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I didn't let her back in.
Not right away. I stood there with my hand on the doorknob, listening to Kira on the other side, and tried to convince myself I was doing the rational thing. The smart thing. You don't just let strangers sleep on your couch because they know your dead mom's name.
Except she knew other things too. Things I never told anyone.
"Layla." Her voice came through the door, quiet. Not begging. Just tired. "I get it. You don't trust me. You shouldn't. But that thing at the store tonight? It wasn't the first, and it won't be the last. They're drawn to you."
I pressed my forehead against the door. The wood was cool. My head wasn't. "Why me?"
"I don't know yet." A pause. "That's the truth. I was sent here three weeks ago. Orders were to observe and protect. Nobody told me why."
"Three weeks?" My stomach dropped. "You've been watching me for three weeks?"
"Not like that. I mean—look, the Bureau doesn't exactly hand out detailed briefings. They said your name, your address, and 'code red priority.' That's it."
Code red priority. Great. I didn't even know what that meant, and it was attached to me.
I opened the door.
Kira looked worse than before. Her jacket was torn at the shoulder, and there was something dark smeared on her jeans. Not blood. Too thick. It looked like oil, but it smelled wrong. Burnt hair and cold metal.
"Is that from tonight?" I asked.
She glanced down. "Yeah. That thing got a piece of me before I got it off you."
"Off me?" I didn't remember that part. I remembered the customer, the static, Marco shoving me toward the back. Everything after that was a blur of noise and cold and something that felt like drowning in air.
Kira stepped inside and I closed the door behind her. She didn't sit. Just stood there in my tiny living room, arms crossed, looking at the floor.
"You don't remember," she said. Not a question.
"I remember Marco telling me to run."
"You didn't." Her mouth twitched. Almost a smile, but not a happy one. "You grabbed the nearest thing—a mop, I think—and swung it at the shadow. Didn't do anything, obviously, but you tried."
That sounded like something I'd do. Stupid, but on brand.
"Then what?"
"Then I handled it." She finally looked up. Her eyes were still that weird amber color, and they caught the light in a way that made my skin prickle. "And Marco called someone. I'm guessing he's more involved in this than he let on."
Marco. I thought about the way he'd moved tonight, the way he knew exactly where to shove me, the way he didn't ask questions when Kira showed up. Yeah. Marco definitely knew something.
"I'm going back," I said.
Kira blinked. "What?"
"To the store. I'm going back. My shift starts in six hours, and I'm not calling in sick because of some—" I gestured vaguely. "—shadow thing."
"Are you insane?"
"Probably." I grabbed my phone off the counter and checked the time. 11:47 PM. My shift started at 6 AM. If I went to bed now, I could get maybe five hours. "But I'm not hiding. And I'm not quitting. So either you explain what's happening, or I'm walking in blind."
Kira stared at me for a long moment. Then she laughed. It was short and sharp and sounded a little bitter. "You're serious."
"Yeah."
"Fine." She pulled out her phone—an old model, the kind with actual buttons—and tapped something. "But we're doing this my way. I'm coming with you, and you're going to listen to everything I say. No arguments, no mop-swinging heroics."
"Deal," I said, even though I wasn't sure I meant it.
She showed me her phone screen. It was a photo of a document, official-looking, with a seal I didn't recognize. Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, it said at the top. Under that: Field Agent Kira Volkov, Clearance Level 4, Specialization: Rift Containment.
"That could be fake," I said.
"It could," Kira agreed. "But it's not."
I wanted to believe her. That was the worst part. Some stupid, hopeful part of me wanted to believe that she was here to help, that I wasn't alone in whatever this was, that my mom's name in her mouth meant something real.
But I'd learned a long time ago that wanting something didn't make it true.
"Show me the security footage," I said.
Kira's expression shifted. "Layla—"
"You said you handled it. Show me."
She hesitated, and that hesitation told me more than anything else. She didn't want me to see it. Which meant it was bad.
"Please," I added, because I wasn't above begging if it got me answers.
Kira sighed and pocketed her phone. "Okay. But not here. We need to go back to the store."
Of course we did.
We took my car. Kira didn't have one, apparently. Or maybe she did and just didn't want me to know where it was parked. Hard to say. The drive was quiet. She sat in the passenger seat with her arms crossed, staring out the window at the empty desert highway. The streetlights were few and far between out here, and the spaces between them felt too dark. Too wide.
"Does Marco know?" I asked. "About the Bureau?"
"Probably not," Kira said. "But he knows something. There are people like him in every town. Watchers. They see things, report things, keep their heads down. He's not an agent, but he's on a list somewhere."
"A list."
"Yeah. People who've had contact with the other side. Survivors, mostly. He lost someone, I'm guessing. That's usually how it goes."
I thought about Marco's careful hands, the way he never talked about his family, the way he always checked the locks twice before leaving. Yeah. That tracked.
The store was still open when we got there. Of course it was. 24 hours, no holidays, no exceptions. The lot was empty except for Marco's beat-up sedan and a truck I didn't recognize.
Kira was out of the car before I even turned off the engine. She moved fast, her hand already on something under her jacket. A weapon, maybe. I tried not to think about that too hard.
Marco was behind the counter when we walked in. He looked up, saw Kira, and his face went carefully blank. "Layla. You're not scheduled."
"I know." I stopped in front of the counter. "I need to see the footage from tonight."
His eyes flicked to Kira, then back to me. "I deleted it."
"Bullshit," Kira said. Her voice was flat. "You called someone. That means you kept a copy."
Marco's jaw tightened. For a second I thought he was going to throw us out. Then he sighed and pulled a USB drive out of his pocket. "You really don't want to watch this."
"I really do," I said.
He handed it over. His fingers brushed mine, and they were cold. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
We went to the back office. It was barely big enough for the desk and the ancient computer Marco used to process payroll. Kira stood behind me while I plugged in the drive and opened the file.
The footage started normal. Me at the register, Marco restocking. The timestamp said 9:47 PM. The customer walked in at 9:51.
I watched myself smile, scan his items, bag them. He didn't look wrong on camera. He looked normal. Human.
Then the lights flickered.
The static started as a faint distortion at the edges of the frame. It spread fast, crawling across the screen like something alive. The customer turned toward me, and his face—
It wasn't a face anymore.
It was a hole. A space where a face should be, filled with nothing but shifting black that moved and writhed and reached.
I watched Marco shout something. Watched myself stumble backward. Watched the shadow-thing lunge.
And then Kira was there.
She moved too fast for the camera to track properly. One second she was across the store, the next she was between me and the thing, her hand outstretched, light pouring from her palm in a blinding flare.
The creature shrieked. The sound didn't come through the speakers—the footage cut to silence—but I could see it in the way the thing recoiled, the way the shelves shook, the way I fell to my knees with my hands over my ears.
Kira hit it again. The light was so bright the camera whited out for three full seconds.
When it came back, the thing was gone. Just a scorch mark on the floor and Kira standing over it, breathing hard. She turned, and even through the grainy footage I could see the look on her face. Grim. Tired. And something else.
She looked at me—at the version of me on the floor, shaking—and then she crouched down, reached out like she was going to touch my shoulder, then stopped. Her hand hovered there for a moment before she pulled it back.
Then she said something. I couldn't hear it, but I watched her lips move.
Are you okay?
My throat went tight.
The footage kept playing. Marco helped me up. Kira stepped back, fading into the shadows near the door. I saw myself nod, saw Marco guide me toward the back, saw Kira watch us go.
And then the timestamp jumped.
9:53 PM became 3:12 AM.
I frowned. "What—"
"Keep watching," Kira said quietly.
The new footage showed the store at night. Empty. The lights were off except for the security lamp near the register. The camera was pointed at the front door.
Nothing happened for ten seconds. Then the door opened.
No one was there.
But something walked in.
It looked like a person. It moved like a person. But the way it held itself was wrong. Too stiff. Too smooth. Like someone doing a bad impression of walking.
It stopped in the middle of the aisle and turned toward the camera.
And smiled.
I stopped breathing.
Because the face looking into the camera was my mother's.
She looked exactly the way I remembered. Dark hair pulled back, the little scar on her chin from a car accident when she was sixteen, the same crooked smile she used to give me when she thought I wasn't looking.
She stared into the camera for three long seconds.
Then the footage cut to black.
I sat there, frozen, my hand still on the mouse. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
"Layla," Kira said. Her hand landed on my shoulder, warm and solid. "That's not her."
I knew that. I knew. My mom was dead. I went to the funeral. I watched them lower the casket. But knowing didn't stop the way my chest felt like it was caving in.
"That's The Echo," Kira said. "It's a mimic. It takes the shape of someone you've lost, someone you trusted. It's how they gather information. It's how they find weak points."
"Why her?" My voice cracked. I hated that.
"Because she matters to you." Kira's grip tightened. "And because whoever sent it knows that."
I looked up at her. She was close enough that I could see the faint scar along her jaw, the tension in the set of her mouth, the way her eyes weren't just amber—they had flecks of gold, like embers.
"What do they want from me?" I asked.
Kira didn't answer right away. She just looked at me, and for the first time since I met her, I saw something that looked like fear.
"I don't know," she said finally. "But we're going to find out before they do."