The Desolations of Devil's Acre (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #6)

by Ransom Riggs

V’s body looked like it had been swallowed by the earth and spat out again. She lay twisted in the grass like a tossed-away doll, arms splayed cartoonishly and legs tangled beneath her. Her gray hair was knotted and clotted with mud, her red cardigan and black dress soaked with blood and rain. She’d lost a boot, and the patched woolen sock on her unshod foot made me think, incongruously, of the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz, the one who gets pancaked under Dorothy’s house. I locked my focus there, on what I remembered of that old acid trip of a movie, on the worn toe of V’s striped sock, so it wouldn’t wander north . . .

“If the prophecy is to be believed,” Horace said, his voice deepening, “and given how much of it has already come to pass, I think it is, then Noor may be the most important asset we have in the coming struggle.” “Not without the other six,” Noor said. “I’m afraid I’m lost,” said Addison. “You get used to it,” muttered Claire.