Page 21 of Bewitched By the Headless Horseman
Beside her, Kit’s body stilled when she pulled out the box and attempted to open it. But it wouldn’t budge. “I can’t get it open.” There wasn’t a lock or anything on it, and she knew at once a spell had been cast on this too. “Give me a second.” Stevie repeated her motions as she did with the basement wall by using Lucia’s brew and a drop of her blood. A spicy aroma brushed her nose and smoke swirled through the air.
When she pressed on the lid again, this time it lifted, an earthy scent striking her senses, not reeking of death as she’d expected. “Yep, these are definitely bones. And if you say they’re yours, then I’m going to take the risk and trust you on that.” She scanned over the pale remains and her eyes glued onto what had to be a femur. Most she couldn’t remember the names of. “I don’t know if they’re all here though. If you need me to count I can. Off the top of my head, I remember a skeleton has 206 bones, but I’m not sure how many should be here since a skull isn’t one bone.”
“178,” he said, his tone assured, and so she would go with his answer and maybe verify it on her phone later. “Take them out and I’ll count to confirm they’re all here.”
Stevie rolled her eyes. “Yes, Your Headlessness.”
“You areamusing.”
The edges of her lips curled up as she moved the trunk onto the floor to give them room at the table. She slowly took out one bone after the other while Kit counted aloud and she mirrored his numbers inside her head. While she knew only a few of the names of the bones, he spouted off every single one. Shewondered if in his living days he’d been a doctor or something close.
Plucking the last one from the sack—another rib—she asked when curiosity finally got the best of her, “How do you know all these names?”
“My father was a physician,” he said. “178.”
“My dad’s a dentist, and I don’t even know all the names of the teeth. But guess what? All the bones are here!” she sang the last sentence, running her finger against the rib. Kit shivered beside her and her lips parted. “Can youfeel itwhen I touch them?”
“Mm-hmm,” he drawled.
“Oh, sorry about that.” Stevie dropped his bone onto the pile, cursing herself for unintentionally caressing it. Thank the witches it wasn’t a hip or thigh bone.
“No complaints from me.” Kit’s voice came out gruffer than she’d expected, and he cleared his throat as he handed her the wooden box. “I need you to hide them here in your home until it’s time to use them.”
“And how long do you expect me to keep them under wraps from prying eyes?” Stevie lifted an eyebrow while using a velvet cloth from the trunk’s contents to pick up each bone and place them gently into the box.
“My head needs to be found before the next full moon.”
“I’m not a detective, and I’m pretty sure that almost every witch has attempted to locate it at one time or another. I mean, even Lucia played a game with her friends when she was younger to see who could win by finding it first. And you know what happened? Nothing. No one uncovered it.” She tilted her head, mulling something over. “What happened to your head anyway? Was it like in the story? You do know the story, right?”
He drummed his fingers against the table. “I know there is one. I would be a fool not to know when there’s a statue of me near the old church.”
If he didn’t know accurately, then he needed to. So she broke down the story and movies for him to see what matched and what didn’t. “You and your horse are both translucent white instead of swathed in black. That’s one difference I know. Oh, and I guess you can only play with ghosts, not the living. So two things.”
“Everything you’ve heard is preposterous,” Kit scoffed. “A cannonball taking my head with it? Pitiful.”
She would loop around to that another time since it wasn’t important right now. “Then if you can feel me touching your bones, why couldn’t you at some point feel someone holding your head? You did know the bones were at the abandoned house without touching them as well.”
“For someone who is a witch’s assistant, you should’ve uncovered that by now.”
“Witchy vibes,” she whispered. “That makes more sense. So someone hid your head with magic. But why?”
“That is a good question, isn’t it?” he said. “Now, where are you going to hide my bones?”
Stevie knew the best place to store them for the time being—the back of her closet in a safe that was spelled to keep her most valued collections extra protected.
“You owe me.” Stevie shut the box and carried it into her room with Kit hot on her heels. She pushed the clothes in her closet aside to get to the large safe. After she spun the combination lock to the correct numbers, she removed her special boxes of coins, stamps, and collector cards, then placed the bones into the empty space. Shutting the door, she draped a blanket over it to make the safe a little more hidden before moving her clothes to cover it. “There.”
“Thank you. I’ll find a way to return the favor,” Kit promised.
She blinked. “Oh, I don’t need a favor. I’m just doing my Sleepy Hollow duty and helping ghosts’ heads remain intact.”
“Good night.” He brought two fingers up to his invisible mouth and released a high-pitched whistle.
Stevie covered her ears. “I think you just blew out my eardrums. How about you warn me in advance next time?”
“If it’s necessary.” He chuckled.
Before she answered him with a snarky reply, his horse whinnied outside her bedroom window. Eyes widening, she shoved the curtains aside. The white glow of the ghost illuminated her backyard. “It’s your stallion!” she gasped, lifting the window. Up close, the horse was like a sculpted art piece, beautiful, its eyes shining brighter than candle flames. She’d never paid attention to its striking details before, not even the other night when she’d been too busy watching Kit reap a head.
