boy!" Elise explains brattily. "Haven't you ever been to the future?" she finished with a sarcastic eye roll.

"Shut up," (Y/N) retorted. "Anyway, just to really quickly sum it up, our grandfather sent us here to get a special book and do something with it, but we don't know why it's special except for the fact that it has to do with our future and that it writes itself. And it has something to do with the twins. Oh, and nobody except Elise and I can see it."

For the first time, (Y/N) noticed the twins looking at each other terrifiedly.

"An invisible book?" Millard replied semi-skeptically.

"Yeah, and also intangible—I threw it straight through Hugh's head once. Here, I'll go get it." She ran into her room, but the book wasn't where it was supposed to be. "It's missing!" she shouted, running back into the room.

Elise sat there with the book in her hand. "I had it," she explained crisply.

"Girls," (Y/N)'s mom yelled from down the hall. "Your cousin's sick and he's sleeping right now. Please quiet down." (Y/N) looked through the doorway and saw her parents talking with Jake's dad in the end room.

"Sorry," she said back. She turned back to her friends.

"Anyway, here it is," (Y/N) said, taking the book and opening it. "I already know you can't see it, so I don't know if there's a way you could help," she sighed defeatedly.

While Millard mused, the twins walked up to him and tilted their heads. It took a moment before (Y/N) understood what they wanted, but when she looked up at her clock, she realized it was almost dinner time. "Oh, Millard, you have to go!" (Y/N) shouted worriedly. "Miss Peregrine's going to find out you're gone if you don't hurry!"

"She would eat us alive!" Millard responded, rushing down the staircase. Outside, the wind blew leaves and tree branches around, and (Y/N) realized there was going to be a problem.

"Are you sure it's safe? And isn't Miss P. going to notice if you three are soaking wet?" she asked.

"Well, I happen to be an expert of deception," Millard replied sneakily. "And besides, I know this island like it's the back of my hand; I know a safe way back." He raised his head confidently.

"Alright," (Y/N) said, hoping he was right. He leaned forward and swooped her into his arms for one last kiss.

    "I'll see you tonight, my love?" he asked eagerly.

    "Yeah," she beamed slyly, now wearing his hat.

    He rolled his eyes (but (Y/N) caught a little grin) as he took his hat and left through the front door. (Y/N) waved, and after that, her sister called her back upstairs.

    "Alright," Elise said expectantly. "Let's see how this goes."

    She typed the number into her phone. It rang three times until someone answered it with a huff. "What?"

Both sisters started at the sound of Ricky's voice, and Elise motioned at (Y/N) to go get Jacob. "Yeah, Ricky, what are you doing on this number? I was looking for a guy..." (Y/N) heard her sister say as she sprinted into Jake's room.

"Yo, Jake, I know you're faking. Your bodyguard is on the phone and we need you to talk to him," (Y/N) said, spitting out the words while dragging her cousin down the hall.

"W—What?" Jacob sputtered. "He hates me right now!"

"Too bad, this is important!" (Y/N) shot back in a whisper.

"—well, Uncle R isn't at home at the moment," Ricky answered Elise. "And I'm not really feeling like taking a message, soooo..." he trailed off boredly.

Elise shoved the phone into Jacob's hand. He blinked in utter confusion before trying to save the conversation. "Uhh, hey Ricky, it's Jacob," he said. "I know we're not exactly friends right now, but I'm here with my cousins (Y/N) and Elise, do you remember them?"

Ricky didn't reply.

"Well anyway," Jake continued, reading off of a paper that Elise had shoved in his face. "Um, they want to know if they could talk to—"

The dial tone sounded. Elise frantically redialed, but nobody answered.

"No!" (Y/N) shouted in utter despair. For all they knew, they would disappear tomorrow before they even woke up!

Jacob's dad called for him to eat dinner, and (Y/N) and Elise watched as he rushed back into his room. The room grew silent as (Y/N) held her head in her hands.

    "Well," Elise stopped. Her voice seemed untroubled, almost bordering on delight. "I bet you would be pretty happy if I told you that I did something with the book.

    "What...?" (Y/N) asked suspiciously.

    "Oh, I don't know. I might've written 'No matter what happens, reality shifts so that (Y/N) and Elise don't disappear from the story,'" she grinned impishly.

    "Seriously?!" (Y/N) rejoined. "You thought that writing in the book would help change things?"

    "Yeah," Elise affirmed exasperatedly. "And besides, I tested it out by writing '(Y/N) and Millard will kiss by the lookout'— and it came true!"

    "So let me get this straight: you decided to scribble that exact quote—in your awful handwriting—in the most important book in our lives?" (Y/N) gave her sister a long, scrutinous look.

    "Well, I thought it was like, some weirdo Tom Riddle horcrux diary," Elise explained. "So since I didn't have a basilisk fang to destroy it with, I wrote in it—like Ginny did!"

    "Oh my strangeness," (Y/N) shook her head, smiling a little. She maybe even let herself relax for a moment. "You really think it'll work?" she asked again, hopefully.

    "Definitely!" Elise agreed. "I already saw it happen!"

    "I hope you're right," (Y/N) grinned.

    At that moment, Elise's phone rang. It was the number they had called. She answered, but for a moment, there was only silence. Then:

    "There's something you need to know," a mysterious voice insisted...

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As they took a short walk down the street to the post office, V inquired one thing of Abe.

"Binding the book to us? Is she a moron?" V scoffed.

"No," Abe answered. "Just too scared to think rationally. She knew she'd lost," he finished matter-of-factly, handing the book to an attendant who took it from him.

He packaged it properly, taping an address slip on before asking:

"Ein eilsendung?"

"Ja," Abe returned with an accent indistinguishable from a foreigner's.

"Wohin?" the attendant asked, pen in hand.

"Kalifornien," Abe responded, sliding an address slip across the counter.

"Zu wen?"

"Ransom Riggs," Abe replied.

The man stamped the package and put it in the pile of packages heading for America. Abe paid and the pair of spies walked calmly out of the building as fire trucks roared past them.

"You'll call him?" V asked.

"Yeah," Abe answered. "But that Ol' loop-hopper would know what to do with it anyway."

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1 Month Later:

    The telephone rang. Ransom answered it.

    "Did you get the package?" a rough voice questioned.

    "Yeah," Agent R confirmed.

    "And you know where it needs to go?"

    "Yeah."

    The line went dead.

(A/N): I don't even have words to express how amazingly this book is turning out now 😅. Thank you to everyone for reading, voting, and especially...commenting! I love you all and thank you for your support!

P. S. Since I was AWOL for like a year or two, I never got to ask if any of you watched the Artemis Fowl movie! What did you think of it?

P. P. S. What did you think of the chapter?!? 🥳 💃