Chapter 11
Crane
I’m not sure if it was the talk I had with Kat that helped, someone to listen to what I was saying and not dismiss me as Sister Sophie did, but I finally had a good sleep last night.
Or should I say, I at least managed to ignore the sounds. Marie’s accusatory cry and her insults, followed by the thump of the thing in the hallway. But I just put the pillow over my head and counted backward from one hundred, and then, by some miracle, I was out.
Suffice it to say, I woke in the morning feeling in good spirits.
Part of me wants to leave the ghosts as practical jokes and move on, while the other has the energy to investigate into Vivienne Henry further.
I don’t know why the teacher I replaced is of such interest to me.
It sounds like she had a nervous breakdown and killed herself.
That happens. The isolation probably got to her.
The stress. She had been here for far too long.
Yet because I know that ghosts exist and that she did die on the school grounds—in the lake—and I did replace her in a technical sense, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ghost outside my door is Vivienne.
Unfortunately, if that’s true, it probably means she’s out for revenge.
A lot of ghosts seek those with magic because our energy is such a draw for them, like moths to a flame.
Only on rare occasions are those ghosts actually able to cause harm.
If the ghost was also magically inclined before they died, well, that’s something I don’t want to find out.
Nonetheless, I bathe and get dressed for the day, and before I head out to the dining hall for food, I decide to pull a card from one of my decks.
I pull the Ten of Swords.
To those who dabble casually in the arcane, the Ten of Swords doesn’t always mean calamity. A man on the ground with ten swords on his back might mean you’re starting over at rock bottom, not certain doom.
But when I pull the card, I see myself on the ground, mimicking the knight drawn on the card deck, my face caked in dirt while I scream for mercy.
There is something dark above me, monstrously tall and large, a big black figure that seems to stretch into an endless night sky, the sound of a horse whinnying and galloping hooves. The echo of a blade being drawn.
I push the deck away and sit back in my chair. I certainly wasn’t expecting that.
So much for waking up in good spirits.
I take in a few long and deep breaths, flexing my fingers as I calm myself down, reminding myself that my visions aren’t always reliable. Then I head out into the hall, expecting to see the body there.
I don’t see the body, of course, just Daniels locking up his door. I wave at him and trot over, wanting company on the way to the dining hall so I don’t get trapped in my own thoughts again.
“Crane,” Daniels says to me with a jovial smile. “How are we this morning, boy?”
He slaps me on the shoulder, his mustache bristling as he talks. Daniels is probably only ten years older than me, but he treats me like a kid. I’ll take whatever flattery I can get.
“I haven’t quit yet,” I tell him as we walk down the hall. “So that’s a good sign.”
“Aye,” he says. “It’s a hard place to be at times. But they do take care of us here.”
“You’ve been here for two years, haven’t you?”
“That I have,” he says as we go down the grand staircase.
“Do you go home in the summer?”
His brows raise. “Home? This is our home, Crane. Where else would I go?”
I shove my hands in my coat pockets as we step into the cool, misty morning, the path slick with fallen leaves. “I don’t know. Perhaps the city. Maybe even Sleepy Hollow itself.”
“And risk losing my magic?” he asks. “I don’t want to forget anything I’ve learned here.”
“They say it comes back,” I tell him.
“Have you put that to the test?” he asks. “What if it doesn’t, and then I’m useless as a teacher?”
“But you teach philosophy and literature,” I point out with a laugh.
“It doesn’t matter. My magic is getting stronger here with each passing week. I’m not giving that up. The power, Crane. It’s better than fucking.”
When he puts it that way…“Don’t you think that keeps the teachers here indefinitely?”
He shakes his head. “Eventually, they leave. But you might as well put off the inevitable.”
I stop outside the doors to the dining hall, touching his arm briefly to pull him to a stop. “Did you know Vivienne Henry well?”
His face goes slack, his mustache pulling down at his mouth. “Not well, no. I suppose there are no secrets here, are there?”
I keep my voice down. “Do you think she killed herself because she wanted to leave? Or because she wanted to stay?”
He lets out a deep harrumph. “I think she was a very tragic woman suffering from hysteria. Sometimes there just isn’t much of a story. Now, let’s go inside and get some coffee. The weather is far too gloomy for this kind of talk.”
—
“Did you want to go for another stroll?” Kat asks me. It’s at the end of our mimicry class, and she’s hovering by my desk.
I look up from my papers and stare at her for a moment. She’s standing here in her pumpkin-colored dress adorned with velvet, a lot more modest than the one she wore on her first day, yet it does nothing to hide her ample curves.
She really is beautiful, I can’t help but think.
It’s the kind of beauty that your brain doesn’t process right away because it doesn’t seem quite real.
Her face is so round and angelic, especially with her blond hair like a halo around her head, but her eyes speak differently.
They’re full of sass and zest and a maturity that I didn’t expect her to have.
Not to mention her mouth, which is always talking back and always keeping me on my toes.
If it were anyone else, I would have told her off by now, but that smart mouth makes me want to dole out my own form of punishment in the shape of my flat palm on her plump ass.
But of course, I can’t afford to think of her like that, sexually or with any affection at all. I wasn’t told there were any rules against relations with students, but I also don’t want to get myself into any trouble this early in the game. It’s a complication I can do without.
I also don’t know how she feels about me.
She is asking me to go for another walk with her, and she does seem to be focused on me a lot of the time.
I’m no stranger to students having their crushes on me.
I know that I represent something to them, a person in power and control.
But when it comes to Kat, I feel her draw to me might be based on the moments our energies met each other.
Her emotions in my body. My energy blocked by hers.
It must create a sense of intimacy when you know someone’s been sifting around in your brain, in the places you may not even know exist, feeling what you’ve felt.
“If you’re busy, I understand,” Kat says quickly, her shoulders dropping slightly, and I realize I’ve been sitting here and staring at her, not giving her an answer.
“Let’s go,” I say, and I’m on my feet, grabbing my coat.
We go out the doors and into the autumn afternoon.
The gloom of the morning has lifted, and there’s even a bit of blue sky peeking through the high clouds.
The fog that hovers around the campus is thinner today, letting enough light in to make you squint.
A light breeze blows from the north, smelling of frost.
“Are you not cold?” I ask her, since she’s not wearing a coat, though I notice she’s at least wearing gloves today.
“I run hot,” she says.
“That much I can tell.”
She looks at me askew.
“You’re hot-tempered,” I explain. “I wouldn’t know what your body feels like.”
Her brows furrow even deeper.
“What I meant was…I mean, I have held your hand before, but…”
“Tripping over your own words, Crane,” she says with a dainty smile. “How very unlike you. You must have been up late again. Another body in the night?”
Crane. Not Professor Crane, but Crane. I like it. So long as she remembers to call me Professor in front of the other students.
“Actually, no,” I tell her. “Well, yes, there were the sounds, but I managed to fall asleep anyway.”
We stop in the middle of the courtyard.
“To the lake or to the woods?”
The gardens are lovely, but they are peppered with students enjoying the day, and with all the things we’re sure to talk about, I don’t want them overhearing. I could use the voice with Kat, but she doesn’t know how to use it in return.
“How about the woods today? But we can stick to the edges, walk around the campus that way,” she suggests. “I don’t feel like being in the dark.”
I’m not about to argue with that. We continue to walk along the main path, then converge onto a smaller stone one that goes between a row of tall orange and peach dahlias, heads like giant pinwheels, buzzing with late-season bees.
Being in the city for so long, I’d forgotten how soothing nature can be, even when it’s dark and electric and heading toward the decay of winter.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” I ask as we step away from the buildings to where the grass meets the thicket of sweet-smelling blackberries and bramble at the base of the trees.
“Me?” she asks. “I’m the one with all the questions for you.”
We walk alongside the woods. “I already answered some. Now it’s my turn to ask you.”
“Fine,” she says with a sigh. “Ask away. I’ll have to warn you, I’m quite boring.”
“You’re anything but boring, Kat,” I tell her. “You seduce me.”
Her brows raise. “I seduce you?” A hint of color appears on her cheeks.
“Yes. You make me want to know everything there is about you.”
She opens her mouth, a peek of her pink tongue coming out to lick her lips, and I feel my cock stiffen in my trousers. Most unwelcome at the moment.
“That’s only because you weren’t able to see anything in my mind,” she says after a moment, her demeanor going from flushed to cool. “You like the challenge. You don’t like being told no.”