Hurrying again now that she had the lay of the land, she shut the door, locked it from habit, and awkwardly jerked down her leggings and underwear, since she refused to put down her phone. It took her a minute to convince her bladder to operate under these less than ideal circumstances. Finally, her sphincter let go, and she sighed with relief.
While she peed, she took off her gloves, stuffed them in her hoodie pocket, and thought about… just… everything. Chased by jack o’lantern-headed bags of bones on horseback through acemetery. Kidnapped into a pocket dimension. Shanghai-ed into a possibly impossible mission to free them all by finding the real Headless Horseman’s head.
Where would it be, if not in his grave? Why would the cute Goth girl have asked for it? Why would the guys have been dumb enough to go chasing after it with no proof that it existed, especially given the story’s explanation that it had been blown off by a cannonball?
Frowning, she finished her business, wiped fussily, pulled up her britches, and tried to flush. The water went down with a swooping sound, but no new water came back up. Oops. No plumbing.
Grumbling, she went to the sinks, leaned her phone against the back of one, squirted a little soap onto her hands, turned on the faucet—again by rote—and cursed when only a trickle of water came out.
“Ugh! I have to wash my hands!”
Muttering under her breath, she went to every single faucet in the line, gathering each little trickle of water that had been sitting in the pipes at the moment they’d crossed over into the Between. She supposed she’d done the best she could and dried her hands with paper towels, then gathered up her phone and turned off the light. She needed to save battery. Who knew when she’d have the opportunity to charge it again?
When she stepped back out into the muted gunmetal twilight, she strode over to Chad and, instead of taking his hand to be pulled back up into the saddle, asked her question.
“Why did you guys believe the Goth girl enough to run to Sleep Hollow after the Horseman’s head in the first place if you thought it had been shot off by a cannonball?”
“What?” he asked, half-laughing.
“You heard me.” She propped her fists on her hips. “You’re not stupid boys. You wouldn’t have gone all the way to SleepyHollow and dug up a body just because some cute girl told you to. What made you think the head was there at all?”
Aaron nudged his horse a little closer. “The diary entry.”
She frowned up at him. “What diary entry?”
Jerome murmured musingly. “You know, I’d forgotten all about that. There was a diary, wasn’t there?”
Chad huffed. “I think I underestimated you, Esmie. You’re right, of course. We didn’t just follow our dicks to New York.”
She rolled her eyes.
“She had a diary from her great great great something grandmother,” Aaron said, fiddling with his reins. “There was an entry that told us where to find his grave and who he really was and all of that. She couldn’t even read it, it was such spidery handwriting. Chad had to decipher it for her.”
“It’s what I was in school for, anyway.” He shrugged. “It was a piece of history right in the palm of my hand. You bet I read it. I can almost tell you word for word.” He chuckled. “But not now. On the way. Come on. Back in the saddle.”
He held his hand down to her again. She looked at it with narrowed eyes, then took it. He kicked his foot out of the stirrup so she could put hers in, then pulled her up and back in front of him, settling her in place. With his arms on either side of her, he took up the reins, stuck his foot back in the stirrup, and led the way back to the road.
Just like that, they were back on the way to Sleepy Hollow.
And Esmie was more impatient than ever.
5
When they’d settled back into the interminable trudge of the road, Esmie turned to look at Chad, forgetting again that he had no facial expression to judge until she saw no face. Grunting, she slumped and faced forward.
“Okay, hit me with it, professor. What did the Goth chick’s diary say?”
He chuckled, his arms still all but wrapped around her, though she knew good and well he didn’t need to keep both hands on Thunder’s reins the whole time. Maybe it was his version of Aaron’s nervous fidgeting.
“Alright, but I’m working with one hell of a time gap, here, so don’t hold it against me if I misremember.”
“C’mon, c’mon.”
“Best I can remember, it went a little something like this.” He cleared his throat, and she was again grateful to be facing forward. No one needed to see that. In a suddenly serious voice, he intoned, “In the woods, there is a haunted church. It used to be a perfectly average church, but it has fallen into disrepair, and the graves have all been moved from the churchyard—all save one. The grave of the Hessian. The fiercest soldier to face ourbrave men, the Hessian could not be felled, be it by bullet nor by cannon fire.”
She let the horse’s gentle walking motion lull her and leaned back a little against his strong chest. She was tired. It was hours and hours past midnight by now, and if this wasn’t a bedtime story, she didn’t know what was.
“He looked like an angel, but he fought like the devil himself sat upon his shoulder. On his fearsome black warhorse, he charged into battle without tremor, without dread of death. So many of our men fell upon his sword that we called upon the garrison in the city for aid. They sent not a deadly new war machine but a priest, who blessed our cannonballs and bullets and swords.”
