The moment Crane entered the archives, it was obvious to Abbie that he had not passed the night pleasantly. Stress and pain was etched into a deep furrow over his eyebrows. His mouth was set into a deep frown, as if contemplating something beyond her knowledge.

'Good day, Miss Mills.'

The salutation lacked his usual gallant flair; it hurt Abbie's heart to see it.

'How you doing, Crane?' she asked carefully, as if he was a time bomb, liable to explode if handled improperly.

He sat down in his customary seat, unsure of himself. 'I have been walking around the town for hours, trying to make sense of everything.'

Abbie stood and walked to a small table in the corner. Months ago – after one particularly murderous all-nighter – she had invested in a coffee maker for the archives. If she had to rely on Starbucks for her regular caffeine fix, she would be bankrupt long before the End of Days. She changed the filter and added a generous heap of coffee grounds before switching on the percolator.

'Did you speak to Katrina?' she asked gently, turning to him.

He nodded briskly. 'It was distressing in the extreme. She begged me to believe that despite the genesis of her mission, she did genuinely come to love me before we wed.'

Abbie folded her arms. 'And do you believe her?'

'I don't know.' Crane rubbed his tired eyes. 'I'm not sure of anything now.'

There was a long silence. Abbie was unsure how to proceed; she knew that Crane was in a delicate frame of mind, but she had to tell him her suspicions.

'If Katrina was… playing a part with you, didn't it strike you that the Horseman's appearance might have been convenient for her mission?'

Crane laughed mirthlessly. 'What, that Katrina acted as agent provocateur between myself and Abraham? That she deliberately came between us by seducing us both, knowing that we would die together, then rise again in order to fulfil God's prophecy?' His tone was hollow and bitter.

'I'm just asking.' Abbie shrugged. She knew that she had to keep her temper in check. Crane needed her to be the level-headed one at this moment.

'Of course I considered it!' He furiously sprang to his feet. 'And I asked her too. I accused my own wife – God help me. I'll never forget the expression on her face. "Have I not suffered enough, Ichabod? Have I not sacrificed everything for your sake? I never saw my father before he died, did you know that? Trapped in Purgatory for two centuries while I hoped and prayed for you to rise again – is that not enough to allay your suspicions?"'

He sat down again, his distress evident from his slouched posture. He did not speak for a long time.

'She swore to me as faithfully as ever I saw that she had no knowledge of the role Abraham would play in our lives. All she knew was that I was the First Witness. She even hoped that she would be the other.'

'The Second Witness?' Abbie laughed to herself. 'Hey, if she wants to job so badly…'

Crane glanced up at her. He did not join in with her laughter, but the burdened look on his face eased a little.

'If only you knew how long I have waited to be reunited with her. In these unfamiliar times, I have been a ship tossed upon the waves. My only anchor has been my dreams of a future together.'

Abbie felt a sharp pang of sympathy for her partner. She had turned herself inside out trying to help Crane acclimatise to the 21st century, yet for all her efforts he had still been hopelessly lonely for his wife. Finding out that she had been lying to him from the beginning must have broken his heart.

She pulled her chair close to his and sat down, gingerly taking his hand in hers. 'Crane, I know you must be feeling unbelievably betrayed right now. It's hard to know if you can trust her, right?'

He nodded with reluctance.

'We do know one thing for sure. She did what she did because she's on our side. She's not our enemy, Crane. And right now, we can use all the help we can get. She's the only witch left alive in Sleepy Hollow, and if we're going to defeat Henry…'

All of a sudden, Crane pulled his hand away.

Abbie looked at him in surprise. 'Are you okay?'

'Quite all right, Miss Mills.' He averted his gaze as he spoke.

'Crane?' Abbie tried again, growing ever more irritated at his refusal to meet her eyes. 'You do want to defeat Henry, right?'

Only after a long while did he dare to look at her. He was embarrassed and shy, scratching the back of his neck in that universal language of men. 'He's my son, Abbie. I have to believe that he can be redeemed. For all that he has been twisted and warped by Moloch's lies, for all the harm he has caused to your family in particular, I must try…' He paused, his breaths coming in a raw, shaky staccato. 'I must try to get him back.'

Abbie was in shock. Since emerging from Purgatory, nothing had existed in her mind apart from bringing Henry to account. She had never considered that Crane would feel differently. For the first time, she felt the impenetrable united front that she and Crane had presented to the world starting to crack.

That he had accidentally caused her ancestors' deaths was never an issue for her. That was the act of Jeremy Crane, a boy with frightening powers who had grown up without the guidance and protection of a mother or father.

Henry Parrish was a different matter entirely. He had willingly given his soul to Moloch, who had buried his father alive and given his mother to their enemy as a prize. He was the villain of this story, and she had no compunctions about sending him to his master permanently.

As impossible as it seemed, Crane still harboured hopes of reuniting his family. He felt the bottomless, hopeless love of a father. It was a feeling she could never understand. At the same time, she sympathised with Crane's feelings.

She just hoped that when the time came, she would have the strength to do what he could not.

'Cannot you tell me where we are going?'

They had been driving over rough terrain for fifteen minutes now. Abbie had turned her car off the main road highway of Sleepy Hollow onto a forestry road that led God only knew where.

'All I know is what Captain Reyes told me. There's an incident in progress on the old Mill Road. They need everyone down there.' She eyed him seriously. 'You need to be invisible when we get there. I mean it, Crane. Reyes won't be happy to see you.'

Since her arrival in Sleepy Hollow, the new captain's treatment of them both had varied between suspicion and outright disdain. She was certainly no Frank Irving, and since then, they had been forced to keep their extra-curricular anti-Moloch activities on the quiet.

She felt distracted, like there was something important pressing on the back of her mind. She hadn't heard from Jenny since the previous afternoon. Her sister was being peculiar and distant, even more so than usual. When Abbie suggested they hunker down in the archives with takeout and Dante's Inferno, she fobbed her off with vague excuses and promises to fill her in later.

Abbie checked her phone for the umpteenth time that morning and saw no reply to her messages and texts. After all the progress the two of them had made, it felt like they had suddenly slumped back into their old routine.

The police road block loomed ahead of them. The breadth of the road was cordoned off, and beyond it were at least a dozen cars belonging to Sleepy Hollow's finest. As they stalked up the tree-lined dirt road, Abbie noticed something else that sent a chill through her. The cordon was marked ATF.

Crane saw the look of alarm on her face. 'What is it, Lieutenant?'

She turned to him, her brow creased. 'Listen to me. Whatever happens, you need to stay behind that cordon, you hear me?'

'Yes, but…' He could see from her expression that further argument would be both fruitless and painful to her. 'Behind the cordon, as you say.'

She smiled before taking a deep breath and advancing, flashing her badge at the officer manning the cordon. Just as she suspected, he was a federal agent. It did not take long for her to find Captain Reyes among the fray.

'Lieutenant Mills, glad you could join us.'

Her tone and bearing conveyed disapproval, but Abbie was used to that now. She kept her voice low. 'You didn't tell me that Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were running the show.'

'I tell my officers what they need to know in order to perform their duties, Mills.'

Abbie curbed her temper. 'Can you tell me what's going on? It looks like every cop we have is out here.'

Captain Reyes directed Abbie's gaze through a gap between two police cars. She could see a dilapidated wooden house in the distance; an old logger's hut by the looks of it.

'We got a report of a hostage situation. The suspect is a man named Clifton Larroquette, a small-time criminal with a string of convictions for weapons violations and petty theft. ATF arrived this morning, attempting to execute a search warrant to uncover a cache of illegal weapons bought at a gun show in Virginia last month.'

'Let me guess,' Abbie interrupted. 'The ATF sold it to him.'

Reyes laughed drily. 'They won't admit it, but they've been known to dabble in entrapment from time to time – anything to get their man. Anyhow, things escalated and Larroquette refused to come out, said he wouldn't talk to anyone except his lawyer from Virginia. He's currently en route.'

'Ma'am, what's stopping them from storming the place? They have smoke grenades, all kinds of non-deadly options…'

'The problem is, Larroquette has a wife and step-daughter in there with him, along with a group of friends. They're part of a religious sect that moved out here a couple of years ago.'

'Survivalists?' Abbie ventured.

'Essentially. They claim to be Wiccans, mixed up with a bunch of Book of Revelation mumbo-jumbo. They believe that the End Times are approaching, that God will cleanse the Earth and leave only the righteous. Guess they didn't read the Bible passage about suffering witches to live.'

Abbie felt a cold, heavy, wet thing slithering inside her belly. Was this a coincidence; a bunch of anti-government wing-nuts with occult tendencies? But what if it were true? She wondered briefly what Katrina might think of having some of her own kind right here in Sleepy Hollow.

'What's the plan?'

'Right now, I'm doing everything I can to keep a lid on it. Whatever happens, I don't want…'

There was a sudden commotion among the agents and Abbie heard a burst of static coming from Reyes's walkie-talkie.

'I didn't copy that – can you repeat? Over.'

Abbie say the face of her superior go slack as she listened.

'Copy that.' She turned to Abbie. 'You're gonna need a bulletproof vest. Agent Davis of the ATF wants to brief you.'

'Wait, brief me on what? What's going on?'

Captain Reyes met her eyes for the first time. There was something unfamiliar in their depths, something that could almost be mistaken for sympathy.

'They want to talk to you – only you. You're our designated negotiator.'

Abbie was baffled, a fearful feeling creeping up on her. 'Why me?'

'Because your sister is in there, Lieutenant. Jenny Mills is one of the hostages.'