“Not the time, Jer.” Chad put a hand to his non-existent chin and rubbed the air. “If the horse ran away with the head, how will we ever find it? The horse could have gone anywhere. Literally anywhere, in any direction. The next entry is about the next Sunday’s sermon about bringing in the sheaves, for god’s sake. I can keep scanning ahead, but?—”
Esmie sighed. “I guess… keep looking? There has to be something else. It feels like we’re still missing something.”
Sighing, Chad went back to turning pages as she held the light steady. After a few minutes of quiet, Aaron suddenly sat upwith a loud, “I know!” that startled everyone to the point that Chad ripped out a page.
“Dammit, A!”
“Sorry! But I know what we need! A map!” He sounded as excited as a little kid. “A plat map, to be specific. We need to know who owned the nearest house to that property. That’s where the horse would have run to, right? The nearest source of food and water.” He reached back and stroked his horse’s nose. “That’s where you would’ve gone, right, Rain?”
“Well, if he wasn’t a supernatural creature that travels between realms,” Jerome said, but he sounded intrigued. “What the hell is a plat map? And how do you know what one is?”
Aaron huffed, sounding sheepish. “My MBA is good for something, I guess. Business holdings are sometimes property holdings, and plat maps delineate property holdings.”
“Aaron,” Esmie said, grinning ear to ear, “if you had a face, I would kiss you right now. That is brilliant. Now, where do they keep plat maps? City hall?”
He shrugged, but he fidgeted with the tattered edge of his cape as he did so, and she sensed he would be blushing if he could. It would probably be adorable.
“Maybe current ones, but I’m guessing old ones—especially this old—would be at the library. Maybe even at a museum.”
Esmie stood up and pointed in a general direction. “To the library!”
“One problem with that,” Chad said, though he sounded amused as he, too, rose to his feet.
“What?” she said, her excitement undimmed.
“The crossing was just after midnight. The library is closed. We would have to break in, and the damage would be visible when time moves forward again. Unless you know how to pick locks.”
Now, her excitement dimmed. “Oh. Damn.” Her pointing hand fell. “Then what do we do?”
He stepped closer and put his hands on her shoulders. “Not we, Esmie. You. You’ll have to do this part on your own.” He sighed. “And we’ll have to trust you.”
She frowned. “What?”
Jerome grunted. “Yeah, what?”
Chad sighed. “We’ll have to cross you back to the Now. You’ll go to the library, find the plat map and the nearest house, and… come back here.” His hands tightened on her shoulders, not painfully but enough that she knew he was struggling. “We can only cross back over if the conditions are right—a foolhardy soul alone in the dark. So you have to come back here, Esmie. Alone. We have to trust you to do it.”
Or they would never be free. Trust wasn’t a strong enough word.
If they crossed her over right now, she could go to the nearest police station, say she’d been kidnapped and driven here by a bunch of crazy guys, and be sent back to Springfield in no time flat. Sure, it would be a pain to deal with all the legal mumbo jumbo, but she could do it to get out of here scot free. Sheshoulddo it.
To get back to her poor Mom. To Tavia. To her students and her scholarships and her job and her future.
But they would never be free. They would always be the Headless Horsemen, cursed to roam the spaces between moments, to take the lives of those out wandering alone in the dark.
She didn’t want that for them. She liked them too much.
Sighing, she nodded, looking up at where his eyes should be. Even the flaming jack o’lantern eyes would be nice right now.
“I’ll be back. I promise.”
His right thumb rubbed back and forth for a second before he let go entirely. Then, absurdly, he reached out his right hand. Smiling crookedly, she took it and they shook twice, firmly. She turned and there was Aaron, right hand out. She shook again, twice, more gently but heartfelt. Then, Jerome—two quick shakes with a fist bump at the end.
“Okay, then,” she said, her voice soft. “Let’s do this.”
They went to the horses, and she climbed on first, scooting forward so Chad could climb up behind her. Unfortunately, once they were mounted, they simply stood around for a moment, the horses’ tails swishing, an occasional hoof stomping.
After a long, long minute, Esmie whispered, “What are we waiting for?”
