by Zenia, Zara
“And if anything else happens then we’ll take it to the faculty. I might anyway, to be honest,” I agreed.
“I’ll make an official note of it in the record, in case anything else happens,” she replied. “Oh well, hopefully that’s the last of it.”
My gaze moved to where Marina stood with Laurie and waited for the elevator. She caught my gaze and gave me a final wave.
I certainly hoped it wouldn’t be the last time I saw her.
8
Marina
As stupid as it sounded, I was infinitely more excited to start classes than anything I’d done since arriving in Sleepy Hollow so far.
I’d spent so long sitting and reading books so that I could have something to put on my application because I knew that my high school wasn’t teaching me anything to a high standard when it came to supernatural topics. My grammar and math and geography skills were great, but being able to tell you a detailed explanation of a vampires powers? If it had been up to my school, I never would have had that ability.
But I’d put in the work because I’d always been desperate to escape Fort Ann.
As much as I loved my mom, I probably wouldn’t ever stop resenting her a little bit for not taking me away from there. Making me hide the fact I was a witch for as long as we could get away with it for, giving me an education that would have never gotten me into a good supernatural college on its own. I would never stop loving her and be glad for the support she gave me my entire life in other ways, but being in Fort Ann until I was eighteen was something I would always regret.
But now it was all over. I was here. In Sleepy Hollow, at the college of my dreams, and about to start class.
My first cryptozoology class, no less. I sat through the entire thing, completely enraptured. It was all things I’d heard before of course, because it was the introductory lecture, but they were things I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a classroom and listening to.
And I already thought my lecturer— and as I soon found out adviser at the college —was great. Professor Macon wasn’t physically imposing at all. Small and rotund with a thick brown beard and long brown hair and no indication as to what kind of supernatural he was— if at all. You didn’t need to be a supernatural to specialize in cryptozoology.
Either way, all I cared about was the fact he spoke in an engaging, humorous way that immediately revealed how passionate he was about the subject. I couldn’t wait until it got to smaller group teaching, or until I could go to him for one-on-one advice for essays or questions about the reading.
In a purely intellectual way, I could have sat and talked to the man for hours and hours. Even just sat and listened to him talk for hours and hours.
I made a note on my phone as soon as the lecture was over to remind myself to have a look online and see if there would be any video lectures I could watch.
As well as my initial lectures— which were all incredible, even the GE subjects I hadn’t really been interested in taking —I had two appointments with supervisors. One was with Professor Macon, which I was looking forward to. The other was with Professor Crane and I was looking forward to that one significantly less.
Standing outside his door, I forced a pleasant smile onto my face before I knocked. I was sure we’d just caught him in a strangely bad mood when we ran into him the other day, and it was probably just that we’d taken his directions incorrectly, or that he’d accidentally misspoke, that meant we were stuck in the building longer than necessary.
I knocked on the door and Professor Crane opened the door. Seeing him again was almost a relief. He looked friendly, with his always watery eyes and thin smile on his lips. “Marina,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied. “I have a guidance counseling appointment.”
“Yes, of course. Come in.”
I entered his small office. It was all pristine, to the point where I was worried that I’d manage to ruin something as I walked in and sat down on a small, uncomfortable looking wooden chair opposite his desk.
“So,” he said, sitting down opposite her and straightening his papers even though they were already in perfect order. “How are you finding Sleepy Hollow so far?”
“Amazing! My classes have been incredible so far, and my dorm room, and my roommate, are all great. Honestly I couldn’t be having a better time.” There was no way I was going to mention my run in with Carlotta. I’d spoken to Laurie about it, and she’d told me I should report it to someone, but I didn’t want to cause any trouble. She’d just been drunk and probably thought that I was someone I wasn’t. If she made another move to attack me then I’d do something, but right now I just wanted to not make that tiny dent on my perfect week into a crater.
I was much happier to just pretend it hadn’t happened.
Professor Crane nodded and jotted something down in his notepad. I had no idea what he could be writing down from that one statement, but I didn’t bother asking him.
“That’s good,” he said. “And how are you finding your major classes so far? Do you know what you want to specialize in?”
I shifted in my seat. “I’m really loving my classes, but I don’t know about specialization just yet. It’s still another year until I’ll be able to pick electives in my major, so I’m waiting to get a better overview soon.”
He shook his head and wrote a long note before looking at me and continuing. “You’ll want to be applying to summer internships and forging relationships with the right people from the beginning of your degree. If you don’t know what you want to specialize in from the get go then you’ll have wasted those opportunities and it’ll put you behind others, which will put you behind in general. Of course we don’t want people to ever be behind at Sleepy Hollow. You’re here because you’re supposed to be the best. That’s why you were accepted.”
I opened my mouth and then shut it again, the shock of being told off making me speechless for a second. I’d just wanted to come and learn from people who really knew what they were talking about before I got too focused on a certain area. Learning from a professional was so much better than learning from a textbook.
And I didn’t know what I was good at yet, either. I knew what I enjoyed reading about, but I’d never been assessed properly. I’d never had any feedback telling me what areas I excelled in academically.
My immediate temptation was to tell all this to Professor Crane and to try and make him understand my perspective, but if I admitted that I had no academic background— though it must have been obvious from my school records —that he might equally judge me as being right for the school.
“Well I am really interested in cryptid rights and freedoms specifically, and the legal aspect of how they sit in a zone between humans and animals. It’s just that I haven’t done anything about that this year yet, and I haven’t spoken to my adviser about it.” It wasn’t a lie, that was something I strongly enjoyed reading about, but it certainly wasn’t something I’d devoted myself to and was certain I wanted to go into when I was finished with my college education.
Maybe Professor Crane was right, maybe I hadn’t thought about this hard enough or long enough. Laurie already knew she wanted to be a crypto-botanist. I was just busy thinking about being excited to learn, to get to see supernaturals up close. I’d never gone far enough ahead to think about what I wanted to do when that was over.
“I see,” he said, and didn’t sound even remotely impressed by my answer. I’d probably already disappointed him too much. “Well you’ll have to speak to your professor and hope that he can help you move forward since you’re already behind on that thinking, then.” He continued to write things in his notepad, and I really wished he wrote in bigger letters so that I could read it.
“I have an appointment with Professor Macon tomorrow. I’ll talk to him about it then.”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
I sat uncomfortably through the rest of the questions about whether I was settling in okay at the university and whether I’d made
friends and whether I needed any help from him. By the end I was completely decided that he disliked me personally. I wasn’t sure if it was just because I’d fallen at the first hurdle, or if it was something else about my personality that he’d taken a disliking to.
Either way I was glad when he said, “That’s all for now then,” and gestured to the door, so that I could leave.
I thanked him for the advice and scurried out of there.
Straight into Carlotta, who stood leaning against the opposite wall and picking at her nails.
Instinctively, I almost jerked back and into Professor Crane’s office, before catching myself and hoping I hadn’t shown my reaction on my face.
Carlotta looked up and saw me, and her eyebrows narrowed. I swallowed thickly and tried not to stare. My stomach was in knots.
She still looked like she wanted to attack me. Did that mean that she really had been calling me a freak at Vlad’s party and not just mistaken me for someone else? Or was she just embarrassed about seeing me now because she’d made a fool of herself?
I didn’t stick around to find out, and turned and walked back down toward the corridor toward the exit. I at least knew where the exit was now, after managing to find a map of this building.
As I was walking, my cell buzzed in my pocket. I grinned when I pulled it out. A text from Colin.
Fancy going for a coffee later? Or tomorrow?
I immediately replied in the affirmative, ignoring the nagging feeling that I’d only just been telling myself how not-casual things with Colin already seemed.
9
Marina
I met up for coffee with Colin that evening, excited about seeing him again. We went to a little place just off campus instead of finding somewhere on campus where there were tons of other students. As it turned out, the café was mostly filled with students anyway, but it wasn’t anyone I knew so I didn’t feel self-conscious about it.
“Have you been here before?” I asked as I read over the menu. It was a small place with checkered table cloths and fake flowers and fairy lights strung around the ceiling. We sat next to a large window looking out over the town of Sleepy Hollow.
“A few times. I like coming here to sketch ideas sometimes. It’s on the outskirts of town so it’s not normally that busy. I guess a few more people have discovered it since the last time I was here.” He picked up one of the flowers in the pot in the middle of the table. “Oh, it’s real. I thought it was fake. Last time they were fake.”
My eyes skimmed over the menu. There were a thousand types of tea to choose from, and seemingly just as many coffees. “This is insane,” I said. “Oh, and the coffee shop is really cute. It’s a good find.” I smiled at him nervously from under my lashes. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
He flashed a grin at me. “Thank you for making it even more gorgeous.”
I flushed pink. “I’m never going to pick something to drink if you keep distracting me like that.”
He laughed. “Are you thinking tea or coffee?”
“Tea I think. Even if you invited me out for coffee. I’m bad with caffeine, I won’t get to sleep tonight otherwise.”
“That’s why Maggie’s cookies are so great as a replacement when the studying gets rough. The magic is easier to manage.”
I made a mental note of that for when exam season started up. I already knew I’d completely overdo it with the studying, but having a good night’s sleep instead of the caffeine-induced trances I’d ended up in before my high school finals was definitely a better solution.
“So were your first year finals really intense?” I asked, finally settling on a tea that I liked the look of and putting the menu away so I wouldn’t be tempted to change my mind again and again.
“It was for me, but I know some people who didn’t take them too seriously. It depends what you want to do with your first summer, I suppose. Those who were applying for internships took them very seriously, those who were going on vacation less so.” He shrugged. “I find it difficult to start an art project without being fully invested in it. There’s something about coming up with an idea and just being lost in making it happen that I love.”
“It’s slightly less romantic, but that’s how I am with cryptozoology. How people would get lost in murder mysteries and stay up all night long to find out the ending, I’d always wanted to stay up and wait for the book to answer all the questions it had posed to me in the introduction.” I chuckled and rubbed the back of my neck. “God, I sound like such a geek.”
Colin laughed. “It’s cute. Don’t ever be embarrassed about being passionate about something.”
The woman from behind the counter came to the table then, small notebook in hand. “What can I get for you both?” she asked with a friendly smile. It was refreshing, compared to the reception I’d gotten in the diner when first arriving in Sleepy Hollow. I’d been a little wary when Colin had suggested going somewhere off campus.
“I’ll have the Butterscotch Truffle tea, please,” I said.
“And an African Mint for me,” Colin said.
“Of course.” She jotted them both down. “Our fresh cakes today are Red Velvet and Salted Caramel Chocolate cake, if I could interest you in either.”
I made a noise that was probably inappropriate. “A slice of the red velvet would be amazing, thank you.”
“Me too, please,” Colin agreed.
She jotted it down and disappeared back behind the counter.
“Sweet tooth?” he asked.
“Absolutely. I’m going to be buying a bunch of Maggie’s cookies for all the wrong reasons.”
He laughed. “I’m bad for it, too. I’m only barely resisted the hot chocolate.”
“They have hot chocolate?” I asked, devastated. I hadn’t flicked that far through the menu, I guessed, assuming it was all coffee after the teas ended.
“Well, we’ll just have to come back another time.”
I grinned widely at him. “I won’t be able to resist the pull of hot chocolate.”
The tea smelled divine when it arrived, and the cake looked incredible.
“Are you working on any sculptures at the moment?” I asked Colin in between mouthfuls, wishing the tea was cool enough to drink.
“I’m always working on far too many things to ever complete,” he said, eating his cake much more elegantly than I suspected I was. “But I’ve got one project I’m really focused on at the moment. It’s a sculpture of a Fae woman. It’s a while since I did a singular portrait sculpture, but I saw a piece of artwork online the other day that really inspired me. I had to start sculpting immediately. I’ve been pretty absorbed in it since then.”
“I’m honored you’re here with me right now, then,” I teased. “What medium do you sculpt in?”
“I like sculpting in the more expensive things when I can. You know, crazy things like marble and granite, but it’s such a rare occurrence that it’s not normally what I’d go for, and I’ve never had access to enough to do a full size one. I’m sculpting this one in clay. When it’s finished I can paint it. I like clay for sculpting a lot because it’s easy to get hold of and you can do a lot of things with it. It’s what I always sculpted with before here, but now I’ve got access to a lot more materials and I’m still finding my niche, I think.”
“I’d love to see some of your work some time.” Just watching him talk about it was intoxicating. His eyes danced with excitement as he talked to me about it. He still had a piece of cake on his fork that he’d completely forgotten about.
He pulled his cell from his pocket. “Obviously it’s not the same as seeing it in person, but this is the kind of thing I’m interested in.”
He handed me the phone and on it was a picture of a sculpture. Half of it was clay, and painting with stunning realism to depict a beautiful Fae woman with long red hair similar to Colin’s own and a long flowing gown. She looked like she was running away from something. Behind her was a metal sculpture. Made from a shining silv
er metal, it was completely at odds with the more traditional style of the clay, but I still knew what it was almost immediately. A man. A Vampire, judging by his fangs. He was chasing her.
“It’s incredible,” I breathed. “It’s not just that it takes so much skill to make, but to even come up with the idea. I love it.” And I wasn’t just sucking up to him. I couldn’t wait to see it in person.
He looked a little flushed under the praise. “That’s what I created for my final last year.”
“I assume you did very well.”
He laughed. “Yeah. It’s possible that I got a very good grade.”
“Well you clearly deserved it. I can’t wait to see what you do this year.”
“Oh God, don’t skip me ahead to finals already. I’m trying not to think about it. I tell you, I’ll shut myself away and you won’t hear from me for days. I’m terrible for it.”
My heart fluttered a little at the fact he thought we were definitely going to still be friends— or more —by the time finals came around. “Do you normally sculpt Fae?”
“It depends. I like sculpting all kind of people. I’ve done all the supernaturals and humans. One of my favorite things to do is shifters mid change, but it’s something that’s been done a thousand times, so I’m trying to branch out from that. I like sculptures with people from two different supernatural backgrounds.”
I rested my head on my hands, well aware just how much I was swooning while listening to him talk. “How come?”
“I’ve always liked the theory that all supernaturals actually come from a common ancestor, especially considering the current divides in society. I like to sculpt with that in mind. So, take for example that one you’ve just seen. They’re quite obviously a Fae and a vampire, but the faces on them both are exactly identical. Of course it’s harder to tell because they’re in a different medium, but your first reaction is Vampire chasing Fae, but if you look they’re clearly the same person just with different racial traits.”
