Hollowed: Return to Sleepy Hollow, the Complete Duology

by Candace Wondrak

  The second problem was that I didn’t know how to broach the topic with Bones and Crane. So far, things had gone unsaid, but I knew when you left things unsaid, misunderstandings tended to happen, with an alarming frequency. I didn’t want to be one of those people who lost relationships based on misunderstandings.

  Another part of me liked how things were and didn’t want to change it. What if bringing up my connection to Wash made what I had with Crane and Bones weaken? What if the almost-magical link between us faded the moment I voiced my confused feelings for the Horseman? I didn’t want to jeopardize what I had, because what I had was amazing.

  Hmm. Food for thought, but for another time.

  “There’s actually someplace I want to go,” I told Bones, earning me a curious look.

  Bones stared squarely at me, as if forgetting Wash stood nearby, ever alert, always watching me. “Can it wait until I get off?”

  Spending the entire day with Bones sounded nice, but not when it would also be full of snooping townsfolk and curious questions as to the nature of our relationship and whether or not I was excited to play Katrina’s part in the play. Yeah, I wanted to avoid the latter, pretty much at all costs. Could anyone blame me?

  “Don’t worry,” I told him, giving him my best—and hopefully most believable—smile. “I’ll have Wash with me. If anything happens, he’ll know what to do.” The fact that nothing had happened in the last few weeks wasn’t enough to put any of us at ease, I knew. In Sleepy Hollow, you never knew just what waited for you around the dark corners, even in the plain light of day.

  Bones glanced to Wash, stepping closer to me as he whispered, “I know, but I still don’t like leaving you in his hands.” His wide, strong shoulders rose and fell with a single sigh. “If something ever happened to you and I wasn’t there…like that night—”

  I stopped him by reaching for his face, tenderly running a hand along his cheek. “But you were there. You came for me, with him.” And then I said the words I hated saying, mostly because they reminded me of how close I’d been to losing, to possession, “If it wasn’t for Wash, you wouldn’t have found me.” After all, when you were being tortured by a spirit who wore the naked, stitched-up body of your dad, how long could anyone stay strong?

  The fact was there was only so much anyone could take, only so much physical pain, only so much mental anguish. To say that night had been traumatizing would be the biggest understatement of the year. It had taken a long while to not see my dad’s mutilated body every time I closed my eyes.

  “Okay,” Bones said, as if I needed his approval to go do what I needed to do. “But if something happens, or if something doesn’t seem right, I want you back at Crane’s, ASAP.” Not a question, but an order. An order I knew I couldn’t go against.

  I nodded once. “Agreed.”

  He bent to place his mouth on mine for a quick kiss goodbye, and then he was gone, heading down the sidewalk and back to the heart of town, or at least our little section of it.

  A strange sadness grew within me as I watched him go. It was the same feeling I had when I left Crane’s company, and I bet they felt the same. Fate, destiny, whatever the hell you wanted to call it, wanted us together—but unlike before, unlike the previous Katrina, I sure as shit wasn’t going to choose. If they made me…well, if they ever made me choose, it would hurt, but I just might not choose anyone. That would show ‘em, right?

  Wash’s large frame moved beside me, and together we stood there for a few moments, letting the sun warm the top of our heads and the gentle breeze caress our skin. Both things did not exist in the otherworld, and I wondered if he liked the feeling of being here, having the sun in the sky and time all around us.

  I heaved a gentle sigh, gesturing for him to follow me. “Come on. It’s kind of a long walk from here.” Walking across town was not something I enjoyed doing in my spare time, but while here, I’d had nothing but an ever-flowing amount of free time to waste. It was nice not spending all of my waking hours nose-deep in ancient books about spirits and witches though, I had to admit.

  Crane and his love of books will never rub off on me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked books, but only books with pretty covers and some sex in them. Ugh. There was nothing worse than a book cover that looked like a third grader used clip art to create it—and those fucking fade-to-black scenes? Come on. This was the twenty-first century. I wanted to read about sex, all the nitty-gritty details of it. Give me all the penises, all the fluids, all of it. But Crane’s books were about spells and history and other boring shit. Plus, they smelled kind of moldy, even if most of his library was in good condition.

  I hooked my thumbs through my belt loops, my boots kicking at the gravel that had broken off the road. We’d headed away from town, to a part that had no sidewalks. Wash walked beside me, and I wished desperately that he would say something.

  At first, I thought he just didn’t want to say anything to me or the guys, but as time went on, I started to wonder if Wash couldn’t speak. If he didn’t have a voice anymore, if his time in the otherworld had made him lose it—or the fact he’d been without his head for so long. Maybe it was a lingering effect of its reattachment…or maybe Wash just didn’t want to talk to me at all.

  I didn’t know why, but that possibility hurt the most.

  Chapter Four

  It took us a while to reach the old, practically forgotten area, but we managed. I lead Wash through the tall, towering trees surrounding the old cemetery. We passed rows and rows of stones—all limestone, so none of them were legible anymore, thanks to the acidity of the rain. Time and rain had eaten away at the stone before humanity realized what a bad idea using limestone was to detail the past. All of these names…all of these dates, forgotten, just like that.

  It was sad.

  In the far back corner of the cemetery, I brought us to the particular spot I was looking for. I’d kept away from this place for so long on purpose, not wanting to stand here and stare down at my dad’s grave. The dirt was packed down now, and I knew he was under there in a coffin, thanks to Crane’s money. I also had Crane’s money to thank for the marble headstone at the top of his grave. If Crane ever told me to pay all of this back, there’d be no way. I was thousands of dollars in the hole when it came to him now.

  I stared hard at the inscription, at the epitaph Crane had written for him. Henry Aleson, beloved scientist and father, and then of course the dates of his birth and his death. It didn’t surprise me to see the scientist part first, and then the father bit, even though I didn’t picture my dad as any kind of scientist.

  Scientists dealt in science, not magic. Not spirits. Not in the veil and the otherworld.

  My dad and Crane had so many experiments going, too. They wanted to peek into the otherworld, close the veil that was weakening between it and earth, and see if they could control spirits. The former they managed to do; it was the only reason, I think, that Bones finally believed in spirits, too. He saw the biggest and baddest of them all: the Headless Horseman.

  Wash, who now stood beside me as I stared at my dad’s grave.

  As far as the hospital knew, my dad’s body was still missing. I think the official report was that someone had taken his body, but there was no evidence on the cameras. When I asked Bones how that could be—because every hospital had cameras these days—he said the cameras glitched, one after another, originating in the hall near the morgue, one by one, all the way out of the hospital…as if something walking under the cameras’ field of vision didn’t want to be seen.

  “Do you think your grave is around here somewhere?” I asked, moving my gaze away from my dad’s headstone to stare up at Wash. His dark, black eyes were on me, no shocker there, and my stomach twisted. I didn’t know why I asked him that…he wouldn’t know, and he sure as hell wouldn’t answer me. I knew he understood me, because when I asked him to do things, he did them with no hesitation.

  Wash’s shoulders shrugged.

  Well, at least he was t
rying to answer me.

  I didn’t even know what they did with the bodies from a battlefield. In the old days, when wars were held just outside your back door, what happened in the aftermath? Did someone go through the fields and bury the bodies? Did they burn them? Or did they simply leave them all there to fester and rot in the sun, letting the corpses of those fallen get eaten by birds and flies? I shivered when I thought about it, recalling having a dream similar to that.

  All those bodies…limbs strewn about, blown apart by cannonballs. Some of them were young, too. So young there was no way they would’ve been an adult in today’s age. Such a waste of life.

  Hell. Maybe Wash didn’t have a grave. Maybe he was never human. Maybe he was just a spirit that had felt the terror and death of the Revolutionary War and decided to take the form of one of the slain, a man who’d lost his head to a cannonball. Maybe this Wash wasn’t really Wash.

  I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, did it matter? Did it matter at all what he was? He’d helped me when I needed him, hadn’t hurt anyone else since I told him not to. He listened to me, and he seemed nice enough, his attractiveness aside.

  No. It didn’t matter. There were humans with no humanity. Humanity wasn’t something that was innate to humans. It was a learned trait, and even a monster could learn to change his ways.

  I felt the strange need to talk, even though I knew Wash wouldn’t respond, so I said, “I’ve been avoiding this place.” I didn’t think anyone would blame me for wanting to steer clear. After all, the mausoleum where that spirit had me cornered was nearby, a reminder of it all. But that wasn’t the only reason I stayed away. “I guess I just wanted to pretend it didn’t happen,” I went on. “Turn my back to it and pretend my dad’s still at the morgue.”

  The wind swept through us, but the wind here was a few degrees too cold. Or maybe it was because the sunlight was blocked by the old, gnarled trees around us. Either way, standing here was just eerie enough to be uncomfortable.

  “But he’s here,” I whispered, my stare practically burning holes in the marble stone below. “Down there.” When I exhaled, the breath came out shaky. “Dead because of me.” I let those words sink in, hating they were true. “He’s dead because of me. Because the spirits wanted me back in Sleepy Hollow.”

  They wanted me to open the veil and let them all through? Ha. They had another thing coming. I wouldn’t do shit for them.

  Of course, that said nothing about the more conceited spirits who didn’t care about me opening the veil. Some spirits just wanted to possess me, even if they wouldn’t be able to use my power. My soul was tastier than others, apparently.

  My eyes grew watery, but I fought the tears, not wanting them to fall. If I began to cry, I knew I’d lose it completely. Whatever calmness I had right now would be shattered, because once I started crying, it was hard to stop. And I was an ugly crier, too. I didn’t want Wash to see that.

  “Is it because I look like her?” I asked no one in particular. Wash didn’t have any answers for me, and neither did my dad’s grave. “Is all of this because I’m the fucking doppelganger of Katrina Van Tassel?” If this was because my face was hers…there was nothing I could do but be upset about it. What a stupid, pointless thing.

  The next time I blinked, a single tear rolled down my cheek, tickling the skin underneath in its descent. I was in the process of reaching up to swipe it away, but someone else did it for me, stunning me into silence.

  Wash.

  Wash had stepped closer, not making a single sound as he gently slid a finger along my cheek, catching the tear before it could go all the way down. His almost tender touch made me sigh, his skin almost too warm to be real. He did not pull back after; his hand lingered there.

  I turned my face toward his hand, pressing my whole cheek against his palm. When I breathed in, I could smell him. Musky, woodsy, like nature itself made into a man. His skin was rough but not uncomfortable to touch, and I sighed yet again when I remembered what his hand felt like when they were in leather gloves. This time, there was no leather separating us. This time, there was nothing but his bare hand on my face, and my urgent, bizarre need to feel him in other places, too.

  My own hand lifted, cupping his, as if I was afraid he’d try to pull away. I held his hand against my cheek, my eyes closed. Inside my chest, my heartbeat increased, a wild, untamed thing that only grew more uncontrollable when Wash was near.

  He didn’t try to pull away. He stood there, his dark eyes angled down at me, his lips slightly parted, as if he wanted to say something. My own eyes were half-lidded, and I knew if I said anything right now, it’d be too late to take it back.

  How was I supposed to deny the feelings this man, this spirit—whatever the hell he was—rose in me? How was I supposed to look him in the eye and feel nothing? It was like my soul called out to his, his handsome face and drop-dead gorgeous body aside. I didn’t care what he looked like; I only cared that he was the Horseman. My Horseman.

  “Wash,” I whispered his name, figuring that much was safe to say. But I was stupid, because the moment I said his name, his other hand lifted to my neck, drawing my hair back over my shoulder and exposing my throat to him. He lightly touched my neck, his fingers drawing down to my collarbone around the charm.

  God, if he wasn’t so tentative about it all, if he played an alpha male for just one second, I had the feeling I’d give in to whatever demand he would make of me. Truly, it was a good thing he wasn’t. It was a hell of a good thing he was a slow, careful creature, because I couldn’t do anything with Wash without talking to Crane and Bones first.

  Since I couldn’t do anything inappropriate with him, since we stood at the foot of my dad’s grave, I was limited, but I did the one thing I could: I released the hand holding my cheek and flung myself at his chest. His strong muscles welcomed me, and I hugged myself to him, wanting his arms to wrap around me and block out the entire world and its shittiness. No more death, no more spirits. No more confusing Sleepy Hollow shit. I’d take a normal life, please.

  A normal life, I knew, wouldn’t include Crane, or Bones, or even Wash. If I had a normal life, I wouldn’t have any of these men, and right now I couldn’t imagine my life without them. How quickly things had changed, huh?

  It took him a while, but Wash got the hang of it. In a few moments his thick, muscular arms wrapped around me, his hold on me just tight enough to be secure but not enough to hurt. Since he was so damned tall, my face was buried against his lower chest, between his lower pectorals. I could feel his hard, defined abs beneath his shirt, and my body grew warm in places it shouldn’t.

  I wanted to yank this man’s clothes off and climb him like a tree, let him ride me like a horse. Hell, or maybe I’d ride him. Either way, definitely not something to think about while standing in front of my dad’s grave and when I had two boyfriends who probably wouldn’t like my growing feelings for the man.

  The longer I stayed cuddled up to him, the more I felt swirling inside of me. Emotions that shouldn’t exist, sensations that meant I was more on the horny side than the sated side, even if I’d just had sex with Bones. Being with these guys, my sex drive was more go, go, go and less of a leisure. I didn’t want to have sex just to have sex and have fun. I didn’t want to have sex at all.

  I needed to.

  Yep. With these guys, in this damned place, sex was a need and not a want. That was that.

  I couldn’t say how long we stood there, lost in our silence and our embrace, but it was a while. Time didn’t matter, not anymore. I felt safe in his arms, protected, even if he was perhaps the most dangerous of them all. Every girl liked the bad boys, right? It’s just that most of us grew out of it by the time we were adults. Me? I thought I’d grown out of it…but there was something about him that drew me in.

  It was a long while before I pulled myself from him. Wash’s hold on me loosened as I went; he didn’t try to hold me to him for longer than I wanted. This gentle giant routine almost had me con
vinced. Almost. I knew what he could do with his ax; I’d never forget it. But still, I could appreciate his mildness.

  I tucked some hair behind my ear, angling my head up to meet his dark stare. Man, this guy had some thick eyelashes, too. Pitch-black, like the rest of his hair. They made his eyes look so pretty.

  Fuck. I had it bad for this one, too.

  “We should get back to Crane’s,” I said, mostly because I needed some space to breathe. I turned away from Wash, giving one last look at my dad’s grave. A sudden, almost unnaturally strong gust of wind blew past me, curling around my neck. The chain holding the charm on me somehow came undone, and it slid off my chest and fell to the dirt.

  I was too slow in catching it, mostly because I hadn’t expected anything like that to happen. When I reached up to catch it, it was too late. The charm was off me, and when I looked up, I saw I was no longer on earth—or at least my soul wasn’t. Where was I, you might be wondering?

  The otherworld. The one place I wasn’t supposed to be because of how delicious I was and how every spirit wanted to use me for one reason or another.

  The air around me was hazy, which meant I couldn’t see far. The sky was a milky white, no sun overhead. The otherworld was a strange place, a sort of in-between world where things were kind of like earth, but not quite. I had no idea how big it was, if it was the size of the earth itself or if the otherworld only popped up around places on earth where the veil was thin. So many things I didn’t know, because I didn’t grow up believing this stuff. Two months ago I would’ve laughed if someone came up to me and said I was in danger from spirits.

  My eyes fell, and even though it was only for a split-second, I was able to see my dad’s grave. Freshly dug, even in the otherworld. The grass around the mound of dirt was a few shades too saturated, a few shades off. My eyebrows came together when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.