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ABBY: Wasn’t even tempted.

SOPHIE: They come out wrong. Sometimes. More and more.

ABBY: Why? What’s happening to him?

Sophie’s hands knot together, and she furrows her brow.

SOPHIE: Hard to... to say. Explain. I’m not good—I can’t...

ABBY: Not much of a talker?

Sophie nods.

ABBY: Can you get me out of here?

SOPHIE: No. But... a better place. Safe. Maybe. A little while. Harder to find you.

She beckons. Abby hesitates.

LIAM: Sneak thief liar brat bring her back I know she’s here.I see her in this mind. You hid her.

SOPHIE: Please.

ABBY: Yeah. Okay. Between the two of you... I’ll take the one with the face.

There is a loud shriek and the sound of massive wings beating.

SOPHIE: Hurry!

The video cuts out.

27

LIAM’S FACE WASpale, gray tones in his brown skin as all the blood drained from it. “It made an echo out of me,” he said. “When I touched that black stuff, when I felt like I was getting walled off in my mind, it must have been... I don’t know. Learning me.”

“But something went wrong,” I said. I thought of Rivers, the back of his skull caved in. “I don’t think it can make echoes the way it used to,” I said slowly. “Something’s changed.”

“You,” Liam said. “It’s all been about you. Both of you.” He looked at my echo. She shrank back under his gaze, eyes fixed on her hands, which she twisted around each other with a whisper of skin against skin.

“Because I’m—we’re—like Abby said. Attuned.Special.” I spat out the word. “I’m what the Six-Wing has been looking for since it came to this place, but it lost me.” I shook my head in frustration. “We still don’t know how I survived. I remember drowning. IrememberHardcastledrowning me. But Mikhail found me in a boat— What boat? Where did it come from?”

A door banged open down the hall, and we jumped. A moment later Dr. Kapoor came striding into view, Kenny trailing. “What the hell is going on here?” Dr. Kapoor demanded. Kenny halted, gaping at my echo.

“What areyoudoing here?” Liam demanded. He put himself between us and her.That’s sweet of you, I thought inanely.

“I went to find you, before the mist,” Dr. Kapoor said. “You weren’t at Mrs. Popova’s, and you weren’t at home. The echoes are everywhere out there, and when I heard the gunshot...” She took a sharp breath. “But you’re all in one piece.”

“For now,” I said. “You locked the door, right?”

“Yes, much to the consternation of those creatures out there.” Dr. Kapoor said.

Mrs. Popova returned then, and she and Dr. Kapoor shared only a brief glance as greeting. “Everything’s secure,” Mrs. Popova said.

I swallowed against the taste of seawater. “What happened on Belaya Skala?” I asked Dr. Kapoor. I held up the video camera, and her eyes widened. “I remember you tried to stop him when he drowned me, but I don’t remember how I survived.”

She stared at me. And then she shut her eyes. “I knew we wouldn’t be able to hide from it forever. And I knew that I hadn’t done nearly enough to make up for...”

“At least you tried,” I said.