Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution (21 page)

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Sophia said in her quiet voice. As always, she kept her head down so that Beth saw more of her blond hair than her face. Her hands were sitting demurely in her lap on the couch. “The signs are all for her returning this month. There were several strange animal deaths, reports of possessions are up, and the blood moon next week is the most powerful one in decades.”

“You said that
last
fall, too, Sophia. Every damn blood moon, you—”

“This is different!” Sophia actually looked up at that. Her hands were still placed demurely on her
lap, but her voice had risen to almost a conversational tone.

Beth finally decided to speak up. “It isn’t just the signs Sophia saw. Death is active in Sleepy Hollow.”

Frieda snorted. “Since when do you get all flowery?”

Rolling her eyes, Beth said, “I don’t mean the concept or event of death, I mean capital-D Death—the Horseman of the Apocalypse. He’s risen from the grave, and he’s already killed Reverend Knapp and Sheriff Corbin and some farmer.”

Stacy shook her head. “You know I was saying we should’ve killed that sheriff years ago, right?”

“No.” Beth shook her head emphatically. “Delivery boys and other scum-suckers are one thing, but we can’t go around killing cops. Trust me, I used—”

“—to be one, we know, we know.” Stacy stuck her tongue out at Beth. “We heard it the first fifty times. Anyhow, I guess the Horseman doesn’t care about being dainty the way we do.”

Frieda folded her arms. “So what’s this
mean
, exactly?”

“It means Serilda’s allies are finally making a
real
move,” Beth said. “Not this pussyfooting around they’ve been doing. Which means that Sophia’s signs are probably
real
ones.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Frieda shook her head.

Sophia actually stood up from the couch, which was the most aggressive move she’d ever made in
Beth’s presence, and faced Frieda. “Why do you keep
doing
that? We’re trying to do something
important
here, and the rest of us take it seriously! If you’re not going to, why don’t you just
quit
the way Miriam and Rachael and Kirsten and Gretchen did?”

Beth had never seen Frieda’s eyes go as wide as they were now. She had stopped rocking the chair and planted her feet on the carpet. “Easy, girl! I ain’t sayin’ we should quit, I’m sayin’ that we heard this song before. Right now, all we got is a dead sheriff an’ a dead priest.”

“A dead
immortal
priest,” Stacy said. “That’s some serious mojo right there.”

“Could just be some demon making a power play.” Frieda shook her head. “Look, I’d love it if you were right, Sophia, but I just can’t get my hopes up again. I’m gettin’ too old t’get excited about somethin’ that probably ain’t gonna happen.”

You are a fool to doubt, Frieda Abernathy
.

Beth looked up and around her house. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and it felt as if it were echoing off her bones. She shivered, as the temperature in the house suddenly lowered.

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.

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—”