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"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 reether, snuffed the fla 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 soain, 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 co this close to death all the tiot 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 hurtit She was, in her way, trying to save ht If Miss Peregrine recovered, then I would have done what I’d set out to do: solved the randfather; settled rine; lived the extraordinary life I’d always dreamed of--or part of one, anyway At which point ation 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 herher otherwise

"Maybe when this is all over," she said, "I’ll send you a letter, and you’ll send one back And ht of the dusty box of therandfather Was that all I’d be to her? An old man across the ocean? A randfather’s footsteps in a way I’d never thought possible In so uard would relax too et 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 randfather’s, and wonder ere to her

"What if you need me?" I said "What if the hollows coe somehow," she said "Look, I can’t talk about this anyo upstairs and tell the others your decision?"

I clenched," I said "You have"

"Jacob, I just told you--"