Chapter Two

"And now," Brom's double said, "We're going to explore the benefits of existing outside this mortal plane."

Brom—the real Brom—stood watching himself snicker as Ichabod Crane rode up on horseback, looking ridiculous on the old nag of a horse named Gunpowder. It had seemed a good deal funnier then.

He turned to his double. "What do you mean?"

With an infuriating smile, the double pointed to a spot in the foliage, which was moving ever so slightly. It could have been rabbits, or squirrels. But as Brom moved closer, he discovered the true source of the movement.

"Will?!" he exploded.

Willem was crouched behind a tree, half hidden by the leaves of a fallen branch. He was peering out at the scene before him intently, oblivious to Brom or his mysterious guide.

"It may have been the Witch," Theodore murmured to Glen. Brom, who was preoccupied with watching Crane, merely nodded absently.

Ichabod Crane, who up until that moment had been carefully examining the body, looked up. His black eyes were narrowed in annoyance.

"There is very likely no such person," he snapped. "And even if there is some old woman living in the woods, I very much doubt she rides about decapitating people. Where would she get the horse, for a start? Or the sword?"

"Then what about the Horseman?" Glen asked.

"There is no Headless Horseman!" Ichabod insisted. "These rustic notions of yours, these backwoods fairy tales, are nothing more than that—utter fiction! They are, I would wager, probably much easier to face than the fact that someone in Sleepy Hollow is a vicious murderer!"

Anger flared up in the back of Brom's throat, but he choked it back. He couldn't very well thrash Crane for his arrogance in front of the town elders. He'd have loved to smash the constable's face like a pumpkin.

It was then that he had a most brilliant idea....

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"Yes, we know," Brom's guide said with a sly smile. "That was rather amusing, but I think that you will be far more interested in where your dear brother goes in his spare time."

Brom looked up, and saw that Willem had left his hiding place, just as the funeral cart arrived. That was why Brom hadn't noticed him them—Will had untied his horse from the nearby tree, and quietly ridden away...directly into the Western Woods.

"What do you mean?" Brom demanded, wanting nothing more than to sock his double in the jaw. After a moment's reflection, he realized how truly bizarre that would be, even if he was actually successful.

"Follow me, Bones, and see."

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Will's trail took them far into the Western Woods—further than Brom had ever remembered going. There was hardly a sound now, no animals stirred in this clearing of the woods. Even Will's horse seemed nervous as he rode to the large rocks, so shaped that they could almost be a dwelling.

Will dismounted hastily, and pounded on the door to the dwelling. A moment later, the door creaked open, and the veiled figure of a wizened woman in pale gray stood before him. With a start, Brom realized that she could only be the Western Woods Crone.

"It's happened again," Will said flatly. "You know what I'm talking about, and the rumors are starting. If they don't find a culprit soon, they'll come for you."

"I know," the Crone replied. "It is good of you to tell me, child."

"The least I could do, after you healed my injury when I fell from my horse last winter," Will responded, looking slightly embarrassed. "I'd have died out there otherwise. And to teach me to do magic as well..."

"You have learned little from my teachings if you think you can 'do' magic," the Crone snapped. "You can invoke it, but the magic comes from the earth, and from knowing."

"I do know that," Will said. "I'm sorry, Mab. I wasn't thinking."

The Crone—Mab--smiled. "So you were not. But you will improve, I am sure."

"The Horseman," Will said suddenly, changing the flow of conversation. "He's real, isn't he?"

"You know he is!" Mab hissed. "You've felt the change in the air, the very atmosphere of this place...the evil radiates like heat from a fire!"

"Can we stop him? You're very powerful. Perhaps, together you and I could do a spe—I mean, invoke the earth magic—"

"It doesn't work like that," Mab replied. "Don't you understand? That kind of magic is different from what I have been teaching you. Invoking spirits is something else entirely."

"I don't want him invoked. I want him gone, before someone else dies! Do you know something that you aren't telling me?"

"I know that you are not the one to stop him," Mab informed him. "I have seen it in the cards."

"What do you—then who—"

"He will come to me soon. You should go back now, and be with your family. Use your earth magic to protect them, young Willem. It is all you can do for now. Blessed Be."

It was a queen's dismissal—purposeful, yet tactful and polite. Certainly not the sort of conversation this part of the woods often witnessed.

Will inclined his head, sandy hair falling forward into his eyes. "I will, Mab. Thank you, and Blessed Be."

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"This is madness," Brom murmured. "Will is a witch? He never said a word to me!"

"He wouldn't, would he?" His guide responded, raising one fair eyebrow. "Most people don't have pleasant associations for witchcraft, and everyone thinks that the Crone is in league with evil spirits. "

"But I'm his brother!"

"Exactly. Do you think he could bear to lose your love, or your loyalty?" Brom's guide smiled. "You are being shown this for a reason, Bones."

Brom's fury erupted. "You still haven't told me why! If this is all, then I can forgive Willem--"

"Forgive?" His double asked in disbelief. "What is to forgive? Has dear Will committed a crime in being a witch? He uses his magic for good. There is good magic as well as bad magic, did you not know?"

Brom scowled. "And which are you, pray tell?"

His guide laughed. "That, my friend, is for you to decide. Shall we move on, then?"

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It was a sight Brom would treasure for a long time. Ichabod Crane, his eyes wide with fear, knocked off his horse by the flaming jack-o-lantern that Brom had thrown at him, while disguised as the Headless Horseman.

Brom and his friends had a good laugh over it. It was his favorite kind of prank, and heaven knew the constable needed to be taken down a few notches. And the damned fool had fainted! Well, that wasn't a surprise—what could a person expect from a foppish city ratcatcher?

Two days afterward, the town magistrate Samuel Philipse, had lost his head. It was Brom himself who had discovered the unconscious Crane and the corpse of Philipse. He had picked Crane up off the ground, surprised at how light the man was, and rode with him on his horse back to the Van Tassel manor, where he'd breathlessly told Baltus of the situation.

Watching it all over again was torture, now that Brom knew how it ended. He wanted desperately to do something, anything, to change the course of the past. Why was he being shown all this, if he could do nothing to alter it?

"Whoever said you couldn't alter it?" his guide had snapped, when Brom had voiced his displeasure for the umpteenth time. "The time will come. When you understand, the time will come."

"Understand what?!" Brom exploded.

His guide laughed, making Brom long to hit him more than ever. "You will know, when the time comes."

"When—"

"When we've finished!" his guide replied with a wide smile. Brom let out a deep, frustrated breath. It was going to be a very long night.

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Griet Van Brunt was outside, chopping wood for the fire, when Brom came outside the next morning. Since seeing the aftermath of yet another Horseman murder, he was feeling more helpless than ever. For her part, his mother seemed unusually dedicated to the chore. Her hair was braided and twisted like a crown around her head, and the front of her simple gown was covered in wood chips.

"Mother, what are you doing? If you wanted more wood, you only had to say so."

Griet rolled her eyes. They were the same shade of blue that she had passed on to her two sons.

"I'm not a glass ornament, love," she replied wryly. "And I'm fully recovered."

"All the same, you should be careful—"

"For heaven's sake, Brom!" Griet cried in mock exasperation. "I've already had the same speech from Dr. Lancaster, and I'm fine. I used to go hunting with your father, don't you remember? Hard work is nothing new for me."

Brom smiled. In some ways, he and his mother were very much alike. Griet had despised being confined to her bed. She disliked helplessness as much as he did.

"Well, what's wrong, love?" Griet asked.

Her point-blank manner shouldn't have surprised him. All the same, he was temporarily flustered by the question.

"You didn't come out here just to lecture your frail old mother," Griet teased. "Out with it, Brom."

"Philipse," he replied. "I found him...Mother, he's one of the town leaders. If he's not safe, then who is?"

His mother neatly cut the piece of wood neatly in half. "Philpse was, and I don't like speaking ill of the dead—a disreputable drunk. But no one deserves to die like that, poor man."

"It's just..." Brom paused. How could he put these feelings into words? "We're up against a ghost. How can we know where he'll strike next, or even how to stop him?"

Griet let the axe rest on the chopping block. "I imagine you're not the only one who feels this way. Still, that constable—"

"Oh, yes, Constable Crane," Brom said mockingly. "He wasn't hurt by the Horseman, did you know? He fainted! How can such a man defeat something so evil?"

His mother paused, deep in thought. Finally, she spoke.

"I don't know that Constable Crane," she mused aloud. "But it seems to me there's more than one kind of courage. I think he's probably very brave, in his own way."

"What way? Mother, he hasn't come out of his room since the murder! Katrina told me earlier."

"I'm not surprised!" Griet retorted. "I daresay after seeing a ghost, anyone might do the same."

"But it's useless!"

"Of course it is," Griet folded her arms across her chest. "He knows it. That's why he'll get over it. Constable Crane may be strange, but he's also rather determined. Of course I only known what I've heard from you and others, but sometimes you can get a good idea of a person that way."

His mother did have a point. Crane did seem determined to solve the case, as haughty and arrogant as he was in the process. And yet he was as frightened as a young girl at what he might discover, and what he had discovered.

A shout from the smithy disrupted the flow of conversation. Both Griet and Brom ran toward the source of the noise.

Will had accidentally reached for a piece of metal he'd thought was cool from the fire—but, of course, it hadn't been. He was left with a rather nasty burn on his left hand. For Will to be distracted was normal. It wasn't normal for him to be careless. He hardly ever did anything that foolish.

With the ensuing trip to Dr. Lancaster's, and the care that his brother consequently needed, Brom did not hear the news till later, when Glen came by to tell him. He'd just heard from the Van Tassels' servant girl, Sarah, that Ichabod Crane and young Masbath had gone into the Western Woods alone, to seek out the Horseman.

Brom was astounded. He'd thought Crane a coward, and a fool—but not reckless. What if they failed to return? What would that bring next for Sleepy Hollow?

"Why the hell didn't they take anyone else?" he demanded.

Glen had shrugged, pulling a face. "No one else volunteered."

Brom could understand that, but he clenched his fist nonetheless. "Have they returned?"

"Not yet. They left about three hours ago."

Rolling his eyes skyward, Brom's fists clenched in frustrated anger. "Devil take you, Crane, but you'd damn well better find something!"

Glen nodded in agreement. "Should we patrol tonight?"

Brom nodded grimly. It didn't look promising for any of them, the outlook as bleak as the gray sky above him.

"We'll meet here, at seven," he replied. "Plan on it. We'll show the Hessian there are a few men from Sleepy Hollow still willing to fight!"