Aprilynne Pike - Sleep No More

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.

As I walk down the hall, I let my hand slip into my pocket and squeeze the pendant. It’s mine now, for better or worse. I’m going to study every book in Sierra’s library. I’m going to learn from both the mistakes and triumphs of Oracles in the past. To decide for myself if and when the future should be seen.

Should be changed .

But I’m not going to fight anymore. None of it. Not my visions, not my abilities, not the powers of the pendant. Because the time may come when the world needs an Oracle again.

A true Oracle.

And I’ll be ready.

Perhaps this part would be better labeled Part Author’s Note, Part Acknowledgments . If you’re a dedication reader, you may have noticed that this book is dedicated to the survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. Before you get offended that I dedicated a book about killing teens to the families of slain children, give me a second. The shooting at Newtown was the first national tragedy that really hit me. Columbine happened when I was in high school, but I didn’t know anyone from Colorado and as I was attending a school with fewer students and teachers combined than any single grade level at Columbine, it felt so foreign as to be unreal. I was in college on September 11, 2001. But again, I knew no one in New York City and though I was as horrified as the rest of the nation, it wasn’t personal . But the afternoon the Newtown shooting occurred, the news that an entire classroom of kindergarteners (which is what they incorrectly reported the first day) had been killed came in less than half an hour before I went to the school to pick up . . . my kindergartener. I was overwhelmed by gratitude that when I arrived at the school, my five-year-old son would be alive —and mired in grief that so many parents could not say the same for their tiny children. The grief didn’t go away when I found out it was first graders, it didn’t go away the next week, it lingered and despite again not knowing anyone even indirectly involved in this tragedy, I was so shaken. About this time I got the green light on my proposal for Sleep No More . Now, the plot had been laid out long before the shooting, but once I got the green light, I found myself writing a story about a community dealing with deaths in their midst. As I did, I poured my grief into the narrative. And it became something darker and more personal than I ever expected. I spat this book out in thirty-eight days and when I was done . . . I felt better. I wasn’t filled with that awful sadness. It wasn’t gone, but it was no longer intruding on my daily life. It was a downright easy solution compared to the process everyone in Newton still—I’m sure—faces. But it was the first time I felt that helpless grief and I had to put it somewhere ! And that somewhere ended up being this book, which is why it is dedicated to those who had, and continue to have, exponentially more to deal with than I did.

Thanks go to my fab editor, Tara Weikum, who loved this story from the very first pitch, and to my agent, Jodi Reamer, who forgave me for taking it out behind her back . . . sort of. Erica Sussman, you are always there to lend a hand. Usually with the tedious details. Your line edits were priceless. To my publicist, Mary Ann Zissimos, for being an expert juggler. (And ARC-fort maker!) To my sister-in-law, Hollie, who was the first one to hear the story all the way through, and to my long-suffering husband, Kenny, who took all of the kids to the zoo on Christmas Eve so I could get six thousand words written.