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Now it's our turn.

By sunset, Sleepy Hollow has transformed into the postcard tourists travel hundreds of miles to see. Orange lights glow from every storefront along Main Street. Fresh jack-o'-lanterns flicker on porches. Horse-drawn wagons carry laughing families past colonial homes draped in black bunting, while costumed actors wander the sidewalks pretending to be ghosts and witches.

The irony would almost be funny. Half the town is paying to be frightened. The other half doesn't realize they already should be.

Inside the cottage, every curtain is closed. Every entry point is reinforced.

I make another circuit through the house, checking every sensor I'd installed over the last 24 hours. Everything reads green. I don't trust it.

"Cameras?"

"Stable."

"Wi-Fi?"

"So far."

"Sayer?"

She glances toward the living room.

"Reading."

"He should be resting."

"He said he couldn't."

Neither could I. I step into the living room. Sayer sits curled beneath a blanket with one of the old local history books Everly dropped off earlier. The title catches my eye.

The Legends of Sleepy Hollow.

He notices me watching.

"I thought maybe there'd be something."

"Find anything useful?"

He flips a few pages.

"Mostly ghost stories."

"Sometimes that's where the truth hides."

He gives me a faint smile.

"You actually believe that?"

"I believe every legend starts somewhere."

Before he can answer, every light in the house dims. Once. Twice. Three times. The motion sensors begin chirping. Not in sequence. All together. Every camera feed dissolves into static.

Carys is already moving.

"I'm losing every system!"

I hurry toward the dining room. The monitors flash with fractured images. Front yard. Back yard. Tree line. Nothing. Then⁠—

One camera catches a figure standing on the roof. Impossible.