Suddenly, Sophia screamed, and then her body tensed, her arms thrust outward. The bayberry candle went out and the lights in the house flickered for a moment.
Jumping to her feet, Beth moved toward Sophia, but then the smaller woman opened her eyes and stared right at Beth—her eyes had gone completely black. Beth stumbled back for a moment, almost falling back into the recliner before she regained her footing.
“Be assured,” came a version of Sophia’s not-as-timid-as-usual voice from her mouth, “that Serilda will arise on the night of the blood moon. My minion is already at work. You must all be ready.” She walked past the coffee table and into the center of the living room.
“For what?” Stacy asked. “And who are you?”
“It’s Moloch,” Beth said quickly, annoyed at Stacy for not recognizing one of Serilda’s strongest allies amongst demonkind.
Sophia smiled viciously, an expression that didn’t really fit on her face. “To answer your question, Stacy O’Connor, you must be ready for victory. Death has arisen, and War will follow soon, then Conquest and Famine. The Witnesses have also been called: they are a man and a woman named Crane and Mills, and their role will be to fall before us to prove our might. The end of days has come, and all who walk with the Horsemen will revel in our dominance.”
Stacy grinned. “Sounds good to me.”
“Excellent. You will see your mistress soon.”
Then Sophia collapsed to the carpeted floor. Beth moved to catch her even as she felt the temperature of the room warm back up.
As Beth guided Sophia back to the couch, Frieda said, “What the hell?” She had risen from the rocker and was just standing by the coffee table with a look of annoyance on her face.
“What the hell what?” Stacy said, scooting over on the couch to leave room for Sophia to lie down. “This is what we’ve been waiting for.”
“Oh no it ain’t,” Frieda said emphatically. “She okay?”
Beth nodded. “Just needs to catch her breath.”
In a very weak voice, Sophia said, “That—that was—very creepy.”
Stacy stood with her hands on her hips. “I thought the idea was to bring Serilda back. We’ve waited two centuries for this. How is it not what we’ve been waiting for?”
Frieda pointed an accusatory finger at Stacy. “Yeah, we been waitin’ for Serilda. You see the mistress anywhere in this room? All’s I saw was Moloch taking possession of one of our own like nobody’s business and telling us that he’s resurrecting Serilda. Who the hell is he to do that? She’s our mistress, and I for damn sure don’t want no demon telling me when he’s resurrecting her.”
“That’s enough!” Beth cried before Stacy could say anything. “Look, Moloch’s a heavy hitter. We can not afford to piss him off. If he wants Serilda, that’s good for us. Means we finally get our mistress back.”
Frieda shook her head. “I guess.”
Then Sophia fainted.
“Dammit. Stacy, call 911, we need to get her to a hospital.”
Snorting, Frieda said, “Whatcha gonna tell the EMTs? ‘Sorry, guys, she fainted after a demon possessed her ass’?”
Glowering at Frieda, Beth said, “We’ll tell them she fainted and we don’t know why. C’mon, help me put her feet up.”
THE NEXT FEW days went very poorly for Beth Nugent.
That meeting was the last time she saw Frieda. She slipped out while the EMTs were taking Sophia to Montefiore Medical Center, and shortly after that Frieda had her phones terminated. All attempts at communication were met with busy signals, disconnection notices, and bounced email messages.
Sophia slipped into a coma, her small, frail body unable to handle the strain of possession by Moloch.
And then, on top of everything else, Serilda’s resurrection was stopped by the very two Witnesses that Moloch had informed them of. They were a cop and some British guy, and they managed to find Serilda’s bones—Beth had had no idea that they were buried underneath the old armory—and burn them.
After that, they heard nothing from Moloch. Sophie continued to lie in a hospital bed, strange things continued to happen in Sleepy Hollow, and Beth had had enough of it.
“So what do you suggest we do?” Stacy asked at their All Hallows gathering.
“Frieda, wherever she is, was right: we shouldn’t be counting on others to bring our mistress back. I’ve been doing some research.” Beth pulled out an old text she’d found through one of her contacts at a library in England. “There are medals that Washington gave out during the Revolutionary War.”
“Wait,” Stacy said, “the Congressional Crosses?”
Beth blinked. “You know about those?”
Stacy smiled. “Back in 1785, a witch who killed a couple of members of Washington’s family, and tried to kill Martha Washington, was an ancestor of mine. The story’s been a major one in my family. Those crosses can be used to stop death.”
Nodding, Beth said, “Well, you’re not the only ancestor who has history with this cross. Sophia listed me as her next of kin and emergency contact, so I got to dig through her apartment. She’s got one of these crosses. One of her relatives, a guy named Jebediah Cabot, was awarded one by the Continental Congress, and they kept it in the family ever since. Based on what I read, we can use the crosses to cast a spell that’ll resurrect the mistress—but we have to wait for the new year. Once eight half-moons have gone by, we can use six of the crosses to get her back. There are a couple in New York, and I can get my hands on those two no problem. But we need three more, which is why you are about to apply for a job in Ticonderoga.”
Stacy frowned. “What the hell’s in Ticonderoga? For that matter, where the hell is Ticonderoga? Isn’t that where they make the pencils?”
“What matters to you is that one of the Congressional Crosses is up there. You need to keep an eye on it and figure out the best way to steal it. We’re gonna need it in January to resurrect the mistress.” She smiled. “And it’s about four or five hours’ drive north of here. Nice little town, you’ll love it.”
“If you say so. What’ll you be doing in the meantime?”
Beth sighed. “The two people who stopped Moloch are the Witnesses he mentioned, which mostly means they’re gonna be a pain in Moloch’s ass.”
“Fine by me,” Stacy said. “He’s a presumptuous asshole. Frieda wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but she was right about one thing—that should’ve been us bringing the mistress back, not him.”
“Next time it will be us, you can count on that for damn sure. And we’ll need to be ready for Ichabod Crane and Abigail Mills.”
Stacy frowned. “Who names their kid Ichabod?”
Beth shrugged. “Someone in England. He’s a professor at Oxford, and Mills is a cop. In fact, get this—she used to be Corbin’s partner.”
Rolling her eyes, Stacy said, “Gotta love it. She taking his place?”
“No, that’s the good part. The guy they put in charge is my old partner from when I was a uniform—Frank Irving.”
“Isn’t he the one whose daughter is a cripple?”
“Hey,” Beth said, pointing a finger at Stacy, “Macey’s a good kid.”
“Whatever.” She took out her smartphone and Googled Ticonderoga.
For her part, Beth also took out her phone. She wanted to check in and see how Sophia was doing.
Just a few more months, and she’d be able to fulfill the coven’s long-term mission. And nobody—not these two Witnesses and not her ex-partner—was going to stand in her way.
FIFTEEN
SLEEPY HOLLOW, NEW YORK
JANUARY 2014
ABBIE DROVE THE entire way back to Sleepy Hollow from the Bronx in silence. Before hitting the road, she texted Irving to tell him to be at the armory as soon as possible, and Jenny read the text he sent back when she was on the Saw Mill headed north saying he’d be there in ten minutes.
This meant he was already there waiting, alongside Crane, when they got to the Batcave.
After spending the entire drive up trying to figure out how to explain things to Irving, she was no more sure how to do it than she was when she recognized Beth Nugent’s face on the bodega security footage.
She entered to see Irving standing with his arms folded, Crane sipping tea with the grimoire from Whitcombe-Sears closed under his elbow.
Procrastinating a bit on talking to Irving, she said to her fellow Witness: “I take it you’ve got the spell all nice and memorized?”
Crane nodded. “I now merely await a location in which to cast it.”
“Well, we’re getting closer to that.” She let out a long breath and turned to Irving. “We got a break in the case, and you’re not gonna like it.”
And then she just dove in and told him everything, including the stuff he already knew about Ippolito’s deal all the way through to seeing security footage of Nugent buying the same burner phone that Polchinski had been calling for the past three weeks.
Irving was quiet for several seconds. Abbie hadn’t known him very long, and still had trouble reading him. She frankly had no idea how the captain would react to this news. Evidence to date suggested a fairly measured reaction—Irving had yet to demonstrate any capacity for flying off the handle—but it was often the quiet ones who exploded without warning.
To her relief, he simply folded his arms. “So let me see if I got this straight. You’re accusing my former partner, someone who’s been in my home, someone who babysat my kid, of committing mass murder in the name of resurrecting a demon-powered witch, all on the say-so of a guy making a deal to get off on a B-and-E charge?”
Jenny muttered, “I liked the way Abbie put it better.”
“Look, Captain, I know it’s far-fetched, but we don’t have anything else to go on. Besides, we only have her word for what happened at the Met. She knows the security well enough there, and she’s in a position to keep them from reporting it. She didn’t get seriously hurt at all at MCNY—”
“Neither did I, neither did one of the officers, neither did the museum chief of security,” Irving said, “so that doesn’t prove a damn thing. And before you mention the burner phone, that’s still a real flimsy connection to Polchinski.”
“And if we were building a case to present to the DA, I’d agree with you,” Abbie said tartly, “but we’re not. We’re trying to stop the resurrection of a very powerful witch who will likely go on a killing spree.”
Crane added quietly, “Your use of future tense is inaccurate, Lieutenant. Serilda has already killed dozens, both in my time and in the present day, and her followers are responsible—”
Irving snapped. “I know what her followers are responsible for, Crane!” He shook his head. “I just don’t buy that my ex-partner is one of them.”
Standing up, Crane moved toward Irving. “I’m aware, Captain, that the bond you forged over your mutual humping of your radio car is a strong one.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, it still took all of Abbie’s willpower not to burst out laughing at that. In her peripheral vision, she saw Jenny was also trying to hold in a laugh. There were times when laughing at Crane’s malapropisms and attempts at modern slang were the only things that got Abbie through a day.
“However—” Crane tried to continue, but Irving stepped over him.
“No, you’re not aware, Crane. You have no idea what my life has been like, and I’ll thank you not to presume.” Irving’s tone had gotten calmer, but no less snippy.
Crane hesitated to respond, but Abbie did not. “Look, Captain, we just followed the evidence—it may be flimsy, but it’s all we’ve got and we’re running out of time. It’ll be sunset soon. We need to find your friend, and we need to find her now.”
Shaking his head, Irving paced to a corner of the armory. “I’m not buying it. There’s no way she could’ve kept something like this from me.”
That was the straw that broke Abbie’s back. “Are you kidding me? Look around this room, Captain. All the crap we’ve got piled in here is a monument to Corbin—my mentor, my best friend, my partner—keeping an entire part of his life away from me. He’d been hunting demons since before I met him, he even brought my sister into it”—she pointed at Jenny, who seemed to cringe—“and I had no idea until after he died.”
Crane approached Irving and put a hand on his shoulder. “The lieutenant speaks the truth, Captain. Katrina was my wife, yet she also hid a second life from me. We all of us have had things kept from us by those we held dear. And both Sheriff Corbin and my wife engaged in deception with the best of intentions—if Miss Nugent is what we believe she is, then her intentions are far less honorable, and far more dangerous for that.”
Jenny spoke up. “I know it sucks. I remember how devastated I was when I was a teenager, and the older sister that I worshipped and would’ve done anything for threw me under the bus.”
Abbie winced. “Jenny—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t worry about it, Abbie, I’m not bringing it up to ding you for it, I’m just reminding Captain Happy here that people are more complicated than you think they are. We all have stuff to hide, and we all keep things to ourselves. You just told Crane that he doesn’t know you—well, maybe you don’t entirely know this Nugent chick. Get the hell over it.”
“For that matter,” Abbie added, “Moloch taunted Crane right before Christmas, said Crane would betray me. No way that’s gonna happen—except maybe it will. We just don’t know.”
Irving let out a breath through his teeth and then removed his phone from his jacket pocket. “Let me call her, and—”
Reaching out to grab his wrist, Abbie cried out, “No! That’s like warning her we’re coming. She already thinks she’s got one over on us. Let’s let her think that.”
Now Irving glared down at her. “If you’d give me a chance, Lieutenant, I was gonna say, ‘Let me call her and make her think we’re on a different track.’ Lull her into a false sense of security.”
Abashed, Abbie removed her hand from Irving’s wrist. “Sorry.”
“I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.” He shook his head and started fondling the surface of his smartphone. “I don’t like it, but I also know better than to argue with all three of you—especially when you’re right.” He put the phone to his ear. “Hey, Beth. Listen, we got a line on one of the people involved with the thefts. Yeah, Lieutenant Mills has a CI who pointed her to a second-story guy up in Greenwich. We’re heading into Connecticut to check it out. You want in?”
Abbie couldn’t make out what Nugent was saying in reply, but she approved of Irving’s tactic.
“Okay, well, I’ll let you know whether or not it turns into anything. Later.”
Crane nodded approvingly. “Well played, Captain.”
“Thanks.” Irving pocketed the phone. “She said she’s visiting a friend in the hospital, which probably had about as much truth in it as what I said. She lives in a house in the North Bronx—been in her family forever. I suggest we get a move on before the moon comes up.”
Jenny moved over to the file cabinet. “Let me just get our protection.”
Confused, Abbie watched her sister. “Protection?”
“Yeah. When I was going through trying and failing to organize this monstrosity last night—”
Unable to resist, Abbie interrupted. “Let me guess, you got sidetracked?”
“Bite me entirely, sis. Anyhow, I found something Corbin dug up a few years back.” She started rummaging through one of the file cabinet drawers, and then pulled out a rolled-up scroll. After shutting the drawer, she unrolled the scroll on the table, revealing an ink drawing of a circle with both a pentagram and a naked human figure inside it, the figure’s arms and legs overlaying four of the spokes of the pentagram, with the head overlapping the fifth spoke.
Crane stared at it almost reverently. “An Agrippa pentagram. At Oxford, we regularly decried such things as Renaissance superstition. I was forced to revise that opinion when I observ
ed General Washington use one as a protection from one of Serilda’s attempts on us.” He stared at Jenny. “As I recall, the talisman requires a key word to be spoken to be effective?”
Jenny nodded. “From what Corbin told me, I say the magic word, and anyone touching the scroll is protected from all magic or magical harm for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Which is it?”
“Huh?” Jenny asked, sounding confused.
“If it is from magical harm, that is one thing, but from all magic? If so, I must refrain from touching the scroll.”
Frowning, Jenny asked, “What? That’s crazy. This lady rips people’s limbs and heads off.”
Abbie, however, had figured it out. “If you’re protected from magic, you can’t cast the spell.”
“Indeed. I shall have to rely upon the three of you to protect me.”
Smiling, Abbie said, “That’s what we do. Protect each other. Only way to stop the bad guys is if we have each other’s backs.” That last part she added with an apologetic look at her sister.
For her part, Jenny just looked away. Sentiment hadn’t been a strong suit of Jenny’s since the incident in the forest, and Abbie had to admit that she only had herself to blame for that. If Abbie hadn’t—as Jenny had so eloquently put it a few minutes ago—thrown her younger sister under the bus, she might not have turned into the surly adult standing before her now.
“All right, then, let’s armor up,” Jenny said, putting a hand on the scroll.
Abbie did likewise.
Irving hesitated. “Sorry, just trying to wrap my brain around all this. Again.”
“I sympathize, Captain,” Crane said quietly, “but we must hurry.”
“I’m fine,” Irving said as he put his hand on a corner of the scroll. “Any time I have trouble with all this nonsense, I remember Paul Short.”
Wincing, Abbie nodded in understanding. Short was a lab tech, and an old friend of Irving. Abbie had met him once or twice on cases. He was shot to ribbons by the Horseman Death, while Irving watched—and almost got killed himself. That was the event that finally brought Irving over into the light side, as it were. Up until then he’d been supportive, but not entirely believing. But seeing a decapitated man blow away an old friend of his with a Colt M4A1 had a way of forcing the captain’s belief in the things that went bump in the night.
Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution Page 16