Page 37 of Bewitched By the Headless Horseman
Roxy bounded into the room and hopped onto the bed. Stevie put the call on speakerphone and knelt in front of the fox. “Let me try something,” she said, crossing her fingers that this would work. Foryearsshe’d wanted to pet her sidekick, feel how soft her fur was. “Can you close your eyes? I was able to touch Kit when we both did this, and I want to see if it happens with us.”
“Did it work?” Lucia asked, her tone anxious.
Stevie rolled her eyes. “I haven’t tried yet. Hang on and I’ll let you know.”
Roxy sat on her haunches and closed her eyes. Stevie mirrored the movement, then pressed her hand forward until her fingers didn’t pass through the fox but brushed soft fur. She gasped, an emotion brewing within her chest, something raw that she hadn’t felt in ages. Pure excitement. Tears formed behind her eyelids while running her hands along Roxy’s back, petting her as she’d wanted to do for years.
Roxy let out a low purr, and Stevie smiled wider. “I guess we get to properly meet now, don’t we?” Stevie finally drew her hand back. “It works on Roxy too.”
“This is amazing! But if it got into the wrong hands… If ghosts know you can do this…” Lucia trailed off.
Most would probably mind their own business, but it only takes one bad egg to ruin things. “If one came in here while I was sleeping, it wouldn’t be difficult to tape my eyes shut or something.” Stevie shuddered at the thought.
“You forget,” Kit said. “I’m here, and I don’t sleep. Not many ghosts want to risk going where the Headless Horseman is.”
Lucia hadn’t heard Kit, but she was on the same page. “You have Roxy and Kit there. Plus I’ll work on creating another ward to protect seers—one that hopefully ants don’t eat.”
“Thanks, Lucia.” Stevie ended the call after Lucia told her she would check on her tomorrow.
Kit backed away from the bed. “Get some sleep. I won’t leave this room unless you ask me to.”
As she tugged back the covers, she patted the spot beside her. “Just get in here, my Headless Knight in ghostly attire. I’m not going to have you sit in the chair the entire night. Besides, we’ve crossed enough boundaries already, so this is only one more checkmark to add to the list.”
Without a word, Kit removed his boots and slipped in beside her.
Stevie closed her eyes, unable to stop herself from wondering what the rest of him would feel like against her palms. What his—
Cauldron’s teeth, get your head on straight, Stevie.
Chapter Fourteen
Something, no,someone, was pressed against Stevie’s arm. The coolness of Kit’s ghostly form, an alluring airy feel, didn’t make her shiver—it only made her want to snuggle closer into him. At least she hadn’t draped her arm around his stomach and wiggled into the crook of his arm like a needy little creature. But really, she wouldn’t have minded it at all. She was tempted to trail her fingers along the planes of his face again, yet she kept her hands to herself, plastered to her sides.
“You don’t sleep, so why are your eyes shut?” Stevie asked, smiling.
The coolness of Kit dissipated, like a flip of a switch, there one second and gone the next. She opened her eyes to sunlight spilling through the slit of her curtains.
“Sometimes I lay with my eyes shut, pretending as if my thoughts are dreams,” Kit said. “It keeps me from becoming as deranged as most consider me to be. Over two hundred years of searching for one’s head will easily snap their sanity. If I didn’t have Inferno, I might not have continued looking.”
Stevie’s heart lodged in her throat when an awful thought slipped into her mind. “Since he’s your sidekick, that means he’ll go to the Hollow too?”
“It does,” he growled. “Because of that bastard Levi.”
Stevie should’ve realized that—after the living passed, the familiar would go wherever their seer partner went, whether stay a ghost here, go to Heaven, or the Hollow. “We’ll get some answers.” She checked the missed messages on her phone, finding one from Ginger.
I’ll be back a little later than anticipated, but I’ll text you when I’m closer to home.
The hourglass was losing more and more sand every second that passed. Soon the new moon would be there and the second Eye would open.
“Looks like we have some time before going to Ginger’s. You know what that means?” Stevie said, keeping her voice light even though she was freaking out on the inside.
“Your tone speaks of trickery.” Kit rolled to face her, his tall frame taking up most of the bed. And she was also tempted to tell him to close his eyes so she could undo the top button of his collar.
“No trickery here.” She grinned while sitting up. “You’ll be required to do some research while theSleepy Hollowmovie is playing. I’m going to get the apothecary deliveries ready, check in with Gideon, and stop by the council.”
Stevie handed him the tablet from her nightstand, showing him how to type in letters to look things up. He caught on quicker than she’d expected, more so than a lot of the living.
After taking a quick rinse, Stevie delivered the packages around town. At each stop she became a Chatty Cathy and asked the residents if they had ever heard rumors about where the Horseman’s head could be hidden. She said that it was for a council project to maybe get some valuable information to slip from them. One guessed on the other side of the world, another deep in the ocean, the third mused that it had to be the cemetery, and the fourth told her the Horseman never existed.
