Chapter 12
Kat
The rain held off until I put Snowdrop inside her stall, coming down in torrents while I groomed the sweat from our ride off her.
I’ve always thought of myself as an elemental witch, given the power I have with fire or wind, but lately, I’m starting to think that I may have some influence over the weather directly.
So far, it hasn’t rained during my rides to and from the school, always just before or after.
Still, I have to run across her paddock to the house, and I’m soaked by the time I get inside.
“Heavens,” Famke says as I shuck off my coat. “You almost missed it.”
“Almost,” I say, looking around. The house has a feeling of contentment and peace with the fire roaring in both the hearth and the sitting room. “Did my mother go out?”
“Ja,” Famke says, heading back into the kitchen. “She went to see Dr. Fielding.”
“Is she okay?” I ask, quickly undoing the laces on my boots.
“She wasn’t eating, so I made her,” Famke says, sounding more annoyed than concerned, which is a good sign. “She will waste away to nothing if she doesn’t eat. As if my food isn’t good enough.”
“Your food is wonderful, Famke,” I tell her. “You know she’s never been the same since my father died.”
“Ja, ja,” she says with a sigh and jerks her chin at me. “Your mother may not be here, but I am. Go take a bath, get into some clean clothes, and I’ll get supper going.”
I do as she says, taking a long hot bath and getting into my tea gown. By the time I come out into the sitting room, my mother is sitting by the fire. I hadn’t heard her, but I knew she’d come in. I could tell by the way the house tensed up, like all the air was sucked out of it.
“Katrina,” she says. She’s in the rocking chair, and she gestures to the leather chair beside her, the one my father used to sit in every evening with his drink.
My heart wrings at the thought.
I sit down beside her, enjoying the warmth of the fire on my skin. With autumn in full swing, the nights are getting cold. “How are you? Famke said you went to the doctor?”
“It was just a visit to check in,” she says dismissively. “Tell me about your day at school. The one teacher you always remember.”
My cheeks go hot, and I face the fire, hoping I can blame it on the flames. “It was good. In my mimicry class, I learned to steal one of my classmate’s abilities and use them myself.”
Her eyes widen, her hands clenching in her lap. “You did what?”
“Only for a moment. His ability was psychometry. Where you can touch objects and gain foresight. Unfortunately, the only thing I was able to touch that gave me any foresight was my pencil. It told me I would lose it later. Guess what? I did. Still don’t know what happened to it.”
“Dangerous,” she mutters, shaking her head, “to remember such things.” Then she exhales heavily and gives me a tepid smile.
“Dangerous, but…I’m also very proud of you.
I never thought you would have such potential.
Never dreamed of it. Never seemed possible that you could become a greater witch than me. ”
That’s because Papa made me hide it from you, I think. “I wouldn’t say that. Nothing too magical about knowing I was going to lose a pencil. But I think I’m getting there. In time.”
“You will.”
I cough. “Thank you. See, I wanted to talk to you about something. Crane—Professor Crane—he asked for my help performing a ritual next week. It would take place at night, so it would be after hours.”
Her hazel eyes skirt over my face, searching. “What kind of ritual?”
I almost tell her the truth.
He wants to contact a dead woman. A dead teacher who drowned in the lake.
And though Crane never told me not to mention it to my mother, I fear I must be cautious.
“He wants to learn how to fly,” I say.
“Fly?” She barks out a laugh. “Gods, that is a lofty goal. He obviously has the wrong idea about witches.”
“He says I’m powerful and can help. I think he’s lonely too,” I add in there. That wasn’t a lie. I do sense a loneliness in Crane, something he might not see himself. He’s not the man to ever admit it, but I am lonely too. I know what it looks like to feel like you’ve been set adrift.
She pins me with her gaze. “Are you intimate with him?”
I cough in surprise. “With my professor? No!”
“Do you want to be?”
I stare at her for a moment. My cheeks have certainly been going red a lot lately. I look away at the fire. “Mother…”
“No, it’s the right question. If Brom were still here, you’d be married with a child by now, I’m sure of it.”
The sound of his name makes me close my eyes. For once, I don’t want to hear it.
“It’s all right to have appetites, Katrina,” my mother whispers, leaning closer.
“For a witch, it’s to be expected. Sex is an exchange of power.
Of energy. Of magic. I want you to be free to explore whatever you want with whomever you want.
You are of the age, my dear child, when you should be doing these things.
Even if it happens to be with your professor. ”
I open my eyes and shift in my chair uncomfortably. “The professor and I are just friends.”
“But you are a beautiful, vibrant young witch, and he is a strong, powerful young man.”
“How do you know these things?” I say, glancing at her in suspicion. “You said you’d never heard of him.”
“If he weren’t those things, would you be doing a nighttime ritual with him?” she asks simply. “I think not.” She sucks on her lip for a moment in thought. “Just remember the tea.”
I frown. “Tea?”
“The tea I made you drink last year. When you were having sex with that farmhand. Joshua Meeks.”
I gasp, my hand at my chest, my whole body flushing. “You knew about that?”
She laughs softly. “I am no idiot, Katrina. I knew. I knew. I was happy for you.”
Good heavens. I don’t like where this conversation is going.
“What about the tea?” I ask, remembering now how she used to make so much tea during that time, though she never did say what was in it.
“Just ask me for it, and I will make it. You can’t get pregnant that way.”
My body tenses like I’ve been slapped. I hadn’t wanted to get pregnant. After Brom left, I never really thought about it, about starting a family. But the idea that she was giving me a magic tea to ensure I wouldn’t get pregnant was…
“It was for the best,” she says in a forceful voice. “Don’t you agree?”
She’s right. She’s absolutely right. But I should have been able to make that choice for myself.
“So,” she goes on, “are you mad at me over this now, or did you want to ask permission to stay out late with your professor? If it’s the latter, the answer is yes.”
And if it’s the former? I think. Still, I’m surprised she’s saying yes to this.
“What about Mathias?” I ask. “He can’t go so late. Besides, I don’t think Mathias needs to escort me to school anymore. And if you’re so concerned, Professor Crane can ride back with me.”
“The professor shouldn’t leave the grounds,” my mother says. “But you’re right.”
“I am?” I look at her in surprise.
“Yes.” She folds her hands on her lap, grasping them as if to keep them from shaking. “I’ll relieve Mathias of his duties. You must carry a torch with you, but I think you’ll be safe on your own now.” She stares down at her hands for a moment. “I no longer fear you running off.”
I stare at her for a moment, not sure that I heard her right. “You thought I was going to run away? That’s why you had Mathias escort me?”
She avoids my eyes. “I was too afraid of losing you, Katrina, and I know you didn’t want to go to the school. I could sense your soul being pulled to other places, sense your dreams. You wanted to escape. I couldn’t afford to let that happen.”
I blink. That is a lot to take in. “You know I could have escaped at any other time. The only thing holding me back was you.” I reach out and take her hand.
It’s so cold, her skin feeling like wax.
“I didn’t want to leave you, and I won’t.
And if you want me to stop going to school and stay here with you, I will. ”
I wouldn’t want to. The thought of not attending the institute, of not seeing Crane again, or even Paul, or wandering the grounds and listening to students laugh and practice magic pains me. But I would accept that pain if it meant my mother would feel better.
I swallow the thickness in my throat. It tastes like guilt. “Do you think that’s why you’re getting worse? Because I’m gone?”
She shakes her head. “No. We don’t know what is wrong with me. The doctor said I should avoid all physical activity. And eat more, but, of course, I have no appetite. I’ll have to save up all my energy to make it to the school on the full moon.”
“That’s in a few days. I can take you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she says. “I can still ride. Chester knows the way. I can practically sleep in the saddle if I wish.”
Now is your chance, I think. Ask her. Ask her.
“Mother,” I begin warily, like I’m approaching a spooked horse. “What do you do when you go to the school? What do you do during the full moon?”
She stops rocking in her chair and looks up at me blankly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, why do you go? Is it for witchcraft? A ritual?”
She stares at me for a moment, and, suddenly, the room fills with a buzzing sound that gets louder and louder, like a hundred cicadas trapped in here with us, and I almost put my hands over my ears and—
It suddenly stops.
My mother smiles at me. “I like to see your aunts, and they don’t like to leave the campus. Full moons are the easiest way to keep to a schedule.”
My heart is pounding loudly in my head now, my ears still adjusting to the silence. A cold sweat forms along my forehead.
“You’re looking a little tired, dear. Perhaps you should lie down.” She gestures to the couch. “Have a nap. We’ll wake you in time for supper.”
I try to protest, to tell her I’m okay, but my feet move, and I’m up and staggering over to the couch, where I lie down. I fall asleep immediately.
—
A week later, Crane asks me to speak with him after class.
By now, the students don’t pay us much attention.
They see us on our daily walks around the school.
They probably think I’m involved with him romantically, and while that’s not true, I don’t mind them thinking that either. He makes me feel special.
I walk to his desk, a thrill running up my spine. He looks at me, and I look at him, and it’s this clandestine meaning that passes between us, knowing exactly what we’re about to do.
Although I actually don’t know what we’re about to do.
All he said to me was that he needed help contacting the lady of the lake, the teacher he ended up replacing who had gone mad and drowned herself in it.
He had wanted a little more time to study spells and find out more about her before we performed the ritual.
Tonight is the night, but what I’m actually doing as part of this ritual is beyond me.
He just told me my energy would be needed.
And I—because I’m apparently a sucker for following his orders—am going along with it.
“Well,” I say to him, eyeing the clock in the room. “We have a few hours until it’s dark.”
“Indeed,” he says. “Shall we grab supper?”
I shake my head. “I would rather not eat with you in the dining hall.”
He looks so comically aghast that I laugh.
“People are already talking about us,” I explain.
“Are they now?” he asks playfully, grabbing his coat. “What are they saying?”
“I imagine they’re saying that you are the dastardly seductive teacher preying on his young students, in particular, the ravishing Katrina Van Tassel.”
He grins at me. “You got everything right except her name. She prefers Kat.”
I laugh, and my stomach tickles like vlinders are taking flight.
This man is giving me butterflies.
“But I do like this business about me being dastardly seductive. Makes me sound like a menace.”
“You are a menace,” I say as we walk out the door, and he shuts the classroom behind him. “A menace to the supernatural. Why do you think so many women are haunting you?”
He rolls his eyes at that but then grows silent, his thoughts trapped somewhere as they often seem to be.
After all that, we still head to the dining hall anyway.
Luckily, the both of us are able to sit with Paul and a few of his friends.
They all seem to admire and fawn over Professor Crane, so they don’t mind him there.
I just stay quiet and let Crane answer a plethora of questions over a meal of roast pigeon and turnip.
It’s the first time I’ve eaten here and the first time I’ve seen the hall in action at dinner.
Usually, I’m riding home by now. In fact, Snowdrop is probably getting restless in the stables, and I make a note of visiting her after this.
Until then, I just eat the food—it’s not as good as Famke’s, but it’s pretty close—and by the time the dessert of broiled honeyed apricots and ricotta comes out, I feel strangely at home.
This is what I’ve been missing, I think, feeling a pang in my chest, an ache for belonging. It’s foreign and familiar at the same time.
It’s too bad my mother would never let me live on campus.
She was so obstinate about her sisters not taking me.
In fact, since I’ve been going to school, I haven’t even seen my aunts.
Neither Leona nor Ana have ever come to my classes to check on me.
Instead, I’ve only seen Sister Sophie and Sister Margaret, both of whom treat me with a sort of quiet contempt.
For how often they seem to deride my mother, it baffles me that my mother comes to visit with them once a month.
They might not be related to us by blood, but they are still part of the same coven.
I guess she needs them a lot more than they need her.
I just wish I knew what she really needed them for.