Page 78 of Hollow

“Maybe if you solve one, you solve them all,” Kat says. “You can start with Brom. Because last night after supper, I was alone with him, and he started acting really strange. Getting mean, getting…violent.”

“Violent?” I exclaim, rage flickering inside me. “Towards you?”

I’ll fucking kill him if he hurt her in any way.

“He didn’t really hurt me, but he was…physical in a way he hasn’t been before,” she says. “He wasn’t himself. I was looking into his eyes, and it was like they became so black they belonged to someone else.” She pauses, her gaze drifting to the ground. “He insinuated I was a whore for sleeping with you.”

My teeth grind together as the rage continues to flame inside me. “Guess it wouldn’t help to point out we haven’t actually fucked.”

Her chin jerks in at my choice of words.

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “That was not very gentlemanlike of me.” I pause. “Well, you can tell Brom that won’t be an issue if you’re currently betrothed to each other.”

She gives me an odd look. “Don’t tell me you’re actually jealous?”

“Jealous?” I let out a sour laugh. “Of course I’m jealous. Here I am falling for one of my students, against all reason and logic, and meanwhile, she’s betrothed to another.”

“Falling for?” she repeats softly, a tenderness in her gaze.

I raise my chin in defiance. “You may be getting under my skin, sweet witch. I won’t hide that from you. You’re unraveling all the threads that have been holding me together.”

She blinks. “Oh,” she says, a small smile appearing.

It would be nice to hear something like that in return, but I’m not sure I’ll be so lucky.

“Well, I’m not betrothed to Brom,” she goes on. “I still have free will. And he’s not just another. You were with him. He was your Abe.”

I swallow uneasily. “Yes, well, that certainly complicates all of this, doesn’t it? As if this needed more complications.”

“There is one more thing,” she says.

“Oh Lord, what now?” I say with a sigh, running my hand over my jaw.

“A man was murdered last night,” she says, and my eyes go wide. “Not just any man either and not just any murder. It was Joshua Meeks, a farmhand that I had a little…relationship with last year.”

“How did he die?” I ask cautiously.

She grimaces and runs a finger over her throat.

Head chopped off.

“Run down in his cornfield by a man on a horse,” she says. “And the worst of it is that I had told Brom last night about my time with Joshua. Right after I told him about my time with you.”

Fantastic.

Chapter 24

Kat

Crane runs a hand through his messy black hair and starts pacing back and forth in the stall like a restless horse. I know the information I just gave him is probably overloading his system, his brain working overtime to try to put all the pieces together.

“So you told Brom about your tryst with this Joshua Meeks, and then the next morning, Meeks is dead. Apparently, a victim of the headless horseman. Correct?”

I nod, tugging on the ends of my blouse. “Yes.”

“And you were with Brom when the constable was there?”

“Yes. I looked at Brom, and he seemed surprised by it all, yet he knew what I was thinking. When we rode here together—”