Page 16 of Hollow

I look up. “Yes?”

He gestures beside him. “Would you care to join me?”

“I’d rather not,” I say. A few classmates snicker while another gasps. I suppose talking back to the teacher is rather uncouth.

But the professor only chuckles. “That’s plain to see. So let’s see how energy works with an unwilling participant.”

I exchange a glance with Paul, who gives me an encouraging nod. I get out of my seat and walk around the desk, one hand gathering my dress, wishing I wasn’t wearing such a fancy outfit, wishing the class wasn’t staring at me.

The professor sticks out his hand to help me up on the platform. It’s only a couple of inches off the ground, but with my dress and my clumsy luck, I’ll probably fall. Reluctantly, I place my hand in his.

And the world goes black.

Chapter 6

Crane

I’ve always been a curious man. I suppose that’s why I decided to become a teacher. Well, I suppose that’s why I wanted to become a doctor first, so I could uncover the mysteries of the human body. Unfortunately, when I started to have a nasty habit of communicating with the cadavers in medical school, I decided becoming a doctor wasn’t for me.

But being a teacher has always felt natural. My curiosity rubs off on the students. Makes them study harder, the yearning for knowledge like a drug. And it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when Leona Van Tassel stopped me on the streets of Manhattan and offered me a position at Sleepy Hollow Institute, that I fully understood how that came to be. It’s not that I’m particularly interesting or commanding, though I like to think those things are true. It’s that I can bestow my curiosity onto others, even without either of us knowing it. That I can literally make others want to learn.

Granted, I can’t get them to do anything. My powers of persuasion work best when combined with equal parts passion and discipline, but their free will always remains their own. I’m merely influencing them. Nudging them in the right direction.

When I accepted the job and was brought here to the institute, a whole world that was previously buried inside me was unearthed like a grave, a monster of potential crawling out. I went through their aptitude tests, tests I’ll admit I don’t remember much of, aside from sitting in a cathedral and drinking wine while the four cloaked Sisters of the institute chanted spell after spell after spell. I don’t know what they did to me, but I remember the feeling of opening up, like they were cutting me open and taking a look inside me. It went beyond the telepathy and mind reading that Leona Van Tassel had done in Manhattan. They were sifting through me for parts I didn’t even know existed.

But after that initiation, things began to change. I became more aware of the magic I already had, especially with bestowal. I started spending time in the school’s library, another expansive cathedral filled with books on the occult and peppered with arcane artifacts, nothing like my father’s church back in Kansas. I read, I learned, I filled the well. I started to feel like, perhaps for once in my thirty years, I had found a place that truly accepted me for what I was. Well, most of me, anyway.

And now, here, in my first class of the school year, I find myself presented with a young pretty girl that seems able to resist my gift of curiosity. This shouldn’t be a surprise—after all, there’s always some pupil in my classes that doesn’t take to my methods as well as I want them to. But because this girl is a Van Tassel, related in some way to Leona and Ana, it surprises me. It’s as if she doesn’t want to be here at all. I didn’t even see her on my class attendance list, like she was some last-minute addition.

Perhaps she was. But she’s here now, and I’m determined to reach through to her. I’m nothing if not stubborn when it comes to teaching.

So I asked for her to be a volunteer in my demonstration. The animosity on her face was worth it. Her blue eyes went wide before turning to an icy glare that made my pulse skip a beat, a snarl on her soft pink lips.

She refused at first but then succumbed. From the wary way she’s been looking at her classmates, I can tell she doesn’t want them to think she’s getting any special treatment by being a Van Tassel, and I suppose that’s why I’m singling her out like this as well.

She gathered up her dress in her one hand, and I held out my hand for her and braced myself for what was about to happen. There are ethical issues, I suppose, to doing this, but I’ve never been one to stake my life on ethics when it comes to magic.

The moment her hand touches mine, a cacophony of feelings floods through me. They don’t come in images as they usually do when I try to read someone, but instead, I’m quickly overwhelmed with grief. Grief and love and…loss. So much loss that I’m not even sure this girl knows it’s deep inside her, rooted there like a tree.

And there are other feelings here too, like yearning, longing, the need to fit in and belong, the urge to be elsewhere, to find a life worth living. A need to escape.

Then there’s something else. Something that surprises me that comes in hot and dark. Lust. Desire. Arousal. But it’s not that she has these feelings in general that catches me off guard—I know witches tend to be very in tune with their sexuality—but that the way she feels them is the same way I once felt them. Almost as if I’m looking into a version of myself from the past. Almost as if…

I can’t quite grasp it, and the longer I hold her hand, the faster her feelings drain from me, like they’re being poured through a sieve. It’s through this transaction, her memories and feelings flowing into me, that I can usually bestow things unto her. We give so we receive. We receive so that we must give.

But I can’t bestow anything onto her. There’s a blockage here, and it’s only then that I finally notice she’s been staring at me with her big azure eyes, the color San Francisco Bay would get on a cloudless day, a look of defiance in them.

She rips her hand out of mine and holds my gaze steadily, her eyes narrowing, and I know she knows what I was trying to do. I can’t help but feel bad about it, like I’ve violated her somehow.

I’m sorry, I whisper to her, using what I call voice to say it so that no one else can hear it. Another thing I picked up while perusing the library for spells.

She opens her mouth to say something but then averts her eyes, rubbing her lips together. She knows that whatever she says back won’t be hidden from her classmates’ ears.

Instead, she puts her hands on her hips and throws her head back. As she does so, her chest comes forward. She’s in a pretty yellow gown with a V-neck lined with ruffles that’s a little too low-cut for school or even daytime, her full breasts on display. All the other girls in the class are wearing dresses with high necks, though they also probably cost half the price. Katrina Van Tassel in all her pretty, blonde, defiant glory, stands out like a sore thumb here.

“Will that be all?” she asks, giving me a way out. I won’t get any further with her today. I’ll have to demonstrate bestowal on someone else.

“That will be all,” I concede.