Before Mrs. Twiggs could answer, I leaped off the bed. Abigail was in the next bedroom, rocking in the chair by the window, staring into the distant nothingness. A book lay open on her lap. It was The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Curious but appropriate reading. She snapped it closed and pointed it at me. “Terra, do you realize who?” She paused. “What you are about to confront?”
“Yes, Abigail.” I knew what the creature was when it was covered in flesh. It carries its evil now in the spirit world. Agatha Hollows killed the flesh, but she couldn’t kill the spirit. There’s only one way to do that in this world. I believe Agatha left that to me. “The creature is a Dullahan, a headless horseman. It is the only creature that could break through the woods surrounding Agatha Hollows’s cabin and the enchantment Mrs. Twiggs had placed on the Leaf & Page. The whip it carries is made from the corpse of a human spine. His wagon is covered in dried human skin. When the Dullahan stops riding, that is where a person is going to die. It calls out the person’s name, and that is when that person perishes. He has come to call our names. There’s no way to stop him as a spirit, Abigail, he must die when he is flesh.”
“Terra, I can’t let you go. It’s too dangerous,” Abigail said. “You can’t leave me here alone. I can’t do this without you. I have so much to learn.”
I wanted to tell her that I would be back, but I knew it wasn’t true. “Abigail, you’re strong. You’re the strongest witch I’ve ever known. Everything you need is inside you. Embrace your bloodline.”
Abigail didn’t turn to say goodbye. She couldn’t.
There was one last room I had to enter. I stopped outside Pixel’s room, trying to find words to say to him that would make him understand. He was asleep on the featherbed, upside down, his white belly sprawled out, paws kneading the air, giggling. “Flutter,” he repeated. I leaped on the bed next to him and stared at him. What a wonderful creature this Pixel is. He flung his eyes open and leaped on me. We bounced in the fluffy down comforter playing like cats should. Then he stopped. “What wrong, Terra? Why Terra sad?”
“Pixel, I have to leave for a while.”
“Pixel go.” He tumbled around the bed.
“Not this time. I need you to stay here and watch over Abigail and the ladies.”
“Terra no go.”
“It’s important, Pixel. I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
All the joy flushed out of his face. I couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. I scurried out of the room, down the spiral staircase, and out the kitchen doggie door. Tracker was waiting for me outside. I rubbed my head against his chin. “Guard Abigail with your life and be nice to Pixel, okay?”
He wiggled his tailless behind. He was a smart creature for a dog and fearless. I headed to the Montford District with its crooked streets. Its graveyard was a beacon for the ghosts of Asheville. Its geographic coordinates were calculated by Frederick Olmsted, the genius who constructed the landscaping at the Biltmore Estate. The Vanderbilts were steeped in the supernatural pursuits. Olmsted was their architect of the conduit to the spirit world. They searched the four corners of the earth, acquiring exotic plants and trees. Spirit trees from Ireland, holy trees from the dark continent, bamboos from the orient, all to bring the magic from those places to the Biltmore Forest and to Asheville. The Montford graveyard was at the epicenter of that conduit. The lieutenant would be waiting for me there. I arrived early afternoon. I was tired. It had been a long walk. The cemetery was empty except for a few lost souls. I leaped on top of a headstone. I bent over to read the name Mordecai Alabaster. I waited for dusk. It seemed a cliché, but spirits truly like to travel from twilight to dawn. Not that they’d be seen in the daylight but because the daylight reminds them of their life on earth. The warmth they will never feel again. That was true for all ghosts. But the lieutenant was not a ghost. He had never felt the warmth of the sun, for he was pure evil. The sun melted past the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had no fear. I felt almost relieved that this day had come. I had lived it often enough in my dreams. That feeling of standing on the edge of a great precipice and jumping off. The fear of falling is worse than the actual fall. I wanted to jump off into this last journey. I smelled the lieutenant as his wagon drifted through the headstones. There was one other ghost with him. He was not the one I had felt in the Biltmore basement. The lieutenant was holding a brass urn. “You can let him go,” I said. “I’ll show you the way.”
He opened the urn and threw the ashes into the air. They swirled like a whirlwind and formed into Albert who looked at me with terror in his eyes. Then he disappeared.
I led the lieutenant out of Asheville onto the road that Agatha Hollows and I had traveled so long ago. Time slipped away as we walked all the way to Saluda, to the Green River. It was swollen from the spring rains. The lieutenant stopped on the muddy bank.
“You know I can’t cross moving water. You’ve tried to deceive me. All your companions are dead.” The lieutenant lashed out his whip, tearing fur and flesh from my back. I howled in pain.
“Wait,” I said. “This is the only way to get where you want to go. You must follow the exact route that Agatha and I took. It’s an intricate puzzle of connecting pieces you must pass through. I watched her closely. I know all the windows you must climb through before you can open the door. I can help you cross. There is magic I know that can give you your flesh back long enough to cross.”
“If you fail me, Terra Rowan, your companions will suffer a painful death in this life and the next.”
Agatha Hollows left behind crumbs of magic along our path, knowing that someday I would return and might need them. I couldn’t summon magic in my form as a cat, but I could use hers. I followed the crumbs until I found the mountain laurel she had charmed. “Touch this tree,” I said.
They touched the tree. The roots snapped out of the ground and wrapped around them. There was a loud humming from its trunk like a buzz saw. Flesh creeped across their bodies. In a matter of minutes, they stood in front of me as their former selves, the men I had seen in Agatha Hollows’s cabin when they came for her. The mountain laurel withered, leaving nothing but a small sliver stuck in my paw. I tried to pull it out, but it was lodged too deep.
“Carry me, the water is too deep for me to cross,” I told them.
The lieutenant picked me up and carried me toward the water. He stopped. “Walk. It’s the only way,” I said. As he stepped into the water, stepping-stones rose up to meet his feet. As the water rushed past us, we reached the middle of the river. This was where Agatha Hollows warned me the bottom dropped off, deep and dark. I thought at that time she was warning me to be careful, but I knew now she was giving me a way to stop anyone who came after her. I reached up and sunk both my claws into his cheeks. He screamed in agony. The stepping-stones sunk back under the water. A Dullahan is two creatures—the head controls the body. Without it the creature will perish in the flesh and in its spirit. Agatha Hollows could not take his head at the bridge. She left that for me to do. I tugged until his head separated. His arms swayed madly, reaching for his head. He struggled as we sank to the bottom. I gave up my life to save my friends. I could feel my light struggling to pass from my body as I exhausted all my air. I welcomed this death and awaited my new life. And then I felt myself being lifted out of the water. A large black bear had grabbed the lieutenant’s head and was dragging him and me to the shore. The bear tore at the head as the lieutenant’s body pounded at it. The spell wore off in time for him to grab his head and turn back into a vapor, disappearing into the woods. I lay nearly dead at the feet of the black bear. I could smell its foul stench. I was waiting for it to finish me. Instead, it picked me up and stared into my eyes as it shape-shifted into the form of Mrs. Lund.