She reaches, but just before her fingers touch it, I close my palm and pull it back, cradling the necklace against my chest. I can’t give it up. Not now.

She stares at me, long and hard.

“It’s mine now,” I whisper. “He gave it to me.”

I expect her to argue, to demand it back. But after a few seconds, she simply sighs and says, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“No. Yes!” I take a deep breath and then just blurt out, “I don’t want to be a Sister. Not yet,” I tack on. After everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve done, I’m not sure I can live by their rules.

She stares at me, silently. Seconds pass. Maybe even as much as a minute. Then she nods. “You deserve to make that choice. But can we make a deal?”

I eye her, but don’t say anything.

“Will you hold off on making that decision for sure until you’re eighteen and you become eligible?”

I think about how much I’ve lied to her in the last three weeks. Maybe I owe her that. “Okay,” I whisper. Then, “As long as you’ll show me how to clean up my supernatural plane and not get them involved.”

She smiles, but it’s a sad smile. “Deal. However, before we start—and we’re not going to start today,” she says, looking very tired, “I want you to understand that when you let me into your supernatural plane, you’re giving me the same access and power you gave Smith. I’m not going to hide that fact from you. Anytime you let anyone in, you give them a master key, so to speak. And there’s no way to take it back without harming that person, like we both did with Smith. Although I trust her not to use it, one of the oldest Sisters has access to my supernatural plane from helping me eighteen years ago. If I were to destroy it, she’s so fragile she would almost certainly die.”

“Could I let anyone in?” I ask, rather horrified at just how much power I gave Smith.

“No,” Sierra says quickly. “That is something I should have told you. Then you would have known immediately that Smith wasn’t who he said he was. Even with an Oracle’s permission, normal humans cannot travel to the supernatural plane. Only supernatural creatures.”

“Like what?” I ask, sensing that she is alluding to more than just Oracles and Feeders.

She hesitates, and for a moment I don’t think she’s going to answer. “Witches,” she finally says. “Sorcerers and Mages. There are others.”

My mouth drops. “Are you serious?” I ask in a whisper. “And you know about them?”

“You will too,” she says, but her voice is strained. “The reason it was even possible for all of this to happen is because I kept you in the dark. I’m turning on the light. All of my books,” Sierra says, taking in her walls of bookshelves with a gesture. “All of the things you’ve wanted to know that I wouldn’t tell you—the questions you asked that I refused to answer. I won’t do that anymore.”

My breath is coming fast now and I try to hide it by standing and walking very slowly to the nearest shelf and running my fingers along the ancient spines. She’s offering me her world.

And I recognize that she’s also offering me a choice. Not just assistance in fixing my supernatural plane. She’s offering me knowledge that could change the way I lead my Oracle life. To follow my own rules.

And she knows it.

“Thank you.”

The silence stretches as I look over the titles hungrily. I know which one I’ll take first. I’m dying to read all of Repairing the Fractured Future. But I don’t want to be a complete jerk by taking advantage of her offer right at this second. I’ll give her a day or two to let it sink in.

Then I’ve got to start. I have a lifetime of learning to catch up on.

“I’m going to go sit with Mom,” I say, not looking at Sierra. I have to leave this room or I won’t be able to resist the temptation.

“Maybe I’ll come out soon too,” she says, and I hear a smile in her voice. Already things are getting better.

I head out, but pause at the door. “How did you know to come save Linden?” It’s the question I’ve wanted to ask the most, but have also been the most afraid of.

She looks at me, her gaze intense, for a long time. The she sighs and her shoulders slump. “I had a vision,” she says as though admitting to a great failing. And after over a decade of never losing, I guess she sees it that way.

“Would you really have killed me?” I ask.

“I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.”

“But you’d already seen it,” I protest, all too familiar with her unyielding stance on never changing the future. “You came because you saw it in the vision, right? You saw yourself come to my rescue.”

Her long silence makes my hands tremble. “No,” she finally says. “I came because I saw you lose. And I knew I could never let that happen.”

I suck in a breath of utter astonishment. “You changed the future?”

Her cheeks redden and that’s answer enough.

I nod and slip out of her room.

I have months—if not years—of healing in front of me. And there’s still so much uncertainty. Will the cops and Feds lose interest in me now that the Coldwater Killer is dead? Will I ever remember what really happened the night Nathan Hawkins died? Will Clara wake up and have any chance at a normal life? Will Michelle keep our secret? I’m going to have to either get answers to these questions or learn to deal with never knowing.