I try to ignore my raging curiosity. Her reluctance doesn’t necessarily portend something awful; she’s going to be privy to loads of people’s secrets, and possibly it’s just none of my business. After all, I wouldn’t want her going around telling everyone that she saw Finn and me kissing.

Tess will be thirteen in another month. Under Elena’s tutelage, she’s grown into a proper young lady who wears a corset and petticoats and her hair up. When she pulls her red plaid dress over her head, I see the new curves of her hips and br**sts. She’ll be voluptuous like Maura and Mother instead of skinny like me.

“I want to go with you to Harwood on Monday and see Zara,” she says.

I fasten the buttons she can’t reach and tie the black cummerbund at her waist. “I don’t want you setting foot in that place.”

She spins around to face me. “I thought you weren’t going to boss me anymore?”

I did say that, didn’t I? Old habits are hard to break. “All right. We’ll ask Sister Sophia. But you have to promise to stay with me the whole time. And you’ve got to steel yourself for it. You’re too important to the Sisterhood—and to me—to risk anything rash, no matter how much you want to help the girls there.”

“I promise to stay with you. I just want to ask Zara about the other oracles—whether the rest of them went mad like Brenna. Zara didn’t write about that in her book, but perhaps—”

Tess wasn’t as comforted as I’d hoped by the truth about Brenna. I sigh, tucking a wisp of blond hair back into her bun. “Brenna would be right as rain if it weren’t for Alice.”

Tess sits heavily on her bed, rumpling the green quilt. “She could be—we can’t really know. She was odd before that.”

“Odd isn’t mad,” I remind her, wishing I could forget about Thomasina, hoping Zara will have more discretion in front of Tess. “You’ll be fine.”

“Will I?” She grabs Cyclops and nestles her cheek against his furry head. “I hope so, Cate. I don’t want to lose my mind. I like being clever. I want to keep learning Chinese, and Sister Gretchen promised to teach me German and cryptography properly, once Sister Cora—well, once she isn’t so busy tending to her. Sister Sophia is going to show me how to make her Christmas pudding. And there are dozens of books in the library I haven’t read, and someday when I run out of stories to read, perhaps I’ll write my own. There’s so much I want to do yet.”

Her fear shatters me. “You will. There’s plenty of time to do all those things.”

“Is there?” She hugs Cyclops tighter. “It’s already December. In a month it will be 1897, and the prophecy says one of us won’t live until the turn of the century. That’s only three years. Maybe less.”

I grab her elbow, and she lets out a little yelp as I turn her roughly toward me. “Teresa Elizabeth Cahill, you listen to me. Nothing is going to happen to you. You aren’t going to go mad, and you aren’t going to be murdered. No one is going to harm you while there is breath left in my body, do you understand me?”

“Ouch, Cate, let me go,” she whines.

“No. This is important. I won’t have you give up. I don’t care what happened to the other oracles, and I don’t care what that blasted prophecy says. You are going to live a long, happy life. You’re going to learn Chinese and bake a dozen Christmas puddings and get married and have babies—or not, whichever you want—and write that book of yours. Is that clear?”

“Yes, fine. Now will you stop lecturing me?” Tess rubs her elbow.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice.” I take a deep breath, struggling for control. “It’s only that—Tess, I have to believe we aren’t just puppets to Persephone or the Lord or the Brothers. That the choices we make matter.”

“We’ve got to be brave, even if we’re frightened sometimes.” Her eyes crinkle at the corners like Father’s, and I hope she is taking my words to heart.

“Especially when we’re frightened. I think the point is forging on anyway, even when we don’t see how we can get through it. I’m scared about Finn and you and Maura all the time.” I pick up her tea-stained dress from the floor and drape it over the dressing table. “Er—I don’t know if she mentioned it, but Maura and I had an awful row yesterday.”

Tess leans back against the brass headboard. “I heard.”

I resist the urge to ask her what Maura said about me; I don’t want to put her in the middle, especially when she and Maura are rooming together.

“I suggested we might be able to organize a jailbreak at Harwood.” I dip a clean handkerchief in the pitcher of water by Tess’s bed, then scrub at the brown splotches of tea on her dress. “It would solve our Brenna problem. Maura and Alice jumped on the idea, but they only want to free the witches, and that doesn’t seem right to me.”

Tess gives a grim little nod. “I agree.”

“I think we ought to try and free everyone, but I don’t know how. The girls are kept too drugged to organize a mutiny.” I wring the dress out into the empty basin. “I’m so afraid we’ll make things worse for them. But maybe Maura has a point—maybe it’s better to risk it than to do nothing.”

Tess steeples her fingers together, thoughtful. “Is that why she was angry?”

I twist the dress in my hands. “Not really. She wants me to step aside and let her lead the Sisterhood. Her and Inez.”

“Is that what you want?” Tess traces the red squares on her plaid skirt. “Perhaps it isn’t fair, letting everyone think you’re the oracle, letting Maura be angry with you. I’m only delaying the inevitable. Maybe I ought to tell everyone it’s me.”

I sit next to her. “Are you ready for that? It’s a tremendous responsibility, Tess, and once you say it—well, you can’t unsay it. I don’t mind shouldering the burden a little while longer.”

“I wish I felt ready, but I don’t. I don’t know if I ever will.” She sighs, and it’s a heavy-hearted sound for a girl her age. “There’s something else that troubles me about telling. If Inez knows she has four years till I come of age, who knows what she might try?”

“Whereas if she thinks she might have to turn power over to me in a few months, it may keep her from doing anything rash,” I suggest.

It doesn’t escape me that I am in Inez’s debt because she knows about Finn. I hope he finds the information she wants soon so we’ll be free of her. Or will it go on and on? Will she demand something else next? Worries unspool through my mind. If she does, I’ll compel her to forget about him; I’ll have to.

Tess leans against me. “I don’t trust her. That’s not a premonition, just a feeling I have.”

“I have the same feeling, but I don’t know what to do about it.” I slide my arm around her shoulders. “Should I pretend to be the oracle? You could tell me your visions, and I could pretend they were mine.”

Tess giggles, knocking her blond head against my chin. “We could never pull that off. It would get too complicated, and you’re a terrible liar.”