Disclaimer: I continue to own nothing.
Author's Note: That's the end of the rewritten part, new chapter will be in the works soon. Thank you all for reading/rereading. Thoughts are still always welcome.
Chapter 3
"This is fascinating! It seems to be written in an ancient form of a Central African language, some of the earliest ones have a resemblence to ancient Egyptian. And you can read these?"
"Well the little footnotes in English explaining what the spells do are useful, but yeah somehow I can pronounce everything."
He looked back at the page where the footnote was clearly visible. "I didn't see those." He defended weakly.
"You know, I was thinking about what Katrina told me." Ichabod looked up from the book, his attention diverted. "She said that her coven still existed."
"We must find them, then."
"Ok. Now the only question is, how do we find a coven that's been staying hidden since the end of the 18th century?"
"What if it hasn't been hiding? Not effectively at any rate." She only responded with a slightly befuddled look. "There's one place where we might find records of any unusual occurrences, occurrences which might have witchly origin. And that place would be-"
"The town library. And we find the center of odd activity." Abbie finished, realizing his meaning and plan. "God bless Ben Franklin."
"Despite his annoying arrogance, I admit that his contributions to this country are admirable."
"I sense a chip on your shoulder."
"Ben and I had our differences." He answered, vaguely.
At the town's small library they met around a table with all the books and documents concerning odd events in the town, which proved to be many. "This town is stranger than I thought." The lieutenant marveled as she gazed at the numerous material sources they had collected.
"We shall have to employ some sort of decisive method to narrow our choices."
"So separate the witch caused events from the Sleepy Hollow weirdness. That might be easier said than done."
"Well this one seems to be a side-effect of the town's supernatural connections, as opposed to this one." They spent the next half-hour or so removing the day to day oddities of Sleepy Hollow from the possible leads. From these they were able to deduce the source of the activity as an old abandoned church outside of town, St. Henry Parish. "That's it, we've found the coven of the Radiant Heart." Ichabod exclaimed, determination shadowing his face and voice.
"So we're just going to storm a coven?" Abbie asked, doubtful of the wisdom of such a course of action.
"Precisely."
"I'm not sure that's such a good idea." She warned, but seeing his pleading look she relented. "Alright, but nothing rash."
"Of course."
And so they set out, armed only with the lieutenant's gun and Ichabod's wits. Upon arrival they found a rundown and overgrown church that miraculously still stood. Against any instincts to the contrary they may have had, they entered the aging church. Their entrance interrupted a group of women in the midst of a chant.
"Who dares defile this coven house? No man may enter during a casting." A very important looking woman at the center of the group demanded, coming to her feet.
"I am Ichabod Crane. I have some questions about my wife and daughter and I'm not leaving without the answers!" He replied with a force to match the woman's.
The entire congregation of witches had recoiled to varying degrees at the announcement of his name. "How do we know that you're who you say?" One asked, taking the defensive for her sisters.
"Do I appear to be lying?"
"How did you find us? No one knows about this place." Another asked, more sheepishly than the other two before her.
Beside her, Ichabod fumed and seemed momentarily incapable of speech, so Abbie responded. "You're not exactly hard to find. You should really consider working on that whole secret thing."
"Ichabod Crane." A seemingly disembodied voice rang out.
Confusion briefly overcoming his paternal wrath, Ichabod replied. "Yes?"
"Is it really you?"
"Yes."
"Do you recognize me?" The voice asked, motion in the back drew their attention. From the darkness, and what seemed a curtain, came a hooded female figure. As she came to the front and stood before them she removed her hood. The face of a blonde woman in her early thirties was revealed.
"Rachel. What are- how?"
"You know him?" Said the important looking woman with indignance, whispers circled through the huddled women.
"Silence!" The woman, identified as Rachel, ordered and all sound ceased.
"This another old girlfriend of yours, Crane?" Abbie asked, half teasing.
"No. She was a friend of Katrina's, from her coven I now presume."
"Indeed, Ichabod. You and I know why you're here, but I'm sure you're wondering why I am."
"You might say we're curious, yeah." Abbie added, during a pause.
She turned her gaze onto the lieutenant, and her cold eyes bore into her for a moment. "I sense a power in you, different from our own."
"The lieutenant is a descendant of one Grace Dixon, whom you might recall."
"Ah, yes, I remember." She responded curtly, giving Abbie a short glare before turning a gentler gaze upon Crane. "I'm afraid I have a small confession to make, my dear Ichabod." She sulked, her voice dripping in the manner of a practiced socialite as she placed a hand affectionately on Crane's chest. The whole performance nearly drove Abbie to illness. "Grace Dixon is the reason I'm still here. You see, she put a curse upon me. I was to wait here until you awakened so I could help you retrieve Katrina."
"Why? Why you?" Ichabod asked, removing her hand from his person.
"I couldn't imagine why she'd want to curse you." Abbie muttered under her breath, already disliking this woman, from whom the feelings were obviously resiprecated.
Rachel straightened, taking a step back from Crane, her rues uncovered. "Because I discovered her and Lachlan's little secret, and because I'm the one who turned Katrina in." she said, remorseless of her actions. She continued cooly, unaffected by Crane's rising colour, in an innocent simper. "I had to, you understand, imagine what the coven would have done to me if I hadn't. Personally, I had no issue with her action. In order to save the man I love, even disturbing the natural order would seem right." She gently replaced her hand upon his chest. "I noticed that Lachlan and... her," she curled her lips in disgust on the pronoun, giving Abbie a brief sideways glare, "had been making occasional trips toward your and Katrina's home and I put the pieces together. Then after we had to trap poor Lachlan I knew she'd come to see him."
"And that's when you trapped her." He stepped forward, closer to her, brushing her hand away from him again, and growled. "You were her friend. That makes you all the more guilty than the rest. You looked on and aided in the eternal entrapment of a woman and her three year old daughter, my daughter." She held eye contact with him, quite unaffected by these accusations. "Did you not even have the decency to allow them each other's company? You separate a mother and child!"
This last sentence at last gained a reaction, a violent one at that. Rachel stepped away in offended shock, similarly the others gasped and muttered. "How dare you make such accusations."
"Not we nor our mothers before us would dream of doing such a thing."
"No, Ichabod. We didn't do that." Her facade was removed, and she sounded truly offended and defensive because of it.
Crane looked at her with hardened, dispassionate eyes.
"You're not actually going to believe what a bunch of witches say. Right, Crane?" Abbie asked, trying to read his expression in the flickering light of candles.
"We were women, many of us mothers ourselves. It was only a punishment, a precaution really, for Katrina's saving you. We would never take a child from her mother!" She looked rather desperately into his eyes; searching for any recognition of her words as truth, she found none. "You must believe me!"
"And yet, somehow, I don't. They are apart, Rachel. A three year old girl was torn from her mother and is alone in purgatory, in fear! If you didn't do it, who did?" He nearly shouted the last question.
"Crane," Abbie placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. "We're not gonna get anything more here. Let's go." She lightly pulled him in the direction of the door. After a moment he followed, leaving Rachel looking wounded by his words.
They returned to the vault in near silence, interjected occasionally by short lived attempts at conversation.
"I don't trust her."
Crane let out a short humorless laugh. "I never particularly did either, truthfully. She always seemed rather insincere." He paused for a moment although considering something. "And yet, if they were telling the truth-"
"Which is unlikely." Abbie interrupted from where she reclined, feet resting on the table and chair leaning back.
"True. But even so, if they were, something must have happened while they were in purgatory."
"Is there kidnapping in purgatory?" She'd meant it jokingly but then the possibility of the suggestion struck her. "Did Katrina mention anything about seeing someone before they got seperated?"
"She wasn't really in the state to explain in detail at the time." He explained. "I'm going to see if she saw anything." He rose to his feet and headed to the old Crane house without another word to her.
Briefly she considered going after him and insisting upon accompanying him. She decided against it and instead planned to give him a half-hour head start before following.
He didn't stop walking until he reached the underground corridor, and even then continued into the small room of his prior encounter. "Katrina?" Nothing happened in response. And so he waited, seated in the ancient chair, waiting for an apparition. The one which he got was not the one he had been expecting. Again the small sniffings of a lonely and frightened girl filled the air. Looking up Ichabod saw his daughter curled up on the small bed, clutching the doll close once again. He resumed his earlier position, kneeling next to the bed. "Hello, little one."
This time she heard him, and started slightly. She looked at him with wide-eyed surprise. "Who are you? Where's Momma?"
"I don't know where your mother is either. How did you lose her, do you lose her, do you remember?" She looked at him warily. "It's alright. I'm also looking for your momma. You see, I'm lost too. Perhaps if you can tell me how you got lost we can find her together."
She didn't speak at first then began in a trembling girlish voice, marked by her mother's accent, which seemed on the verge of tears at any moment as she spoke. "We were in a strange place, dark. There was a man, he wear red coat, big. Momma didn't see but I did. Then Momma was gone and I was alone." Finishing her story she fell into tears and as they grew she faded away.