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Marco wasn't answering his phone.
I stood in the parking lot behind the store, staring at the cracked asphalt where I'd found Kira three nights ago. The dumpster still smelled like old fry oil and something sweet that had gone bad. My thumb hovered over the call button again, but I shoved the phone in my pocket instead.
He'd seen something. I knew he had.
The back door rattled open. Marco stepped out, cigarette already between his lips, lighter in hand. He froze when he saw me.
"Layla." He didn't light it. Just stood there, shoulders tight, eyes flicking past me like he was checking for witnesses. "You're early."
"You've been dodging me."
"I've been busy."
"Bullshit." I crossed my arms. "You pulled the security footage. I saw you delete the file from the main system."
His jaw worked. The cigarette bent a little between his fingers. "You shouldn't be looking at that stuff."
"Why? What's on it?"
"Nothing." He finally lit the cigarette, took a long drag, eyes on the horizon where the desert started. "Just a glitch. Happens all the time with those old cameras."
"Marco." I stepped closer. Close enough to see the purple under his eyes, the way his hand shook just a little when he exhaled smoke. "I know you're lying."
He didn't deny it. Just smoked and watched the sky turn pink at the edges.
"My mom used to work here," I said quietly. "Didn't she?"
The cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth.
"She did night shifts too. Ten years ago. You were the day manager back then." I'd checked the old rosters this morning, the ones still filed in the storage closet under a decade of dust. Her name was there. Looped handwriting. Liliana Santos. Tuesdays through Saturdays, eleven PM to seven AM.
Marco dropped the cigarette and ground it under his heel. "Yeah. She worked here."
"Did you see her the night she disappeared?"
His eyes finally met mine. Something old and sad moved behind them. "No. She called in sick that week. Never came back."
"But you know what happened."
"I know enough to tell you to stop asking." He pulled a USB drive from his jacket pocket. Small. Black. He held it between us like a grenade. "This is the footage from the night you brought that woman home. The one you're hiding in your apartment."
My stomach dropped. "You—"
"I'm not blind, Layla. I've worked this store for fifteen years. I know when something's off." He pressed the drive into my palm, closed my fingers around it. His hand was warm and rough and shaking. "Watch it once. Then get rid of it. And for god's sake, don't go looking for your mother."
"Why not?"
"Because she didn't want to be found."
He turned and went back inside before I could ask what the hell that meant.
---
Kira was awake when I got home. Sitting on the couch in the dark, knees pulled up, staring at nothing. She didn't look up when I came in.
"We need to talk," I said.
She nodded. Still didn't look at me.
I plugged the USB into my laptop and sat down beside her. Close enough that our shoulders almost touched. She smelled like the soap I kept in the bathroom and something sharper underneath—copper and smoke.
The video loaded. Grainy black-and-white, timestamp in the corner. 2:47 AM. Three nights ago.
The alley appeared on screen. Empty. Just the dumpster and the back wall and a slice of desert beyond the fence.
Then the shadows moved.
Not normal shadows. These were wrong, thick, crawling along the ground like oil. They pooled near the dumpster, and something rose out of them—tall, too tall, limbs bent at angles that didn't make sense. No face. Just a hollow where a face should be.
Kira went rigid beside me.
The thing tilted its head. Slow. Curious. Then it collapsed into the shadows again, and when they pulled back, Kira was lying there. Human. Unconscious. Blood on her temple.
"What the fuck," I whispered.
Kira reached over and paused the video. Her hand was shaking. "It's called an Echo."
"An Echo."
"Shadow creature. They slip through weak points in reality. Rifts." Her voice was flat. Mechanical. Like she was reciting a report. "They can't hold a solid form for long. But they can mimic things. Voices. Faces. Memories."
I stared at the frozen image on screen. At the shape that had been Kira and wasn't. "You fought that thing."
"I lost."
"But you're alive."
"Barely." She stood up, paced to the window, arms wrapped around herself. "It was looking for you, Layla. It's been circling this town for weeks. I've been trying to keep it away from the store, away from you, but it's getting stronger. The rift is opening."
"Why me?" My voice cracked. "Why does it want me?"
She didn't answer.
"Kira."
Still nothing.
I got up, crossed the room, grabbed her wrist. She flinched but didn't pull away. I turned her to face me. "Tell me the truth. Did you know my mother?"
Her eyes were dark and wet and full of something that looked like grief. "Yes."
The word hit me like a fist.
"How?"
"I was assigned to protect her too." Her voice broke. "Ten years ago. Same job. Same creatures. Same rift."
"And?"
"And I failed." She yanked her wrist free, turned away. "I was young. Inexperienced. I thought I could close the rift without backup. I thought—" She stopped. Swallowed. "The Echo got to her first. It wore her face. It spoke in her voice. And by the time I realized it wasn't her, the real Liliana was already gone."
I couldn't breathe. The room tilted. I sat down hard on the floor, back against the wall, hands pressed to my face.
"She's dead," I said. Not a question. Just fact. Cold and sharp and final.
"I don't know." Kira crouched in front of me. Close. Too close. I could feel the heat coming off her, see the scar on her collarbone where her shirt had slipped. "The rift took her. I searched for months. The Bureau called it off. Declared her lost. But I never found a body."
"That voicemail—"
"Was an Echo. It's using her voice to lure you out. To the desert. To the rift." Her hand hovered near my knee, didn't quite touch. "That's why I didn't want you to go. That's why I—" She stopped. Looked away. "I can't lose you too."
Something hot and sharp twisted in my chest. Anger. Grief. Something else I didn't have a name for.
"You should've told me."
"I know."
"You should've told me the first night."
"I know." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I'm sorry."
I wanted to yell at her. Wanted to throw her out. Wanted to shake her until she gave me answers that made sense.
Instead I just sat there, breathing hard, staring at the scar on her collarbone and the way her hands were clenched into fists on her thighs.
"Show me," I said finally.
"What?"
"Show me what you can do. You said you're a guardian. Prove it."
She hesitated. Then nodded.
She stood, held out her hand. Palm up. And the air above it started to glow.
Not bright. Just a faint silver light, like moonlight trapped in glass. It pooled in her palm, then stretched into a blade—thin, humming, edges sharp enough to cut the air.
"Holy shit," I breathed.
She closed her fist and the blade vanished. "I can do more. But not here. Not without drawing attention."
"From what?"
"From things worse than Echoes." She offered me her hand. I took it. She pulled me up, and for a second we were too close, her fingers still wrapped around mine, her breath warm on my cheek.
She let go and stepped back like I'd burned her.
"We need to move," she said. "If Marco has that footage, other people might too. The Bureau. The creatures. We're not safe here anymore."
"Where do we go?"
"I don't know yet. But first—" She looked at the laptop, still open on the couch. "First we finish watching."
I didn't want to. But I sat back down and hit play.
The video kept rolling. Kira on the ground. The shadows retreating. Then the timestamp jumped—skipped forward ten minutes—and a new figure appeared at the edge of the frame.
A woman. Dark hair. Denim jacket. Face turned away from the camera.
She crouched beside Kira's body, checked her pulse, then looked up.
Straight at the camera.
My mother's face.
No. Not quite. The features were right. The scar on her chin. The way her hair fell. But her eyes—her eyes were black. Solid black. No whites. No iris.
And standing behind her, hand on her shoulder, was a younger version of Kira.
Same scar. Same sharp jaw. But softer. Fewer lines. Maybe nineteen. Twenty.
The young Kira leaned down, whispered something in my mother's ear. My mother nodded. They both looked at the camera one last time.
Then the screen went black.
I sat there. Frozen. Heart pounding so hard I thought it might break through my ribs.
"That's not possible," I whispered. "That footage is from three days ago. You were already—"
Kira was staring at the screen. Face white. Eyes wide.
"That's not me," she said.
"Then who—"
"I don't know." She grabbed the laptop, rewound, paused on the girl's face. Her hand was shaking so hard the image blurred. "But if there's another version of me in this town, and she's with your mother—"
She didn't finish.
She didn't have to.
Because we both knew what it meant.
The Echo wasn't just mimicking the dead.
It was mimicking us.