Page 60 of Hollow

“Crane,” Kat says to me, hope swimming in her beautiful blue eyes. “You can help him. Try to read him.”

“I…” I begin. I’m about to say that I already have tried to read him once and that I didn’t get any further with him than I did with her. But while I’m sure that truth will come out sooner than later, it can wait.

I pause and fix Brom with my gaze. “Are you sure you would like me to try? I can gain access to your memories using magic. You just have to go into it wanting to let me in.”

Brom licks his lips and nods quickly. “Yes. You can try. I don’t remember anything. There’s nothing I have any shame of.”

At that, Kat’s face flushes slightly, but she doesn’t say anything.

And then I realize what he means to Kat. He was the one she was searching for in the void during the ritual, the one that made her feel desperate and aroused. He’s the dark, hot lust I glimpsed when I first tried to read her.

He’s the thread that we share, the common denominator that has always bound us. I thought it was a shared experience from our past, perhaps grief or something else, but all this time, it was Brom.

“Alright,” I concede. I get up and move around the desk, glad that my desires are under control. I walk right up to Brom and make myself stop before I get too close and inside his personal space. I have to remind myself that he doesn’t know me the way I know him.

But did I really know you at all? I think. Who are you?

I hold out my hand, palm up, my eyes flickering over his face.

“Give me your hand,” I tell him.

He meets my eyes and holds them there, and for just a moment, he frowns, not out of confusion by what I’m asking, but in a searching way, like he just had a glimmer of his past.

Brom places his hand in mine, and I wrap my fingers around it.

Do you remember this feeling? This feeling of your hand in mine, in my fingers wrapping around your dick and bringing you to a finish?

He blinks, perhaps a little unnerved at how intensely I’m staring at him.

I close my eyes. I picture my energy welling up inside me like a bubbling pot, heat pouring through my arm and hand and onto him. I’m in the void and see a door in front of me, but it’s closed. This is his mind. This is what I want to see.

But try as I might, I can’t open the door. I can’t get any feelings from him either, not in the way they once rushed through me or in the way it happened with Kat. Instead, I feel like there’s something else behind this door. But whatever it is, it isn’t him.

I press to the door and listen.

“I will do your bidding,” a low, sinister voice says from the other side.

Then I hear other sounds. Cannon-fire. Horses whinnying. Cries and shouts and the drawing of swords. People begging for mercy, pleading for their life. The sounds of death. Blades slicing.

I hear war.

There is nothing else beyond this door except war.

And then the door opens, swinging out toward me so that I’m knocked backward into the void, and hot wind smelling of brimstone and rot comes flowing toward me.

“There is no room in here for you, teacher,” the voice says.

Then the door slams shut, and suddenly, I’m being pushed backward, enough that I’m stumbling back into the classroom until my back hits the wall.

“What happened?” Kat exclaims.

Brom’s eyes are wide, still holding out his hand. “What did you see?”

I gasp for air, my heart thundering against my ribs. I feel the sulfurous smell sticking to me like a cloak.

“I saw war,” I tell him, catching my breath. “I heard it. There is a war inside you, Brom Bones.”

He frowns and quickly exchanges a confused look with Kat before coming back to me. “A metaphorical war?”