Chapter 6
Crane
I’ve always been a curious man. I suppose that’s why I decided to become a teacher.
Well, I suppose that’s why I wanted to become a doctor first, so I could uncover the mysteries of the human body.
Unfortunately, when I started to have a nasty habit of communicating with the cadavers in medical school, I decided becoming a doctor wasn’t for me.
I preferred the dead when they didn’t talk.
But being a teacher has always felt natural.
My curiosity rubs off on the students. Makes them study harder, the yearning for knowledge like a drug.
And it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when Leona Van Tassel stopped me on the streets of Manhattan and offered me a position at Sleepy Hollow Institute, that I fully understood how that came to be.
It’s not that I’m particularly interesting or commanding, though I like to think those things are true.
It’s that I can bestow my curiosity onto others, even without either of us knowing it.
That I can literally make others want to learn.
Granted, I can’t get them to do anything. My powers of persuasion work best when combined with equal parts passion and discipline, but their free will always remains their own. I’m merely influencing them. Nudging them in the right direction.
When I accepted the job and was brought here to the institute, a whole world that was previously buried inside me was unearthed like a grave, a monster of potential crawling out.
I went through their aptitude tests, tests I’ll admit I don’t remember much of, aside from sitting in a cathedral and drinking wine while the four cloaked sisters of the institute chanted spell after spell after spell.
I don’t know what they did to me, but I remember the feeling of opening up, like they were cutting me open and taking a look inside me.
It went beyond the telepathy and mind reading that Leona Van Tassel had done in Manhattan.
They were sifting through me for parts I didn’t even know existed.
But after that initiation, things began to change.
I became more aware of the magic I already had, especially with bestowal.
I started spending time in the school’s library, another expansive cathedral filled with books on the occult and peppered with arcane artifacts, nothing like my father’s church back in Kansas.
I read; I learned; I filled the well. I started to feel like, perhaps for once in my thirty years, I had found a place that truly accepted me for what I was. Well, most of me, anyway.
And now, here, in my first class of the school year, I find myself presented with a young, pretty woman who seems able to resist my gift of curiosity.
This shouldn’t be a surprise—after all, there’s always some pupil in my classes who doesn’t take to my methods as well as I want them to.
But because this woman is a Van Tassel, related in some way to Leona and Ana, it surprises me.
It’s as if she doesn’t want to be here at all.
I didn’t even see her on my class attendance list, like she was some last-minute addition.
Perhaps she was. But she’s here now, and I’m determined to get through to her. I’m nothing if not stubborn when it comes to teaching.
So I asked for her to be a volunteer in my demonstration. The animosity on her face was worth it. Her blue eyes went wide before turning to an icy glare that made my pulse skip a beat, a snarl on her soft pink lips.
She refused at first but then succumbed. From the wary way she’s been looking at her classmates, I can tell she doesn’t want them to think she’s getting any special treatment by being a Van Tassel, and I suppose that’s why I’m singling her out like this as well.
She gathered up her dress in her one hand, and I held out my hand for her other and braced myself for what was about to happen. There are ethical issues, I suppose, to doing this, but I’ve never been one to stake my life on ethics when it comes to magic.
The moment her hand touches mine, a cacophony of feelings floods through me.
They don’t come in images as they usually do when I try to read someone, but instead, I’m quickly overwhelmed with grief.
Grief and love and…loss. So much loss that I’m not even sure this girl knows it’s deep inside her, rooted there like a tree.
And there are other feelings here too, like yearning, longing, the need to fit in and belong, the urge to be elsewhere, to find a life worth living. A need to escape.
Then there’s something else. Something that surprises me that comes in hot and dark.
Lust. Desire. Arousal. But it’s not that she has these feelings in general that catches me off guard—I know witches tend to be very in tune with their sexuality—but that the way she feels them is the same way I once felt them.
Almost as if I’m looking into a version of myself from the past. Almost as if…
I can’t quite grasp it, and the longer I hold her hand, the faster her feelings drain from me, like they’re being poured through a sieve.
It’s through this transaction, her memories and feelings flowing into me, that I can usually bestow things unto her.
We give so we receive. We receive so that we must give.
But I can’t bestow anything onto her. There’s a blockage here, and it’s only then that I finally notice she’s been staring at me with her big azure eyes, the color San Francisco Bay would get on a cloudless day.
She rips her hand out of mine and holds my gaze steadily, her eyes narrowing, and I know she knows what I was trying to do. I can’t help but feel bad about it, like I’ve violated her somehow.
I’m sorry, I whisper to her, using what I call voice to say it so that no one else can hear it. Another thing I picked up while perusing the library for spells.
She opens her mouth to say something but then averts her eyes, rubbing her lips together. She knows that whatever she says back won’t be hidden from her classmates’ ears.
Instead, she puts her hands on her hips and throws her head back.
As she does so, her chest comes forward.
She’s in a pretty yellow gown with a V-neck lined with ruffles that’s a little too low-cut for school or even daytime, her full breasts on display.
All the other women in the class are wearing dresses with high necks, though they also probably cost half the price.
Katrina Van Tassel in all her pretty, blond, defiant glory, stands out like a sore thumb here.
“Will that be all?” she asks, giving me a way out. I won’t get any further with her today. I’ll have to demonstrate bestowal on someone else.
“That will be all,” I concede.
—
“Katrina, may I have a word with you?” I ask as the class ends and she’s about to leave the room. A few of the students make a low “oooh” noise under their breath as they go.
“It’s Kat,” she corrects me like I knew she would. She punctuates that with a heavy sigh as she walks over to my desk, her gown rustling, the paper and pen she borrowed from her classmate Paul clutched in her hand.
I rest against the edge of my desk and wait until the last student leaves the room before I say, “I just wanted it to be clear that just because you’re a Van Tassel, that doesn’t mean you’ll get any preferential treatment from me.”
“I think you’ve made that very clear,” she says with an indignant scoff.
“Have I?” I ask, leaning forward to stare at her intently. “Because in all the classrooms I’ve taught in, it’s punishable to talk back to a teacher the way that you do.”
For a moment I imagine having my ruler in my hand, giving her a hard paddling for being so obstinate. I have to push the image away before I get aroused.
“That’s only because you refer to yourself as a god,” she says, thoroughly unrepentant. “And you think yourself one too. Why else would you try to read my memories without my consent?”
I stiffen. “How did you know I was doing that?” I thought I’d learned how to hide it, how to look through memories and slip them into my own consciousness without the person ever finding out, like a street thief in the night.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I could tell, that’s all.”
“So then you figured out how to block me from your memories,” I muse.
“I couldn’t see any of the images like I usually can.
I could only feel them.” That had happened just once before where someone’s memories were off-limits, leaving only their emotions behind.
Naturally it just left me wanting to find out more about him.
Now I feel the same pull of curiosity toward her.
She tilts her head at me, a strand of curled straw-blond hair falling across her delicate face. The girl may look like a complete lady, but she reminds me more of a princess, the kind that’s accustomed to getting what she wants. “I suppose I did,” she says thoughtfully.
“That in itself is worth studying,” I say, feeling excitement well up inside of me, the prospect of heading into the unknown. “We may be here to learn about energy manipulation, but being able to stop unwanted energy is a gift in its own right.”
“Perhaps,” she says, woefully unimpressed. “What was it that you were trying to glean from me?”
“I was curious as to why you act like you don’t want to be here. I thought it was tradition for the Van Tassel witches to attend this school. At least, that’s what I learned from your aunts.”
Her jaw tightens a little. “Perhaps I wanted to make my own decisions. It had never been my destiny to attend this school.”
“What changed?”
She swallows and look down as her fingers fiddle with a ruffle in her skirt. “It became important to my mother. So it became important to me.”
“I haven’t met your mother, I don’t think. It’s hard to say when so much of my time has been a blur here so far.”