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“And then I let him bury it,” she growled. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I helped hide all of this, because I wasafraid of what it meant and I was afraid of what I’d done. When we got back, Dr. Breckenridge explained everything to us—that Theresa Landon founded the LARC to watch the island, not just the birds, and to try to find a way to destroy what her husband had worshiped. That is the work.”

“That’s what you’re trying to do with the sound equipment?” I asked.

She nodded. She had the same stiff posture as when she’d lectured me about counting chicks. “It was the military that realized the birds could travel into the echo worlds. And there was the song. They theorized it was sound frequencies that let the birds navigate, slip through. And those same frequencies bind the echo worlds together, bind them to this one. We thought if we could find the right frequency, we could create enough interference that the link would be severed. The bridge between the worlds would collapse.”

“Okay, hold on,” Kenny said. “Can someone please tell me what you’re all talking about? This sounds bonkers.”

“It’s a really long story,” I said.

“There’s a fucked-up supernatural world on the islands full of evil doubles of everyone here and a big fuck-off evil angel, and they want Sophia for some reason,” Liam rattled off.

“Decent summary,” Mrs. Popova noted, a touch amused.

“Oh. Huh,” Kenny said. I gave him an incredulous look. He spread his hands. “It explains a lot, you know? Everyone knows that island’s haunted.”

“I know why it wants me,” I said. I glanced at Sophie, but she had shrunk back. She didn’t have the words, so I would explainfor her. “Abby told me there are people who are attuned to other worlds. The Six-Wing needed someone that was attuned toitsworld. To make an echo of. There’s a connection between us, the same kind of bridge that links the echo worlds to ours, and to the Six-Wing’s world.”

“You’re like a tuning fork,” Dr. Kapoor said. “The birds have learned to mimic the echo’s song, but it’s in yourbones. You do it without thinking. If you strike the right note, you’ll make the link between the worlds strong enough that the Seraph—thetrueSix-Wing, the Eidolon beyond the gate—can wrench open its prison and step into our world.”

“Then why let me come?” I asked. “You knew who I was.”

“We haven’t been able to find the exact frequency we needed,” Dr. Kapoor said. “I thought if I could get you and Sophie in the same place, I might be able to isolate it. I knew it was a gamble, but...”

“But the echo worlds are expanding. At first they only touched Belaya Skala, and then all of Bitter Rock. By now they extend into the ocean. They’ll reach the mainland soon. People will die,” Mrs. Popova said.

“It was a hell of a risk,” I said.

“The Six-Wing can’t control Sophie. It can’t see inside her mind. I knew we’d have time before it realized you were here,” Dr. Kapoor replied.

“But it made an echo out of Liam. It saw insidehismind. It saw who I was,” I said. “That’s why the echoes are attacking. It’s coming for me.”

This was bigger than filling in the mystery of my past; biggerthan finding Abby; bigger, even, than finding my mother, that lonely voice echoing down the corridors of my memory.

“I’ve done what I can to help. All these years—” Dr. Kapoor said, and anger flared through me. All these years, she’d sat and fiddled with her equipment and kept her secrets. She’d kept the secret that had poisoned this island, had preyed on it. That had destroyed my life.

The rage was like a storm, but there was no point in being angry at Dr. Kapoor for what she had or hadn’t done—I had to focus on what came next. And so I pushed that anger away. Into the void.

And my echo’s lips peeled back from her teeth. She let out an angry growl and rocked forward, digging her fingers roughly into her upper arms. Her eyes, the whites showing starkly around her irises, met mine, and a fraction of my anger washed back into me.

“Oh,” I whispered. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The anger ebbed. She made a mewling sound and drew back against the wall, pulling in on herself.

She’d borne it all. All my anger, all my fear. It hadn’t been an empty, uncaring void that held my rage and terror for me. It washer.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. But she shook her head, as if it didn’t matter.

“It’s all right. Because you’ve come back,” my echo said. “You’ve come back and now it ends, but how it ends, we don’t know.”

I could see my reflection in her eyes. My true reflection, mirrored as it should be. And I knew, from the faint vibration in mybones, that I could slip as easily into that other world as I could step through a doorway. “We’ll end it,” I told her.

“What if we can’t?” she asked.

“Then we can’t,” I replied. I took her hand and helped her up.

One of us was real.

One of us was the echo.