A day and a night had passed since Abbie had vanished. Crane could not recall much of the aftermath; he reasoned that there was too much pain to process. Dawn broke with the sensation of Jenny shaking him to wakefulness and demanding to know where her sister was. The horror of explaining everything that had occurred was something he wanted to erase from his perfect memory forever.

They spent the day combing the Archives for some way – any way – of reversing Katrina's spell. Jenny read Grace Dixon's journal until she knew it by heart – all to no avail. Crane cursed himself for the hundredth time for allowing the Fenestella to be destroyed without saving some of its contents.

As they sat in the Archives, bereft and alone in their unique misery, Crane considered the mysteries of time. Like most people, he had never thought of it as anything but an immutable line guiding him ever onward. However, Abbie's insistence that he read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine had forced his imagination to perform the most painful contortions. If he could travel back through time, would another version of Ichabod Crane exist? Could he go back and talk to himself?

He thought of that other life, where he was arrogantly sure of his place in the world. He had a mission, given to him by General Washington – a great man, a true-hearted man. Most of all, he had a happy home, a wife whom he loved – a balm to soothe all hurts.

All that sweetness was now tainted with bile. Katrina had betrayed him and everything he had fought for so valiantly. To return to that life – for all its familiarity and simplicity, its comforting rituals of grace and behaviour – that prospect now seemed as hollow as the grave. For in it, he would be without the one thing that was indispensable, the one person without whom his heart was an empty sack, fluttering in the breeze.

His Abbie was not there. Until the moment she leapt through the portal and vanished from his world, he had not known real pain or fear. To him, the ravages of the grave, the pain of losing his son were nothing compared to the howling void of life without her. To live without the prospect of seeing her again, of holding her in his arms once more was a torment.

It was clear to him in that instant that he loved her more than life.

He imagined her lost in a distant past – alone and vulnerable. The thought twisted inside him like a knife. Another possibility occurred to him. If Katrina succeeded in her wishes, would he continue to exist in this plane, or would he disappear like a puff of smoke? If he died on the battlefield with the Horseman of Death, then history would be irrevocably changed. His blood tie would mean that the Horseman would never rise and wreak havoc on Sleepy Hollow. That at least was a comfort.

Jenny's confused and frightened voice interrupted his reverie. 'Crane? Crane, what's happening to me?'

His heart nearly stopped when he saw her face, greying and becoming fainter by the second. In the confusion of that moment, he knew exactly what was happening. Something was changing – something had changed in the past, throwing everything off its natural course.

'Help me!'

He grabbed for her hand by instinct, but even as he touched her she faded like a spirit.

'Jenny!' he shouted. His last sight of her was her terrified eyes.

The room around him shook, rattling his very bones. A cloud of dust billowed out of nowhere. Sheets rose from the ether and threw themselves across cabinets and bookcases, restoring the room to the state in which he and Abbie had once found it when they were chasing Serilda of Abaddon.

Back, back. We're going back.

He had to break the door down to escape. At first glance the street seemed the same; the shop fronts unchanged – all except the flower shop. The firebombed building that had lain empty for months was now intact, returned to life – its windows bursting with blooms.

No sooner had his eyes grown accustomed to the sight than he saw a lone figure standing in the middle of the road. His heart knew who it was before she even turned her head.

'Abbie!' He took off running towards her, silently praying that she would recognise him. He could handle anything as long as she knew him.

'Crane!' she shouted, flinging herself at him. She wrapped her limbs around him, clinging on for dear life. 'Tell me this is real. Please God…' she murmured softly.

He drank her in, holding her close as if to seal her onto his very bones. 'You're here.' He pulled away from her, only enough to see her face. 'You're really here.'

Abbie pulled away, fixing him with the most penetrating stare, as if judging what to tell him. She bit her lip, and Crane found his traitorous eyes trailing to her mouth, his desire for her undimmed even in the midst of chaos.

'Crane,' she blurted out. 'I met you in the past. You didn't believe me at first, but somehow I managed to convince you I wasn't crazy. When you didn't die on the battlefield, we had to make sure that everything would play out in the future. We managed to trap the Horseman and Grace Dixon… yes, Crane, I met my ancestor… Grace Dixon sealed him underground in a lead casket.'

Crane was dizzy with all the information. The fog of relief finally cleared, and he was finally able to ask the question that had gnawed at him since the night she disappeared. 'Abbie, what happened to Katrina?'

Abbie took a deep breath. 'Katrina wanted to kill you, to undo everything that happened then. And she… she succeeded.'

She looked as if she were in pain. 'Katrina used the death hex to stop your heart. Crane… you died in my arms.' Tears sprung from her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. 'I thought that I'd never see you again, and I didn't care about anything else.'

Crane felt as if his heart would burst with emotion. To hear those words filled him with hope for the first time, even in a world changed beyond recognition.

Then he shook his head in confusion. 'Then how… am I here?'

Abbie smiled. 'Grace was able to cast a protective spell over you, so that whatever happened, you'd stay fixed in this time. Then she sent me back… God, Crane, you're really here.'

As much as Crane desired to remain in that moment, lost in her gaze, he knew that he had to tell her the truth. 'This place has changed, Abbie. I don't know how much, but…' He paused, summoning his courage. 'Jenny disappeared a few moments ago.'

'Disappeared?' Abbie was dismayed. Her face was a mask of concentration, as if she were performing complex equations in her head. 'Crane, if Katrina was never sent to Purgatory, and Jeremy was never buried by her coven…' She looked at him in horror. 'I need to find my sister!'

Abbie took off running again, leaving Crane standing in her wake as the truth slowly unravelled in his brain. If Moloch never raised Jeremy, then Abbie and Jenny never saw them in the woods that day. That crucial event which affected their lives in countless ways… it never happened.

He caught up with Abbie at the front entrance of the Sheriff's Department. 'Abbie, what you discover in there might shake everything you know, everything you have taken for granted. Are you ready for that?'

'I need to find my sister, Crane!' Abbie's eyes were filled with tears. 'I need to know!'

Before he could protest, she flung open the station door. What she saw inside shocked her to her very core. Nothing was as she remembered it. There were no familiar faces; the colleagues that she had worked with for years had all been replaced with strangers.

'Crane…' she whispered.

He too was dumbfounded; all he could do was reach out and take her hand. More than ever, they needed each other as anchors in a strange new world.

Then she heard a voice that almost arrested her heart. 'Abbie?'

She turned her head and felt her heart turn over at the sight of August Corbin, standing not twenty feet away from her. He held a cup of coffee in one hand, a newspaper in the other. She could scarcely believe what she saw, but there he was, very much alive. It was so much like her Purgatory vision that she was afraid to give it credence.

To add to her mounting confusion and disbelief, Andy Brooks strolled by at that moment, absorbed in reading a file. 'Abbie!' he started at the sight of her. 'What are you doing here?' He looked at Corbin, who seemed just as mystified.

'I… work here,' Abbie managed to say. She discerned a look of amused confusion on Andy's face, while Corbin bore an expression of pure heartbreak.

'Abbie, have you been drinking?' Andy said in a low voice.

Meanwhile, Corbin tossed an order over his shoulder. 'Luke, get Jenny Mills.'

Luke? Jenny? The information was coming too fast for Abbie to process.

'Abbie, will you step into my office please?' It was only then that Corbin noticed Crane standing by Abbie's side. 'Bring your friend with you.' It was almost if he saw the connection between them, and knew that they could not be separated.

She was bathed in a sense of familiarity and warmth as soon as she stepped into Corbin's office. It was like being home again, like all the loss and grief that she had experienced had been wiped away.

Corbin sat down behind his desk and stared at Abbie with a look of curiosity. 'Abbie, I've known you for a long time. I've seen you overcome some tough times, your Mom's death… I know it hasn't been easy for you seeing Jenny join the force while you struggled to find work.'

Abbie blinked in disbelief. Her whole life – everything she had worked for and achieved – wiped out in an instant. She had spent so long wishing she could change the past – wanting to eliminate all the mistakes she had made. She had not considered the possibility that she might lose everything else in the process.

'You march in here with… some guy in a re-enactor's outfit and tell me you work here? What is this about, Abbie?'

Abbie looked at Crane for reassurance before taking a deep breath. 'I know this sounds crazy and we have no proof of this, but there's a war going on in Sleepy Hollow – a secret war between good and evil. A demon called Moloch is trying to raise Four Horsemen to herald the Apocalypse.'

Crane chimed in. 'You may have seen signs of this already – mysterious killings, occult activities, unexplained events. We have been fighting this war for some time.'

Corbin had an inscrutable look on his face. 'Oh, have you indeed? And who are you?'

'My name is Ichabod Crane, sir. I was a captain and sometime spy in the Continental Army under George Washington.'

Abbie closed her eyes. If her story didn't sound nutty enough, Crane had to play the Revolutionary soldier card. Before Corbin had a chance to form a response, the door opened and Jenny entered.

'You wanted to see me, Sheriff?' Jenny looked at Abbie in surprise. 'What are you doing here, Abbie?'

Abbie's jaw dropped in amazement as she regarded her sister, rigged out in an officer's uniform. This was just perfect; Jenny was a cop in this world, and she was a screw-up. God must be laughing his ass off right now was all she could think.

'Jenny, your sister claims that Sleepy Hollow is hiding a secret underworld of witches, demons and Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Oh, and her friend here is a time-traveller from the War of Independence.'

Abbie saw the look of acute embarrassment on Jenny's face. If this was some great karmic payback deal, then she could expect to be carted off to Tarrytown before too long.

'I'm really sorry, Sheriff,' Jenny said in a practised tone that suggested she was used to dealing with her sister's antics.

'The thing is…' Corbin continued. 'I believe her. I think I should fill you in on some things, Jenny. I've been tracking unsolved murders in Sleepy Hollow over the span of more than a century. I've accumulated files which suggest a vast conspiracy of silence to hide what's been happening. Like you said, Abbie – a secret war.'

Abbie and Crane stood in mute amazement at his revelation, not only that he believed them, but that he also knew what was happening. Perhaps this version of time wasn't so bad after all.

'You okay, there, kiddo?' Corbin asked, seeing the raw emotion on Abbie's face.

'I've just had a really rough day, that's all. I went from being a police lieutenant with a divine mission to fight the Apocalypse to traveling back in time and being mistaken for a runaway slave. Then I come back here and find that not only are you and Andy alive, but Jenny has my job.' She laughed a little manically.

'Okay,' Corbin intoned. 'So maybe there's more to this story than I realised.' He tossed as set of keys to Jenny and grabbed a jacket from the back of his chair. 'You can tell me on the journey.'

'Might I ask where we are going?' Crane enquired.

'The Old Dutch Church,' he replied. 'I think it's time we spoke to Reverend Knapp.'

The End