My apologies for the long wait. Please let this extra long chapter make up for it! I promise the next update is coming soon.

I was going to go up to my room after I had gotten to a certain point, but instead went and sat somewhere else. After a while Jacob had gone home, and I was the only one in the living room when someone knocked on the door. Miss Peregrine opened it, and immediately a woman collapsed into her arms. She had fainted. Miss Peregrine only had a brief second of hopelessness before she turned, saw me, and motioned me to get up. She carried the woman, who looked so frail she must've weighed nothing, into the sitting room's open door. I lingered there, in the doorway, ready to be ordered to do something.

"Nettalyn, fetch me something to wake Miss Avocet with." Miss Avocet! Only the matriarch of ymbrynes, and she was in our house.

Kids were started to come downstairs, creating quite a buzz of noise.

"What do you require, Miss?" I asked her in an urgent tone.

"Something strong, dear. Something strong." She said, panicked. She snapped her fingers and told Horace, who was closest, to get a blanket. I ran to the liquor cabinet, which held many strong drinks, pretty much only for medicinal purposes. I pulled down a flask of brandy and a few various other bottles, and ran back with a spoon and bowl. Miss Peregrine gave me a nod, got up, and shut the door behind me.

"Is everyone here?" Bronwyn asked, standing on her toes to look around. Everyone but Emma. We pondered where she was. Hugh looked uneasy.

"Me and Fiona were in the garden, and Emma ran past us. I asked where she was going, and she said to meet Jacob by the pier." He blurted out. Bronwyn's face looked stern.

"Go get her then!" Bronwyn said with a sweep of her arm. She opened the door carefully and told Miss Peregrine.

We paced back and forth a bit, unsure what to do. Or even why Miss Avocet was there.

"Where's her wards, why would she leave them alone?" Asked Horace. He had gotten upstairs and changed into his day clothes when he heard we were probably not going back to sleep.

"Something bad happened." Olive said.

"Wyn, I'm scared." Claire whimpered.

"Not me." Olive crossed her little arms, just pretending to look uninterested.

"You know, it's probably hollows." Enoch said. "I bet they're coming here next. And they're going to eat us, and pick their teeth with our bones."

"Ahh!" Both girls this time buried themselves under Bronwyn's arms. She glared at Enoch.

"Now, now. Everyone knows hollows can't enter loops, we're perfectly safe right here in the loop. And you," she turned to Enoch, "Can kindly piss off."

Emma, Jacob, Hugh, and Fiona all came inside. Both Emma and Jacob were still wet. I could bet they went swimming in the ocean. They immediately went into the sitting room. Miss Peregrine would want to know where they were.

Our moment of adrenaline left us, and when it left it brought tiredness. We soon dispersed to the rest of the house, and some people even went back to sleep.
~*~
The days following Miss Avocet's arrival, Miss Peregrine set out a hard lockdown routine. No one was allowed to leave the house, and we all had to travel in pairs. Some, well, most of us went a little crazy. Olive lost her lead shoes and crawled around on the ceiling. Enoch stayed in his basement almost permanently now. Hugh's bees stung just about everyone until they were forced outside.

I had nothing to do so proceeded to occupy myself with sentry duty at the window nearly all night. I let fear of wights coming to the island, as I was certain they were already there, envelope me. It kept me plenty awake. Jacob came and went presently, and I think everyone in the house was quite envious of his freedom.

Everything changed when I overheard Miss Peregrine and Jacob holding a conversation. She told him that he had two options- stay forever, or never come back. He started to walk up the stairs, and I ducked behind a long window curtain. He was going to Emma's room, so I decided to come with him, as to see what his decision was.

He looked behind himself and saw me, giving a nod of acknowledgement. There was Emma, Bronwyn, a lump on her bed who was Millard, and even Enoch had dragged himself out of the basement. I didn't look at him.

"What are you going to do, Jacob?" I asked him.

"There's no way I'm staying here in this house. She can't tell me what to do." Jacob said.

"Then we'll never see you again, though. Who's going to keep the hollows away?" I leaned against the lowered ceiling.

"I'm not your silly hollow guard. I'm a person, and I have a family that still care about me." He said. He was thinking a profound thought. To us, it seemed an impossibility that his parents would ever accept him for what he truly was.

"Your parents are never going to understand. But I suppose you could go live with Abe." I pointed out.

Jacob's face was a mask with confusion. Maybe Abe was too old to take care of him anymore? But they could help each other. Bond over peculiarities. Abe loved Jacob very much, I was sure of it.

"Grandpa's not alive anymore." Jacob said. It was my turn to be confused.

"But Miss P. said he was in America!" I said. "Why didn't you say something?" I looked at everybody else in the room.

"Well, I thought you knew." Bronwyn said. "I figured you were the first to know."

I felt like a part of my heart was being sucked into a vortex and I would never be getting it back. A lot of memories went through my head. Abe coming to pick me up. All the times he'd comforted me, few and far between yes, but still. Abe joking with me, all his conversations at the dinner table, all the times I saw him kiss Emma. Him enlisting. Waiting for his letters and wanting to hear from him just as much as Emma. So happy when he came home. So handsome in his outfit. Daydreaming of visiting him in America, him and Emma's own children. A wedding. Some day leaving the island, all peculiars living on our own cul-de-sac in America.

Abe represented hope. And everything else good outside of Cairnholm. I felt like I had lost my own brother. But I had lost a brother figure to me. And he was off and buried someplace, in a magical land, which was just all lies, really. A place full of fake promises. Peculiardom would never be safe anywhere.

Lot less hollows my arse.

I started sniffling and Jacob put an arm around my shoulder. Emma joined and it was all just a teary circle of peculiars. Except Enoch, who I noticed when we disbanded was pacing back and forth like he was thinking of something.

"Is that chap who got eaten by a hollow dead and buried yet?" He asked.

"No, they're keeping him in the fishmonger's shed." Jacob said.

"Let's get some answers out of him!" Enoch said, rubbing his hands together. "I haven't awakened a human in a long, long time." He grinned.

"Well, alright." Jacob said. "When are we going to pull this off?"

"No, no, no!" Millard said. "We cannot afford to anger the headmistress any more. She's been through hell and back. It's much too dangerous."

"You don't have to come." Jacob shrugged.

"Oh, I'm not coming. If you go through this ridiculous plan, bird help me, I will tell on you!" Millard said accusingly. "Don't do it!"

"Millard, you're very smart and I'm sure you would be very useful. Are you sure you won't change your mind?" Bronwyn asked once more.

"Like hell I will. Don't you listen to the Bird? You're going to be killed!" Millard said hysterically.

"Hey, if you don't tell on us, I know exactly where the oatmeal raisin cookie mix is, and you can have the entire batch. You're the only one that likes them anyway." I said.

"Oatmeal raisin, you say? You know what, fine! I don't care what you do. Go get yourself killed, less stupid people in our ranks is better anyway." Millard opened Emma's door and walked off down the hallway.

"You can't have too many people going. I can stay here and cover for you." I said. I wouldn't bring anything new to the table anyway.

Enoch ran downstairs to get stuff from the basement. We told Olive what we were doing, and she was more than happy to help, unlike a certain invisible boy I knew. Fiona came to see them off too. Olive began floating people off the second story window. Jacob looked uneasy.

"It's okay Jacob, we've done this loads of times. Well, one time." Emma said reassuringly.

"I don't remember that." I said. Emma winked. Jacob looked at me puzzled and I nodded vigorously.

The three of us waved at the four of them trudging off in the dark.