Echoes of Us (31 page)

Authors: Kat Zhang

BOOK: Echoes of Us

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We still got calls, relatively frequently, from reporters wanting to interview us, or people furious at everything we’d done, everything we stood for. Our parents tried to shield us from those calls, when they could. Our number was supposed to be unlisted, but people were diligent and relentless.

“Someone named Bridget?” Mom said, and I immediately pressed the receiver to our ear.

“Hello?” I said, as Addie whispered

We hadn’t spoken to Bridget since the night we escaped from Hahns. Had never known what had become of her.

Bridget’s voice was quiet, but steady. “For someone who was so famous, you’re hard to get ahold of, you know?”

I laughed, and saw Mom’s shoulders relax. She gave us a hesitant smile, and I smiled back.

“How are you?” I said. “Where are you?”

“Home,” Bridget said. “It took a while, but I’m home.”

I looked around at the new house, the rougher edges of it beginning to wear away after months of our living here. At the crisp autumn world beyond the windowpanes. At our mother as she motioned she was headed back upstairs.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “So are we.”

Addie still says, sometimes, when we wake from dreams. When slumber peels away, and she reaches for me in the haze of another day’s beginning.

she says, like she did when we were children.

And I answer

Because I am. And I always will be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
t is insanity to think that we have come to the end of the Hybrid Chronicles—the story I first began in my last year of high school and am now completing months after graduating from college. Writing this series is inextricably linked with my college years, and the people who have mentored and aided me during this process have also been my mentors in life.

I am forever grateful to my editor, Kari Sutherland, and my agent, Emmanuelle Morgen. Kari, for your incredible notes and suggestions, which guided me through each revision. The series is so much stronger because of you. Emmanuelle, for teaching me things I didn’t even know I needed to learn about publishing, and for always being only an email or phone call away when I needed help.

I owe the biggest thanks to everyone at HarperTeen, who received these stories as words on a screen and transformed them into (and I might be a little biased here) the most beautifully bound books. Special mention, of course, to the lovely Alison Lisnow, who rocks my world as my publicist.

Thank you to Whitney Lee and all my other foreign agents. I’ve always loved to travel, and seeing my books on shelves in new countries continues to be the biggest thrill. I am very grateful, also, to my film agents, Jon and Michelle at CAA.

Savannah Foley and JJ, I owe you both infinite amounts of baked goods for setting other work aside to read through drafts of
Echoes of Us
. Amie Kaufman, even being on different continents and in utterly different time zones didn’t keep you from helping me brainstorm the first outline for book three. You’re awesome like that. :)

It’s been a fantastic journey, guys, and I am grateful to everyone who has helped give me the opportunity to take it.

BACK ADS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo by Mandy Whitley Photography

KAT ZHANG
is an avid traveler, and after a childhood spent living in one book after another, she now builds stories for other people to visit, including
What’s Left of Me
, her first novel, and its sequel,
Once We Were
. You can read about her travels, literary and otherwise, online at www.katzhangwriter.com.

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BOOKS BY KAT ZHANG

What’s Left of Me

Once We Were

CREDITS

COPYRIGHT

ECHOES OF US
:
THE HYBRID CHRONICLES, BOOK THREE
. Copyright © 2014 by Kat Zhang. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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ISBN 978-0-06-211493-8

EPub Edition July 2014 ISBN 9780062114952

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