Chapter 15 #2
My mother shrugs lightly. “I suppose. It’s not very fancy, is it?”
“No, but if it works, it works. It’s magic all the same. It’s healing people, helping people, wouldn’t you say? Tell me, Ms. Van Tassel, for I’ve been very curious about you. Why don’t you teach at the school? Surely your skills and knowledge would go a long way, given your family name.”
That was a question I had wondered too and yet never asked. But Crane gets right down to brass tacks.
My mother presses her fingertips together, and I can see she’s thinking. “I’m afraid you think too highly of the Van Tassel family name,” she says. “I may be Leona and Ana’s sister, but I haven’t been part of their coven for a long time.”
That takes me by surprise.
“But I’m not a part of their coven either, and I teach at the school,” Crane points out.
She gives him a stiff smile. “Yes. And perhaps you’re a much better teacher than I could ever be.” She nods at us both. “Now, finish your teas, and off to bed. I’ll be making the journey with you to school tomorrow. I may not be part of their coven, but the sisters need to know what you saw.”
I want to tell her that we can inform them ourselves—it’s about time I saw my aunts—but then I stop myself.
I want to see how my mother is on campus.
I mean really watch her and watch how the sisters interact with her.
There’s something about their relationship that nags at me, but I can’t put my finger on what it is.
“Well,” Crane says, bowing slightly to my mother. “Thank you for the tea and your hospitality. I better go get ready for bed.”
He turns to me, and our eyes lock. I don’t want to be apart from him, not tonight, maybe not any night. I think from the intense look in his dark eyes, he doesn’t want it either.
But then he heads toward his room just as Famke comes out of it, showing him around, and my mother steps in beside me.
“There’s one man for you, Katrina,” she whispers in my ear. “And that man is not him.”
—
The next morning, we rise with the dawn. The roosters crow from the yard, and golden light streams through our windows. I’m curled up in the corner of the bed, alone, forgetting I’m upstairs in my mother’s room. I think I slept like the dead; the tea probably knocked me right out.
I get up and slip on my dressing gown, surprised to find Crane already up and reading a book by the fire. He glances up at me as I walk down the staircase and grins.
My heart does a little dance in my chest. I don’t care what my mother said about him looking like a ghoul—he’s certainly beautiful.
“Good morning,” I say to him, feeling stupidly shy at having him see me so early in the morning, despite how intimate his fingers were with me last night.
“Good morning,” he says, his smile getting deeper, one that makes me feel weak at the knees.
“Katrina, get dressed and get ready,” my mother barks as she bustles out of the washroom. “We need to leave soon.”
I roll my eyes and get ready as quickly as I can. Then we have a quick breakfast of a few hard-boiled eggs and bread, which Famke was very insistent we eat.
By the time we’re out in the stables, getting the horses tacked and ready, the sun has already burned off the layer of fog that was sitting on our pastures and over the Hudson. The water sparkles now like a mirage.
My mother gives Crane my father’s old horse, Gunpowder, a sway-backed dapple gray who is still strong but only gets more stubborn over time, and once she’s on top of her sorrel gelding, Chester, we’re off and riding toward the school.
It’s a brilliant morning, clear blue skies and the air scented with bonfires and the last of the season’s blackberries, October only a couple of days away.
Goldenrods that dot the lane sway in the breeze, and I’m having a hard time reconciling this bucolic morning with the terror of last night.
Is it possible that it all happened? Could it have been an illusion, not an actual ghost of a soldier?
And if it was an actual ghost, this Hessian, where was it going?
Who was it hunting?
My mother is riding between me and Crane, and I try to catch his eye, but his focus is elsewhere.
I want to talk to him in private about last night, about everything.
But even if he did use his so-called voice, where he speaks inside my head, I don’t have the ability to respond.
And there’s a chance that my mother would hear it.
There’s so much of her magic I don’t know about.
Eventually, we reach the school and go our separate ways after handing our horses to the stable boy, who seems a little less spooky now in the daytime. My mother takes off for the cathedral building to talk with her sisters while Crane and I walk toward the center courtyard.
“I know I’ll be late, but I need to get changed,” he says, coming to a stop. He’s close, almost too close if anyone were to be watching, but he doesn’t touch me. “Are you all right?”
“No,” I admit. “I want to be alone with you. I want to talk to you.”
He swallows and gives me a quiet smile. “And I want to be alone with you. More than you know, my vlinder. Our afternoon walk will have to suffice.”
“Okay,” I say with a nod, hating how strangely desperate I’m feeling for him.
I feel scared for reasons I can’t explain.
It’s not just that we encountered the horseman last night.
It’s everything. It’s the way Crane made me feel, the power I felt when I came on his hands, this need to grab him and get as close to him as possible.
I ache for him, both physically and emotionally, maybe even spiritually.
“I would die to kiss you right now,” he says, leaning in closer, his charcoal eyes burning on my lips.
“And I would happily accept that death.” Then he pulls his head back.
“I’m not a patient man, Kat, but it will have to wait.
I promise it will be worth it.” He gestures to the dorms. “Will you wait for me while I get changed?”
I nod, and he casts a cautionary glance around him before hurrying off to his dorm.
I exhale a trembling breath, my whole body feeling jittery, and stand there on the path as he runs into the building. There’s so much to try to make sense of, and I feel like my brain isn’t keeping up.
Thankfully, Crane doesn’t take long, and he’s back in a few minutes. “How do I look?” he says as he takes long, quick strides toward me, tightening the buttons at his collar. “Do I look like I spent the night at the Van Tassel farmhouse?”
I laugh, reaching out and straightening his necktie. “Not at all.” Truth be told, all his suits are dark and look the same anyway.
We hurry along toward the classroom, and with my short legs, it’s hard to keep up with him—he covers so much ground when he wants to. Crane anxiously checks his pocket watch. “Well, a few minutes late won’t kill anyone,” he says. “I’m sure one of the teachers has already unlocked the classroom.”
He opens the door to the building for me and ushers me inside. By the time we reach his classroom, I’m already out of breath.
Someone did unlock his door for him, and the chatter of the students rolls out into the hall.
We stop inches away, and I look at him to ask if it would seem wrong for the both of us to enter the room together. He taps my bottom with his hand, telling me to go first.
I give him a coy smile and then step into the classroom.
Everything looks the same as it usually does except for one big difference.
There’s someone sitting in my chair.
And it’s not just anyone.
No…
It can’t be.
I feel all the blood drain out of me, my vision growing fuzzy, and I fear I’m about to faint.
It’s like looking at a ghost.
The ghost of Brom Bones.
He’s sitting in my seat and staring right at me with those achingly familiar brown eyes of his, so dark they’re almost black. He’s older now, with a dark beard, and he’s so broad-shouldered and Herculean that he barely fits in the desk.
But it’s him.
It’s him.
He came back to me.
“Oh my God,” I say softly, my hand at my lips.
Just then, I feel Crane come up behind me and hear his sharp inhale.
“Abe?” Crane whispers, a gasp.
I twist around to glance at Crane over my shoulder, his eyes focused on Brom too, a look of utter shock on his face.
Abe? I think. Who is Abe?
I look back to Brom, but he’s still looking directly at me.
“What is he doing here?” Crane whispers, a tremor in his voice.
And then I remember what Crane told me last night.
And I realize that we’ve both been under the spell of Abraham Van Brunt.