“Of course.” I’d forgotten all about Robert. “Thursday, then, Mr. Merriweather?”
“What’s Thursday?” Finn wonders, and Merriweather looks even more affronted.
“The Resistance leaders meet here.” I pull my hood back up over my hair. “They talk about—well, I’m not quite sure. Clearing Brennan’s name? Ousting the Brotherhood in favor of a proper democracy? Giving women the right to vote?”
“The last one isn’t part of our agenda,” Merriweather points out, and Rilla snorts.
“Well, if you could use a spy inside the Brotherhood, I’d be interested in joining up,” Finn says.
“It isn’t really open for—” Merriweather begins. I can tell that he’s going to say no.
“You owe me, for Prue,” I interrupt. “Let Finn come to the meetings, and think about Rilla’s ideas for the Gazette. Please.”
“All right.” Merriweather spreads his hands out. “If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll give you the information. Belastra, was it?” There’s a suspicious glint in his eye.
Rilla peeks her head out the door. “The carriage is waiting, Cate.”
Ag. I don’t relish the notion of leaving Finn alone with Merriweather. What if he questions Finn about Harwood? He was distracted about Prue earlier, but once he thinks about it, he’ll realize that the handkerchief was Finn’s and that his memory’s been erased and then where will we be?
“I’ll see you Thursday?” Finn asks. I nod, and he gives me a gap-toothed grin. “Good. I’ve got more questions for you.”
• • •
Rilla and I creep back into the carriage, then into the convent through the back gate, and then upstairs into our room, Rilla grumbling the whole time about “that patronizing egghead Merriweather.” We’re changing into our nightclothes when a shriek rends the silence.
I freeze. I’ve been awakened by that shriek before, after Mother died, when Tess used to have regular night terrors.
I’m out the door and running down the hall, heedless of the impropriety. I burst into the room Tess and Vi share without knocking. Tess is sitting up in bed, and she’s still in one piece, her face flushed with sleep, her blond hair tumbling out of its plait.
But she’s sobbing, her entire body shaking with the force of it.
“What happened?” I ask, but she’s buried her face in Cyclops’s fur and she’s crying too hard to answer. I turn to Vi, who’s sitting up and blinking in her bed.
“I don’t know. I was sound asleep when she screamed and scared me half to death.” Vi throws her covers back and stands up. Her black hair falls in two braids over her shoulders. “Tess, honey, what’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”
Tess points a wavering finger to the other end of her bed. “It was all around me.”
“What?” I ask.
“Fire.” Tess wipes away tears with the backs of both hands. “I heard something—a door shut somewhere—and I woke up, and my bed was on fire!”
My stomach plummets, remembering the threat she received a week ago. Nothing’s happened since then. But now—
“It was just a nightmare,” Vi says soothingly, lighting a candle. “It’s no wonder, after everything that’s happened today.”
“No!” Tess’s voice is shrill. “Someone’s playing a trick on me. It was real. Or—not real, but an illusion. I felt the heat of it. I smelled the smoke.”
“Who would do that?” Rilla asks. She and half a dozen other girls crowd in the doorway. She pulled her yellow dress back on but didn’t bother buttoning it up the back.
“You’re the oracle,” Vi adds, smoothing her wrinkled lavender nightgown. “Who would want to see you hurt? You’re too important to all of us.”
I turn away from Tess to the girls hovering in the doorway: Rebekah and Lucy and Grace, whose room is to the left, and Parvati and Livvy, whose room is to the right. “Were any of you up and about? Did you see anyone leaving Tess’s room?”
“You and Rilla look like you were out,” Parvati says.
I flush, glancing down at my ivory petticoats and blue corset. I’d just pulled off my dress and corset cover when Tess screamed. “We’re hardly responsible for this.”
“Don’t tell me you’re taking this seriously. It was a child’s nightmare!” Parvati insists.
Tess crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not a child.”
Parvati shoots a pointed glance at Cyclops. “Your teddy bear would beg to differ.”
“I know what I saw,” Tess says, flushing. “It was an illusion. Someone cast it on purpose, to frighten me. Someone’s trying to—to get into my mind.”
“Well, it seems as though it’s working. Didn’t the other oracle go mad?”
I turn on Parvati in a rage as Tess starts to cry. “This is the second time someone’s threatened her, and I won’t have you or anyone else making light of it. A threat to her is a threat to the entire Sisterhood.”
Parvati shrugs one bony shoulder. “I seriously doubt anyone here is out to get her. It’s been quite a day. They said she had a vision earlier. Perhaps she’s cracking up under the stress of it.”
Tess cries harder, burying her face against her knees. I resist the urge—just barely—to shove Parvati out the door. She’s suffered, I remind myself.
“Everyone out,” Vi announces, sensing my tilt toward violence. “Tess needs her rest, and so do I.” She marches over to her bed, picks up a tattered stuffed white rabbit, and thrusts it out in front of her. “And for what it’s worth, there’s nothing wrong with teddy bears. I’m fifteen, and this is my Bunny.”
Rilla and the others laugh and file out. Vi flushes but stands her ground, fierce, and I feel a swell of pride. When I came to the convent two months ago, she was one of Alice’s lackeys, always currying favor, embarrassed by her father the coachman. She hardly ever said a word for herself. She’s grown up a great deal since then.
Parvati hesitates in the doorway. “You want this child to run the Sisterhood? To have a vote on the war council? Truly, Cate?”
“Yes,” I say, and shut the door in her face.
“I’m not going mad.” Tess sniffles, raising her tearstained face. “Someone is trying to scare me or discredit me or both. I’m sorry for waking everyone. I should have realized straight off that it was an illusion, but it looked so real, and it was hanging right above my bed, and—”
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for.” Vi sits on the edge of Tess’s bed and strokes her back while I pace the room angrily. “Anyone would have screamed. It sounds terrifying.”
“Perhaps it was Parvati,” I suggest. “You heard her.”
“I don’t know.” Vi flips a braid over her shoulder. “She’s not very handy with illusions yet. I’m not sure she could have managed something that complicated.”
“Who, then?” Would Maura lower herself to torment Tess like this? I don’t want to think it, but I can’t rule out the possibility. “Tess, do you want to come sleep in my room?”