Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution (22 page)

“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 observed 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.

Jenny looked around at the two of them. “Ready?”

Abbie nodded. Irving said, “Not in the least, but go ahead, anyhow.”

After nodding back, Jenny closed her eyes, took a breath, and then said,
“Da nobis auxilium de magicis.”

A flash of light blinded Abbie temporarily, and she had to blink the spots out of her eyes.

When her vision cleared, the scroll was gone, and she could smell the residue of smoke in the air, like a match that had just been blown out.

“I don’t suppose Corbin had any more of those?” Abbie asked as she continued to blink away spots that danced in her vision from the flash of light as the scroll burned.

“If he did, he didn’t tell me,” Jenny said.

Crane raised an eyebrow. “As I believe we all may attest, his lack of speech on the subject is not indicative of anything—and is also of little moment right now. I suggest we proceed with all due haste to Bronck’s land.”

They filed quickly out of the armory, Abbie
pausing to turn out the lights and lock the door. Crane was polite enough to wait for her to finish that, and as she turned the key, she asked, “So what was that phrase that Jenny used?”

“Simply translated,” Crane replied, “it means ‘give us protection from magic.’ It is almost poetic in its concision.”

“Concise is nice. So’s poetic.” She turned to stare up at Crane. “I just wish we had more of them. Or we could make it last longer than a day. Or we could use it on you and still let the spell be cast.” She let out a sigh. “But hey, if wishes were horses, we’d be hip-deep in crap.”

Crane made one of his faces. “How quaint.” Then he cocked his head. “Though, admittedly, it is actually rather a logical progression, since horses are indeed known for producing prodigious amounts of dung.” He shook his head. “In any event, if wishes did come true, I doubt you and I would ever have met. I would have survived the war with Katrina and our son, and we would have lived peaceful lives in these United States, perhaps with more children.”

Abbie almost made a comment about how she would be in D.C. right now with the FBI, but she couldn’t bring herself to voice it. Crane had spoken in a remarkably matter-of-fact tone, but it wasn’t quite enough to hide the anguish behind his wistful words of what could’ve been—what, in her opinion,
should
have been.

But she couldn’t bring herself to say
that
out loud, either, as it would sound horribly patronizing.

So she settled for putting a hand on his arm and giving it a friendly squeeze, while looking up at him and smiling warmly.

Crane looked down and provided a similar smile back. “Alas,” he said very quietly.

Within a minute, they were outside, where Irving was standing by one of the department’s SUVs. The sun was starting to set, painting the western sky over the Hudson River with a magnificent burst of oranges and purples, and casting the Tappan Zee Bridge in a warm glow.

But she couldn’t really pause to enjoy the magnificent sunset. She promised herself that she would force herself to do so one of these days. After all, she and Crane were trying to save the world. It wouldn’t do to go to all that trouble and not remember what about the world was worth saving.

Irving was holding a set of keys in his hand. “We’re getting into rush hour, and the moon’ll be up soon. I want a company car that has sirens and lights we can run in case we hit traffic.”

Jenny gave the captain a teasing look. “What’s this? Abusing police privilege? Captain Irving, I’m
impressed
.”

The look fell when Irving whirled on her and pointed a finger. “Don’t—not tonight.”

Holding up both hands, Jenny said, “Sorry.”

Irving got into the driver’s seat. Jenny immediately
went into the back on the driver’s side, and Abbie decided to take shotgun. Crane climbed into the seat behind her.

As Irving started the ignition, Abbie looked over at him. “Look, I’m sorry for what I said. I know this isn’t easy for you.”

“None of this is easy for any of us. Doesn’t mean we don’t do it. Like your sister said, I need to get over it.”

He put the car into drive and headed out onto Beekman Avenue toward Broadway.

JANUARY 2014

BETH NUGENT NEARLY
stumbled when she entered Sophia’s room at the hospital and found Frieda sitting next to her.

Frieda said, “Hey, Beth” as if she hadn’t disappeared for three months. She was looking at Sophia’s still-comatose form in the hospital bed. Sophia was a scion of the very wealthy Cabot family, and so her health coverage pretty much boiled down to money-is-no-object. So she got a private room in Mount Sinai Hospital, and had been looked at by many of the best specialists in the world.