Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Two) (8 page)

Chapter 7

Kate was uncharacteristically silent on their ride home. Quinn tried to see into her mind only to find it blocked.

“What’s up?” he asked. “You still mad at me?”

“I’m mad at Tim,” she replied. “I’m just angry you apologized.”

“He was right and you know it,” Quinn replied. “We disappeared for a chunk of the day. I didn’t even file my story on Zora until 3 p.m. It wasn’t professional.”

“It was fun, though,” Kate said.

She knew she should let it go. Tim was fuming when they returned to the office, closing his office door behind them and demanding to know where they’d been and why they hadn’t responded to their cell phones. Quinn had been immediately apologetic, but Kate…

Kate had been angry and unable to understand why. By any objective measure, Tim was right. But she felt like he had ruined a perfect celebratory moment for them. They should be out enjoying their new powers, not cooped up inside writing stories. Suddenly everything in comparison to being Prince of Sanheim seemed petty. They had their abilities back—she wanted to embrace them.

That wasn’t all of it.

While Quinn was itching to transform himself into the Headless Horseman again, Kate was lost. She wasn’t even sure how she had done what she had last year, didn’t understand how she had taken her mother’s form.

In short, her powers were coming back and she still didn’t know what she was.

“It was fun,” Quinn said.

He turned from driving to smile at her. She wanted to smile back, but she was frustrated. Here he had all the answers about his own powers and she had only questions. She turned away from him and watched the trees rolling by. Soon he would be out there in the forest, racing along the roads. And she would be… what? Sitting at home? Riding with him?

As they drove, they passed a small church with a graveyard. For just a moment, she glimpsed something standing among the stones—it looked like a person. But what was someone doing out there this late at night?

“Turn around,” she said.

As he started to object, she opened up her mind, let him see everything she had been thinking. She still didn’t know what she was looking for, didn’t understand why she wanted to go to the cemetery. But suddenly she wanted to very much.

Quinn completed the u-turn and headed back to the cemetery. He took a left and parked at the far end of the parking lot. Kate was out before the car came to a complete stop. She practically ran into the cemetery.

There was no one there and she knew there never had been. So what had she seen?

She heard Quinn come up behind her, but he knew better than to say anything. The cemetery was small—only a couple dozen gravestones with a forest around it. It was her second time today in a graveyard, but she had no desire to make love to Quinn this time. Instead, she moved from stone to stone, searching for something.

She had seen something, she knew she had. More than that, she could feel someone here, watching them. She was cold suddenly, despite the warm, still evening.  

“Who’s here?” she asked. “Who are you?”

She heard a whisper then, something so faint she could barely hear it. She felt a touch on her arm and she turned to find nothing there. But something was trying to communicate with her.

She read the names on the graves, their dates and inscriptions.

“Beloved Father.”

“Blessed Mother.”

“May God Grant Her Peace.”

She moved past each one, moving frantically now. She knew it was here, knew some key would explain it to her.

Finally, in the back row, she found it. A grave with a small statue of a little girl looking solemnly toward the forest. The girl had angel’s wings, but Kate knew better, understood without being told.

She lightly touched the statue and a breeze blew all around her. There was the sound of leaves rustling and underneath, a woman crying.

Kate read the inscription at the base of the statue. It was only a girl’s name, Carrie Alyers, 1910-1915.

“This was your daughter, wasn’t it?” Kate said.

She could see a woman now, the same one she must have glimpsed as they drove past. The woman was young. She had black hair tied up in a low bun and was dressed in black from head to toe. Her face was awash in sorrow and despair. Kate watched her as the woman stared back.

“You see me?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Kate responded.

“Are you dead?”

“No, but… I am the harbinger of death,” she said, and shivered as she uttered the words that Lord Halloween had first written more than a decade ago.

The woman nodded as if it made perfect sense.

“Can you help me?” she asked.

“I’ll try,” Kate said.

“They buried me with my husband,” the woman said. “I asked to be buried with my baby, but they… They buried her here.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Christiana Mitchell,” the woman replied.

“Where are you buried?”

“Hillsboro,” she said. “I lived there… once. A long time ago.”

Kate looked at her and could feel her pain and loss. A minute ago she had been translucent, but now she seemed solid.

“Can you see her?” she asked Quinn.

“Yes, but until a few seconds ago, I kinda thought you had lost it,” Quinn replied.

“How long have you been here?” Kate asked her.

The woman shook her head. She seemed confused by the question.

“Will you help me?” she asked. Her voice was urgent, desperate.

“Yes,” Kate said.

The woman’s face flooded with relief. She watched them both silently. Kate wasn’t sure how, but somehow she knew exactly what she had to do. Quinn turned to face Kate.

“What’s the plan here, honey?”

“Well,” Kate said, “how do you feel about a little grave-robbing?”

Quinn didn’t blink an eye, didn’t question what kind of difference it would make, or why they were helping a random spirit. Instead, he just nodded.

“We always have the coolest dates,” he said.

*****

Grave-robbing, it turned out, was surprisingly hard and long work.

Kate and Quinn left to buy shovels and other equipment at Home Depot and went home to change into clothes more suited for their task.

Then they waited until the dead of night. Neither thought it was a great idea to begin their endeavor while cars were driving by.

Using a battery-powered lantern, the two started digging at 2 a.m. It took longer than either imagined. An hour and a half later, they finally hit the coffin.

Quinn had worried they would find a gigantic ornate casket, like the ones he had seen on TV. At the very least, he thought it would be like the dark mahogany one they had buried Janus in. Instead it was a small pine coffin with no decoration of any kind.

He leaned on the shovel and looked at Kate. He wondered if the two of them had gone insane. What were they doing here, digging up a nearly century-old grave of a young child?

They should be home, reading Crowley’s book or trying to figure out more about who was after them. At the very least, they should be exploring their abilities.

He looked out of the hole they had dug and saw the woman watching them. There was a look of such intensity in her eyes, of longing. Quinn wiped the sweat from his brow. He felt filthy and tired, but he didn’t feel like what he was doing was wrong. Whatever they were up to, this woman clearly needed their help.

Quinn looked down and felt stupid.

“Uh, Kate, how are we going to get this in the car?”

“Can’t we get it in the trunk?” she responded.

“You have seen our trunk, right?”

Quinn suddenly had visions of trying to cram a coffin into the back of his compact car. The vision ended with the police showing up.

“I’m trying to imagine how we’re going to explain the coffin to the cops.”

It was the woman in black who resolved the problem.

“You don’t need the coffin,” the ghost said simply.

“But your daughter…” Quinn said, then stopped. “Oh.”

“You just need what’s in it,” the woman said.

Quinn wanted to laugh, or maybe cry. In the past year he had done some strange things. The fact that this wasn’t the weirdest only made it worse.

“Okay,” Kate said.

She crawled out of the grave and headed toward the car. When she came back, she had a black cloth bag.

“Where did you get that?” Quinn asked.

“Don’t ask,” Kate replied.

Quinn shrugged. He looked at the woman standing above them.

“Who do you want to take the bones?” Quinn asked.

“I’ll do it,” the ghost responded.

The woman in black sat down at the grave’s edge, then jumped into the hole they had dug.

“How can you…” he trailed off.

Quinn looked from the woman to Kate.

“You’re doing this, aren’t you?” he asked her. “You’ve made her solid.”

Kate nodded, seemed shocked herself.

“How?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m ready,” the woman said, as if this were totally natural.

Quinn wondered if he were dreaming. But the ache in his muscles, the sweat on his chest, told him no.

He finished digging the coffin out of the hard soil, then stepped to the side. Placing the shovel’s edge on the seam of the coffin, he pushed upward. For just a moment, it seemed like it might not work. But decay had worn the coffin down and it popped up.

Kate smelled damp soil, but no whiff of decomposition, which she had feared. The grave was too old. She saw bones, smaller than she had thought, and then looked away. She wasn’t repulsed, she just wanted to give the woman privacy.

She looked at Quinn, who also had looked away. She smiled.

Having fun yet?
She asked.

I have to admit, this wasn’t how I saw this evening playing out.

Thank you for doing this
, Kate responded.

Why are we doing this?
He asked.

I don’t know. When we drove by… I think she was calling to me, Quinn. I think…

“It’s done,” the woman said. She cinched the bag tight, the bag that now held her daughter’s bones. “We must hurry.”

“Why?” Quinn asked, genuinely confused.

“Because she must be buried before dawn,” the woman said, matter-of-factly.

Oh
, Quinn thought.
Ghost rules
.
You think they hand out a pamphlet when you die?

The woman handed the bag of bones to Kate.

“You must help me,” the woman said. “I’ve been here for so long, I…”

“Why are you trapped here?” Kate asked.

“Because I wanted to be with her,” the woman said, and her eyes stared off into the darkness.

“How can we help you leave?” Kate asked.

“I cannot travel with you,” she said. “I must travel on my own, but I’m worried I will be lost. It’s been so long.”

The woman looked on the verge of tears.

“I need a guide,” she said. “I need a…”

“I have a guide for you,” Kate said calmly. The woman looked immediately relieved.

“You do?” she asked.

“We do?” Quinn said.

Kate arched her eyebrow at him. At first he didn’t know what she meant, staring at her stupidly. And then…

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.

“Did you think she was going to ride in the car?” Kate asked. “She needs a guide, something spectral. And you…

“Kate, I don’t even know how to change into him,” Quinn said. “It’s not like I can run into a phone booth or something.”

“You’re just afraid,” Kate said. “You know how to do this.”

“Please,” the woman said, turning to him. “You must help me.”

They had it all wrong. He couldn’t just flip a switch and become the Headless Horseman. Could he?

Quinn thought back to last year, remembered facing off against the Horseman. He closed his eyes and let the memory wash over him. His heart started racing, he could smell the gasoline on his hands, feel Janus’ lighter in his pocket.

“Go back to Sleepy Hollow, you headless son of a bitch!”

He had sent him away, banished him back to the story he had come from. And then Lord Halloween had shown up and tried to kill him. The knife came through the air, right down on his neck…

But Quinn had known. He had finally understood. You are what you fear. That feeling had burned inside him, consuming him, until he was no longer Quinn O’Brion. He remembered now.

He opened his eyes. He watched as his horse came out of the forest, its burning red eyes sizing him up, devouring him. He felt himself changing. By the time the horse reached him, Quinn was gone.