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“I will,” I said with all the boldness I could muster. “And then we’ll go home. You and me—and Sophie.”
“I can’t go home,” she said. “I wish I could, little bird, but there isn’t enough of me left.”
My eyes had adjusted in the dark. And so when I looked at her this time, I saw what I hadn’t before. Broken, ragged black wings, growing from her back. They were grafted to the salt, vanishing beneath it. Blood stained the wall around them, and fresh wounds wept where the skin had opened.
“This place gets inside of you,” she whispered. Her pupils were pinpricks; her irises filled her whole eyes. “It gets inside of you, and you’ll never scrape it all out.”
32
I STOOD ONthe gray rock, the taste of salt on my lips where I had pressed a kiss against my mother’s cheek.Live, she’d told me.Please just live.But I hadn’t wanted my last words to her to be a lie.I love you, I’d said instead.
Abby held my phone now, recording; Liam held my hand. We faced the ramshackle village, and we steeled ourselves one last time as we started forward.
“It’s quiet,” Abby murmured. “Not to be cliché, but—”
“They don’t need to come for us,” I said. “We’re coming to them, remember?”
“If it’s what they want, doesn’t that mean it’s a bad idea?” Liam asked.
“There isn’t a good idea in this scenario.”
There was a shadow in the doorway of the church. I expected wings and empty eyes, but it was a man, his shoulders slightlyhunched and his face obscured by the dark. We walked forward.
“We can’t let them take me,” I said. “I don’t know exactly what happens if they do. But I have to make it inside with my will intact.”
“We’ve got you,” Abby assured me.
“All the way to the end,” Liam added. He squeezed my hand. For a moment I saw, as vividly as if it was truly laid out in front of me, the future that might have been. The future that belonged to Sophia Hayes: a summer of endless sunlight, of hard work, of evenings learning Liam Kapoor by heart. A future flung open to possibility, hers to choose. And she’d choose him. They’d travel, drink coffee in cafes, wander side streets, hike trails. They’d go everywhere until they found theherethey wanted to stay in, and having seen the world, they’d build their own.
But I was Sophia Novak, and my future was not one of endless possibility. It was as unyielding as the rock beneath our feet. It was the church, and it was what lay inside, and there was nothing else beyond it that I could see. That I could even hope for.
We’d reached the church. It seemed larger than it had before, grander—and the shadows within it were far too deep. The man in the doorway stepped forward. William Hardcastle’s echo looked at me and smiled.
“Welcome home,” he said, his voice like the scrape of rocks. His clothes were patchy, moldering, and his skin was patchy too—peeling from wind-carved sores. I stood rooted in place.
It wasn’t him, but it didn’t matter.
He was the echo of the man who’d tried to kill me, and my body didn’t care that those weren’t the hands that had done it. It feared them just the same.
Help me, I whispered silently, and Sophie replied—replied with all the rage and fury that had sent her at Hardcastle on the shore. Anger was better than fear. Anger was fire, and I needed fire. “Get out of my way,” I growled, advancing. If I’d had one of Dr. Kapoor’s guns, I wouldn’t have hesitated an instant to use it.
But Hardcastle only kept smiling. “Come on. I’ll take you to them,” he said.
I shook my head. If he took me, I was lost.
“There are other ways,” he said. “Less kind. But come with me, and they can live. Your friends.”
“You really think I’d believe that face?” I asked. “You should have worn someone else.” Hardcastle’s echo laughed.
I flung myself at the empty space beside him, thinking to force my way past. He caught me around the waist and tossed me back onto the rocky ground. My back took the impact, knocking my breath out of me. Abby yelled something, and Hardcastle came at me.
I bunched up my legs and drove both of my feet, in their heavy boots, into his stomach. He let out a whuff of breath. His torso gave oddly, and I could feel something soft tearing, something brittle cracking. He staggered back and swiped his hand across his mouth, smearing black liquid across his palm. He grinned, and his teeth were black with it. He came at me again.
This time when I kicked at him, he caught me by the ankle and dragged my body forward. I rolled, scrabbling at the ground to find some purchase, and the angle gave me a glimpse of what was happening behind me—and why Abby and Liam weren’t helping.
More echoes had appeared. Some of them were twisted beyond recognition, corrupted echoes like Lily’s. Others wore the facesof the Landontown residents, or air force uniforms, or LARC ID badges swinging around their necks on lanyards.
Abby and Liam had spread out, darting in opposite directions to avoid the attackers. There were too many of them. We were going to fail, I realized. We were going to fail here and now, and they were going to die, and I was going to be taken, and my defiance would do nothing.
