Silence swells and fills the room, relieved only by the crackle of the fire. “Do you mean . . . ?” Cora asks.
For a moment, fear rumples O’Shea’s thin face. Then he swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, and it’s gone. “Yes. This new oracle, on the brink of discovering her powers, is the prophesied witch. The one we’ve been hunting for a hundred years.”
Oh. I go so still that I can feel the blood surging through my veins, feel the air move in and out of my lungs. I am a Cate statue made of flesh and bone and pounding heart.
He’s talking about me.
But I haven’t had any premonitions. Not yet. On the brink of discovering her powers, he said. Prophecies are frustratingly vague. I could start having visions ten minutes from now or tomorrow or next week or next year.
Fear chatters through me. I don’t want to have visions. The responsibility of leading the Sisterhood is enough. Too much. I don’t want the weight of the future on my shoulders, too.
“Obviously, we must flush this creature out of hiding,” O’Shea says, and Helmsley pops his knuckles one by one, as though he relishes the bloodthirsty prospect. “There has never been an oracle who was also a witch, much less one capable of altering people’s minds. There are always some whispers against us, but I fear the sort of frenzy she could whip the people into. She could use her magic to twist them against us. The future of New England rests on finding and containing her, Cora. Women’s tongues may be less guarded around you and your novitiates. If you hear the slightest whisper—even the barest suspicion of mind-magic or of premonitions—you must report it to us.”
“Y-yes, of course,” Sister Cora stammers. Sister Gretchen helps her to her feet as Brother O’Shea stands.
My heart hammers through the ritual blessings.
When the Brothers arrested Brenna, they said she was delusional. That it was presumptuous to think a woman could do the work of the Lord. Now they believe in her visions?
Perhaps she’s got it wrong. She is half mad.
Do all oracles go mad? The thought leaves me trembling.
When the Brothers take their leave, when the front door is shut firmly behind them, Sister Cora turns to me and puts her hands on my shoulders, her wrinkled face folding into an origami frown. “Have you had any visions? Premonitions of the future?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“No sense that something is about to happen, no dreams that came true later?” she presses. “I know this must be frightening, but I need you tell me the truth, Catherine, so that we can protect you.”
I gaze back at her solemnly. She’s just my height—tall for a woman. “Never. I swear it.”
Gretchen bustles back into the room from seeing the Brothers out. “Have your sisters?” Cora asks.
“Not to my knowledge.” They would tell me, wouldn’t they?
“It could have manifested in the time since you left Chatham,” Cora muses. “This confuses everything. I wish we knew the exact wording of the prophecy. You know the oracle they spoke of, don’t you? She’s from Chatham.”
“Brenna.” I nod, remembering the last time I saw her—cowering in the gutter, her yellow dress splashed with mud. She screamed, and the Brothers’ guards slapped her into silence.
“Does Brenna know what you are?” Sister Gretchen asks.
“That’s difficult to say. If you’re asking did I tell her, no. But she knows things without anyone telling her.” I turn away, warming my hands before the fire.
What if Brenna reveals me to the Brothers?
“An oracle who’s not of sound mind is the last thing we need,” Sister Cora mutters, staring out the window at the ice-covered trees.
Sister Inez, the illusions teacher, strides into the room. Within the privacy of the convent, most of the other teachers wear color, but not her. She is always dressed in unrelieved, funereal black. “It would be easy enough to eliminate a threat like Brenna,” she suggests.
Sister Sophia, the plump and pretty healing teacher, follows her. “She’s just a girl, Inez, and a sick one at that. I hardly think assassination is called for.”
Assassination? I gawk at them. They can’t just kill Brenna!
Inez shrugs. Her brown hair is pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, and between that and her sharp cheekbones, her face looks perpetually pinched. “They’ll have her watched night and day. It’d be easier than breaking her out of that place, and with an oracle, compelling her to keep her mouth shut might not work.”
“Listening at the vent again, Inez?” Gretchen glares.
“I knew there would be trouble as soon as I heard the news from France,” Inez says. “Who knows what this mad creature will tell them next? She’s a danger to us all, and particularly to Miss Cahill. Controlling an oracle, having foreknowledge of the future, could be what helps us regain our power. We can’t risk that over childish scruples.”
Controlling an oracle. I frown at her choice of words. The Sisterhood does not—will not—control me. I’m no one’s puppet, oracle or not.
“I have sources in Harwood. I’ll have them keep a closer eye on Brenna.” When Sister Cora speaks, they all quiet. “I think it’s too soon to suggest such dire methods. We may be able to use Brenna to our benefit.”
“They’ll be arresting girls left and right now,” Inez points out, “on any pretense they can. They won’t take any chances, not if this oracle could swing public opinion our way.”
I pluck at Sister Cora’s gray sleeve, careful not to touch her bare skin. “If things are getting worse, Maura and Tess should be here, with us.”
I bite my lip, praying that this is the right decision. Am I making a mistake or rectifying one?
Cora gestures at the others. “I’d like a moment alone with Catherine, please.”
Inez frowns, but she follows Gretchen and Sophia out. Cora shuts the door behind them. This time, she reaches up and pulls the chain to close the copper vent high in the wall. She grins as it creaks shut, then turns to examine me with her bright blue eyes.
“I’ll write to Elena immediately, summoning her and your sisters, but there’s something else I think we need to do, as soon as possible.” I take a deep breath—what more could she want from me?—but Cora barely pauses. “I think it’s time you met your godmother.”
My godmother, Zara Roth, is in Harwood Asylum. I don’t remember her; she was arrested for possessing banned books when I was only a child. But she was a scholar who studied the oracles, and I daresay she knows more about them than anyone else living.
“But she’s in Harwood,” I point out. Because Sister Cora didn’t intervene in her trial. My mother never forgave the Sisters for that.
Sister Cora sinks onto the settee with a groan. “Yes. I want you to go speak with her. Find out as much about the previous oracles as you can—how old they were when their visions began and how they first manifested. There were two oracles between the Great Temple fire and Brenna, and the Brothers caught both of them before we did. Zara will know how. We won’t let that happen to you. We will protect you, Catherine.”
“You’re sending me to Harwood? On purpose?” I can’t get past that. The asylum is the stuff of nightmares. All my life I’ve had the threat of it hanging over my head.