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“I’m inclined to agree with you,” I say, tapping my fingers on the desk. “We should save ourselves.”
Both she and Brom raise their brows and give me an incredulous look. “You think we should save ourselves?” Kat says.
I grin. “I mean, if you were adamant that you wanted to get under this desk and suck both our cocks at once, I wouldn’t say no.”
“Crane,” she hisses, looking around her. “Keep your voice down.”
“This might be one of those times you should use your inside voice, Crane” Brom suggests. “For the record, I also wouldn’t say no.”
“No one is paying us any attention,” I assure them. And it’s true. Though there aren’t many students in the library, they’re all staring listlessly at their books, some of them even asleep with their heads on the desks. Being a teacher, I’m used to seeing students studying until the point of exhaustion. In fact, that kind of devotion to academics usually warms my heart.
But this is different. This has nothing to do with studying. Something else is ailing these students, something linked to the Sisters. But no matter how hard I think about it, I can’t figure out why this might be happening.
“Crane!” I hear a deep voice yell, and I look over to see Daniels marching into the library, obviously agitated. He comes straight over to us, barely acknowledging either Brom or Kat. “Crane, I need to speak with you.”
“Daniels, is everything alright?”
“No,” he says. “I need to speak with you. Alone.”
I shake my head. “Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of them.”
Daniels looks at Brom and Kat, as if for the first time. He frowns, and I know he’s trying to figure out why these two are so special to me. But if he comes across the answer, it doesn’t show on his rattled face.
“Last week you were asking after the history teacher, Ms. Wiltern. Why?”
I blink at him calmly. “Because she was teaching some things to her students that seemed off the books, so to speak, and I wanted to get some more information about it. I was merely curious, that’s all.”
“Well, she’s gone,” he says brusquely.
“Gone?” I say, sitting up straighter. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she’s disappeared,” he says, leaning on the desk and breathing hard, like he ran all the way over here. “And Ms. Choi, too. Both are gone.”
“Ms. Choi?” Kat says with a gasp, jolting in her seat. “What happened to her? I was just in her class the other day.”
He takes his hat off his head and starts turning it around and around in his hands. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. But don’t you see how strange this is? First Desi disappears. Then the girl jumps off the roof—”
“Jumped or fell?” Kat says, testing him.
“Jumped. I saw it. We all saw it. She jumped. Then the Sisters tried lying to us all, the entire school, pass it off as it was an accident. No ma’am. I know what happened. Now Ms. Wiltern and Ms. Choi are gone. Their rooms are untouched, all their belongings are there, but they’re nowhere to be found.”
“Do you know if Ms. Wiltern was feeling sick lately?” Brom asks.
Daniels shakes his head. “I have no idea. I barely talked to the woman. She always rebuked me when I did, but I certainly meant her no harm. So where did she go? Leaving all her papers here, not telling a soul?”
I bite my lower lip for a moment. “Have you told the Sisters about your concerns?”
“Not yet, but I will,” he says.
“Mmmmm, maybe think twice before doing that,” I advise him.
“Why?”
I give him a steady look and lower my voice. “I don’t think they’re on our side, Daniels.”
His chin jerks inward. “You mean to tell me that you think they have something to do with all of this?”
“And you don’t?” I counter gently.
He grumbles, moving his mustache back and forth, and straightens up. “I’ll tell you who I will talk to. The constable. The new one, who isn’t missing a head.”
“There’s a new one already?” I ask.
“I’m sure there is,” he says. “Someone has to protect Sleepy Hollow.”
Then he turns around and marches out of the library in the same harried way he came in.
Someone has to protect Sleepy Hollow. But who is there to protect the school?
I sigh and lean back in my chair, running my hand over my face.
It’s going to have to be me, isn’t it?
That night Kat snuck into my bedroom so the three of us could discuss our plan. With the full moon ritual a week away, we have to do everything we can to make sure it goes off without a hitch. The horseman must be expelled, and I know that every day that passes, Brom becomes more and more attached to the spirit. Sometimes Brom goes completely silent and drifts off, but it’s not his normal brooding way, it’s like he’s having a conversation inside his head and I have no clue what the horseman is saying to him. But I do know he’ll lie to Brom to get what he wants, whatever that is.
