WE WALKED BACK to Mrs. Popova’s together. It was early enough that we were the only ones up. “Do you get used to this?” Liam asked Abby. “Does it ever stop feeling like you’re dreaming and you’ll wake up at any minute?”
“It does. But then you miss when it felt like that,” Abby said. “When it still felt like there was a chance it could all be undone.” She was thinking of her sister, I was sure.
“It doesn’t feel like I’m dreaming,” I said. “It feels like I’m awake for the first time in my life. When I’m in that other place—it’s like when there’s a loud fan running, and you’ve stopped noticing that it’s there, until suddenly someone turns it off.”
“Does that worry you?” Abby asked.
“Of course it does,” I said with a laugh. “Who feels relaxed on Spooky Echo Island?”
“It’s not actually that weird, necessarily,” Abby said slowly.
“How is that not weird?” I asked.
“There are certain people who have a connection to the other worlds,” Abby said. She rubbed her thumb along her jaw thoughtfully. “They’re special. Different. My sister was like that. She’d get feelings about things that turned out to be true, and she could see things that even Ashford couldn’t. Ashford thinks that’s why . . .”
“Why she’s a ghost?” I asked.
Liam’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth as if to ask a question, but then he just shook his head and fell silent. Maybe he’d used up his budget of weird.
“Not just a ghost. She’s different now too,” Abby said. “She doesn’t act like she should. She sent me here, and that’s just not something ghosts do. If you’re attuned to the world that’s intruding on Bitter Rock, it could be why you could see the Six-Wing. And why you have some kind of connection to your echo.”
I felt an odd flutter of hope. Could that be it? I had some strange bond with my echo, and she had caused all the strange things in my life? I wasn’t a freak. It wasn’t my fault. It was hers.
“What if she has some hold on you?” Liam asked. We’d stopped at the head of the long driveway down to Mrs. Popova’s, and he turned so that we were all facing each other. “If you’re connected to your echo, you’re connected to the Six-Wing.”
“It is worrying,” Abby said. “But listen. This is what I do, remember? Most of the time, I’m only there for the aftermath, when it’s too late to do anything. But this time, I can help. I’ll keep you both breathing, I promise.”
Liam scoffed slightly, but I could tell that he was relieved to hear it—and trying not to show that he was relieved. Oil and water, but I was glad that both of them were here. Glad not to be alone.
“We’ll get through this,” I said.
“If something happens to me, I’m sure Dr. Kapoor will cover it up for you,” Liam said wryly.
“Well, if I die, gather up all of my stuff and send it to Dr. Andrew Ashford,” Abby said. “He’s the only person left in the world who would care what happened to me.”
“I’d care,” I said.
The corner of her mouth twitched. “You’ve known me a day, Sophia Novak.”
“And I already like you better than anyone back home,” I said. “I’m not big on friends.”
“Aw. I like you too,” she said.
“Just to be clear,” Liam said, “I might be fake-dating you, but I don’t like you.”
“Oh, no. Totally hate your guts. Glad it’s mutual,” Abby responded, and they gave each other a fist bump. I rolled my eyes, and Abby laughed. “I should get back to my room. I still haven’t gone through that stuff from the LARC.”
“I’ll help. I’ve still got time before Dr. Kapoor needs me up at the Center,” I said. “Liam?”
“I’d better get back into my bed before Dr. Kapoor figures out I’m not in it.”
“Sweet dreams, sweetie,” Abby replied, and waggled her fingers at him. Then she hooked her arm through mine and pulled me off down the driveway. I twisted around to mouth sorry at him, but he just chuckled ruefully. Abby jostled me a little. “Be careful,” she said.
“What, with Liam?”
“Not just with Liam. With making friends. Especially with people like me.”
“And what kind of person are you?” I asked.
She was quiet a minute, like she couldn’t decide if it was a good idea to explain. When she did speak, her tone was serious, her words slow and careful. “I’m like you,” she said. “So focused on the prize I don’t care about the risk that it puts me in. Or puts other people in. We get killed. And we get people killed.”
“No one’s going to die because of me,” I said dismissively.
“Just be careful. Like I said.” She didn’t say anything more on the subject, but I couldn’t stop the words from looping in my mind, again and again. Echo and warning.
Inside, we ditched our boots and padded past Lily, who stood staring at the brewing coffeepot with furious intensity, and Kenny, sprawled on the couch in the living room with his phone on his chest and his eyes closed.
Abby had stowed the backpack of looted evidence under her bed. She set it on the bed and pulled out a stack of files, a bunch of loose papers, and a folded map. I grabbed the map.
It reminded me of the one I’d found in the specimen room—marks and dates around the area. But that one hadn’t been updated since the eighties. This one had dates up to last summer, and the dots had short phrases next to them as well as dates.
Oct. 17, 2015—cruise passenger reports cabin flooding, men screaming. No water found.
Nov. 3, 2014—crew member on fishing vessel reported lost at sea. Storm confirmed by weather service, likely unrelated.
There were no lines drawn on this one, but the dates on the map painted their own picture. The echo world’s impact was still spreading, year by year. Winter by winter, I realized, examining the dates more closely. The summer dates never exceeded the range of the previous winter. It was in the darkness that its influence grew. I turned my attention to the other papers. What had fallen into the category of “worth hiding”?
There was data on the terns—notes on their mutations. Seven human teeth found growing in chest cavity, I read, and shuddered. These were the ones too strange to preserve or explain. There were weather reports and reports on currents, which I couldn’t make heads or tails of, and a number of photocopied documents in Russian that I set aside. Someone would be able to translate them for me.
I was moving a manila envelope—this one actually full of receipts for reimbursement—when something made me pause. I hefted it. The weight was wrong. Unbalanced. What . . . ?
I peered inside and let out a sound of satisfaction. An SD card was taped against the side of the envelope. The irregular shape of the receipts inside meant you’d never know it was there unless you actually looked in. I peeled it free and showed it to Abby. But Abby wasn’t paying attention. She was staring at something she’d pulled from one of the other envelopes—a photograph.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. She looked up. Her expression was lost.
“What doesn’t?”
She held the photo out. I recognized the backdrop immediately as Landontown on Belaya Skala, though the buildings were newer, freshly painted. It was a group shot: men with long hair in corduroy pants, women with high-waisted jeans with bell-bottoms, quintessential 1970s styles, the date confirmed by the fuzzy numbers in the bottom corner: July 1973. They looked out of place on the rugged island. There were four women and five men. I recognized the one at the center, a man with gleaming, intense eyes and the kind of face I could imagine people following all the way to the middle of nowhere to start a new society.
“It’s Cole Landon,” I said. And the woman beside him with frothy blonde hair was his wife.
“Not him. Them,” she said. She pointed at a man and a boy of maybe thirteen standing beside Landon. The man had a hand on the boy’s shoulder; both were smiling. Father and son, I thought; they had the same bold features and nearly black hair.
“What about them?” I asked.
“That’s my grandpa,” she said, pointing to the older man. “And that’s my dad.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m sure. I’ve seen lots of pictures. My dad was really proud of his family—they’re sort of old money, big on legacy, you know? I grew up in a house that had a name and a dumbwaiter. He wanted us to know where we came from. But why would he be here?”
“I don’t know. But I bet it’s why Miranda sent you here,” I said. “To find out.” Not to help me. I’d started to think of Abby as mine, my protector, my friend. But this wasn’t just about me.
“It was in an envelope with this,” she said. She had a USB drive in her other hand.
“What do you think’s on it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. For once, she didn’t take the lead. She only stared at the photo and the drive, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted whatever answers were waiting.
I took the drive from her. She almost looked like she wanted to stop me. “We have to find out,” I told her, and plugged it into the laptop.