Page 33 of Hollow

“Just the way my father would talk about them. I was always listening—I was always so nosy.”

“Still are, I imagine,” I interject with a smile.

“That’s true,” she concedes with a nod. “My father would say that she was better off without them. Sometimes he made it sound like she chose him over them.”

“They didn’t approve of your father?”

“I don’t know how they couldn’t have. Everyone loved him. He was the nicest man in town.”

“I don’t think the Sisters care much for whether someone is nice or not. They seem to care whether they have power.”

“My father was a witch too,” she adds to my surprise. “But I never really saw any magic with him. Or with my mother. In fact, when I was really young, one night when my mother had gone on her monthly trips to the school—”

“Your mother went on monthly trips to the school?” I interrupt. “To here?”

“Yes. The days before and after the full moon. She still does. She’ll probably be back in October for the next full moon.”

“What does she do here?”

“I have no idea,” she says.

“You never asked?”

“I was told not to speak about it by my father,” she says. “I assume it’s some full moon ritual she has to do with her sisters, but my father made me promise to keep my own magic and all talks of magic hidden.”

I frown. “Why would he tell you that?”

She shrugs. “He said it was too dangerous for the world to find out what I am. Said I was never to practice my magic in front of anyone, and that included him and my mother. So I didn’t…for the most part.” She trails off with a wistful look in her eyes, and the energy coming off her deepens in grief. “I had a friend. I showed him sometimes.”

Him. How curious this feeling of jealousy that she used to show her magic to a male friend. I shake it out of my head.

“Well, I suppose your father wasn’t wrong in that. I grew up with a father who was a pastor for the church in our small Kansas town. I didn’t even know I was predisposed to magic until the old native man, John, who ran the general store, pointed it out to me one day. After that, he used to visit me in dreams, and it was there I was able to practice and understand. He warned me that my family would never understand and I’d risk being killed over it or locked up in a mental institution, which is more or less the same thing. But to have parents who are also witches…feels like a shame to have to bury it.”

She watches me for a moment, taking in the information with hunger in her eyes. “I just did what I was told. My father was so adamant about it. And because neither of them ever mentioned their magic or used it in the house, it was easy to pretend we were normal.”

“Except when your mother left the house on those full moons.”

“Except for that part. I just told myself she was having family time, even though my aunts stopped coming to see us after a while.” She stops and points to the stables, which we’re now behind. “Want to come see Snowdrop?”

“Would love to,” I tell her as we walk around the building and to the stalls at the front. There are quite a few stalls, but it seems most of them are empty save for two bay draft horses at one end and a grey at the other.

She stops at the grey, who immediately nickers when it sees Kat.

“Hello, darling,” Kat says to the horse, kissing its dark grey muzzle before running her hand over its white forelock. “Crane, this is Snowdrop. Snowdrop, this is Professor Crane.”

“You seem to have a close relationship,” I comment, their connection quite visible.

“I talk to her when I can’t talk to anyone else. My mother doesn’t like to listen to anything I have to say, really, and my friend Mary doesn’t understand anything of witches or of this school. I’m not allowed to talk about it, even if I could remember it. But Snowdrop knows. I mean, she really knows. She understands my thoughts.”

That makes sense that she would have some sort of telepathic aspect with her horse. “Are you able to talk to all animals?”

She nods. “Yes. It’s a one-way street though.”

“Even so, that’s a handy talent to have,” I say. “I must admit, I am continuously impressed by you.”

“Thank you,” she says, giving her horse another kiss.

And now I’m finding myself envious of a horse.