Sleep of Death (Charlotte Westing Chronicles) (3 page)

Chapter Three

While Sierra
’s on the phone I run my finger down the spines of a row of books. Her many shelves are stuffed with texts, old and new, about Oracles—and the supernatural.

I’m allowed to read them now.

Sierra is the historian for an ancient and secret society of women who govern Oracles all over the world. That makes it sound like there are a lot of us, but there really aren’t. Just a handful, actually. But the power is hereditary so the society—the Sisters of Delphi—knows where every single Oracle is. Including me, even though I’m not a member yet.

Might never be.

Hopefully
never will be. For most Oracles, the Sisterhood means three things:

Never reveal that you are an Oracle to anyone except another Oracle.

Fight your visions with all your strength. Never surrender. Never give up. Don’t close your eyes.

Never, under any circumstances, change the future.

In practice, that means ignore your abilities, fight your visions, and remain in the dark about exactly what we can all do. But here’s one exception to the general rule of carefully-cultivated ignorance: the Sisterhood’s Historian.

My aunt, Sierra.

It’s a position of significant power. In order to monitor Oracular activity and advise the leaders of the Sisterhood,
someone
has to know the full extent of our powers while being trusted to resist the temptation to use them. The downside is that the Historian has very little authority; she serves in a strictly advisory capacity.

Until last year, I wasn’t allowed to read
any
of her books, and every time I asked a question about Oracles I knew I’d only be getting half an answer. Often less than half. After everything I’ve discovered lately—not only about myself, but about her—I don’t resent it. Sierra has chosen the way of the Sisters of Delphi and their rules. She’s more than earned that right.

But after
what happened with Smith, she agreed that, for my own safety, I should know more about my abilities. So we made a deal: I get to read her books and ask her questions, and in return, I promise to seriously consider committing myself to the Sisterhood—and its rules—when I turn eighteen. Though from everything I’ve read and heard, when you turn eighteen you just kind of
become
a member—and become fully
accountable
for breaking their rules.

Still,
I like to believe that, in a year and a half, I’ll have a
choice
. I have to believe there’s still freedom in my future or it becomes overwhelmingly bleak. And even though I think the Sisterhood is wrong, thanks to Smith I have a much better understanding of
why
the rules are what they are. So I guess I can’t know for
certain
that I won’t change my mind and join the Sisterhood after all. That gives my promise a sheen of authenticity.

Sierra
ends her phone conversation with the office aide and turns her chair toward me. I can’t help but smile at the sight of her. I’m still getting used to her new appearance. She’s been in hiding for more than a decade, but when the …
thing
hunting her died last year, she had a beautician strip the dye from her hair. It’s not quite the gorgeous strawberry-blond I remember from when I was little, but as it grows out, it’s getting there. She fixes it and wears a little bit of make-up again, and last week she went on a date. An
actual
date.

I’m happy for her. She deserves it. Deserves to
live
.

She insists on continuing to go by Sierra, even though that’s not the name she was born with. But, as she said, she
’s spent half her life being Sierra; she may as well continue. It makes sense—and the idea of calling her “Shelby” felt really weird to me anyway—but I do wonder if it’s a sign that she’s still afraid.

“So,”
Sierra says in her crisp librarian voice, “you met a Sorceress today.”

“Did I?” I ask, adrenaline zipping through me at the word.
Sorceress
. Some of the stuff I’ve read in the last two months has hinted at supernatural beings beyond Oracles—and parasites like Smith—but Sierra hasn’t answered my questions about them because she doesn’t think it fits into our deal.
Our deal was only about Oracles
, she said once. I huffed off at the time. There’s a sense of victory now, I admit.

Of cours
e, answers to my questions can probably be found somewhere in the thousands of books on Sierra’s shelves. But freedom isn’t the same thing as support—she doesn’t help me with my research at all. I imagine it’s a case of violating the spirit of Sisterhood law while keeping to the letter; turning a blind eye to my extracurricular reading but doing nothing to encourage it. But as far as I can tell, the only catalog this library has is in Sierra’s head—so I have to sift blindly through the virtual mountain of information. Like trying to find hay in a haystack.

It doesn’t help that
most of the books aren’t written in modern English. And some of them don’t appear to be written in a particular language at all.

“Oh, that’s a cipher,” Sierra
once responded blandly when asked about a volume filled from cover to cover with an unbroken string of hand-inked numerals. “You can try cracking it if you like, but it will be difficult. The plaintext is Arabic.”

So I’d pretty much
given up looking for material on the rest of the supernatural world. Finding out more about myself was the most important task, anyway.

Not so much anymore.

“Sorceresses are the masters of the past,” Sierra recites, like the narrator of a documentary. “They can see and alter the past much in the way we can see and alter the future. Of course, just because they
can
doesn’t mean they
should.
”

I don’t know whether the Sisterhood has an official position on Sorceresses, but my aunt’s disapproving tone suggests that it might.
But I’d rather not talk about the Sisterhood today. “No one else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary when time backed up,” I press.

“
You have a supernatural existence. Remember how I told you that only someone else with powers can accompany you into your supernatural plane?”

I nod.
My supernatural plane; a place I can go when I sleep and see every possible future. It’s also the aspect of being an Oracle that Sierra has been the most open about. Possibly because Smith damaged mine. Badly.

“
Something similar happens with a Sorceress. Involving other supernaturals will allow them to see the manipulation of time, and remember both tracks. That doesn’t mean you’re immune to her powers,” Sierra adds in a warning tone. “You still go back in time along with everyone else. But unlike them, you’ll
remember
. Which means they can’t play tricks on you or directly interfere in your life without your knowledge.”

I know
Sierra well enough now to take her meaning:
You’ll know about it, but they can still mess with your life.
Someone who can “take back” mistakes could take back successes, too. Would it be better to know that you failed, than to know success was taken from you by powers beyond your control? Knowing is often worse than not knowing. As an Oracle, I already know all too well the pain that comes from
knowing
the world could have been better than it is. It’s one way I can sympathize with the Sisterhood’s rules, even though I think they go too far.

“You’ll have to be very careful around her,” Sierra warns. “And it may not be possible to hide what you are but—”

“She already knows,” I blurt.

“Charlotte!”
Sierra’s voice drips with disappointment and I feel like I’m six years old again.

“I didn’t
tell
her,” I shoot back defensively. Then take a breath. No reason to turn this into a fight. Sierra and I have been quite volatile the last few weeks—both of us treading new, uncharted territory. It keeps us pretty high strung, and we’ve had a few rather epic fights. Always conducted in hissing whispers and cold shoulders, thanks to my mother’s presence in the house, but epic nevertheless.

I start again,
moderating my tone. “I—I had a vision in art class.”

I don’t offer to tell Sierra what I saw in the vision. Not because I can’t trust her, but because we have
differing opinions about visions these days. The unspoken terms of our truce seem to have settled on “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Sierra’s duty-bound to tell the Sisters
her
secrets. But as long as I keep
my
secrets to myself, they aren’t hers to tell—and while I know that doesn’t completely satisfy her conscience, it seems to have worked with the Sisterhood, one way or another.

I’m not sure what exactly
Sierra told them about Jason-also-known-as-Smith re-entering her life—or meeting his death. But after (as she told my mom) “an important conference call with her publishing team” during which I frequently wandered over to Sierra’s office door,
not
eavesdropping but desperately
wanting
to, she had reported simply that “the Sisters are satisfied.” Neither of us has brought it up since, but the Sisters haven’t shown up at my door with stern looks, ready to drag me off to whatever the Oracle version of Brat Camp is either.

“
That’ll do it,” Sierra says at last, sighing and reaching out to brush my hand in apology. “I guess it would have happened eventually; you spend nearly a third of your life in that school. And visions do come, don’t they?”

“
I didn’t know what to think at first, but she came and found me at lunch.” I pause, scrunching my eyebrows together. “She asked me if I was a Witch.”

Sierra laughs and even though it’s
a welcome sound, I still don’t get the joke. “There are a
lot
of Witches,” she explains at my blank look. “And being a Witch isn’t like being an Oracle. Their gifts have grown so diluted that many can only sense supernatural abilities in others. And that only barely. Probably one woman in ten has a bit of Witches’ blood in them, and most of them have no idea. Women’s intuition—it’s a real thing. What people don’t realize is that it’s latent paranormal ability. But they don’t really register as supernatural themselves; they often can’t enter a supernatural plane or sense a shift in time. Anyway, yes,
lots
of Witches. So it’s a logical assumption.”

I tell her what happened when Sophie asked
straight out if I was an Oracle and Sierra purses her lips, but nods. “So she knows for sure.”

“Why did she apologize?”

“I doubt she knows much about Oracles except that we’re rare, secretive, and try very hard to never use our powers. We’re also the only supernaturals with a united, central governing organization. We’re simply too powerful to run amok. People could use us—you know that better than most.”

I nod grimly.

“It’s just easier if we stay under the radar. Everyone’s radar—other supernaturals included. But they know
about
us. No way to prevent that, unfortunately. And they often associate with one another, which is likely why she approached you, thinking you might be a kindred spirit. But when she found out what you are, she probably thought she’d accidentally embarrassed you, or maybe even gotten you into trouble.”

“
Am
I in trouble?” I’m confident that Sierra knows I mean
with the Sisterhood
.

“No,” Sierra says, but she stretches the word out like she might actually mean
yes
. “In a town this size—and a school as small as William Tell—she would’ve found out eventually. But just because she knows doesn’t mean she’s like you, or that you should even be friends. Not that I’m saying you
can’t
be her friend,” Sierra tacks on.

I raise my eyebrows.
Has she decided that I do things
because
I’m not supposed to?

Well, maybe I do, sometimes.
I’m working on it.

Sort of.

“But, you’re not the same as her. And you certainly don’t live by the same rules; even the rules you
have
chosen to live by,” she adds, quietly. “You’ll have to be as careful with her as you would with anyone else. Maybe
more
careful. Here,” she says, rising to her feet. She walks to one of the bookshelves and pulls out a thick volume bound in supple crimson leather. After flipping through it, she marks a spot with a bookmark and then hands the huge tome to me. “Read that section. It should prepare you for most eventualities.”

“Thank you,” I say, still loving the fact that Sierra will let me touch—much less read—her books. I take note of which shelf it came fro
m and decide to check that section out next.
So many books, so little time
. “Oh, Sierra, one more thing. She looks …
sick
.”