Hollow (A Gothic Shade of Romance #1)

Prologue

Baltus Van Buren sat in front of the roaring fire with a stiff shot of bourbon in his hand, pretending he wasn’t waiting for his wife, Sarah, to leave.

She took her time as she always did when she went to the school, puttering around the house as if she were perpetually about to forget something.

Over the years, Baltus realized it wasn’t absent-mindedness, though that sometimes came into play, rather it was her reluctance to leave him and Katrina on their own.

Sarah went to the school only on the nights before, after, and during a full moon, but one would think she had to go to the other side of the country, not a forty-minute horse ride into the dark woods of Sleepy Hollow.

She’s afraid, Baltus thought absently as he swirled the amber liquid in his glass. But of what?

Though he always asked the question, he had his suspicions. That was why he was waiting for Sarah to leave that night, because he wanted a moment with Katrina alone.

She was nine years old, and it was time for his daughter to finally know the truth.

“Goodbye, dear Baltus,” Sarah said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. She smelled of cloves and something earthy, like the hard, dark soil that lay under the thin layer of evening frost, rich with decaying leaves.

Baltus forced a smile and eyed her. She was looking worn, her face like parchment, the wrinkles deepening around her eyes and mouth. But she always looked this way before she left for the school. She’d look much better upon her return.

She would have said goodbye to her daughter, but Katrina was already in her bed, fast asleep. At least that’s what Sarah thought. Baltus knew otherwise.

The door opened and closed, and Sarah was gone, a blast of frigid air blowing in and tickling the fire. The flames leaped and danced and then settled, and the entire house seemed to relax as if letting out a sigh.

Baltus waited a moment, had another swig of his drink, and listened to the branches of the bare trees tapping the narrow windows of the sitting room, wanting to come in. They sounded like a ticking clock.

Then he said in his loud, fatherly voice, “Katrina?”

He waited a beat, and the door to her bedroom opened a crack, and her pale face peeked through.

“I know you’re not sleeping,” he continued, and gestured to the velvet chair beside him. “Why don’t you come here so we can have a chat.”

She paused in the doorway, large blue eyes, pale skin, and hair like cornsilk. “Am I in trouble?” she asked in a small voice.

“Not even a little,” he said, his smile raising up the corner of his mustache. “Come here, my child.”

Katrina walked toward him, her bare feet smacking the floor loudly, which made her father smile to himself.

His daughter was never the most graceful little girl, always loud and brash and clumsy, as if her feet were too big for her body, and she had no sense of the space around her.

He wondered if one day her mother would make her attend a finishing school or if Sarah would use her own magic to help Katrina be more “refined.” He prayed Sarah would leave Katrina as she was.

Baltus was a kind and loving man, beloved all over town for his thoughtful and genial ways, but he was a coward when it came to his wife, and he knew it.

Sarah Van Tassel’s roots in Sleepy Hollow were so deep that sometimes he worried he could be uprooted at any moment and tossed away with one defiant look from his wife.

After all, when they married it was she who decided to keep her maiden name—Van Tassel—because of tradition on her maternal side, and pass that name on to Katrina.

And though Baltus was a witch too, his magic paled in comparison to Sarah’s.

When it came to Katrina, however, her magic was yet to be seen.

“What is it, Papa?” she asked, climbing into the chair beside him, her legs swinging back and forth.

If she had been sleepy before, she was fully awake now, her bright blue eyes looking him over curiously, eagerly, for it wasn’t often she was encouraged to stay up late. “Did something happen to Mama?”

He glanced at her, bushy brows furrowed like dueling caterpillars. “What makes you say that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Your mother is fine,” he said. He shouldn’t be surprised at how observant she was. That was the whole point of this talk. “She left to go to the school.”

“I know. I heard her say goodbye. It’s just that the house feels different.”

“How so?”

“Like it was holding its breath, and now it’s not.”

Very astute, he thought. He cleared his throat. “Well, dear Kat, that feeling you have, what you’re noticing, that’s energy. And not many children your age would be able to put that feeling into words like you have, but that’s what makes you special.”

She stared at him, a tiny smile on the corner of her lips. He knew she liked being called special.

“You know what else makes you special?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I think you do.” He gestured to the fire with a nod. “The fire listens to you, doesn’t it? You can make the fire dance with your fingers.”

Her eyes went wider, like fancy blue-and-white porcelain saucers Sarah brought out when they had company.

“It’s your secret, I know,” he said gently.

“But I am your father, and there is no hiding things from me. I also know that you talk to birds and animals and that they understand you. That when you’re really upset, a gust of wind will flow through the house, slamming all the doors.

And I know you’ve made yourself disappear on more than a few occasions, something that has always given me such a fright. ”

Katrina swallowed hard, her legs no longer swinging. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, and Baltus felt bad for bringing it up.

“I’m not telling you all of this to punish you, my dear,” he said. “For I know it is not your fault. If anything, it’s because of your mother and I. Because we are also special in similar ways.”

She nodded slowly. “I know.”

He chuckled. “Of course you do. Do you know what that’s called? The name we have?”

She shook her head.

“A witch,” he said.

She stuck out her lower lip and pouted for a moment. “No. That can’t be. Witches are bad. You’re not bad. And men can’t be witches.”

He straightened up in his seat. “Men can very much be witches, and witches aren’t bad either.”

Except for a few, he thought.

“Witches are special,” he went on. “But the world doesn’t know that.

They think what you have been told. That they are bad and wicked and up to no good.

That is not the case, but the world doesn’t understand.

Sleepy Hollow is the last safe haven for us, and even then, not everyone is… as special as we are. As you are.”

She seemed to think that over. “So I’m a witch?”

“You are. A beautiful, wonderfully good witch. But because you are a witch, you have a responsibility you must adhere to. It will keep you safe. It is so important to keep yourself safe, Katrina.”

“You keep me safe,” she said with a smile.

His heart pinched at that. “I won’t always be there to keep you safe, my dear.”

“Then Mama will keep me safe.”

“Of course she will,” he said, feeling the pinch in his heart grow tighter. “But one day, your mother might not be able to protect you. One day, you’ll be on your own.”

“I won’t be on my own. I’ll be married to Brom Van Brunt,” she said proudly. “You always tell us that we are to marry each other when we’re older.”

Baltus tried to keep a smile plastered on his face, but it faltered. “Yes. Your mother has seen to that.”

“Brom is my best friend, so that’s okay,” she said. “And he’ll protect me.”

Brom was a couple of years older than Katrina and a good kid, if not a bit wild.

His parents were spineless though, and Baltus always thought it odd how much Sarah pushed for the two children to be together.

Brom’s mother, Emilie, was a witch, but his father was not, and Brom himself showed no signs of magic at all.

But when Sarah set her mind to something, she’d keep going until the whole town agreed with her. She was persuasive like that.

“Be that as it may,” he continued gruffly, “one day, you might be alone, and you’ll need to keep safe. So in order to stay safe, I need you to promise me something. Are you ready to promise your father something very, very important?”

“What?” she asked.

“I want you to never tell anyone that you’re a witch. Even your own mother. I want you to keep it a secret from the world, even from yourself. We don’t show our magic and powers, and you won’t show yours either. You must hide all of that deep down until you’ve forgotten it.”

“Why?”

“Because the world is cruel. You know what happened to the witches of the past.”

“But they were bad,” she said, her nose scrunching up.

He quirked a brow. “Were they? Or is that what people were told? They might have been as innocent as you are. The world isn’t ready for people like us. Even this town.”

“Are there other witches in Sleepy Hollow?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer that. The truth would come out soon, once Katrina learned what her mother was doing at the institute and what the school was doing with their students. Who the students really were.

“There are other witches,” he said carefully. “But they hide it too.”

“So we can’t all be friends?” she asked.

He shook his head. He knew it was safest for Katrina to seem like a magical dud, to appear uninteresting, to appear to have no powers or interest in the occult at all, whether that was among other witches or normal people.

Because if she let her magic keep developing, they would discover her. And they would take her for every ounce of her soul.

Panicked by the thought, Baltus reached out and grabbed Katrina’s hand, squeezing hard.

“Promise me this, Katrina. Promise me that when you feel the call to magic, to the strange and the unusual, to power, that you ignore it. That you bury it deep inside you. That you will do all in your power to not be a witch. That you will never show it or tell anyone about it. Including Brom, including your mother, including me. Please.”

Katrina blinked at him in shock, then studied his face. He knew there was nothing but anguish on it, a desperate plea for her to understand and obey.

Finally, she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I can do that.”

“Do you promise, dear daughter?”

“I promise,” she said.

And God, he hoped she meant it. He hoped that this would stick and that it would keep her safe in the end.

It was as if he knew he didn’t have much time left with her.