Chapter 12
Kat
I have a bad habit that when someone tells me I can’t do something, say something, see someone, it makes me want to do it even more.
I don’t know who taught me to be so rebellious in a world where rebellion is so often punished.
But perhaps I like the punishment. I certainly do when Crane is doling it out.
So when Crane told me I couldn’t see him until tomorrow and also had to stay away from Brom, naturally it made me want to see them both.
When I left the faculty dorm I was already plotting how to sneak out through my window to visit him and Brom in the night.
I wanted to see what Brom looked like naked and covered in chains.
I was assuming he’d be naked, anyway. In my mind he was.
But when night had fallen and I was in bed, wondering when I should attempt my escape, I remembered the anguish in Crane’s face. He was trying to be strong, his face a blasé mask, but I saw it slip when he held my face in his hands and told me that everything he was doing, he was doing for me.
And I trust Crane, deeply. I know I am at the forefront of his actions and desires—perhaps side-by-side with Brom, but still at the front.
As much as I don’t like being apart from him, especially now when the world seems so precarious, I also don’t want him to lose his job.
If he does, it means he has to leave and he’ll never be allowed back in through those gates.
But then of course, I would leave too. The more that happens the more I think there’s no point in staying at the school as it is.
I’m an adult, I can make my own decisions.
If it comes to it, I can leave this school, leave Sleepy Hollow, and never look back, as long as I have Crane and Brom at my side.
I’m not leaving either one behind.
So instead of sneaking out my window and paying my men a visit, I fall asleep.
A deep, dark sleep.
So deep that the next morning I wake up not knowing where I am for a moment. I sit up in bed, my heart beating rapidly, until I look around the room, barely lit by the gray morning light, and realize I’m someplace entirely new.
I exhale loudly, feeling utmost relief. My mother isn’t in the same house as me anymore. There’s a gate and magic wards and a long trail through a dark woods between us now. I finally have broken free from her in the way I always yearned to.
Granted, her influence is everywhere since I’m now stuck with her sisters, but even though I fear my aunts (and Sisters Margaret and Sophie, to a degree), I still feel like I’m one step closer to truly spreading my wings.
I close my eyes and I think of blue butterflies taking flight into the sky, my fingertips tingling.
But instead of taking flight, I get up and get ready for the day.
I’m up early enough on this Sunday that the bathroom and toilets are available, so I do my business and take a quick bath before the rest of the girls in this dorm get up.
Then I take my time getting dressed, taking extra care to make sure my clothes are particularly flattering and that my hair looks nice—all for Crane, including not wearing any drawers—and forgo breakfast in the dining hall so that I can get to the library by nine.
The library is a short walk away and while the morning mist is damp on my face, the rain holds off.
The librarian, Ms. Albarez, gives me a courteous yet distant nod as I enter, and I’m relieved to find it completely empty except for one very tall, dark-haired gentleman at the very back of the hall, silhouetted by the morning light at the windows, sitting with his back to me.
My stomach does a little flip as I walk toward him and he raises his head, sensing my presence.
I’m about to throw my arms around him, kiss him on the cheek, but I remember where we are and the roles we have to play. He is the teacher, I am the student. Nothing more.
I walk around the desk and stand primly on the other side, my back to the large Gothic windows that look out onto the woods.
“Good morning, Professor Crane,” I say to him.
He stares up at me with a feverish glint in his eyes, his full mouth curved, taking me in like I’m some sort of tonic he’s been deprived of for weeks on end. If I could bottle this look and carry it around with me, I would. I want him to gaze at me like this forever.
“Good morning, Kat,” he purrs, and then gestures with a quick tap of his elegant fingers. “Have a seat.”
I dutifully sit down across from him, glancing at all the books he has strewn across the table in haphazard piles. “What are these?” I ask.
“Many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” he says, to which I frown. “You haven’t read any Poe?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“What a shame,” says Crane. “Now there’s a fellow I would have liked to have a drink with.” He clears his throat. “But there will be other times to read his works. These are books I found that should help us with performing the ritual. I want to get it right before we even attempt it.”
I take the nearest one to me, a dusty old thing with a plain leather cover, and open it. The text is in Latin, but my grasp of it is rubbish. Tenebrae veniam. Something about the dark. The darkness will come?
How are you? Crane asks, his warm voice sliding into my head.
I glance up at him, wishing I could learn the same technique.
“I’m fine,” I say quietly, my attention back down on the page as I flip it. “I take it last night went well.”
Well enough, he says, still using the voice. At least I know I’m no longer going insane. Vivienne Henry showed up.
I look at him sharply.
Brom saw her, he goes on. I couldn’t risk following her with him in chains—we’d wake up the entire faculty—but once I heard her outside the door, I opened it to show him. Sure enough she was dragging her bloody body around the corner. Brom took it in stride, of course, but he saw her too.
I shiver. I want to make a comment about the chains but I can’t, especially not since Ms. Albarez is a few aisles down putting books away, so I don’t say anything at all. To her it looks like the two of us are flipping through the books in silence.
After several minutes, however, she finally moves on out of earshot.
“Where is Brom now?” I whisper, keeping my eyes on her as she takes her place near the door and a couple of older students walk in.
“Asleep,” Crane says, licking his thumb as he turns the page.
I would love to be that thumb.
“Still in chains?”
He nods, a wry, knowing smile on his lips, a dreamy look passing over his eyes.
Despite everything, my gut twists with a mixture of desire and jealousy.
“Did you punish him?” I whisper as I lean forward across the desk.
Crane eyes me in surprise. Kat, he says inside my head. We don’t need to talk about what Brom and I—
“I want to talk about it,” I say softly. “I want to hear about it.”
He stares at me for a moment and then looks over his shoulder as the students disappear into the aisles closest to the door, the librarian busy cataloging.
My gaze catches on the definition of his fine jaw, the fading bruises left there by Brom, the faint stubble coming in above his lip and on his chin since I don’t think he’s shaved in a few days.
What a ridiculously handsome man he is. So refined in many ways and yet depraved in others. And it only makes me want to be depraved in return.
You want to know what happened with us last night? he asks, molten heat coming over his gaze as his eyes meet mine. I nod eagerly.
“Please,” I whisper, knowing what effect that word has on him.
I fucked him, he says, and the sound of that in my head makes me swallow hard.
“How?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. I got him naked first. Then I had him in chains, around his ankles and his wrists. The chains at his ankles were pulled to keep his legs apart as I bent him over the bed. He offered his ass up to me like a gift, Kat. You should have seen it.
My mind goes to the other night when I did see exactly that.
Is this making you jealous or turning you on?
“Both,” I whisper.
Do you want me to tell you exactly what it’s like to fuck Brom Bones?
I nod.
Then put your hand down your skirt and start playing with yourself. I know just how swollen and wet you already are.
This man knows too much about me.
But I do as he says, carefully, making sure no one in the library can see.
I didn’t wear drawers for a reason and the feel of my hand sliding over my mound and between my legs in front of Crane, let alone in public, is thrilling.
The moment I dip between my thighs and discover how wet and hot I am, I have to bite my lip from groaning.
Crane inhales sharply.
Oh, Kat, he says, voice lowering. I can hear how wet you are. You’re making it hard for me to sit here.
“Keep talking,” I whisper, my eyes falling closed as I let my fingers explore my most secret parts in a most public setting.
I hear him adjust himself in his seat and I open my eyes to see him reaching down into his trousers.