Page 31 of Hollow

I push the deck away and sit back in my chair. I certainly wasn’t expecting that.

So much for waking up in good spirits.

I take in a few long and deep breaths, flexing my fingers as I calm myself down, reminding myself that my visions aren’t always reliable. Then I head out into the hall, expecting to see the body there.

I don’t see the body, of course, just Daniels locking up his door. I wave at him and trot over, wanting company on the way to the dining hall so I don’t get trapped in my own thoughts again.

“Crane,” Daniels says to me with a jovial smile. “How are we this morning, boy?”

He slaps me on the shoulder, his mustache bristling as he talks. Daniels is probably only ten years older than me, but he treats me like a kid. I’ll take whatever flattery I can get.

“I haven’t quit yet,” I tell him as we walk down the hall. “So that’s a good sign.”

“Aye,” he says. “It’s a hard place to be at times. But they do take care of us here.”

“You’ve been here for two years, haven’t you?”

“That I have,” he says as we go down the grand staircase.

“Do you go home in the summer?”

His brows raise. “Home? This is our home, Crane. Where else would I go?”

I shove my hands in my coat pockets as we step into the cool, misty morning, the path slick with fallen leaves. “I don’t know. Perhaps the city. Maybe even Sleepy Hollow itself.”

“And risk losing my magic?” he asks. “I don’t want to forget anything I’ve learned here.”

“They say it comes back,” I tell him.

“Have you put that to the test?” he asks. “What if it doesn’t, and then I’m useless as a teacher?”

“But you teach philosophy and literature,” I point out with a laugh.

“It doesn’t matter. My magic is getting stronger here with each passing week. I’m not giving that up. The power, Crane. That feeling of being a god. It’s better than fucking.”

When he puts it that way… “Don’t you think that keeps the teachers here indefinitely?”

He shakes his head. “Eventually, they leave. But you might as well put off the inevitable.”

I stop outside the doors to the dining hall, touching his arm briefly to pull him to a stop. “Did you know Vivienne Henry well?”

His face goes slack, his mustache pulling down at his mouth. “Not well, no. I suppose there are no secrets here, are there?”

I keep my voice down. “Do you think she killed herself because she wanted to leave? Or because she wanted to stay?”

He lets out a deep harumph. “I think she was a very tragic woman suffering from hysteria. Sometimes there just isn’t much of a story. Now, let’s go inside and get some coffee. The weather is far too gloomy for this kind of talk.”

* * *

“Did you want to go for another stroll?” Kat asks me. It’s at the end of our mimicry class, and she’s hovering by my desk.

I look up from my papers and stare at her for a moment. She’s standing here in her pumpkin-colored dress adorned with velvet, a lot more modest than the one she wore on her first day, yet it does nothing to hide her ample curves.

She really is beautiful, I can’t help but think. It’s the kind of beauty that your brain doesn’t process right away because it doesn’t seem quite real. Her face is so round and angelic, especially with her blonde hair like a halo around her head, but her eyes speak differently. They’re full of sass and zest and a maturity that I didn’t expect her to have. Not to mention her mouth, which is always talking back and always keeping me on my toes. If it were anyone else, I would have told her off by now, but that smart mouth makes me want to dole out my own form of punishment in the form of my flat palm on her plump ass.

But of course, I can’t afford to think of her like that, sexually or with any affection at all. I wasn’t told there were any rules against relations with students, but I also don’t want to get myself into any trouble this early in the game. It’s a complication I can do without.

I also don’t know how she feels about me. She is asking me to go for another walk with her, and she does seem to be focused on me a lot of the time. I’m no stranger to students having their crushes on me. I know that I represent something to them, a person in power and control. But when it comes to Kat, I feel her draw to me might be based on the moments our energies met each other. Her emotions in my body. My energy blocked by hers. It must create a sense of intimacy when you know someone’s been sifting around in your brain, in the places you may not even know exist, feeling what you’ve felt.