Free Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution by Keith R.A. DeCandido Page B

here.”
    “We’ll hit the road.” Abbie looked at Crane. “Let’s go.”
    Crane gave one of his bows. “Happy hunting, Miss Jenny.”
    “You too, Crane.”
    Jenny spent the next hour trying and failing to organize Corbin’s files. Each time she took a shot at it, she either got distracted by something interesting to read—there was one musty old book that had all kinds of interesting stuff about healing potions andherbs—or got fed up and stopped after only sorting a few things because it was boring.
    To her horror, she was going to have to admit that her older sister was right.
    Considering she’d been spending the better part of a decade thinking of Abbie as nothing but wrong, this was a bit of a revelation for her.
    Putting it out of her mind, she left the armory and headed up to North Broadway and then down to Chestnut Street.
    The first time Jenny had set foot in the Whitcombe-Sears Library, it was in the company of Sheriff Corbin.
    “This old church is a library?” she had asked the sheriff when he brought her down Chestnut the first time.
    Corbin had smiled under his beard. “Hasn’t been a church of any kind in fifty years. It was Episcopal, and done in the Federal style—which is why it’s made out of brick instead of stonework, and why the inside was boring as hell. Give me a good old-fashioned Gothic church or Catholic cathedral any day.”
    Jenny had stopped walking and given him a look. “Is this gonna be another lecture? ’Cause if it is, I can go back home
right
now.”
    Putting a reassuring hand on her back, he guided her forward. “No lecture, I promise. At least not from me.”
    They had gone inside the large wooden doubledoors, which opened with a creak. Inside was a small hallway with a staircase on the left and a wall on the right that had a bulletin board covered with flyers about various happenings and services in the town. In front of them sat a doorway to the larger church area—or, rather, library area—which had a small security gate designed to read the bar codes on books that hadn’t been checked out.
    Past the gate had been rows of bookcases where pews probably used to be. Looking up, she saw more bookcases up on the balcony where the organ probably was. Up front, in the area where the altar would have been, sat a huge wooden desk.
    Corbin had made a beeline for that desk. On top of it had been a pile of books, a computer that was top-of-the-line the year Jenny was born—the fan was making a labored noise—and a wooden box containing call slips and small pencils. On either side there had been two small tables with computers of the same vintage as the antique on the desk, which Jenny had figured to be for the use of the general public.
    Said public had been nowhere to be found, as the two of them had been the only patrons present in the library.
    Behind the desk had sat a middle-aged man with a beard that was even grayer than Corbin’s, and with thinning wispy salt-and-pepper hair, which was tied back in a ponytail.
    Without preamble, Corbin had smiled and saidto the man behind the desk, “You know that desk violates the fire code, don’t you?”
    The librarian—at least, Jenny had assumed he was a librarian, though she never did find out for sure—had just grinned. “So cite me, you old reprobate.”
    Corbin had put out his hand over the desk, and the librarian shook it enthusiastically. “Good to see you.” He had turned to Jenny then. “Jenny Mills, this is Albert Whitcombe-Sears, the proprietor of this august place of learning.”
    “Thank you, August,” Al had said, mispronouncing Corbin’s first name with the accent on the second syllable like the adjective Corbin had used to describe the library. Then he had offered her his own hand. “Pleased to meet you, Jenny—but you can call me Al. Just don’t call me Betty.”
    Jenny had returned the handshake, and had also given him a confused look. “Why would I call you Betty?”
    Corbin had waved the joke