At first, the only ones at the dinner table were me, Charlie, Sebasten, and Miss Peregrine and her children. We ate our pasta in general silence, the others making side conversation. There was still a heavy mood.

Miss Cardinal's children slowly made their ways down; first, Janie came bounding down the stairs and took her seat as she dragged the pasta bowl to her; next, Raymond came down, wearing an entirely different suit, which was identical to the one his brother was wearing, except Raymond didn't have a top hat or monocle; George came right behind him in the same way Janie did; then, when most of us had finished dinner and were setting our plates in the sink, Riley came down with Phoebe, who was hiding her bright red face.

Phoebe barely even touched her supper; just picked at it and ate a noodle every few minutes.

Riley put her arm around the younger girl and said. "I'll stay up to look after her for a while."

"Wake me up when you go to bed." Raymond replied. "Then I'll look after her a while. If I go to bed before everyone gets here, I'll wake up Sebasten."

Sebasten looked up when he heard his name, noodles spilling down his chin. Apparently he hadn't been listening. "Huh?"

"Don't stay up past midnight, alright?" Raymond told his girlfriend.

"Okay." Riley nodded, then continued to talk to Phoebe quietly enough that no one else could hear.

Miss Peregrine stood up. "As the rest of us will be leaving shortly," she started, "Miss Jones, Miss Knoll, Mister Somnusson, Mister Evergreen, if you will come with me, please. It'll only be a moment."

Riley and Raymond immediately stood up, pulling Phoebe up by the arms. Sebasten was a little more reluctant, but followed the four of them out the door anyway.

When they came back, Riley, Raymond, Phoebe, and Sebasten sat back down and continued eating.

"Come along, now." Miss Peregrine said to her children and Charlie and I. "Let's go."

Miss Cardinal's children waved goodbye to us as all 11 of us followed Miss Peregrine out of the dining room and towards the long hallway with all the doors where we'd entered from Cunningham Valley. We went just a few doors down before going through a door whose panel said 'London Town, 16 July, 1981'.

We found ourselves in a huge greenhouse and emerged into the expansive backyard of one of the biggest houses I'd ever seen; Miss Cardinal's home in Cunningham Valley and the Portmans' house would've both fit inside several times over with tons of room to spare. It was painted mint green and had pillars of dark wood all around it and palm trees were planted around the yard.

"Is this it?" Charlie gaped at the magnificent house.

"No. Just down the street." Emma answered.

After Miss Peregrine got us into the present, we went out onto the sidewalk of a wide, newly paved street. Huge mansions stood proudly on either side. I had never seen so many shiny new sports cars in my life; it seemed like each mansion had several. Menacing iron gates surrounded each massive property, cameras installed every few feet watching is as we went by.

"Just up the street there!" Olive pointed up the hill to a property on the other side of the street that, thanks to the curve in the road, gave the appearance of being right on the top of the hill at the end on the lane. The house itself was huge; surely the biggest one on this street. It looked like a giant marble palace and glistened red-orange as the sun was setting behind it. The gates were over 12 feet high with barbed points and what I guessed was electrified wire ran along the top. There were cameras placed at three-foot intervals that swiveled in the direction of any detected movement. The central gate was between 2 tall marble pillars; the gate itself had a fancy 'S' on either side of the opening, which was locked up tight.

Horace stood on his toes to press a button on one of the pillars; the nearest camera stared down at him. "It's us." He called into the intercom.

After the camera examined all of us, the gates began to creak open, revealing an absurdly long driveway splitting a vibrant green lawn. Once we were all inside the gates, they closed and locked themselves once more.

Everyone went at different paces up the driveway; some ran, some skipped, others just lagged behind or walked comfortably.

Right in front of the house itself, there was a huge running fountain pouring lots of water into an intricately carved stone tub about ten feet in radius. There were a total of three sports cars parked around the fountain: one gold, one cherry red, and one black with white racing stripes.

The house looked straight up enormous close up; it appeared to be at three stories, but something told me  each level was way bigger than your average level.

The front door area actually looked surprisingly normal, if you ignored the ugly Cupid statues on either side of the porch, each sprouting tufts of brown grass from his head. A man stood in the open doorway; he wore a velvet purple tux with a black shirt.

"Hello there, welcome back!" The man said as we all gathered in front of him.

"Good evening, Mister Rice." Miss Peregrine stepped forward, her hands on mine and Charlie's shoulders. "These are the Pickering siblings; they will be staying with us at least for a few days."

"Lovely!" The man- Mister Rice- stepped aside, allowing us inside the huge gold-domed front room.

That one room alone could've fit my Grandma's entire house. It seemed to be constructed purely from marble and gold. Pillars were carved into intricate designs, the carpet was a dark foresty green with threads of gold and silver woven in, on either side of the front door was a grand marble staircase with shiny gold railing, the gold railing was swapped with some other equally-flashy material when it reached the second floor; the far wall on the second floor was rather simple; white-trimmed sets of dark wood double doors were placed at maybe ten-foot intervals; very old-looking paintings depicting sleep and dreams were hung at the halfway point between each set of doors. Right across from where we came in, both floors branched off into hallways. The upstairs hallway looked like it had a sunroof.

"Alright, children, go get ready for bed; we'll be up early tomorrow." Miss Peregrine said.

Immediately, the children started running up the stairs. Charlie and I looked at the ymbryne expectantly and she gestured us to follow the others. So we did.

The second floor of the estate just looked like a fancy hotel; normal cream-colored walls, a dark red carpet with a gold floral design, single dark wood doors placed at regular intervals, more paintings of more variety than those in the front room. At the end of the hall, it formed a t shape. Here, the boys went one way and the girls went the other; I followed the boys and Charlie followed the girls, of course.

I would've thought that a house this size would have more bathrooms on the second floor than just two on either side of the hall. Hugh got to the door first and went inside. I wound up at the back of the line right behind Horace, who was shifting his weight from one foot to the other so fast you'd think he hadn't peed in a year. I leaned against the hall.

"So you and Raymond grew up here?" I asked the short boy.

"Yes." He replied.

"How'd your family get to be so rich?"

He shrugged. "A lot of generations ago, we got paid for acts of heroism."

"Heroism?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Yes. Like one of my ancestors had a vision of the Black Death a month before it struck England; she also saw how to greatly reduce your chances of dying and told the village. That kind of thing. Though we also got a good percentage of our wealth by normal means; investing, marrying members of other upper class families."

"Wow." I let out a low whistle.

"I'm the first in my family in a long time to value anything over money; if my mum were still alive, she'd probably force me to marry Jacob and I'm not even gay!" He added.

"What do you value over money?"

"Friendship, family, honesty, mercy, some other things that I can't think of off the top of my head." At that moment, Jacob left the bathroom, allowing Horace in and leaving me all alone in the hall, staring at a large painting of a regal-looking young man sitting on a horse.

When Horace came out of the bathroom, he notified me that the spare toothbrushes were in the bottom drawer on the right. I thought he was joking at first; who has spare toothbrushes? But when I looked to make sure, sure enough, there was a ton of unopened electric toothbrushes. I selected one, brushed my teeth, and got out of there as quickly as possible.

I caught the girls walking down the hall towards the front room in a giggly mass. I followed them quietly, not at all she where to go. They went downstairs and down the hall across from the entrance.

They went under a tall, wide arch on the righ-hand side and into a large tv room containing the biggest flat-screen tv I'd ever seen in my life, six smooth, shiny sofas that were pushed together to form one huge sofa, in between the tv and sofas was a glass coffee table that could've held a feast fit for a king. The other boys were lounging around on the sofas, talking, doing what appeared to be homework of some sort, and watching the cheesy comedy program that was playing on the tv.

"So where are we gonna be sleeping?" I asked.

"Well the only bedrooms with only one occupant are Horace's and Buford's." Millard said. "So each of you will share a room with one of them."

"Who's Buford?" Charlie asked.

"My cousin's grandson." Horace answered. "Mr. Rice's son. His family took over this place for a while when Raymond and I were both in loops and our parents were dead."

"He acts really bratty." Jacob added. "But he's alright; see, his peculiarity is memory manipulation and he's also a computer whiz; he hacked into government records and changed some people's memories so that Miss Peregrine mad her children have official records in the 21st century."

"That means we can get driver's licenses and passports and stuff like that." Millard added. "Of course, we don't need a lot of the things that grants us, but it's interesting the things we can do."

"So where is he?" Charlie asked.

"Asleep, probably." Bronwyn answered, taking a drink of water.

About ten minutes later, Miss Peregrine came in and told us it was time to go to bed; the others would be going to the Peculiar Academy right after the funeral and Charlie and I would visit with the administrator or something to decide if we wanted to attend the school.

As it turned out, Horace was moved to his cousin's grandson's bedroom and Charlie and I got to share Horace's room, which was a lot less classy than I expected.

While the rest of the house looked like a literal royal palace, Horace's room looked weirdly normal; it could've belonged to pretty much any teenage boy in the world. The walls had dark blue Star Wars wallpaper that was obviously put up very recently. There was a set of very wide bunk beds against the far wall so the window that looked out onto the grounds fit perfectly in between the beds, which were made neatly. Or at least the bottom one was made neatly; the top one was covered in boxes of random items- things Horace's parents put into storage after he went to live with Miss Peegrine, he told us- so we had to arrange them all in the back of the walk-in closet in the corner. Next to the door was a desk that was overstuffed with paper and pens and pencils and erasers everywhere; there was a typewriter with paper inside, but it was pushed dangerously close to the edge of the desk to make way for a modern computer complete with a rather large monitor. An overflowing trash can was against the wall between the wall and desk. The desk's chair was on the complete opposite side of the room, next to a wardrobe almost identical to Raymond's back in Cunningham Valley, holding an empty laundry hamper in the seat.

Charlie and I were given pajamas- I got a pair of Millard's and Charlie got some of Bronwyn's- then we went to bed- myself on the top bunk and Charlie on the bottom. I stared at the glow-in-the-dark space-themed stickers scattered on the ceiling until I fell asleep; it'd been a long day and it would be a long day tommorrow.

_________________________

There ya go!

Hope you enjoyed!

Love ya!

CC