Chapter 2 — When Desire Becomes Magic (Lara)

The sound of students leaving the classrooms echoed through the college hallway like a call to what would be my destiny. While the other students hurried to their next commitments, I walked slowly toward Professor Dorian Caine’s literature auditorium.

He stood on the auditorium stage, with those gray eyes that seemed to see through all my masks. When he spoke about *Wuthering Heights* to the graduate class, his voice was a spell in itself. Deep, resonant, full of a passion that made my stomach tighten.

“Heathcliff and Catherine…” he said, sweeping the auditorium with his penetrating gaze. “They represent obsession in its purest form. A connection that transcends death.”

His eyes lingered on me for a second longer than necessary, and I felt my face burn. He wasn’t just teaching about obsession — he embodied it.

After the lecture, while everyone dispersed, I pretended to organize my notebooks. He approached my row, his woody perfume enveloping me like an embrace.

“Lara…” he said, his tone softer than with the other students. “Your essay on the gothic nature of love in Brontë was… insightful.”

“Thank you, Professor,” I replied, keeping my voice steady even though my heart was racing. “I think the true horror isn’t rejection, but being loved incompletely.”

He tilted his head, studying me as if I were a complex text he was trying to decipher.

“An interesting observation,” he murmured. “Perhaps you should explore that in your next assignment.”

As he turned to pick up his notes, my eyes were drawn to the still-open screen of his laptop: him and his wife, smiling in front of the college library. His hand was wrapped around her waist, pulling her close as if he feared she might disappear.

The stab of envy was so physical that it nearly took my breath away. I wanted that. Not just him — but to be looked at that way. To be the reason someone breathed.

That night, in my room wrapped in shadows, I opened Agnes’s diary. My hands trembled as I flipped through the pages until I found the spell I was looking for: “Binding by Obsession.”

The ingredients included personal items from the target.

The next day, during his office hours, while other students waited in the hallway, I furtively approached his desk in the department. My fingers closed around the pen he had used to grade papers, still warm from his touch.

“Finding everything you need, Lara?” His voice made my heartbeat skip.

He was standing at the office door, watching me with a curious expression.

“Yes,” I lied, hiding the pen in my bag. “Just… reviewing my notes from yesterday’s lecture.”

He came closer, and the outside world disappeared.

“You’ve been distant lately,” he commented, his eyes studying my face. “Is everything okay?”

The concern in his voice was almost worse than my parents’ indifference.

“I’m perfectly fine,” I whispered, stepping back before I could do something stupid, like touch his face.

I went straight to the department bathroom, locking myself in a stall. I leaned my forehead against the cold door, the pen still warm in my hand. I didn’t just want to disturb him or seduce him.

I wanted to rip away that devotion he reserved for his wife. I wanted him to look at me as the only thing that mattered in his universe.

And according to Agnes’s diary, I knew exactly how to get it.

That night, I traced a circle of salt on the floor of my room and lit black candles I had taken from the same box where I found Grandma’s diary. I held the professor’s pen over a flame, whispering the words that would make his desire for me consume any other loyalty.

“May he see me when he closes his eyes,” I recited, the flame reflecting in my tears. “May he want me until it hurts.”

Outside, the wind howled like a warning. But I didn’t care about warnings. I would finally find someone who couldn’t abandon me.

Even if it meant destroying him in the process.