Sleep No More

by Aprilynne Pike

  I sense Smith standing at the black drape, waiting. I’m not sure what to do. I don’t see a curtain. And it’s not like I actually walked through one when I came; I just pulled it to the side and then I was here.

  Maybe I’m making this too difficult. “Let him in,” I whisper into the night air.

  Nothing.

  My chest is tight and my muscles are clenched so tightly I know I’ll be sore tomorrow. I can’t stay in this weird limbo for much longer. “Let him in!” I yell now, lifting my face up to the sky. “Let him—”

  “I’m here.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THIRTEEN

  I spin, frightened.

  He looks exactly like he does in the physical world, right down to the clothes he’s wearing. His hands are in his pockets and snow dots his hair as he strolls toward me. It feels wrong, like something is invading my space and stealing my air. I did this, I remind myself. I let him in; it was my choice.

  But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it over so I can get him out.

  “Where’s the stone?” Smith says before I can speak.

  I don’t understand what he means. The necklace isn’t here; my physical body is holding it. But even as I have the thought, I realize there’s a weight in my fingertips. I gasp as I open my hand and see the necklace, glowing red.

  “Put it on,” Smith says, clearly not surprised at all.

  “But it’s not here.”

  “And neither are you. Technically.”

  “But—”

  “It’s the embodiment of the necklace, just like you’re the embodiment of yourself. Touching it or wearing it while you’re here is essentially just like holding it in the physical world. And you’re going to need it.”

  I lift the chain over my head and drop the gem down the front of my shirt where it sits warmly against my skin.

  “Why don’t you have one?”

  “Just like in the physical world, there’s only one. And you’re the one using it now. I hitched a ride with it essentially, but I know how to stay here on my own. You’re still a novice.”

  I don’t completely comprehend his answer, but then, I don’t understand half of what he’s said. Or what I’ve done. “What now?” I ask, pushing my other questions away for now.

  Smith is silent for a few seconds. He walks past me and crouches beside the dead body, staring at Jesse’s open, lifeless eyes. “We have to stop this.”

  “How?” I ask, insistent. I want this done.

  He stands. “Back up the scene. For starters, let’s see if we can figure out who this bastard is.”

  “How do I . . . do that?” I ask.

  His brow furrows. “You should be able to simply tell the scene to back up. Going forward, backward, stopping things, that’s easy. It’s learning to affect the actual scene that’s hard. Just . . . tell the whole vision to rewind.”

  I lift my chin and concentrate. Rewind, I command in my head.

  Nothing happens.

  “You want this to be easy,” Smith says, “but—”

  “You said I just tell the scene to back up.”

  “You’re mistaking ‘simple’ for ‘easy,’” Smith says, and I have to bite down my impatience. “I’m not sure what technique is going to work best for you; maybe picture the scene going backward in your head and then force your mind to let it.”

  I’m so tired already. Smith is right—I vastly underestimated how difficult this would be. Feeling more than a little self-conscious, I decide to use my hands as a kind of focal point. Palms out in front of me, I move my arms from left to right as though I were paging backward through a book.

  “Back,” I whisper as I will the scene to move in reverse, wishing it with all my soul.

  At first I don’t see anything, but after a while Jesse isn’t covered with snow anymore. Terror churns in my belly and I realize I should have considered what event will inevitably come next.

  I lose my focus for a second and the snowflakes pause all around me.

  “I know you don’t want to see this, Charlotte, but the only way we can save him is to go back before the murder. You can do it,” Smith prompts from behind my right shoulder.

  I shove the fear away—attempt to anyway—and think of saving him.

  Saving him.

  Saving him.

  The flakes are flying upward again. Maybe even faster than before.

  A figure in black walks backward to Jesse’s prone form. In seconds, he’s on top of Jesse’s chest, his hands iron vises around Jesse’s neck as Jesse kicks and struggles, trying to throw his killer off.

  “Stop!” I scream, and try to run forward.

  But just like in my usual visions, my feet are stuck. Jesse is frozen with his eyes wide, his face purple, his mouth open in a silent scream. It’s worse than blood and death. So much worse and my whole body trembles in disgust and desperation.

  “Stop him!” I yell at Smith when I still can’t move. “You said you could stop this!”

  “You have to go further,” Smith says, his calm demeanor breaking through to my rational self and giving me a sliver of sanity. “We can’t fight him off—we’re not in the real world. We’re inside your mind. Go back more and we’ll keep Jesse from being here at all. That’s what I meant when I said I could stop him.”

  “But,” I stare frantically at the frozen attacker, “the killer! He’s right there. Can’t we rip his mask off and find out who he is?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Smith says, and while I can tell he’s trying to calm me down, the frenzy inside me refuses to abate. “We’re not physically here; we exist only in your mind. Through your powers as an Oracle, you can affect this world, but not in the way you assume. You need to trust me. Please, keep rewinding.”

  I draw a deep, steady breath and force myself to look down at Jesse. Jesse frozen in his struggle for life, only seconds away from death. I hate that I stopped everything here—a macabre photograph of almost-death.

  I put my hands out in front of me again, and it’s easier to move the scene this time. Probably because I want so desperately to leave this moment. The story in reverse continues to tell itself. Jesse wanders in—barely visible from where I stand—and scarcely out of sight of the place he’s meant to die. His headphones are on and there’s a joint in his hand.

  “Sneaking out to get high,” I mutter to myself. “Of course.”

  “I imagine he’s been stressed, don’t you?” Smith says, and I hate the twinge of empathy I feel toward Jesse’s careless mistake.

  “Okay,” Smith says when Jesse’s walking backward, almost at the edge of the development. “We should be far enough. You can let the scene stop again.”

  Stopping it feels more like letting go than forcing the scene to my will. I’ve been given a brief reprieve to catch my breath and rub the trembling muscles in my arms, and I take full advantage of it.

  “Are you ready?” Smith asks softly, and I realize he’s been giving me time.

  I nod my head yes, even though I’m not sure I am.

  “You’re going to go up to him. Command him to go home, the same way you’ve been doing with the scene, and then you’ll use your physical self—although technically it’s a form of energy—to push him all the way home. When the killer comes around, Jesse simply won’t be there.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I say, waving my hands in front of me. “Pretty much none of that is even possible. I can’t move in my visions. I mean, I can move my body, but I can’t walk. I tried two minutes ago.”

  “You tried to move on your own. You need to use the power of the focus stone to move.”

  “I’m wearing it—it’s not helping.” A desperate weariness is creeping over me.

  Smith purses his lips and pushes his short hair off his forehead. “Shelby said she would filter all of her energies through the stone, and the sto
ne would multiply them, and that’s how she would have enough power to break free.”

  I grit my teeth and think it over. It does make a strange kind of sense, but the idea that I have an entirely new dimension of abilities that I’ve never had any clue of is hard to wrap my head around. I think about the little section I read about the focus stone from Repairing the Fractured Future and remind myself that—somewhere, somehow—Oracles have been using focus stones for a long time. “Okay,” I say, and I wish my voice were stronger. “I’m ready to try.”

  “Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re trying to run but you’re moving in slow motion?”

  “Yeah. I hate those.”

  “This will feel like that. It will take every ounce of mental energy you have, filtered through that focus stone.”

  “Okay,” I say, ready to make the attempt. I let go of the last bit of control over the vision that I was still hanging on to. The scene starts to play and I lift my foot, determined to get this over with.

  But my foot rises a mere inch. Then freezes.

  “You can do it,” Smith whispers when I pause. “Think of the stone making you more powerful.”

  I focus on the warm feeling of the stone against my skin. Distantly I can almost feel the real one pulsing against my fingertips in my physical hand. And a surge of . . . of something rushes through my body. An entirely new kind of energy fills me. This time my foot moves.

  I step.

  One single step and I’m already tired. I look at Jesse. He’s coming my way. I lift a foot again. Two steps, three. Smith’s explanation was right on and I have the surreal feeling of being in a dream instead of a vision. I continue slogging through air that feels like Jell-O until I’m only a few feet from Jesse.

  “Tell him to go home,” Smith whispers.

  “Jesse, go home!” I shout with every ounce of force and volume I can muster.

  “In your head,” Smith corrects. “It’s a mental thing.”

  I close my eyes for two seconds, concentrating on the stone again. Go! I scream in my head. Go home!

  Jesse stops. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the thin joint. He considers it for a moment and then looks up at the light pole that’s dark on one side.

  “Now push,” Smith says.

  My hands won’t quite make contact with Jesse and, for a second, I don’t think it’s going to work. Then Jesse’s turning, shoving the joint back in his pocket, and starting to trudge home.

  I keep walking and pushing at the same time and I know with absolute certainty I could never have done this without the stone. My arms and legs are shaking and I’m afraid to look beyond Jesse’s back to see how far I have left. I don’t want to know.

  After what seems like hours, we reach his doorstep.

  “That should be enough,” Smith says. “Rest.”

  At his words, I let go of everything—Jesse, the energy from the stone—and lean over with my hands on my knees, gasping for air. My whole body feels rubbery. This had better be enough because I’m not sure I could go on for one more second.

  At the sound of a door closing, I look up. “He’s in,” I say, breathing hard. “Did we do it?”

  “Probably,” Smith says. “But you know how fickle the future can be. We hope that when he decides to go out on his own, he’ll change his mind.”

  “Now what?”

  “Pull the curtain back over your second sight—the one you use when you fight visions. It’ll kick us both out.”

  I concentrate on blackening my visionary world and almost instantly I’m back at the library, sitting across from Smith, peering at the focus stone, his fingers on my temples. “Holy crap!” I say, pulling away from him and letting the necklace clatter to the table. “Did that seriously just happen?”

  Smith looks at me with one eyebrow raised.

  I move my arms and legs, straighten my back. I was absolutely exhausted a few seconds ago. But now I don’t feel tired. The bone-crushing weariness I can recall so clearly is nothing but a memory.

  Because it wasn’t physically me—just like Smith said.

  “Did it work?” I ask.

  “Did you really change what’s going to happen? Yes,” Smith says with certainty as he picks up the necklace and slips it into the little velvet case. “You’ve worn yourself out though; you won’t be able to fight visions off for a couple of days.”

  “I haven’t been anyway,” I say, too mentally tired to realize I shouldn’t admit that.

  Lie to someone who was just inside my head? I shake the thought away; it feels wrong on too many levels.

  “That’s probably good,” he says. “If the universe sends you more visions that have anything to do with the murders, you’re going to want to see them.”

  “Why aren’t you tired?”

  “I didn’t do anything. You have to understand, Charlotte, I’m like a . . . an instruction manual. I know what to do, but I don’t actually have any power on my own. I’m useless without you.”

  “So, is that it?” I ask as he rises.

  “For now. You saved his life, don’t ever disregard that. But the murderer is still out there.”

  “Do you think it’s all the same person?”

  His brows furrow. “I’ve been over it a million times. Different methods, differences in the victims, and no . . . ‘signature,’ I guess you would call it.” He turns to me now. “But doesn’t it seem like it must be the same guy?”

  I nod as he voices the same suspicion I’ve been harboring. That I suspect everyone in Coldwater has been.

  “Maybe he’s a first-timer and hasn’t settled on a method yet. Maybe Bethany was an accident, even. Maybe he didn’t plan to kill her right then and there.” He shrugs and scuffs at a stained path on the carpet with one shoe. “But if it’s the same guy, there’s a good chance he’s going to kill again.”

  “More after Jesse?” I say, and my gut clenches with a hundred fears at once. Another death. Another gruesome vision. Another strange session in my head like the one I just went through.

  “If you get a foretelling of it, you have my number,” Smith says.

  I nod and he starts to walk away. Then he stops—one hand on the study-room doorknob—turns back and asks me quietly, “Does he know?”

  I startle. “Who?”

  “The boy who helped you all those years ago?”

  Linden. The story he doesn’t remember. The day I fell for him.

  The day I caught Smith’s attention.

  A burning wistfulness curls into my stomach and I whisper, “No.”

  “That’s probably for the better. For everyone.” And then he’s through the door and walking away, blending in seamlessly with the sparse crowd of library patrons.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  FOURTEEN

  The next day, I wake up and rush to the television, but there’s nothing. For two more days, still nothing. By the morning of Christmas Eve, I’m starting to feel cautiously optimistic. I think we did it. We saved him. I saved him.

  I don’t hear my mom up and moving around yet, so I lean against my pillows and pull up my comforter and let myself feel like everything’s okay for a few more minutes. I try to remember the dream I had last night. About Linden. It was a good dream; I can recall that much. Lights, music, dancing. But not much else. Unfortunately the harder I try to remember, the faster it slips away.

  When I finally put on some thick socks and make my way to the kitchen, Mom greets me with a hug and the smell of dough baking. Each year we spend much of Christmas Eve day making dozens and dozens of cinnamon rolls. Dough and sugar from one end of the kitchen to the other. Then we pack the rolls into foil trays and take them around to the same list of neighbors and friends we’ve been delivering to since before my dad died. It was the first tradition we picked back up after the accident.

  Seeing my mom up
to her elbows in dough at our low kitchen counter brings back a hundred memories of doing exactly the same thing in previous years. I’ve been so caught up with murders and visions and Smith, I’m ready for some normalcy.

  “Give me just a sec,” I say, and run back to my room to get dressed.

  Several hours later—both of us covered in flour, dough, and sticky smears of frosting—my cell phone rings. We giggle as I try to wash my hands fast enough to answer the phone and not get it too messy.

  I see the name LINDEN flash across the screen and my mirth melts away, replaced by something exponentially better.

  “Hello,” I manage to choke out.

  “Charlotte?” I want to jump and shout and sing all at the same time.

  “Hey,” I say, hoping he can’t hear the pounding of my heart that fills my own ears.

  “How’s your break been?”

  “Good,” I say, delighting in how fun small talk can be. Even if my nerves are crackling over every inch of my body.

  “No more migraine problems?”

  “Oh no, no problems with any of that.” And there haven’t been. Two little visions since Saturday with Smith. No big deal at all.

  “Good. I’m glad. Well, anyway, this is kind of a weird request, but . . . are you busy tonight? I know it’s Christmas Eve and I should have called you sooner, but things weren’t for sure yet and—” I hear him take a breath and I’m oddly relieved that he’s not always cool and collected. “I’m sorry about the late notice, but do you think your mom might let you go out?”

  I glance at my mom and think about how hard it was to get her to let me go to the library on Saturday. In daylight.

  But this is Linden. She’ll understand.

  Won’t she?

  “What time?” I ask, stalling.

  “Eight?”

  Eight. Maybe we can deliver the cinnamon rolls a little early. I mean, it’s only two o’clock and they’re done except for one batch still in the oven. And we’re generally home around then anyway. “Lemme check.”