by Zara Zenia
"Don't worry," I said instinctually. There was a lot to worry about though, I knew that. "This isn't going to change anything, right? Not really."
"Are you sure about that?" she asked.
I was sitting on the hotel room bed, which was like sitting on a cloud after two days being detained like an animal. It made me wonder how anyone calling themselves righteous could lock people up when they hadn't done anything wrong.
"Yes, I am one hundred percent committed to being able to see you, Marina. No one's going to put a stop to that, other than you..." I let it hang there like a question. Wanted her to assuage my doubts herself without prompting so I could really believe them.
"No one's going to stop you from seeing me then, Tom, no one at all." The smile that had to be on her face was shining through in her voice. I imagined her radiant beauty and had to be with her right away.
I said, "So, we're not banned from going on a nice date. And I do have a hotel room nearby.”
"Well, finals are over now so I don't need to focus on studying. They would have been postponed anyway for me. Some people still hadn't finished. They're mostly freaking out, but I guess some students are just happy about not having to finish them yet."
"How about I pick you up at six tonight?"
"If you're caught anywhere near campus, won't you get in trouble?"
I was silent for a moment, even though that was sure to arouse suspicious. The truth was, I'd been told to stay away from all Sleepy Hollow students or there was a chance I could get myself taken back in by the campus police.
"...What?" she asked. For just the briefest moment I considered using my mind magic to stop her from wanting to know what the deal was, why I had hesitated. Only, I couldn't bring myself to do it to her. That level of dishonesty was surely be the first nail in any relationship, looking at it from a long-term perspective. I was raised to be smarter than that, to understand myself better and those around me too. I couldn't trick her that way.
"You're worrying me now, what's wrong? You're hiding something aren't you?"
"I'll talk to you about it when I pick you up okay? Just please don't worry, it's nothing. Alright?"
Now it was Marina's turn to hold back what she really wanted to say, leaving that cold silence there instead. The soft background noise from my lackluster rural cell connection was like a wall between us for a few seconds.
"Alright, baby? It's nothing, really. Everything will be fine."
"Okay, if you say so," she responded with a less than confident tone in her voice. I hated to hear her sound upset like that. "I'll see you at six then."
"Okay, bye, beautiful."
When I picked Marina up, my first instinct was to go pick her up from her dorm room. I struggled against the urge, knowing that it would be a much smarter idea to just wait in the car where I'd pulled up in the street outside her school. "To hell with that," I said to myself. I wasn't stupid enough to drive up to the parking lot where my expensive car would be like an eyesore among the relatively dirt-cheap ones that were mostly parked there.
There was no way I was going to let Marina walk around at night by herself on a campus where someone had died just days ago, and in suspicious circumstances as well. No fucking way. So, with that mindset fueling my actions, I got out of my car and made my way onto the grounds of Sleepy Hollow. It was a quiet evening, probably largely because no one wanted to be out and about at night on the campus.
Things were going just fine when I came upon someone, an older guy who was maybe in his forties or fifteen. It had to be a staff member, but at least they weren't wearing the uniform of the campus police. Of course! I hadn't even considered the campus police might be out keeping a patrol. This was going to end badly for me one way or another, I just knew it.
"Who's that?" the man asked, squinting through the dimly lit walkway between two buildings. One of those buildings was the women's dorm rooms where I wanted to go. The only issue was that the man was standing near the entrance that would lead to the stairs. I could go another way, so I just turned and started to walk quickly without saying anything.
"Hey, you're that student from Salem, the one the campus police interrogated. You're banned from stepping foot on our property. Stay where you are!" He pulled out his cellphone and was about to unlock it. I didn't see any other option. I turned and walked closer to him so this could be done more easily. I had to stop him.
My mind magic wouldn't have worked against a teacher or other more experienced paranormal if they also had the ability to use mind magic in any serious way. This time I got lucky though, since he apparently had little-to-no defenses against me. All I did was make him forget the past thirty seconds or so; just enough time to ensure that he wouldn't remember even having seen me approaching from the distance. It wouldn't do him any harm at all, and no one would have to know.
I walked right by as he stood there with a stunned expression on his face. As I was almost up the first flight of stairs into the girl's dorm building, I ducked down to look through the glass door and saw that he was starting to come to. The middle-aged man looked around for a moment, then down at his phone that was in his hand. He would probably wonder why he'd taken it out, but that kind of thing happened to people a lot, especially as they got older and had a hectic work schedule. With all that had been going on around the campus, there was a good chance he was running on more coffee than sleep anyway.
I went to Marina's dorm room without any more hitches. She answered and acted appropriately surprised to see me there. "Tom, I thought you would message me when you were on the street. Are you trying to get yourself arrested?"
"Again, you mean?" added her roommate Laurie with a mischievous smirk. "Just kidding, Tom. Are you okay?" She stood up and gave me a brief, sisterly hug. At least Marina had a caring friend to be with her since I couldn't do that here.
"Very funny," I replied, feeling a little weird about hugging another girl, especially with Marina right there. But she didn't seem the least bit phased by it. I guess here ideals about what constituted cheating were a whole lot different than mine, evidently.
We made it out of the school grounds without any issues. I knew where that one man was keeping an eye out, so we just took the other exit from the dorm building and skirting the edge of the school near the fence where it was darker. "They sure don't keep a very good eye on who comes and goes," I commented to Marina as we got into my car.
"You know, I think you're right. I expected to be seen for sure. Did you come across anyone on the way in?" I started up the car and began driving, hoping that my silence would be taken as me just concentrating on driving safely away from the curb.
"Earth to Tom, are you feeling okay? You didn't answer me, silly."
"Oh, sorry. I was just thinking I guess."
"You guess?" It was pretty clear she knew I was dodging her question. I pulled out onto the main road that connected to the one Sleepy Hollow was on and drove toward my hotel. "Did someone see you?" she asked again with a more insistent voice this time.
"It doesn't matter," I said. "They won't remember."
"You didn't use your magic on them..."
Stupidly, it had not dawned on me that using my mind magic might have been a problem. "Someone saw me coming in. I think it must have been one of your lecturers, or maybe a parent volunteer keeping watch. It's not like they were doing a great job, since we had no trouble leaving through the back entrance." I glanced at her quickly then put my eyes back on the road. She looked pissed off.
"You not only came onto campus when you were explicitly told to stay away, told you'd be arrested again if you did so—but you were seen by someone and you used mind magic on them! I can't even ... what the actual fuck."
She rarely swore. Marina even said 'heck' instead of 'hell’, which I found adorable and so pure. This had to mean she was seriously not happy. "They won't even know. No one's going to know."
"They could detect that and possibly figure out what happened if that guy
notices even the slightest odd occurrence with his memory. Tom, this is a paranormal school; they know how to look for tricks like that. Geez, I can't believe you'd be that reckless."
"Look, I know it was stupid. I just couldn't let you walk by yourself through the campus at night. Imagine how I'd feel if something were to happen to you while I was just sitting in my car twiddling my thumbs. I was just looking out for you, baby."
"I know ... I get it, and that's very sweet of you. Oh, fine. There's nothing we can do about it now. Let's just go enjoy ourselves and try to forget about this for a night."
"That's my girl," I said, the smiles coming back to each of our faces for the first time that evening.
7
Daniel
I hadn't seen Marina since all this happened. They were being super strict about letting people just walk around the campus after class hours. "Do you think anyone will have a problem with us visiting her in the girls’ dorms?" my best buddy, Vlad, asked me.
As we walked along through the campus, I had to look up a little to meet his eyes. I was a very big guy, as you would expect from any football player. Only it was hardly a fair comparison when standing beside a dragon shifter.
I replied, "No one said anything about us not being allowed to mingle with other students. What are they gonna do, detain us all inside our dorms until this thing blows over?" And as I said that, I gestured around to the many other students who were freely coming and going. It was daytime and things were carrying on almost as usual. There was a strange air of anxiety about though, with people walking just a little faster than usual, and maybe acting a little suspicious of people they didn't know well.
You can bet your ass that meant I was getting more than my usual share of stares. Being a vampire was never going to be easy, even in a place where most of the students and staff members were paranormals themselves. We were walking through the tunnels, where it could have been day or night for all anyone knew. Except this was modern times and we all had internet connected smartphones or watches.
"I always prefer walking through the tunnels," said Vlad with his dense Romanian accent. His English was good, since it was expected that exchange students do their due diligence in learning the language of their exchange country. But he still had quite the accent. That, coupled with his height, pale skin, and jet-black hair, kind of did make him look like a vampire almost as much as me. His eyes were green though, so that was a dead giveaway to anyone who know anything about vampires, that he was not one of them.
"Why's that?" I asked.
"You must have taken notice," he said with his not quite perfect way of putting together sentences in an American way, "that people stare much less in the tunnels than inside the common room and cafeteria." We hadn't been going to class since finals were now officially over, which is why he didn't mention those.
"There are still non-vampires down here," I said, trying to avoid the subject as I didn't like to think about how much people didn't trust vampires, even when they were paranormals who should have known better. They were used to being treated like freaks by enough people outside of school, so why did they have to pass that onto me?
"True," Vlad said. "But who uses the tunnels when the weather is warm outdoors?" The tunnels were there so that vampiric students could come and go between the buildings without being completely messed up by the sun. And they were also a very appreciated way to travel during the frost-bitten winters we got out here in the sticks. He was right, but I didn't really feel like admitting that to myself right then. Sure, it was starting to get cold now, but today was unusually sunny for this time of year. It was unlikely people would retreat into the tunnels when they could be out there enjoying what might be the last bit of semi-nice weather until next year.
"I think maybe you're just being a little paranoid," I told him. "Seeing Marina will make you feel better."
"Hey, I wonder if she has any vodka. Maybe her roommate will not be there, and we can have ourselves some fun, no matter about being stranded on campus for the winter?"
"Vlad, you're a good buddy, but I don't think there's any way you and I are getting naked in the same room, no matter how much vodka is in the picture."
We shared a laugh at the thought, but the idea of Marina naked was very distracting as we approached the room of her dorm. I knocked and we waited for someone to answer.
"I hope we're not too early. Maybe she hasn't been sleeping so well since all of this happened," I said quietly, wondering if we should have waited for her to message back before coming over.
Vlad started chuckling to himself as he quietly said to me, "Or maybe her roommate is here, and we can have big fun all together." But just as he said that, the door opened. There was Laurie, Marina's roommate. The look on her face was complex, and something like outrage carefully masking the desire to laugh.
"Daniel, how are you? Come in." As I walked through first with her holding the door open for us and gesturing inside like a butler, she gave Vlad a dirty look and said, "Vlad. Come in, if you're not expecting too much fun."
"Who's not having fun?" said Marina from where she was sitting at her study desk. That was on the other side of the door, symmetrically placed near the end of her bed like Laurie's was. It was kind of eerie living in a room where you had the exact same set up as the other person, only with everything opposite.
"Oh, I was just telling the boys they needed to keep it down if we don't want to draw any unnecessary attention to ourselves," Laurie told Marina with a carefully hidden smirk still on her face. It didn't look like she'd been offended at overhearing Vlad's remark at least. Maybe she was even flattered. Guys sure said a lot worse around campus. "What, with all of us being detained here over winter until they find this killer, we wouldn't want to do anything out of character. Right guys?" She looked at Vlad as she said this, then walked over to sit on Marina's bed beside the desk.
"I've missed you both," Marina said to Vlad and myself as she stood up and gave each of us a big warm hug, and passionate kiss. We were great friends and had no issues at all with dating the same girl. It wasn't like we were keeping ourselves to just one woman anyway, so what was there to have an issue with?
"You smell good," Vlad said. Maybe that was just something to do with his shifter ability of scent, or maybe he was just a perv who didn't know when he was being inappropriate sometimes.
"Thanks," said Marina a little self-consciously. Looking at her and then back to where us two guys stood, the massive size difference was impossible not to notice. There was no way Marina would want to deal with the two of us at the same time, given that she was short and kind of petite. "Sorry I didn't get up to answer the door when I heard it was you. How come you didn't message or call before you came over?"
She was clearly flustered and had possibly been crying earlier judging from the way her eyes were a little bit red. Or maybe she'd just been having trouble sleeping.
"We did message," said Vlad. "Both of us. You didn't get our text messages?"
"Oh..." Marina checked her phone and there were a whole bunch of notifications that popped up from various different apps. Anyone our age who had that many unchecked notifications left on their phone was either very busy or trying to avoid contact with the outside world. "I've been trying to stay away from my inbox, and the internet. I'm sorry guys, that's awful of me. I hope you weren't too worried."
"No, we knew you were okay, physically anyway," I said. "But how are you doing otherwise? You been taking care of yourself since, it, happened?" I didn't want to talk about the murder out loud, not if I was the first one to bring it up anyway.
"Well, guys, it was fun running into you like this," said Laurie as she put her computer to sleep and grabbed her hoodie and backpack. She checked herself in the little mirror hung by her bed, brushes some of the short, silver hairs into place. "I have my crypto-botanist study group to get to."
"You're studying now? Finals only just finished," I said with honest shock. I knew she was a hard w
orker but even this was a bit extreme for total geeks.
"It's not time for books, it's time to drink," said Vlad. Somehow, he usually got away with being more crass than other people. It was probably thanks to his charismatic good nature and looks. The accent usually had a special way of making him a lot more endearing, especially to members of the opposite sex around campus. "No?" he asked when Laurie just gave him a stare that was something like a reprimanding bigger sister might give her mischievous little brother.
"No," she said while shaking her head and laughing. "Oh, you're a character, I will give you that. Bye guys, and you take care of this girl or else I might have to unleash the dog on you, got it?" She was talking about the dog that she was capable of shifting into, since that was her paranormal power. And being that she was from a no-nonsense farming community in Nebraska, even a dragon shifter like Vlad was not eager to get on her bad side.
"Don't worry about this lovely young lady," I said. "Nothing's going to happen to her with two badass football stars like us by her side." I did a mock muscles flex to drive home the joke and make it clear that I wasn't taking myself too seriously.
"Okay, hot shot. Have fun." She left the dorm and the three of us were alone for the first time in a while. The idea of having a three-way suddenly hit me again, but that was only because of the shit Vlad had been talking. I would never ask Marina and put her in the awkward position of having to turn us down.
"So, I can't believe we are actually being detained on the campus," Vlad said to break the silence. Marina was present, standing before us, but her mind was somewhere else completely. She seemed pretty upset too.
"Laurie says we're allowed to have visitors in the girls' dorms at least, even boys. Not after hours though, of course. So that much hasn't changed anyway." As though she remembered herself, she put on a forced smile and added, "I get to see two of my favorite boys still, that means." The beautiful little witch took our hands, one hand, one in each of her own. Leading us over to the bed, she placed herself between myself and Vlad and made herself the middle ingredient in a footballer sandwich.
