Chapter 13
Kat
When dinner is over, my stomach full and my heart happy from the company and conversation, Crane makes a trip to the faculty dorms to get supplies while I go check on Snowdrop.
“Hello, darling,” I say to my mare, but she seems especially anxious tonight.
“I know, I’m sorry. We will go soon,” I tell her, scratching my fingers along her neck.
“You’re still here.”
I jump in fright and whirl around to see the stable boy holding a lantern and staring at me.
“I am,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “I have to stay later tonight. Don’t worry about tacking her up for me. I can do that later.”
“You shouldn’t be here after dark,” the boy says flatly. He’s not blinking at me, and his eyes seem especially black.
I swallow uneasily. “It’s all right. I won’t be alone.”
“You’re never alone. Not when you’re here. They’ll never let you be alone again.”
Then he turns and walks away, disappearing into the night.
I glance at Snowdrop, my heart racing. “Gosh. He must have had a rough day.”
I have to wonder if that boy sleeps here. He must. But then, who is his mother if no families are supposed to be on campus? Who takes care of him? The coven?
“Kat?” I hear Crane’s voice come from the darkness.
I kiss my horse’s nose and then walk toward the lantern that’s coming closer to me.
“Did you see a little boy walk past you?” I ask him.
“No,” he says, looking around. I’ve never seen Professor Crane in the dark before. In the lamplight, the shadows under his cheekbones and brows are pronounced, making him look chiseled from marble. Or like a skull. It gives him this otherworldliness that I don’t think I’ve really grasped before.
This man is a witch.
This man is magic.
And he wants me to create magic with him.
“Who was it?” he asks, and I realize I’ve been staring at him, at the way his hair seems to blend in with the shadows, how dark his eyes look, how they draw me in.
“The stable boy,” I say.
In the distance, most of the buildings are dark, with the only lights coming from the dorms and the dining hall, where I’m sure a few people are still lingering over meals. There is no sign of another lantern, like the boy vanished into thin air.
Perhaps he knows shadow magic too, I wonder.
“Stable boy,” Crane muses. “Can’t say I’ve ever noticed him.”
“He’s not staying in the men’s wing of the faculty dorms?”
He shakes his head. “No. Perhaps he goes into town like you do. Or maybe he lives in the cathedral with your aunts.”
It’s only now that I notice that in one of his hands, he’s holding what looks to be a black tie. “What’s that?”
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “You’ll see.” He holds out his arm for me. “Come on, let me walk you to the lake.”
My stomach flips. From nervousness or something else, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s everything. Two witches walking into the dark together.
I put my arm into his, and we walk down the path until we reach the main one that takes us close to the lakeshore.
The air has a bite to it, and I’m grateful for my warm dress and gloves.
But it’s also peaceful, the sound of our footsteps punctuated only by the occasional hoot of an owl, so soft that it sounds like a dream.
We stand at the foot of the lake, the water as black as anything.
It looks bigger here, feels deeper, seems like it stretches on forever.
Mist clings close to the surface, but up above, the sky is clear.
I suck in my breath as all the stars come into view, as if the clouds just parted like a curtain.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the clear sky here,” I say quietly, my neck craned as I stare up and up and up. All the constellations spread out like someone had thrown diamonds in the air and they got stuck there.
“Neither have I,” he says. His hand brushes against mine as he lets go of my arm, and for a moment, his finger gently wraps around mine, holding it. “I think you brought out the stars,” he murmurs.
Then his fingers start to move up against the back of my hand, touching the edge of my glove. “Can I take this off?” he asks softly.
I gulp. “My glove?”
“I would like to bestow you with what I’ve seen,” he says. “So that you know what we are looking for.”
My pulse hammers in my throat, and I turn my head slightly to look at him. He has that zealous look in his eyes that I know he gets when teaching.
“Will you promise to give but never take?”
His face widens in a slow grin, showing off perfect teeth. Still, in this light and with the sharp cut of his features, the effect makes me shiver. “Only this time,” he says smoothly. “I like to give, but I love being selfish too.”
From the husky tone his voice took on, I get the feeling we aren’t talking about the same thing.
“I don’t want you trying to read my—”
“I won’t,” he implores, his fingers curling over the hem of the glove.
Then, with one quick snap, he pulls it off, leaving my skin bare, the cold making goose bumps along my flesh.
He immediately envelops my hand in his, and the energy swarms off him. I feel it, I see it, a white glow that reminds me of lightning as it travels up my arm, disappearing under my coat.
Suddenly, the black of the lake fades, and then I’m in a shadowy dorm room.
I’m sitting up, hearing a woman laugh and cry, and she calls out, “Ichabod.” I hear the thump outside the door.
I’m grabbing a candlestick. I’m frightened and curious at the same time.
Then I’m in a dark hall, the candlelight swaying.
There’s a trail of blood. There’s the body.
The limp gray feet that drag around the corner. I follow it.
The flashes come on fast and leave fast, and then I’m back where I am, staring at the lake and Crane’s worried face, his arm around my waist as if I was close to fainting again.
“Are you all right?” he asks, his eyes searching mine.
I gasp for air and nod. “I am. I think so.”
He lets go of my waist, and I wish he was still holding me. “What did you see?”
“Everything that you did,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “I saw it through your eyes. Had your memories. The cries in the night, the body, all of it.”
He frowns, a sharpness to his eyes. “And that’s it?”
“That’s it,” I assure him. Though I have to wonder what else he doesn’t want me to see. The more time I spend with him, the more I’m sure he has a lot of skeletons in his closet.
“Good,” he says. Then he steps back, places the lantern on the ground, and holds the tie out in front of him between both hands. “Time for me to blindfold you.”
“What?” I exclaim in horror.
“I will use you as a vessel.”
“A vessel?!” This is getting worse and worse.
“It’s possible you will be possessed, but only for a minute or two, just long enough for me to ask Vivienne Henry questions.” He says this so plainly, as if he told me what the chef is making for dinner.
“You are not blindfolding me, and you are not using me as a vessel, and you are not opening my body up for possession by some crazy schoolteacher.”
He leans in. “But what if she wasn’t crazy?” His eyes are wild, the light dancing in them.
“I think maybe you’re crazy.”
“She’s after me,” he explains. “My energy. My energy is now in you. This is where she died. She will come to you.”
“Why the blindfold?”
“Because you need to be totally cut off from this world.” He pauses. “And I was hoping you could go in the lake.”
“Professor Crane,” I snap at him, putting my hands on my hips. “I am not going in the damn lake in my clothes.”
“Take off your clothes, then,” he says with a lopsided grin, a flare of lust in his eyes that makes me feel hot and dizzy.
“No!” I cry out, giving my head a shake. “You want it so badly? You go in the lake. Or better yet, tonight when she’s dragging herself outside your room, ask her then.”
He stares down at me with complete focus. “I like to do things on my terms. I want to be in control.” Then he gives me his crooked smile again. “Come on, Kat. Be a good witch for me.”
I hate that his words are undoing me.
Be a good witch for me? How did he know that praise was a soft spot?
“I’ll give you an A,” he teases, his voice throaty and deep. “You’ll pass all my classes with flying colors.”
It’s tempting to take it. “I would rather earn my way,” I say defiantly. Then I sigh. “But I’ll do it for you anyway.” I reach out and swipe the tie from his hands and hold it up over my eyes. “I’ll be a good little witch.”
“Yes you will,” he murmurs, his voice growing richer as my world goes black. I feel him move around me, taking the ends of the tie and making a knot at the back of my head.
Then he reaches down and takes my hand in his, and when I try to pull it out of his grasp, he says, “Don’t. I’m not trying to do anything to you. I’m just trying to touch you.”
A warmth spreads at my core, and I relax slightly. His fingers lace with mine, and he holds me there, as if proving that he can do this without any give or take.
“So is it all a conscious effort?” I ask, teetering slightly without anything to see and focus on. “The exchange of energy when you touch someone’s skin?”
“Yes,” he says quietly, giving my hand a squeeze. “Otherwise, I’d be wearing gloves all day long. I’d certainly never be able to fuck anyone.”
My body goes stiff. The way he said fuck makes my knees want to give out.
“And wouldn’t that be a shame?” When he says the last word, it’s a whisper, close to my face, so close I feel his breath on my cheek.
I swallow hard, my nipples hardening under my corset, heat between my legs. What I wouldn’t give for him to touch me all over. What I wouldn’t give for him to demonstrate just how he fucks. Would he be cool and demanding? Powerful, like a stern god? Both controlling and wild?
Whatever way he does it, I want it.
“I hate to say this, Crane,” I manage to eke out, “but you’re being awfully distracting from the matter at hand.”
“Mmm?” he says.
Then I feel air between us as he lets go of my hand and steps back.