“I don’t care what Miss Peregrine says,” said Horace. “I’ll fight.”

Enoch choked back a laugh. “You?”

“Everyone thinks I’m a coward. This is my chance to prove them wrong.”

“Don’t throw your life away because of a few jokes made at your expense,” said Hugh. “Who gives a whit what anyone else thinks?”

“It isn’t just that,” said Horace. “Remember the vision I had back on Cairnholm? I caught a glimpse of where the ymbrynes are being kept. I couldn’t show you on a map, but I’m sure of this—I’ll know it when I see it.” He tapped his forehead with his index finger.

“What I’ve got up here might just save those chaps a heap of trouble. And save those other ymbrynes, too.”

“If some fight and some stay behind,” said Bronwyn, “I’ll protect whoever stays. Protecting’s always been my vocation.”

And then Hugh turned to me and said, “What about you, Jacob?” and my mouth went instantly dry.

“Yeah,” said Enoch. “What about you?”

“Well,” I said, “I …”

“Let’s take a walk,” Emma said, hooking her arm around mine. “You and I need to have a chat.”

*   *   *

We walked slowly down the stairs, saying nothing to each other until we’d reached the bottom and the curved wall of ice where Althea had frozen shut the exit tunnel. We sat together and looked into the ice for a long while, at the forms trapped there, blurred and distorted in the darkening light, suspended like ancient eggs in blue amber. We sat, and I could tell from the silence collecting between us that this was going to be a hard conversation—one neither of us wanted to start.

Finally Emma said, “Well?”

I said, “I’m like the others—I want to know what you think.”

She laughed in the way people do when something’s not funny but awkward, and said, “I’m not entirely sure you do.”

She was right, but I prodded her to speak anyway. “Come on.”

Emma laid a hand on my knee, then retracted it. She fidgeted. My chest tightened.

“I think it’s time you went home,” she said finally.

I blinked. It took a moment to convince myself she’d really said it. “I don’t understand,” I mumbled.

“You said yourself you were sent here for a reason,” she said quickly, staring into her lap, “and that was to help Miss Peregrine. Now it seems she may be saved. If you owed her any debts, they’re paid. You helped us more than you’ll ever realize. And now it’s time for you to go home.” Her words came all in a rush, like they were a painful thing she’d been carrying a long time, and it was a relief to finally be rid of them.

“This is my home,” I said.

“No, it isn’t,” she insisted, looking at me now. “Peculiardom is dying, Jacob. It’s a lost dream. And even if somehow, by some miracle, we were to take up arms against the corrupted and prevail, we’d be left with a shadow of what we once had; a shattered mess. You have a home—one that isn’t ruined—and parents who are alive, and who love you, in some measure.”

“I told you. I don’t want those things. I chose this.”

“You made a promise, and you’ve kept it. And now that’s over, and it’s time for you to go home.”

“Quit saying that!” I shouted. “Why are you pushing me away?”

“Because you have a real home and a real family, and if you think any of us would’ve chosen this world over those things—wouldn’t have given up our loops and longevity and peculiar powers long ago for even a taste of what you have—then you really are living in a fantasy world. It makes me absolutely ill to think you might throw that all away—and for what?”

“For you, you idiot! I love you!”

I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Neither could Emma—her mouth had fallen open. “No,” she said, shaking her head like she could erase my words. “No, that’s not going to help anything.”

“But it’s true!” I said. “Why do you think I stayed instead of going home? It wasn’t because of my grandfather or some stupid sense of duty—not really—or because I hated my parents or didn’t appreciate my home and all the nice things we had. I stayed because of you!”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, just nodded and then looked away and ran her hands through her hair, revealing a streak of white concrete dust I hadn’t noticed before, which made her look suddenly older. “It’s my own fault,” she said finally. “I should never have kissed you. Perhaps I made you believe something that wasn’t true.”

That stung me, and I recoiled instinctively, as if to protect myself. “Don’t say that to me if you don’t mean it,” I said. “I may not have a lot of dating experience, but don’t treat me like some pathetic loser who’s powerless in the face of a pretty girl. You didn’t make me stay. I stayed because I wanted to—and because what I feel for you is as real as anything I’ve ever felt.” I let that hang in the air between us for a moment, feeling the truth of it. “You feel it too,” I said. “I know you do.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, that was cruel, and I shouldn’t have said it.” Her eyes watered a little and she wiped at them with her hand. She had tried to make herself like stone, but now the facade was falling away. “You’re right,” she said. “I care about you very much. That’s why I can’t watch you throw your life away for nothing.”

“I wouldn’t be!”

“Dammit, Jacob, yes you would!” She was so incensed that she inadvertently lit a fire in her hand—which, luckily, she’d since removed from my knee. She clapped her hands together, snuffed the flame, and then stood up. Pointing into the ice, she said, “See that potted plant on the desk in there?”

I saw. Nodded.

“It’s green now, preserved by the ice. But inside it’s dead. And the moment that ice melts, it’ll turn brown and wither into mush.” She locked eyes with me. “I’m like that plant.”

“You aren’t,” I said. “You’re … perfect.”

Her face tightened into a expression of forced patience, as if she were explaining something to a thick-headed child. She sat down again, took my hand, and raised it to her smooth cheek. “This?” she said. “Is a lie. It’s not really me. If you could see me for what I really am, you wouldn’t want me anymore.”

“I don’t care about that stuff—”

“I’m an old woman!” she said. “You think we’re alike, but we aren’t. This person you say you love? She’s really a hag, an old crone hiding in a body of a girl. You’re a young man—a boy—a baby compared to me. You could never understand what it’s like, being this close to death all the time. And you shouldn’t. I never want you to. You’ve still got your whole life to look forward to, Jacob. I’ve already spent mine. And one day—soon, perhaps—I will die and return to dust.”

She said it with such cold finality that I knew she believed it. It hurt her to say these things, just as it hurt me to hear them, but I understood why she was doing it. She was, in her way, trying to save me.

It stung anyway—partly because I knew she was right. If Miss Peregrine recovered, then I would have done what I’d set out to do: solved the mystery of my grandfather; settled my family’s debts to Miss Peregrine; lived the extraordinary life I’d always dreamed of—or part of one, anyway. At which point my only remaining obligation was to my parents. As for Emma, I didn’t care at all that she was older than me, or different from me, but she’d made up her mind that I should and it seemed there was no convincing her otherwise.

“Maybe when this is all over,” she said, “I’ll send you a letter, and you’ll send one back. And maybe one day you can come see me again.”

A letter. I thought of the dusty box of them I’d found in her room, written by my grandfather. Was that all I’d be to her? An old man across the ocean? A memory? And I realized that I was about to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps in a way I’d never thought possible. In so many ways, I was living his life. And probably, one day, my guard would relax too much, I’d get old and slow and distracted, and I would die his death. And Emma would continue on without me, without either of us, and one day maybe someone would find my letters in her closet, in a box beside my grandfather’s, and wonder who we were to her.