Page 46 of Hollow

“Did you try and read his memories?” she asks.

I swallow uneasily, feeling shame. “Yes. I tried. I needed to know what ailed him, what he was running from. But we were only together for a couple of weeks, and I experienced the same thing I did with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He blocked me. I couldn’t read him. I could only feel what he felt, and there was a lot to sift through on that alone. I didn’t push it. I didn’t talk to him about it or whether he was aware he was blocking his mind from me. Then one day, he was gone. On the run again. I still don’t know if it was something I did that made him flee or the excuse he had that something was hunting him.”

She grows silent at that, and I can tell her mind is working.

“That sounds terrifying,” she eventually says. “To feel someone you’re with is being hunted.”

“It was. But what did I say about terror leading to sex?”

“It leads to magic.”

It led to magic. I had magic with that man. He was so wild and unpredictable, wearing every single emotion on his sleeve. He felt everything in the same ways that I feel everything, but I’m always trying to run from it, hide from it, bury it under layers of aloofness. He ran right into it. Embraced it wholeheartedly. He was so damn messy in every aspect of his life.

And he loved it when I ruled over him. He was tall, though not as tall as me, and his muscles were huge. He was built like an ox, so strong and sometimes dangerous, and yet he’d let me dominate every single inch of him. The man sucked my cock like no one else had ever done before.

But I feel no need to dwell upon it. He was gone.

I’ve moved on.

“What was his name?” she asks.

“Abe,” I tell her. “Never gave me a last name.”

“Where did he—”

“Shhh,” I say to her, cutting her off.

In the distance, I hear the sound of hoofbeats.

“Do you hear that?” I whisper, steering Snowdrop to the side of the trail just in case. Blackberry bushes reach out and scratch along our arms, pull at her dress.

“What are you doing?” she whispers as we duck under a branch.

“I hear a horse,” I tell her as the sound gets faster, louder. “They’re coming fast. I think they’re on the trail, but…” I turn my head behind me, seeing only darkness, then look forward again. “I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”

She lets out a small gasp. “Do you think they’re after you? For escaping?”

“It’s not a prison, Kat,” I tell her, but even so, I don’t feel so sure. Could it be one of the Sisters out to get me and drag me back to the school? If that’s the case, I’m not going, no matter what they do. If I have to punch an old witch in the face, so be it.

“You could be in trouble for, uh, what you did to me,” she notes. “Maybe they saw or heard.”

“Did to you? I’ll have to remind them that you were a very willing participant.”

“That might not matter,” she says, and the hoofbeats are closer now.

She opens her mouth to say something else, but I slide my hand over her lips to keep her quiet and then pull Snowdrop to a stop. Luckily, the horse doesn’t make a noise, but its white coat will be noticeable in the dark of the woods.

I think about maybe taking the horse into the thicket and out of sight, and perhaps the rider will pass on by without noticing us. There’s also a chance that it’s not someone after us at all, but—

“Ichabod!” Kat cries out. She’s staring over my shoulder in horror, and I quickly whip around to see a big black horse just feet away, galloping toward us at full speed. Steam rises from its body, and on top of the giant horse is an equally giant man, dressed all in black with an ax at his side.

He doesn’t have a head.

He doesn’t have a fucking head.