Page 28 of Hollow
I expect him to jump like he didn’t know I was standing there, but instead, he slowly lowers his hands from his face and gives me a tired look. “Thank you, Kat,” he says. Usually his voice is smooth, low, and strong, but now, it sounds faint. Strained. Worried.
I’m about to walk away, but I can’t seem to leave him. “Are you okay?” I ask, peering at him.
He sighs heavily and sits back, running a hand through his thick hair. “Is it that obvious that I’m not?”
I give him a tiny smile. “You’ve looked better. Are we students not shaping up to be the witches you want us to be?”
He gives me an equally small smile in return. “It’s not that. It’s…actually, I don’t even know where to start.” He looks away, and I notice the purple hollows under his dark eyes.
“Would you like to go for a walk with me and talk?” I blurt out. I don’t know where that came from, but it seems getting him out of this room and talking might help him.
He brings his attention back to me, his eyes raking over my face. “Right now?”
I shrug with one shoulder, trying to appear nonchalant, as if I hadn’t come across too bold and eager. “I have a couple of hours before my next class. I usually peruse the library or visit with Snowdrop. That’s my horse,” I add when he looks confused, “but perhaps some fresh air will do you good. Do us both some good. Sometimes this place can be a little too gloomy.” I gesture to the room with its stone walls and narrow windows, the empty cages in the back.
He continues to watch me for a few moments, and I have no idea what he’s thinking. Then he gets to his feet. “Alright,” he says with a conceding nod, patting the stack of tests. “I can always grade these later.” His gaze narrows at me. “Just don’t think I’ll be giving you an A because of this.”
“I’m sure I’ll earn that A on my own,” I say with a confident smile. He doesn’t need to know that I’m bluffing.
“That remains to be seen,” he says under his breath as he grabs his coat from the hook and slips it on. He holds the door open wide for me, and we walk down the hall together, our footsteps echoing in the silence until we’re through the main doors and outside.
The fresh air immediately feels good. I breathe in deeply, letting the mist that wisps past fill my lungs, my ribs straining against the bones of my corset.
Crane exhales loudly and gives his shoulders a shake. “You’re right. This does feel better. In fact, I think until the weather officially turns, we should have more classes outside. Take advantage of it. We could all think more clearly, use the magic of Mother Nature to help us.”
I eye the lake and the storm clouds that have gathered at the other end of it. So far, it looks like the rain is staying away from campus.
We walk down the central courtyard path, nodding at students as we pass. A group of boys is sitting on the lawn, laughing and creating flames with the tips of their fingers, while nearby, a pair of girls perch on a bench, whispering in each other’s ears as they stare at the boys. They’re framed by fading rosebushes and tall stone statues of women holding skulls. The statues look like they’ve been taken from the graveyards of antiquity, and yet they look appropriate amongst the flowers. Beauty and death mingling.
“Have you memorized all the students’ names yet?” I ask Crane, feeling strangely shy all of a sudden, like I’m afraid to walk beside him and not talk. I suppose this is the first time I’ve been with him outside the classroom, not to mention with him alone.
“I have,” he says, his hands clasped behind his back. Even when stooped slightly, he still towers over me. He must at least be six foot five. “The school only has forty-two students, and I happen to be good at memorization. Came very handy in med school.”
“You went to med school?” I ask. “What happened? Why did you become a teacher instead of a doctor?”
He glances up at the grey sky for a moment, the color mirroring his eyes, before looking back at me. “Would you believe me if I said that teaching is a far more noble profession?”
“No.”
He laughs, and the sound pleases me. I think I would like to make him laugh more.
“Fair enough,” he says, his eyes focused on the lake as we approach, our footsteps now meeting the fine gravel of a smaller path and crunching beneath our shoes. “It turns out that med school wasn’t for me. You know the gift of bestowal I possess? Well, I didn’t know I had it at the time. I didn’t know I had the capability to pass on energy. So when we started to work with cadavers—dead bodies—from the morgue to practice, I discovered my touch had the ability to…well…”
My eyes go wide. “To what?”
“To cause the dead to come awake. Temporarily, of course.”
“You’re a necromancer,” I say in a hush, clutching my hand to my chest.
“No, no,” he says quickly. “Not a necromancer. I didn’t bring them back to life. I merely just…pushed my energy into them.” He makes a pushing motion with his hand. “It lasted a second, but it gave me quite the scare. Not to mention, I was surrounded by very sane and normal people. They already thought I was odd with the way my brain works. I couldn’t afford for the dead to start speaking to them, or me to the dead. So I quit.”
I try to imagine what that must feel like, to have that sort of power to bring the dead back to life, even for just a moment. He must have felt like a god, I think. Perhaps that’s why he claims to be one in the classroom. I wonder if that attitude extends to the bedroom.
My lewd thoughts surprise me, and I immediately shove them away and force myself to pay attention.
“It took me a long time to figure it out too,” he goes on. “When you give your energy to someone alive, it’s not so noticeable, not to the one giving it. When you give it to someone dead, completely devoid of life force, well, that’s a hard one to miss. Nonetheless, I decided I would be better off as a teacher. I’m told I made the right choice.”
I mull that over as we continue walking out of the courtyard and away from the buildings. Eventually, the gravel gives way to dirt and a layer of fallen leaves, red, orange, and gold, that ring the shoreline of the lake. Strands of mist hang just above the water like cotton ribbons.