Aunt Marie taught me lots of things, and one of them was to look beings in the eyes. College taught me a lot about body language and the psychology of human response, but that combined with everything else has helped me figure out my customers pretty quickly.
Most kids are good of course; comes from being innocents in general. Most of the tourists are good too; they're only here a short while and don't stay long enough to feel the influences in Sleepy Hollow. And dogs. Dogs are good.
I don't own a dog, but there's one who hangs out around Take the Cake so I guess by default he's my dog, after a fashion. Sure I put food out for him and there's a big plastic bin lined with a blanket in the side hall leading out to the alleyway, but I don't actually own him. People don't own dogs; they form alliances with emotionally supportive benefits on both sides. At least that's what I tell myself.
I call him Wolf, although 'Haystack' would probably be a better name. He's a big shapeless mass of curly brown fur with enormous paws and a tongue that hangs out like a red washcloth. If you're a good one and you get near him, he'll use that tongue on you until you cry 'Uncle!'
And if you're a bad one, he'll growl. Low. Down in the barely audible range, but your hair will prickle and if you're smart, you'll back off and get lost.
Inside the shop I do fine on my own, but if I head out, Wolf goes with me. Not because I ask him to, or hell, even want him to—he just does. If I try to drive off somewhere he'll lope along the sidewalk following me, embarrassing me . . . you get the picture. I've learned to simply open the back door of my car and let him jump in because he's determined to go with me wherever I go.
I suppose he'd be a familiar if I was a witch, or a spirit guide if I was a Medicine woman, but I'm neither of those, so I simply think of Wolf as a companion. He showed up a day after I'd broken ground to build Take the Cake and that's enough of a sign for me.
Wolf was the one who alerted me about Andy Brooks.
Andy used to come into my shop a few years back. A big one for brownies, that guy, and nice in a quiet sort of way. Then one morning Wolf growled at him. I was embarrassed by that, and gave Andy a few extra brownies as an apology, but I should have paid attention. The next time he didn't come in. He stood outside and waved. I came out and Andy said something about having a cold, not wanting to spread it around . . . I took his order and brought it out to him.
By the second time he waved me out, I realized it was because he couldn't step over my threshold and that depressed the hell out of me. I didn't want to add him to the list, but there it was. Andy was one of the bad ones.
He hasn't been back since.
There were others of course—the music teacher, and the little old woman who ran the bowling alley, even the Avon lady. Some of them knew it and wouldn't meet my eyes. Others . . . who can tell, right? They might have had nightmares they rationalized away. I don't know.
What I do know is that the new chief of police was the handsomest man I'd ever seen. I probably shouldn't say that since it's such a shallow observation, but Will had been dead and gone for nearly three years and I'm only flesh and blood. When he came strolling in that first time I tried hard not to stare, and in the course of avoiding that I ended up slamming my hand in the sliding door of the bakery case, pinching it pretty good.
He looked concerned so I had to wave my wounded fingers and try to grin, which probably looked as stupid as it felt. "I'm fine. This happens sometimes," I assured him. Wolf came over and tried to lick my hand; I tried to push him away because having a dog in the shop wouldn't go over well with the health inspectors let alone the chief of police.
"You sure? Because I prefer my pastries free of human blood," he murmured in that straight-faced way of his.
"Picky, picky," I chided him, just to have something to say, and it must have been the right thing because he gave the tiniest smirk possible. Wolf figured I was fine and trotted around the counter to inspect the chief, bringing a cold, wet nose right where no man really wants one. Luckily said man seemed to be a dog person.
"Whoah, unless you hold a medical license, stand down, big guy," Irving told him, and Wolf sat, his big fuzzy tail sweeping across the linoleum. Irving looked at me approvingly. "Well-trained."
"Nah, he just likes you," I admitted. "He's a pretty good judge of character. He's Wolf, and I'm Hannah. Hannah N. Duncan."
He held out a hand and shook mine very gingerly. "Frank Irving, police chief. What's the 'N' for?"
I blushed. "Um, Nokomis."
Now I'd have to explain. Again.
But instead he just nodded. "Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Nice."
I blinked at him. "Wow, you actually know the reference. I'm impressed."
He gave a little self-deprecating shrug and right then, that's when my official crush started, because hey, who couldn't fall for a literate public servant, right?
-oo00oo-
One of the other points about my particular job is that I start very early in the morning. Too early for most people, but if I want to sell bread by seven I have to be up by four to get it going after the overnight proofing. The big glass windows of Take the Cake look out onto Elm Street, and in the neon-pierced darkness it gets creepy out there. Between the fog and the leaves skittering and the headless rider, there's a lot to make you jump.
Yes I saw him, the horseman that is. Saw him before the rumors started going around town and I can tell you he was extremely sinister. Went galloping by down the middle of the road and his horse's hooves were striking sparks the entire way. I threw myself behind the counter and held onto Wolf for at least half an hour. Probably would have stayed there longer but one of the timers went off and I knew I had to turn the donuts or else lose the whole batch.
Later a few policemen came by to ask me if I'd seen anything and I had to tell them a half-truth about it; that I'd only caught a glimpse of a horse going past. When I met up with Seamus later I told him the whole of it though, and he got that sour look on his face.
"More than just winds blowin' around this town," he grunted. "Maybe Nathan and I oughta go fishing."
Fishing is my brother's way of pulling back and laying low. Seamus's got it harder than I do because he takes stuff seriously even if he pretends to scoff at it. He and his best friend Nathan can both sort of look underneath the skin of this town and see what's down there. They don't talk about it, they don't interfere with it, but they know when it's moving.
Like now.
"Crane's here to balance against the bad one," Seamus told me. "Him and the Mills woman both. They're new to the territory though, still working out their footing."
"Are they up to it?" I asked him, feeling a little anxious. I liked Abbie. She was one of ours from right here, and from what I'd seen of Crane he was a good one.
"If they can keep each other out of trouble, maybe."
Seamus isn't exactly an optimist, but I've learned to listen to him, so I just nodded and made a mental note to stock up on supplies.
I saw Abbie and Crane a few more times after that, usually for breakfast goodies. They'd come in with their Starbucks coffees and pick up either muffins or doughnuts, and sometimes I would hear them discussing things. It wasn't like I was deliberately eavesdropping or anything, but they seemed interested in the Book of Revelations because I know I heard snatches of conversation about the Four Horsemen.
I couldn't see any connection between our Horseman and the Four, but that seemed to be the gist of what they were on about, which seemed a weird topic. Especially between two people who were such opposites: man and woman, white and black, academic and professional. If I had to guess I'd say Crane was probably Anglican and I know Abbie had been Baptist ages ago, so yeah, definitely at different ends of the spectrum all around.
But they made a cute couple. Anyone looking at the pair of them could see they were attuned to each other in a way beyond a mere work relationship. For one thing, Crane flirted with her. It was subtle and really old-fashioned, but it was there. For another, Abbie had his back. She always seemed to take point when they walked around, and more than once I saw her check to make sure he was closest to the exit wherever they were.
They had a connection, all right, although sometimes I wasn't sure if they understood it.
Anyway, they talk about the Four Horsemen got me curious so I found Aunt Marie's bible and looked up Revelations just to refresh myself on them, and it wasn't pleasant reading; Conquest/Pestilence, War, Famine and Death weren't anyone's idea of a boy band. I figured the Horseman had been one of them . . . War maybe? Because he'd been in a war? I dunno, it was all guesswork on my part. All of them seemed terrifying, and wondered which one of them had used Ro'kenhronteys as his lackey.
Out of all of them though, I was most bothered by Famine, and that goes back to Aunt Marie talking about the Wendigo. Legends can be powerful influences and she got me at just the right age to scare the crap out of me with stories about him and his appetite. It may be one of the unconscious reasons I work with food now, if you want to go to the Freudian level.
In any case, I stocked up on ingredients and kept an eye on the weather.
The snow came as it always does; thick and white and a pain to drive in. The sky is what depresses me on snow days, what with it looking so grey most of the time. I was glad my neon lights could at least put some color in the air, and most mornings the chief stopped in before work to get a jelly-filled breakfast.
I always served him myself; Naomi thinks my crush on him is cute. It's all right, though—my assistant baker has one herself, on Jenny Mills. Naomi works part time as a janitor up at Tarrytown and she tells me that Abbie's sister is a goddess. I can believe it, given the bone structure that runs in that family.
I guess we all have our dreams. Anyway, I know Chief Irving likes the raspberry jelly, so I make sure to have them on hand. About the middle of November he asked me if I did themed birthday cakes, and that was when I found out about his wife—ex-wife, yes, and daughter.
The theme he wanted was Mathematics. I stared at him standing there in his parka and then assured him that if he wanted equations and proofs I could do it, with a calculator on top to check the answers.
"Sounds good, although I'll have to trust you on that. I'm not the one with number sense," he told me as he picked up his bag of doughnuts.
"How old will she be?" I asked, "So I can work it into the design."
"Fourteen," the chief told me with a sigh.
Before I could commiserate or say anything more, the wind picked up outside, a huge gust that hit my front windows making them rattle. I swear the snowflakes hit like pebbles against the glass. Naomi looked alarmed and Wolf growled.
"That didn't sound good," the chief ventured, turning to look out the windows.
It wasn't; outside was a wall of white swirling fog so thick you couldn't see anything beyond the fire hydrant on the corner. The wind moaned in a way that made the hair go up on the back of my neck, and if I'd been alone I would have bolted the door and slunk upstairs to get into bed.
"Snowsquall," I murmured. "Big one. You're going to have traffic problems with that blowing in."
The chief muttered a bad word under his breath, nodded thanks to me and headed out into the wind. Naomi and I lost sight of him in three steps, and she came over to me, shivering. "Hannah . . ."
"Go," I told her. She lives out on the south side of town and most of the morning baking was already done. As it was it was still going to take her at least an hour to get home. "Wolf and I can handle the rest of the day."
Later though, after she'd gone, I stood close to the big front window and tried to see if any cars were moving on Oak Street. I turned up the music to drown out the wind, and to counter the cold deep in my guts.