Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Guys,” Sabrina announces, bubbling with excitement, “This is going to be the best summer ever.”

She’s beaming, her eyes bright and smile fixed, but Sabrina has a way about her that’s just a little too — too precise and too wild, too shiny in the dark, like the legend of a floating light that leads you deeper into the forest than you ever planned on going. Harvey is used to pronouncements from Sabrina, so he knows her follow-through is typically terrifying. If she makes a promise of something — or if she promises not to do something — she’ll make it come true, tooth and nail.

Baxter High let out for the summer about fifteen minutes earlier and it’s a half day, so none of them have anywhere to be right away. Sabrina and Harvey and Theo and Roz perch side by side on the back of Harvey’s truck while their fellow students stream around them. Roz’s hair is in two little puffs, one sporting a flower from Harvey; Theo had shucked his jacket and rolled up his sleeves; Sabrina looks incandescent in the sunshine with her black dress and white hair.

Sabrina’s been different since everything went down with the pagans. Harvey always found her fearsome and adorable, but her intensity over the last few weeks reminds him of the mandrake. Nothing can penetrate her positivity. She’s going to have the best time and woe be to him who doesn’t get on board.

He has one arm slung around Roz, but he puts the other around Sabrina. “If you say so, ‘Brina, then I’m shaking in my boots,” he teases.

With a faux-affronted laugh, she shoves him and the three of them go toppling, Sabrina and Roz on either side of him. Roz leans close to press her smiling lips to his cheek, which surprises Harvey, though just a few weeks ago he wouldn’t have felt anything but shy pride. Theo makes an exasperated sound and hops off the truck bed, but then he’s grinning, streaking towards Robin’s green head, now visible in the crowd. And for a moment Harvey lets himself believe Sabrina, because he wants to have the best summer too. He doesn’t think anyone would blame him for being a little optimistic, right then.

Sabrina plans to spend the summer being a real teenager. She split time in two so she could have it all and she’s going to have it, all of it, every last bit. There’s no coming-of-age cliché that she’ll leave unexplored. She sleeps late until the sun is high and her room swelters with late-June heat; she puts on a blood-red bikini first thing in the morning and drags her friends to the community pool, swigging soda and slurping ice pops from Roz’s cooler. On Saturday mornings Harvey will sometimes drive them out to the beach, where there are no lost souls drowning in cages or men made of clay. They eat parchment-wrapped sandwiches that no one spiced up with newts’ eyes. Sabrina dances along the surf.

They pile into the back row at the cinema to watch horror movies that make Harvey hide his face in Roz’s shoulder the way he used to do with Sabrina. They drive around all night and park to look at the stars. Sabrina doesn’t even feel bad about being the odd one out without a boyfriend. She’s happy for Roz and happy for Theo, content to name constellations without holding anyone’s hand. The candle spell had burned all of that clean out of her.

Without cheerleading to make demands on her time, Sabrina joins the band, singing along as she twirls from microphone to microphone, leaning her cheek close to each of her friends’ in turn. She takes the lead on “Fools Rush In” and doesn’t think anything when her gaze catches Harvey’s during the song and holds there. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, she sings, laughing. Her heart is a blank slate watching him mouth the lyrics. She sees no danger there.

After rehearsal one night, buzzy and happy, she ices Theo’s ear and passes a sharp sterilized needle through its cartilage. Harvey has a kind of antsy expression the whole time and at first Sabrina thinks he doubts her ability to successfully pierce an ear, but then she realizes it’s envy. She smiles at him and holds the needle up. “What do you say, Harvey?” she wonders, voice lilting.

By the end of the evening, both he and Theo have small silver hoops high up on their ears. They fist-bump about it, but Sabrina notices Harvey smoothing his hair over his earring before he goes inside his house. Before he sees his dad.

But that’s almost normal — the kind of problem anyone could have.

Harvey has been skirting the mines again after so many mornings spent at the doors to hell, so he gets a summer job at the newly-opened ice cream shop four doors down from Dr. Cee’s instead. Dragging the last ice cream man to hell had left an opening and necessity was the mother of invention. Since Sabrina is all about normalcy, she puts in an application, too.

Three days a week, she and Harvey button up into pastel-striped shirts and balance little paper hats on their heads so they can pass out cones and sundaes. Harvey likes the parade of kids with their sticky fingers, sometimes drawing mini comics for them on paper napkins if the traffic’s slow. Sabrina plunges her ice cream scooper into strawberry and vanilla, rolls rainbow sprinkles over each soft-serve surface. She feels the most normal she has since before she wrote her name in the devil’s book.

To hell with hell.

Home is strange. Ambrose has seen its ebbs and flows, has been imprisoned by its walls as much as he was cherished by them. Absence had made the heart grow fonder, but now heartbreak has turned it cold again. Funny that Ambrose went all over the world only to end up in the same place he started, but everyone who remained in Greendale has made their life anew.

He leans close to Sabrina at the breakfast table. Today her hair is held back with black cat-eye sunglasses, because she’s going to the beach. Ambrose had declined an invitation. “Bet you goblin gold that Auntie Hilda snaps and buries Mambo Marie in the Cain pit by lunchtime.”

Sabrina laughs, but she doesn’t discount the possibility. Marie has made a home for herself in the Spellman kitchen, boiling bubbling brews on the stovetop and hanging herbs from the rafters, huddling with Zelda at the island as they devise a whole new curriculum together — interrupted only by flirtatious smiles and teasing touches. Auntie Hilda isn’t thrilled. She can barely get at her own cabinets.

“Suppose I’ll just have cereal for breakfast,” Hilda mutters, taking her place at the table. “Without a bowl… Or a spoon, since you’re standing in front of the…” Her voice fades out into an irritable mumble, more a riff of annoyance than intelligible commentary.

Ambrose smiles and snaps his fingers, summoning a bowl quick as you can. “Must take some initiative, Auntie.”

“Thank you, my love,” she sighs. “I wouldn’t be quite so bothered if they didn’t — oh, the seating plans!” She jumps to her feet but is too late to stop an uncorked potion from being casually swatted by Zelda’s cigarette-holding hand. It promptly loses its contents all over Hilda’s carefully sketched-out seating plans for the wedding.

Zelda barely glances over. “Was that important?” she wonders carelessly. “Then you really shouldn’t leave it lying about, sister.”

“Yes,” Hilda says, through clenched teeth, “how silly of me.”

When Zelda wasn’t spilling her bisexual schoolteacher bliss all over the kitchen, Hilda was slowly inching Dr. Cee into their lives. But even a centimeter was too much for Zelda. She patiently ignored him over lunches, spoke around him during dinner, and pretended not to see him at all if they crossed paths in the house after dark. It would all be terribly amusing, if Ambrose had much energy to be terribly amused lately.

Sabrina’s phone buzzes and then there’s a honk outside, signaling the arrival of her friends. “Try not to blow the house up while I’m gone!” she says brightly, grabbing for her bag.

Ambrose follows her out into the foyer. “Cousin —”

She turns on her heel, smile shining. She always has time for them lately. Interesting thing, time. Sabrina is there to soothe Ambrose with movie nights, to dance along to records in his room, and to pester him about such silly things as online dating profiles. She’s tasted every practice wedding cake Auntie Hilda has attempted, all thirty-two of them, even when the flavors are as ghastly as blackberry-and-squid. She dutifully reviews Zelda’s lesson plans when asked and offers notes. For one girl, she manages time most artfully.

Of course, she’s not quite one girl, not anymore.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come, Ambrose? Never know who you might meet out on the surf. You could have your very own From Here to Eternity if you wanted.” She raises her eyebrows playfully.

“No, thank you, as delightful as that sounds. I’m rather more concerned with whether or not you’ve noticed any more time anomalies —”

Sabrina waves that off with a widening smile. “Everything’s fine, Ambrose. I didn’t break the world. In fact, I think I improved it.” She’s positively buoyant. “If only I could do something for the aunties. Do you think a kind of reverse Parent Trap might do the trick?”

“Please do not enact any schemes, no matter how kind-hearted,” Ambrose pleads, only half-kidding. No, he realizes when he thinks of what Sabrina might do next, not kidding at all.

She laughs. She is a bubble on a breeze lately, as charming as you please. “You worry too much.”

But Ambrose is afraid he doesn’t worry enough.

“Hey, girl?”

At the sound of Roz’s voice, Sabrina looks up from her book with a smile. And while Roz will love her forever and for always, inside her own head she’s free to shiver; there’s no denying that Sabrina has become slightly unnerving ever since the night her hair turned salt-white, though it seems especially obvious lately. She takes off her sunglasses, still picturesque in her wide-brimmed black straw hat and red bathing suit, like a pinup of a witch from another decade.

Roz loves it. Roz loves her. But.

“Yeah?” Sabrina’s voice is musical with laughter. “Roz, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Roz hasn’t seen a ghost, but she’s seen plenty of other things that could chill one to the bone just as easily. “Can I ask you a super insecure question that we’ll forget ever even crossed my mind and never bring up ever, ever again?”

The boys went to get snacks on the boardwalk, so it’s just Roz and Sabrina on the big beach blanket, surrounded by other people’s merrily playing stereos and loud chatter. Alone in public feels oddly guarded — like Roz’s sour fears could be swallowed up by the ocean, never to be seen again.

“Shoot,” Sabrina says.

“There isn’t…” Roz hesitates, but it flashes through her mind’s eye again: Sabrina on top of Harvey in his bed with her white hair, her mouth on his and his hands sliding over her back. A desperate kind of kiss. Maybe a secret one. Roz barrels forward. “There isn’t anything between you and Harvey anymore, is there? Like, not even the little dredges of feeling at the bottom of the jar that you can’t reach with the knife?”

The smile dims into something serious and introspective. “No, Roz,” Sabrina says, so somberly that Roz wants to believe her. “There’s nothing there, I promise. Boys are so not high on my list of priorities right now.”

Roz is relieved to hear it, but a part of her does not unclench. Sometimes Sabrina says the opposite of what she means, as a way of making it true. And Roz has never had a vision of anything good.

The worst has happened. Theo has been left alone with Harvey just long enough that he can see Harvey itching to talk about feelings — he’s doing the sideways glance, his mouth crumpling up like Charlie Brown. They’re standing in a stagnant line for hot dogs, the ocean crashing pleasantly behind them. Robin ran off a few minutes ago towards some crystal tattoo stand down the boardwalk, delighted by the prospect of peel-and-stick gems. Theo loves that, the way Robin gets so excited about small things. It makes him feel more excited, too. Theo feels like he can finally see the world in color lately, though he’s got a preference for green.

“So, Theo, man,” Harvey says, with that same voice he used to announce his stomach aches and panic attacks when they were little kids. Theo tunes in, because he’s a good friend, even if he’s kind of dreading whatever’s about to come next.

It’s not that feelings are bad. Feelings are great. Theo has feelings; everyone does. But Harvey’s come with a line graph of romantic drama that would give even the most studied statistician a headache. “Lay it on me, bud.”

With a self-conscious smile-laugh designed to downplay whatever he’s about to say, Harvey says, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things are kind of weird with Roz lately.”

Theo has noticed. They’re acting like they did when they first started dating, like they don’t know if they’re allowed to touch each other. Theo figured it was just a side effect of everything that had happened; purity-policing ancient carnies have got to put a strain on a relationship, even though personally, Theo’s has only blossomed under the same circumstances. There was also the whole turned-to-stone thing. It’s a lot, and Harvey and Roz have only been seeing each other for a few months. “Little bit, yeah.”

“Well.” Harvey chews on his lower lip. “Okay. So. We were going to — you know — but then Roz got this vision, so we didn’t. But then we tried again and it was going really well, until, uh. She had another one. So we…didn’t. And we haven’t tried again.”

“Wow.” Theo is almost impressed. “Cockblocked by psychic visions is not one I saw coming.”

“Theo!” Harvey laughs, half-embarrassed and half-scandalized. Theo grins.

“What are the visions of? Ruination of Greendale? Attack of some new horror — maybe it’ll be zombies this time!” Theo feels very prepared for the eventuality of zombies.

Harvey is back to lip-chewing. “She won’t tell me.”

“Then that’s where you gotta start,” Theo tells him wisely. “Communication is the mother of finally getting laid, or something.”

“Oh my god,” Harvey says, laughing again, maybe regretting this entire conversation. He can’t say anything else because the line moves forward and they’re next, and then Robin is bounding back with a crystal daisy stuck on his collarbone, showing it off so proudly that Theo kisses him, right on the boardwalk.

Robin makes the flowers outside his window grow. It doesn’t suck.

Harvey is hanging over the counter of the ice cream shop so he can talk to a five-year-old boy very seriously about rainbow sprinkles. And dinosaurs. There’s a connection there somewhere, and while Harvey waits to find out what it is, he sketches a quick little napkin-comic of a T-rex in a party hat. The kid loves it so much that he smashes his chocolate-covered face right into it, which might be the biggest compliment Harvey has ever gotten for his art.

Sabrina, meanwhile, is playing around with the stereo. She finds a song she likes just as the boy and his mom head outside to eat, ice cream already dripping down over tiny fingers. I Scream, which is exactly what an ice cream shop in Greendale would be called, is more of a storefront than a store, just a couple of tables and a counter inside, most of the real estate taken up by coolers packed with a ridiculous number of flavors. Most people sit out in the sun with their treats, partially shaded by pastel-striped umbrellas. Harvey and Sabrina are pretty much alone now, no one else inside but them.

Sabrina shimmies a little, then does a balletic twirl from one end of the counter to the other. Harvey laughs. “Really enjoying your summer vacation, huh? Sure you don’t miss essays and reading lists and math homework?”

“Not a whit,” Sabrina says, still bopping. “You know what else I don’t miss? Demons and carnivals and princes of Hell.”

Right, Harvey thinks, with a mental forehead-slap. Duh. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten any of that, but for a second it felt like it was all so far away and everything was back to how he thought it was going to be, way back when. “Do you still have to go to the Invisible Academy?”

Her lips quirk. “Auntie Z’s letting me work from home.”

“Is it — do you not want to see —” None of them have brought up Nick Scratch to her in weeks, which is a change from the days when all they ever talked about was Nick and Hell and how to extract one from the other. Harvey thought Sabrina would be in bliss with her perfect warlock boyfriend once they got him out, but, well. Harvey has been accused of being a little naïve before.

“You can say his name, Harvey. Nick.” She reaches out for one of Harvey’s hands, which startles him until he realizes she wants help with a spin. Smiling, if wary, Harvey lets himself be pulled into the dance. “And no, it’s not because of him. I just want to be with my family and my friends and have a good time — no distractions.”

Her doll-like face is serious but they’re dancing like silly little kids, hands joined as they pull in close then push away. They try to do one of those two-people bridge turns famous at weddings and eighth-grade dances. Sabrina starts laughing, which makes Harvey smile.

“Do you think he’s okay?” Harvey asks, but he knows as soon as he says it that it was a weird thing to say. You don’t ask if your ex-girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend is okay after he goes on a PTSD-motivated bender and cheats on her. The answer is: probably not.

But, “I hope so,” is all Sabrina says before adding firmly, “It’s not my job to worry about it anymore.”

Harvey kind of had a dream about Nick the other night. At least, he thinks it was Nick. He was in the woods with a rifle and he felt this dread, this bone-deep dread he had whenever he was dragged along hunting with his family, because he knew he would have to shoot something but he didn’t want to. He kept seeing flashes of a shape through the trees, sometimes dark and sometimes light, with thick coarse fur like a wolf. Then out of nowhere he was tackled to the ground — and he really felt it, the hard earth under his shoulders bumpy with twigs and stones. He was pinned. And the face above him might have been Nick’s, frowning and handsome; Harvey felt a different kind of dread, deep in the pit of his stomach. He was so stressed out that he woke himself up. He was covered in sweat, panting.

It was a weird dream.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he says to Sabrina now. “You should do whatever makes you happy, ’Brina.”

She smiles at him. It’s not one of her wide, beaming smiles of late; it’s small and secret, a little mischievous, just for him. “Dancing makes me happy.”

“Then let’s dance,” he says.

So they do, and when customers come in, they dance with them. When no one’s there Sabrina makes everything in the room float for Harvey — cones and sprinkles weaving around them like a small cyclone of summertime. She only has to tilt her head up to catch a Maraschino cherry from the air. Harvey decides he wants to draw her like that — playful, cheerful. Magic.

After work, Sabrina walks herself home. Harvey had offered to drive her but, thinking of Roz, she’d declined. It’s late but still light out, the sun only beginning to sink behind the horizon. The town is still jovial and active in the way it is during summer, with kids riding their bikes through the streets and barbecues wafting from every other yard. Soon enough the neat roads of Greendale give way to the winding woods, orange and gold streaking the sky before night falls.

The woods are full of rustling, but Sabrina’s never been afraid of a whisper in the dark. She grew up on them: the wind moving through the trees on an autumn morning; a squirrel’s near-silent patter; the twittering of birds. As she walks, she becomes aware of a croaking noise. It’s not like a frog, but more avian, raspy and abrupt. She doesn’t think anything of it until she realizes it’s the only sound she hears — no wind, no deer, no trickling of streams. Just that croaking.

She’s almost home. She can see the cemetery fence through the trees, and the dark shape of graves. “I’m not interested in talking to anything,” she says loudly, to be safe. Sometimes stated intent is enough. “Or anyone.”

Silence. Then, again, the croaking.

Sabrina stops and scans the trees. As her eyes adjust to the darkness, she picks out the outline of a bird on a branch ahead. A big black bird like a crow or a raven, its wide wings extending briefly as it shifts its weight, its beak sharp and eyes beady.

She’s seen plenty of black birds before. It doesn’t mean anything.

It’s not Lilith’s raven, she tells herself. It’s just a bird.

But she can’t shake the feeling that this one is watching her, long after her path has taken her past it. And despite how warm it is, Sabrina feels a chill.

Chapter Text

They used to be better at this, Prudence thinks.

It’s not that they’re bad now. Her pulse is in her throat, her body all over shivers; she’s raked her hands through Nick’s hair so many times it nearly stands on end, and his back is scored from her nails. She came once already, quick, and will again and maybe again after that. A minimum of three orgasms is really a requirement for Prudence during any sexual encounter. Things are better in threes.

It’s not like it used to be. She never put much stock in how mortals must attach a feeling to every situation, but there are none to be found here — sensation and a little sorrow, but not the hungry excitement she remembers, the desperate lust and heady power. Though she was loath to admit it after he callously kicked them aside, Nicky was above average in bed. And more than that, he was a game lover, willing to do and try anything, to offer his body for whatever whim she and her sisters may have had.

But there’s no Dorcas purring in pleasure, no Agatha eager to try a new binding. Nick once lost all feeling in his arms from some of her knots. The only man Prudence has been with absent of her sisters is Ambrose Spellman and the less said of him, the better. Prudence and Dorcas and Agatha took their Dark Baptisms together and later that same night laid down to experience carnal rapture for the first time, with clasped hands and bodies close.

And there is something absent in Nick. Not a lack of attention — Prudence would be only too happy to punish him for that — but a lack of devotion, perhaps. He can do all the things she trained him to do when her pleasure was his chief occupation, but he’s only checking them off a much-revisited list.

(Prudence does not think of how Ambrose played her like an instrument on the floor of their New Orleans residence, her neck cushioned by the curve of his arm and her gasps caught against his mouth, demanding, let me, and Ambrose saying, in a moment, all good things in a moment — I only want to look at you.)

Prudence does come again and then slithers from the silk sheets, leaving Nick on his back, star-fished with his head hanging over the foot of the bed. Glossy all over with sweat, his hair has begun to curl at the root. In years past, people probably told him he was beautiful as the Morningstar, as tempting as the Dark Lord himself.

Eh, Prudence thinks.

She slides on a black lace peignoir, its beaded fringe making soft music as she crosses to the sideboard, where a tidy line of empty goblets await. When she taps one, it fills to the brim with red wine. Zelda Spellman has allowed them each their own rooms, as there are so few of them, and Prudence appreciates the convenience. She doesn’t have to look at empty beds here. “Nicky. There’s something you have to do for me.”

“If you want to go again, I need half an hour or a potion.”

“No, you relentless thot.” Her hand tightens on the stem of the glass, but she has no idea why she’s apprehensive. This is how it works. She makes demands and Nicky complies. “It’s about my sister.”

The ease goes out of Nick. He sits up, his back a strong curve. “Pru.”

“Am I supposed to leave her with that madman, Nicky? Abandon her and the twins after all I’ve done to protect them?”

The way he looks at her now bothers her more than his inscrutable emptiness. There’s a bruised tenderness in his eyes, like she is someone to be pitied. “Even after Dorcas?”

Prudence releases a sharp breath, her teeth coming to her bottom lip in a near-snarl. “Not all of us abandon our ties so easily.”

The words are a whip, and they wipe the sympathy from his face. “Some of us know when to call it quits,” he says. “What would you even need me for? You could take on Blackwood with one hand tied behind your back.”

Prudence hasn’t forgotten the egg, jellied and softly phosphorescent, that had gone with her father. “I may need a distraction, and you’re such a willing sacrifice.”

His expression twists up like a balled fist. He pushes off the bed. “Fuck you, Pru.”

“Already have, really wasn’t worth it,” she drawls.

She watches him grab for his clothes and storm out, the door closing with a crack like a gunshot. It’s not the first scene they’ve had like this. Last week she blamed the whole sorry ordeal on him. It was Nicky who killed the snake, after all, in his constant bid to be of use to those around him. If not for him, perhaps her sisters might never have been lost.

Perhaps Prudence should not have tied Agatha to a chair. Perhaps she should have tied her tighter.

As it’s not their first go-around, Prudence is prepared for the subsequent knock. She doesn’t hurry to answer it. Behind the door she will find Nick repentant and half-dressed, which is his natural state.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Yes, well,” she says. “I…also.”

He runs a hand through his ruined hair and doesn’t look at her, gaze roving. For a moment she’s petrified that he’s going to tell her something about how he feels and she’ll have to pat him on the shoulder, because it’s the only alternative she knows to saying, Yes, Nicky. You did fuck up. You bungled the whole thing, start to finish. But all he says is, “I can’t keep doing it. I just can’t.”

It’s irritating. He could be hung up on the devil’s daughter anywhere. But they’ve slept side by side enough that Prudence has been privy to a few of his darker torments, so she allows it to pass. “You think if you skulk around the Academy halls long enough, a certain white-haired witch might look your way again?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s not that, I’m not — Sabrina’s fine. She’s better off. Now she can get back together with her lovely little mortal and live happily ever after.”

“Ew.” Prudence wrinkles her nose. “The mortal isn’t lovely, he’s a maniac witch-hunter. And isn’t he seeing that other mortal, the one with sense?”

“Poor thing,” Nick says ruefully.

Ambrose has experienced no shortage of stress at the hands of his cousin. She has brought him to the brink of tearing his hair from his scalp, had him nursing fears of an ulcer, put undue strain upon his night-black witch’s heart. So it’s only fair that from time to time he gets to enjoy the schadenfreude of her being subjected to one of Auntie Zelda’s lectures.

“—and it’s pure arrogance to think you have nothing to learn from our illustrious new instructors,” comes at the end of a much lengthier diatribe, which Aunt Z punctuates with a sharp drag of her cigarette, burned down to the quick from similar exclamatory gestures. “Honestly, Sabrina.”

“I never said I had nothing to learn from Marie or Gryla or Sycorax!” Sabrina exclaims. “But you said I could study from home, Auntie Z, and I —”

That’s waved away with one brisk, elegant hand. “As though I don’t have enough on my plate without having to give every lesson twice. You may want to bring your work home, Sabrina, but not all of us do.”

Ambrose never thought he’d live to see the day that the Academy of the Unseen Arts was run by nightshades and ghouls, but he rather likes it. Until Aunt Zelda rounds on him.

“And you, Ambrose, really ought to consider teaching again. All that knowledge rotting away inside this house, it’s a disgrace.”

“Excuse me, how did I get dragged into this?” Ambrose slides off the counter, where he had been happily perched before the spotlight rounded on him. He reaches for the carafe to pour himself another cup of coffee. “I never aspired to the molding of young minds, Auntie.”

Zelda fluffs her hair and gives them a thin, triumphant smile. “You might find it more rewarding than you expected.”

Ambrose and Sabrina exchange a look, smirking. He’s the one who jokes, “Are you sure it’s teaching that’s so rewarding?”

“Oh, hush.” She’s frazzled the way caught people can be, but she can’t hide the bubble of pleasure she feels just to think of Marie. It makes Ambrose wistful, and happy for his aunt, and sad. “You two can’t avoid the Academy forever just because it’s populated with your exes.”

That stings. But not for Sabrina — she only offers a sunny smile and a teasing, “Easy for you to say, Auntie Z. Not everyone can be as blissful as you.”

“Yes.” Zelda’s lips twitch with a suppressed smile. “Well.” Her eyebrow quirks and she spins on her heel to leave, giving them a last superior look over her shoulder. “Don’t make your final decisions just yet. I’ll await your answers.”

“My answer is —” Ambrose starts, but Zelda has already swept from the room. His sigh becomes a chuckle. There may be so much new magic to learn at the Academy these days, but Ambrose doesn’t have a moment to spare on imparting sacred geometry or preaching the history of Hecate. He’s working on his very own research project: time. And, more specifically, what happens when someone snaps it in half.

Said someone slips her arm around Ambrose’s waist, leaning into his side and putting her head on his shoulder; he smiles and drapes his arm around her in return. That’s how she gets you, his cousin. She’s impossible to resist.

“Maybe you should get out of the house a little, Ambrose,” Sabrina says. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were still under house arrest.”

“Don’t worry about me, cousin.” Ambrose presses a kiss to her hairline and slides away, leaving Sabrina with that worryingly forlorn little crease between her eyebrows, the one that says, what do I have to destroy to make you happy. He holds up a warning hand. “I mean it.”

Sabrina’s head tilts to the side with a no-nonsense sigh. “I can’t help it. I know what happened with Prudence —”

La la la, Ambrose thinks loudly, to drown it out, can’t hear you.

“— but it doesn’t have to ruin your whole summer. Have you thought about doing a cord-cutting spell?”

“What, with the candle and the whole bit?” Ambrose looks at her with some disbelief. “I don’t want to erase my feelings for Prudence. It hurts, yes — but that’s just proof that the love was there.”

So many things hurt now. Ambrose sometimes aches for the specific sound of sharp nails drumming against a flat surface. Leather and lace have become almost sacred to touch; the perfume she changed for every city has cut a whole host of spices from Ambrose’s repertoire. How he hungers for a distasteful look shot over her shoulder. How he misses her smile.

Sabrina’s face does a funny thing then, but before Ambrose can ask, the expression vanishes, replaced with the beatific modus operandi of the last few weeks. “Okay, Ambrose. But I still want you to let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

Find a way to close your time loop, even if it brings all hell down upon us. “Focus on fixing someone else’s life, cousin. I’ve got mine under control.”

Even though it’s too hot out today, Roz has tied a little patterned kerchief around her throat. The silk sticks to the back of her neck with perspiration but the knot feels secure against the hollow of her throat, like protection. And it gives her something to fuss with while Harvey sits next to her not knowing what to say now that they’ve finished their free ice cream cones — vanilla chocolate chip for him, and raspberry pistachio for her. They’re on a long bench just outside the shop and Roz is aware of Sabrina inside, behind the glass.

“So —” she starts, just as Harvey goes, “Um —”

Then they both say sorry at the same time and sort of laugh, looking down at their laps. Roz tugs at the knot of her scarf. She tells him to go ahead, but he defers to her, looking nervous, and Roz decides to speak because otherwise they could go on forever, passing it back and forth.

“We should talk,” she says. “Right? I mean — we have things to talk about.”

Harvey looks nauseous enough that she almost feels bad, but every time she touches him lately she gets a snapshot of him touching someone else. She doesn’t understand why the cunning gave Harvey to her in the first place if it was just going to snatch him away.

But then she wonders if maybe that was the point. That first vision was a warning, not a gift.

“Rosalind —”

And, oh, she loves his anxious voice, the thin pitchy edge it has whether he’s actually nervous or not, this voice she heard break and reform when they were in middle school, a voice she’s heard her whole life. Her name has always sounded different when Harvey says it and she just loves it, she loves hearing it.

But he has more to say than just her name.

“Rosalind, I know things have been totally weird and you’ve been having visions or something that are making you second-guess us, but I don’t care about any of that, it’s bullshit. I’m not going to let magic run my life when I know what we have and it’s —” He gives her a helpless look. “Please don’t dump me.”

Roz opens her mouth even though she doesn’t know what to say; she just hopes once she starts, she’ll get there. Unfortunately, she’s almost immediately cut off by the sudden sweeping-in of that witch girl, Prudence, who storms past them into the ice cream shop with hardly a glance. She has two swords strapped to her back and a full, floor-length sheer black skirt that billows behind her like a dark cloud.

Roz and Harvey look at each other. Then they both immediately get to their feet to go inside and see what fresh hell they’ll have to deal with this week.

“I wish I could help, Prudence.” Sabrina looks genuinely crestfallen, but also comically pastel in her ice cream uniform opposite Prudence’s glowering, glittering splendor. “Isn’t there anyone else you could get to come with you?”

“Who am I going to ask, Elspeth?” Prudence spits. “After all the absurdities you’ve put us through, Spellman, I would think you could do as much for me.”

“What about Ambrose?” Sabrina suggests, soft-voiced, and for a moment it truly looks like Prudence might reach back for a sword and go full Game of Thrones on her.

“Bitch,” Prudence says thinly, “Please.”

Harvey takes half a step forward, as though he might say something, but Roz grabs his arm to stop him.

Sabrina is already answering, anyway. “I get it, Prudence. You want to save Agatha. I’d want the same thing if I were in your position and — well, if it was anyone besides Agatha. But I can’t leave right now. I’ve done that to my family and my friends too many times. I have to be here.”

Roz remembers the days that went by without a word from Sabrina, how she would disappear for weeks and not answer her phone or bother to check in. It still gives Roz a twinge sometimes, even after all Sabrina has done to make up for it. All the same, Roz’s feelings about Sabrina sticking around are mixed. Roz always missed her when she went away, but there was a strange relief to it too — like there was finally space for her, without Sabrina around.

“You’re as useless as you ever were, spawn of Satan,” Prudence sneers before spinning on her heel and coming face to face with Roz and Harvey. She laughs, though it comes out as more of a scoff. What Roz is caught by is the wild look in her eyes, this sharp desperation where she has only ever seen Prudence cool and in control. “Oh, wonderful, the mortals are here to hear my tale of woe. The humiliation is complete.”

She shoulders past them, but before she gets through the door, Sabrina calls out to her. “Prudence…” She shifts her weight, uncertain. “How’s Nick?”

Prudence just barely glances over her shoulder, her dark eyeshadow making her gaze even more flinty and cat-like. “Still inexhaustible. Not that you would know.”

There’s no change in Sabrina, no sign of a reaction, but Roz feels Harvey straighten up next to her. It makes her throat tight. She doesn’t know if feelings are catching, but some of Prudence’s wild-eyed agitation twists through her.

Harvey asks, “Something going on?”

“Nothing I can help with,” Sabrina says, which isn’t like her at all. But it does give Roz an idea — a horrible, no good, very appealing idea.

Prudence knew it was a mistake to appeal to Sabrina Spellman, and that makes the mortification of being turned down an even more bitter pill to swallow. She shouldn’t have bothered. It’s a mistake to extend a hand to another and expect anything besides a slap. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, ignoring the odd looks from passing mortals. She ignores the furious racing of her heart.

When she opens her eyes again, Prudence is fortified. She feels composed and certain, not angry anymore except for that ever-present burning inside her that she nurtures so it never burns out. This time she will kill her father. She’ll go and get Agatha on her own and they will bind themselves together tightly, with no one else daring to creep closer ever again. She will handle it, as she always does.

She feels better, ready to go on, but then one of the mortals careens into her shoulder as they walk by. Prudence turns, scorn on her lips, only to come face to face with herself.

It’s her, only it isn’t — the edge of her own smile over the other girl’s shoulder, the face so similar it could be her own reflection. She blinks, a sudden sharp terror spiking in her stomach, but she — whoever it is — has already gone on her way. Before Prudence can do anything, someone else is calling for her.

It’s that mortal. No, not that one, the other one.

“I don’t know if you ever really caught my name, but we met a bunch of times, I’m Roz,” she says.

Prudence is aware, but uninterested. She scans the sidewalk around them but there’s no hint of anyone who looks like her besides herself, and she’s not exactly easy to miss in Greendale. It was just the side of the girl’s face, but she had Prudence’s nose, her sweep of dark eyeshadow, her short bleached hair. She had been so sure. Who could mistake themselves?

Another of her father’s tricks, perhaps? Her jaw sets.

The mortal is still speaking. “I heard what you were saying in there, about going after your sister, and I want to help.” Her voice is firm and forceful, so Prudence gives her the barest shred of attention. She arches one penciled brow. The mortal is undaunted. “I know I can help.”

“Oh,” Prudence says, with a slow, curling smile. “I see.” Sabrina and her witch-hunter are all enmeshed in their sweetshop together, and this one can see the end is nigh. “Someone else seeking distraction from their romantic dilemmas. I don’t care about your little mortal boyfriend, and I’m not especially interested in my sister serving as a bridge for you to escape him.”

Roz blinks, but her lips press together and her brow furrows. “It’s not that,” she insists, a lie. “Look. I know what it’s like to be left behind and to — to feel like you’re going crazy and no one’s going to come for you. You shouldn’t have to go alone. I’ll go with you.”

Prudence’s lip curls. “What would I want with some fragile mortal who might get herself killed?”

“Well, your options are limited,” Roz points out. “And I’m pretty good with a sword, remember?”

Sabrina lets her cheek lean into Aunt Hilda’s shoulder as they stand together at the kitchen island, rocking slightly with Hilda’s busy gestures. Sabrina misses this. When she was a kid, she was forever peeping around Hilda in the kitchen, fascinated and sometimes a little repulsed by what would be going on; it could just as easily be iced cupcakes or snake soup. Often Ambrose would scoop her up and put her on the counter so she could happily taste pancake batter, frosting, cookie dough. That rich smell of sugar and butter will always be Aunt Hilda to her, especially when it’s cut through with the strangeness of bitter herbs. Today it’s more experiments for the wedding, which promises to have a spread that puts the rest of the Spellman dinners to shame.

“Haven’t done this since you were little,” Hilda says, reaching back with a floured hand to pat Sabrina absently, landing somewhere on her cheek and leaving a powdery print behind.

“Maybe I’m feeling nostalgic since my auntie is about to get married and leave us all behind,” she teases.

“Oh tosh,” Hilda tsks, but there’s a noticeable pause before she adds, “You know I’ll always be here for you, don’t you, my love?”

“Yes,” Sabrina says, with absolute certainty. She receives another dusty pat, this time on her hand.

“Well — what if — and now this is just between the two of us, just a thought, nothing to get alarmed about and certainly nothing to mention to Zelda, because it isn’t a sure thing at all —”

“Auntie Hilda,” she laughs. “Out with it.”

It still takes her another minute of hasty whisking to finally say, “Would you mind terribly if I moved out?”

Sabrina blinks. “Of the house?” She’s never lived in a house without both her aunts at the end of the hall, there if she needed them no matter the hour. When Zelda had gotten married, Sabrina hadn’t thought for a minute it would be permanent; it felt instead like her aunt was on a bad vacation. She can’t imagine coming down for breakfast and not finding Hilda busy at the stove, or not getting that final check-in before bed like she was still a little girl. But the reason she did what she did was to make sure she was there for her family. She wants them to be as happy as it’s possible to be, even if her fingers tighten on Hilda’s sleeve with a touch of apprehension. “Well, you are getting married. It makes sense that you and Dr. Cee would want a place of your own.”

Hilda turns with a careful smile, concern keeping it from being as bright as it wants to be. “Are you being honest, darling? I know it would be a big change — but you’ll be off to college soon enough, you know, won’t need your Auntie Hilda buzzing in your ear anymore.”

Sabrina isn’t keen on the reminder. Aunt Z keeps leaving fanned-out pamphlets about witch universities on top of her bed and dropping comments about continuing education programs at the Academy. Just a couple of years ago, Sabrina had big mortal plans about college, making sure anywhere she considered was in immediate proximity to an art school for Harvey. But those plans don’t matter anymore, and she hasn’t thought about them in ages. She’s been so focused on the next thing, and the next. Who cared about college with the Dark Lord breathing down your neck?

Sabrina gives Hilda her widest, most brilliant smile; Hilda’s eyes widen in mild alarm. “Completely honest. I want you to be happy. But have fun trying to tell Auntie Z.”

Hilda makes a face, bright pink lips pulling into a grimace. “Yes, there is that. She’s already hardly a fan of Dr. Cee.”

“She might expect it,” Sabrina points out. “She can’t think you’re going to commute to see your husband.”

The word husband has a cheering effect on Hilda, but she says, wryly, “You and I know Zelda only sees what she wants to see.”

Sabrina purses her lips, thinking quick, and comes up with a plan almost immediately. It isn’t her favorite idea; far from it. But she knows it could help, so she says, “How about I tell Auntie Z that I’ll go back to the Academy after all? Then she’ll be too pleased to be sour. She’ll get something she wants, and then you’ll get something you want.”

“Oh, my darling, are you sure?” Hilda immediately gives Sabrina a spoonful of pale purple cream to taste as a reward, but it’s a negligible one because it tastes like violets and soap. “You won’t mind, even having to see N— your classmates there?”

She resists rolling her eyes. “I can handle seeing Nick. It’s not a big deal — especially if it helps you out.” Her lips quirk and she leans in close, conspiratorial. “This wedding is going to be so much more fun than Aunt Z’s.”

Hilda laughs and hugs her and Sabrina feels good, because she did that. That was all her.

Harvey’s pencil scrapes across paper, its noise pleasant in the otherwise awkward silence of his bedroom. He was going to put on music, but Roz said she wanted to talk. Except she hasn’t talked. She’s just sitting on the edge of Harvey’s bed and looking uncomfortable, so she’s probably about to dump him, which feels so much worse since he’d begged her not to. If you have to beg someone to stay with you, then it’s already over. Harvey learned that from Sabrina, but he obviously hadn’t learned it very well.

Whatever Roz saw when she touched him much have been bad. Harvey presses down too hard with his pencil, thinking of his dad and the way he’d been when Mom was still alive, that strained look her eyes have in some pictures.

Roz might be about to dump Harvey, but that doesn’t mean he has to run into it with open arms. When she got here, he was working on a poster for the Battle of the Bands that’s coming up during Greendale’s Fourth of July hoopla, and he picked it back up when she didn’t start talking. They’d signed up for it before the school year was over. They never did come up with a band name.

“Fright Club could work, now that Sabrina’s joined,” Harvey muses, not looking at Roz. He focuses instead on sketching out a logo of some sharp bat wings over a clean circle, but it looks too much like Batman so he has to erase it. “Theo’s really pushing for The Hobgoblins, but I think he’s got a serious bias.”

“Harvey,” Roz says softly.

He pushes on. “Then again, it does sound pretty cool and we’re kind of pressed for time with the show coming up next week —”

“Harvey. I’m not going to be able to make it to Battle of the Bands.”

He stills. On the sketchbook in front of him, there’s half of a goblin face.

“I’m going with Prudence,” she continues. “You know, to find her sister.”

Harvey does look at her then, wide-eyed and maybe a little wild. “What?”

“I told my parents I was going on a youth outreach trip with a neighboring church in Riverdale,” Roz continues, as though this is all perfectly normal. “Prudence gave me a — well, she called it a susceptibility potion — so they would buy it. We’re leaving tonight, after — after this.”

This. After taking care of Harvey, getting him up to speed and getting rid of him. He’s not offended by the idea of her trying to help someone, not even surprised that she’d throw herself into danger if she felt like there was something she could do. Harvey knows he would do the same in most circumstances. And he’s watched Roz shake off her old uncertainties in the last few months, watched her stop holding herself back. She was always strong-minded and strong-willed, but she had her parents to think of, her health; she was afraid of disappointing people, of being hurt; she thought the world of popular kids and cheerleading and reckless missions with sharp-tongued witches wasn’t one she was allowed to have. But now Roz can have whatever she wants. And the thing is, deep down, Harvey wants her to have it. She deserves to have everything she wants.

He never liked being protected, so he didn’t know why he thought Roz would.

“So we’re not talking about it,” he says slowly. “You’re telling me.”

She already thought it through and made the plans. She didn’t let Harvey in on the conversation until there wasn’t a conversation to have. She didn’t want his opinion.

“Don’t say it like that,” Roz says in her softest voice, the one that doesn’t fit her anymore.

Harvey swallows against the tightness in his throat and looks down again, at that dumb grinning face on his paper. Quick, unthinking, needing something for his hands, he gives it a ring of tentacles. It becomes a weird, hideous thing; he crumples it up. “Are we breaking up?”

“No, Harvey —” Roz gets up all in a rush and puts herself in his lap, even though there’s very little space at the desk and the edge must be digging into her back. She puts her arms around him and Harvey is kind of lost in it, enveloped but unsure. It feels like she’s doing one thing but she means another. She smells like lilac and honeysuckle, fresh as summer itself. She sits back up and brushes her hand over his cheek, through his hair. She touches his new little earring. “Maybe just taking a break.”

His stomach sours. That’s breaking up.

Her fingers run over the hard line of his mouth. “Just a little time, so I can do this — this crazy thing, and help somebody. That’s all.”

If Roz needs space and time, he’ll give it to her. It’s the least he can give her.

Sitting in the shadows of Roz’s front porch, Prudence is nearly imperceptible. She’s dressed in a black leather duster over a sheer black minidress, so there’s nothing to catch the light except for the rings on her fingers — and the sword that flashes dangerously as she shifts it from hand to hand. She’s so submerged in the semidarkness that Roz has no idea she’s there until she speaks.

“Is it done, then?”

Roz jumps out of her skin. She’d been dragging her feet up the walkway like the weight of the world was crushing her instead of one tepid teenage tryst. “What?”

“Your mortal, did you cut him loose?”

“That’s not what I was doing.” Roz tosses a small vial at Prudence without warning, but she catches it easily in her half-gloved hand. “I didn’t use that, either. I just talked to him. He gets it.”

She says it the same way Prudence used to talk about taking the Blackwood name, as though it meant something. A stupid little girl drunk on lies. “Well, gol-ly, Rosalind, aren’t you a lucky one.”

Roz presses her lips together but lets the mocking slide off her shoulders. Good. They might work well together. “I’m ready to go, I just have to get my bag.” Prudence rises when Roz arrives at the door, keys in hand and expression uneasy. “Um, maybe put the sword away before my parents see you?”

Prudence waves that off. “I told you the potion lasts twenty-four hours. Tell them I’m a girl scout selling cookies. They’re going to be everyone’s best friend until this time tomorrow.”

Roz’s bedroom is a depressing shrine to the false god. She has a Bible on her bedside table and a cross over the headboard. Prudence wonders if she ever feels guilty and sinful touching herself beneath all that idolatry. Maybe it helps. Roz goes into the back of her closet to get her bag, an odd lumpy sack, and then she turns to Prudence like it’s hey-ho, off they go. Prudence raises an eyebrow. “So eager, and you haven’t even asked where we’re going.”

“Oh.” Roz’s shoulders sink. “Where?”

“I don’t know yet, silly mortal.” Prudence takes a map out of her pocket and spreads it out on the pink carpet, kneeling before it. “I’m not sure your lot know much about it, but —” Quick as a flash, Prudence drags her open hand over the edge of the sword so blood blooms bright in her palm. Roz gasps. “Blood calls to blood.”

Faustus Blackwood can never run from her again. Prudence will always find him, until there’s nothing left to find. Her blood, and his too, patters over the paper like rain until it starts to form a slim rivulet, a marked path.

“There you go, Rosalind,” she says. “Our destination.” She tracks the blood red road with her eyes, feeling that little flicker of flame inside her, the heat of her anger, grow until she is suffused. She won’t be satisfied until her father is ashes, until Agatha is hers again, until Leticia and Judas belong to themselves. “See you soon, Daddy dearest.”

She’s surprised when she feels a light touch on her bleeding hand. Roz has carefully pressed a towel against a wound that Prudence could heal with a muttered word.

“I get it,” Roz says, the corner of her mouth pulling up just a little. “My dad’s a preacher, too.”

Nick steps out of the library and there she is: Sabrina, sudden and unexpected, gleaming against the gloomy hallways of the Academy. She’s wearing a sundress and holding a stack of books, chatting amiably with Mother Hubbard and looking for all the world like no one has ever made her cry. He’s going to slink away, maybe back amongst the books, but then her head happens to turn in his direction. Sabrina looks through him for a moment, like he isn’t even there, and then at him, a sudden focus lending a steeliness to her expression. Nick knows then that talking to him is something she intends to cross off her to-do list.

They drift towards each other down the long, dark hall. “Spellman.”

“Scratch.” The slight twist of her mouth could never be mistaken for a smile, but there’s a suggestion of satisfaction in it all the same. “It’s been a minute.”

“You’re back at school.”

“You know Aunt Z, education is everything.” She shifts her books slightly, lifts an eyebrow. “So do we have to do the awkward ex thing, or can we opt out?”

Surprised, Nick almost laughs, the way he might have before everything, free with charm and amusement like he used to be. “We can do whatever you want.”

That’s the kind of thing Nick used to say, too — used to do, even if he had to swallow up parts of himself to do it. Here with her it’s too easy to fall back into old habits, to want her to like him, despite everything.

“I don’t want to feel any weirder than I have to,” she says. “You know, weirder than walking up the steps and almost getting pelted by a bat with a toad’s head. I’m cool with witch weird. I don’t want — regular weird.”

He blinks, and frowns. “Did that happen? With the bat?”

She waves it off. “Friends might be a stretch, but how do you feel about cordial classmates?”

“I like friends,” he says. “I’ve always been an overachiever.”

She rolls her eyes, but she does smile. And Nick feels, conversely, worse. His stomach curls up into a knot, the kind he used to soothe with drinks at Dorian’s or something much darker. The things that used to be right feel so wrong now, and it all feels like his fault.

“Okay, Scratch.” She punches his arm in a gesture that is definitely regular-weird before walking past him, pausing to say over her shoulder, “See you around, then.”

“See you, Sabrina.” He watches her go, her narrow shoulders and the perfect bell of her pale hair, and feels a little like she never actually stopped looking through him.

But that’s not unusual for Nick lately. He opened himself up to be a vessel and he was filled to the brim with darkness; once they started scraping the bad things out of him, it became clear there was little else left behind. Sabrina put more and more into him, trying to make him into someone she could want forever, and got less and less in return. Now Nick feels like one of the ghost children haunting the Academy. He lost whatever it was he had — his charm, his use, his appeal. He keeps coming up short.

Nick had dreamed of giving himself up the way mortals could, giving himself away to someone else, and when he finally had he understood why witches didn’t.

Chapter Text

Prudence says, “Keep up.”

Roz has never been much of a hiker and she doesn’t share Sabrina’s fondness for the woods, so she stumbles along in her Keds trying not to trip on roots or crunch too aggressively on the underbrush. Prudence moves like a specter despite the fact that she’s wearing thigh-high boots with spike heels, almost gliding over the forest floor with her long black coat trailing ominously behind her.

Roz doesn’t know where they are anymore. The blood spell was not as reliable as Prudence thought; it kept taking them backwards and forwards in a dizzying zigzag, from a field somewhere in the north of England to the edge of a salt-white cliff. Now they’re somewhere else again. It’s all trees, so close-growing that it’s like inching through a narrow corridor of leaves and bark. It reminds Roz of Hell.

She hefts her sack up onto her shoulder. “Are we close, do you think?”

Prudence pauses. She lifts her chin with her eyes closed like she’s trying to sense which way the wind is blowing. “Not long now.”

Anticipation and apprehension prickle over Roz’s skin. “What do you think is going to happen when we get there?”

Prudence looks over her shoulder with one eyebrow arched, as though she can’t believe Roz would ask so silly a question. But then she smiles, her lipstick jet black and precise. Terrifying. “Someone’s going to die.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Theo says flatly.

Sometimes he really wonders about his life. The perks are not to be dismissed — he loves his dad, his hair’s been looking pretty great lately, and, oh yeah, don’t forget the dreamy boyfriend — but every so often Theo wonders if the price he pays for all that good stuff is a whole lot of nonsense. Like how five minutes ago Sabrina burst into Harvey’s garage with her I Have A Plan face and said, “I have a plan for how we’re going to handle Battle of the Bands without Roz.”

Theo didn’t even have a second to bemoan Roz’s abandonment before Nick Scratch stepped out from behind Sabrina. He waved. “Hey.”

Apparently Nick happened to overhear Sabrina’s plight about being down one bassist and just so happened to play the bass. What a world! And Sabrina, being Sabrina, thought the best way to fill the void in their group was to import another ex-boyfriend into it. Theo, stuck behind his drum set and staring at Sabrina, Harvey, and Nick, decides some things really are beyond the pale. He looks at Robin. “You couldn’t play the bass, could you?”

Robin smiles his curly little smile. “I can play the lyre?”

Theo sighs. “Hot,” he says forlornly. “Not helpful, but I like it.”

Harvey is being weird, understandably. He always gets that way around Nick. His shoulders go up by his ears and his whole body tenses like his skin has suddenly become two sizes too small. He frowns. “You seriously play the bass?”

Nick shrugs, then wanders over to pick up Roz’s abandoned instrument. He loops the strap around his neck and fiddles with it for a moment, tuning, before his fingers suddenly fly over the strings. He starts playing what Theo can only describe as some killer bass licks. “I seriously do, farm boy.”

He sounds better than any of them do at their respective instruments; he sounds like he could join a touring company and take this show on the road. Harvey looks like he would prefer Nick follow that path instead of the one they are currently on. But he pushes down whatever he’s feeling, long face flattening out into wry amusement instead. “Well, I guess now we have a chance of winning.”

“It’ll be good, right?” Sabrina beams, bouncing a little on her heels. When she’s being so painfully optimistic, no one wants to be the one to bring her down. Even Theo finds himself wanting to reassure her that this’ll work out, despite the fact that it’s patently insane and self-destructive. “Should we try a song? Maybe ‘Gold Dust Woman’?”

Theo looks from Robin to Harvey to Sabrina to Nick. And he says, “I actually think a Fleetwood Mac song would be really appropriate right now.”

Harvey gives Nick a challenging look. “Do you know it?”

Mildly, Nick replies, “All witches know Stevie Nicks.”

Theo rolls his eyes at Robin, who smiles back. Robin likes to listen. When he was with the carnival, there had been bacchanals where the music was thumping and wild, so intense it made Robin’s heart pound in his chest. It was nothing like this — nice but amateurish, just a bunch of kids tooling around as they try to get it right. Odd sour notes spike the air from time to time, but Theo is always on rhythm. That sums up Robin’s new life pretty neatly.

He’s never stayed in one place long enough to do the human thing before. He used to tell himself that he was ready to go by the time his family yanked him along to the next town, and the next. His job was to be a shadow, so he’s gotten used to going unnoticed, slinking around under his cap and not drawing any attention. That way there was less to miss when he moved on. Who would mourn one high school lunch with a potential friend, a single smile shared on the last day of class? It was never enough to hold on to. But Theo had a way of looking right at Robin from the very start. Seeing him, when no one else had bothered.

Now Robin has a bower in the Greendale woods. Sometimes Theo’s dad lets him do stuff around the farm even though Theo loudly protests that Robin is his boyfriend, not the newest farmhand. Robin doesn’t might being both.

Once the band gets going, they sound pretty good, despite the flourishes Nick occasionally throws in when he’s not supposed to. It makes Harvey scoff audibly at his microphone, but Robin sees the way Nick’s eyes flick towards Sabrina and Harvey every time he does it, looking for a reaction. Robin doesn’t know Nick very well, but he’s observant; he had to be. It hurts in a strange, distant way to recognize an echo of himself in Nick, that old version of Robin that was so desperate for someone to see him and tell him he was okay.

Sabrina leans into Nick’s mic for the next line in the song and their eyes meet, something sparking there that’s impossible to miss. Nick’s lips follow the words half a second after Sabrina sings them and they sound good together, voices building and echoing like those old nights of family revelry. Like a spell. Pale, Sabrina sings, and Nick after her, shadow, again, of a woman.

Harvey snaps one of his guitar strings. They all have to stop while he fixes it, so Theo comes over to sit in Robin’s lap and butt his head against Robin’s shoulder. “Save me,” he complains.

Robin smiles and produces a little flower from nowhere. “If you get them to fall asleep, I can anoint their eyes with nectar and we can create some chaos,” he jokes.

“Oh yeah, just what I need, more romantic drama.” Theo sticks the flower behind his ear. “Speak of the devil’s daughter.”

Nick is absorbed in the old vinyl Harvey keeps out here, flicking through records with a critical expression, so Sabrina wanders over to talk to them. She’s bright and welcoming until Theo cuts in with, “Dude. What the hell.”

“What?”

Robin is familiar with people who look like what they are not. Everyone wears different faces depending on the situation, some more literally than others. His family could appear more or less threatening when they needed to, and Robin could sink back into the shadows without moving an inch. He knows all about facades. But he can never tell if Sabrina is aware of hers.

After a hard look from Theo, Sabrina sighs. “Yeah, okay, I know.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I thought it was really weird when Nick offered! But where else are we going to get someone to fill in on such short notice? The festival’s tomorrow.”

“Yes, those are all valid-sounding reasons,” Theo says wryly.

It’s Sabrina’s turn to tilt her head, something sardonic in her smile. “What?”

“Are you sure you didn’t just want to see him?”

Sabrina’s gaze slides over her shoulder to where Nick is crouched in front of the record crates and Harvey is messing with his guitar, both of them unspeaking. “I’d just rather be friendly than not.”

“Uh-huh.” Theo and Robin exchange a glance. “So you’re just deciding to be cool with this?”

“I’m not deciding.” Her chin lifts. “I’m cool. More than cool.”

Her brown eyes are opaque, no feeling to deduce from their depths. Robin knows why they never considered Sabrina as one of their sacrifices — it would have been like stocking their altar with a bomb.

If that mortal looks at her phone one more time, Prudence is going to throw it as far as she can into the trees. And considering the state of these trees — long hanging branches with furred leaves of silver-green and rough bark shivering with beetles — that isn’t a scavenger’s hunt anyone would want to take on. Every time that little rectangular screen lights up on a photo of her and the boyfriend, faces smushed together in a kiss, it’s like a beacon alerting all manner of creatures to their location. “You mortals are obsessed with those things. Why did you even bring it?”

Caught, Roz automatically shoves the phone into her pocket, forcefully smoothing out the worried little line between her eyebrows. “Emergencies?”

Prudence would argue that ship has sailed already. No one would be able to reach them in time all the way out here. “If you miss your witch-hunter so much, why did you leave him?”

“Don’t make this about Harvey,” Roz sighs.

But it is about him. Prudence knows how girls get about their boyfriends — bringing their brothers back from the dead or following them into Hell. Letting them convince you not to behead your father on the coast of Loch Ness. Even little weasels like Melvin were linking hands with new girls before some people were cold in their graves. Prudence knows, and so she has a responsibility to call it out where she sees it. Not everyone needs to be stupid if they can help it.

“Or Sabrina,” Prudence says reasonably.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Roz’s fingers twitch like she wants to take out the phone again, hoping that in the last few seconds a missive has come through that will put all her darkest fears to rest. “I’m not —”

“Did you know my sisters and I are telepathic?” Are rolls off her tongue easier than were. She doesn’t know how to speak about them now that they’re all in such separate places. She touches her wrist, where she has woven a bracelet of braided red hair, and it makes her feel calmer. She made one for Agatha, too, if she will take it. “Not that I need to be to see that situation exploding from a mile away. This is why it’s so much easier to unsubscribe from silly mortal rituals of monogamy. You know you can have your cake and eat it too.”

Politely, Roz says, “Um, no thank you.”

“Church girl,” Prudence sneers.

“Desecrated church girl,” Roz retorts. Prudence is really in desperate danger of not disliking her. It makes the whole witch-hunter thing all the more unfortunate. “I — okay. Can I tell you something?”

“I cannot stop you, if you feel you must.”

Roz takes a deep breath. “You know about the cunning, right? Well, lately… Whenever Harvey touches me, I get this jolt and I see —” She breaks off but plunges on ahead almost immediately. “Him. And Sabrina. First kissing in his bed, then in his garage, where we have band practice.”

The image must be vivid in her mind, because it flashes across Prudence’s unbidden: Sabrina visible through an open doorway, her back to Prudence but her hair unmistakable, straddling the mortal on a sofa. His hands on her hips, pale and dark heads bent together.

Prudence is unforgiving. “I hope you didn’t need the second sight to see that. How soon after he ended things with her did he start them with you?”

When Roz doesn’t answer for too long a moment, Prudence finds Roz’s fingers twisting in the tie of her bag, her face troubled. Prudence may think the girl a fool, but she doesn’t need a broken heart fouling up the mission.

“If a vision is a warning, then you have time to act,” Prudence tells her harshly. “Cut out your own heart or cut out his. Make your claims or sever your ties. Wallowing does a favor to no one, least of all yourself.”

Roz looks at her, expression turning from sorrow to annoyance and then through to understanding. “Are you — Is this you trying to help?”

Prudence bristles. “Quicken your pace, Rosalind. I want to get to my father before the sun sets.”

She charges on, but catches the fleeting hint of Roz’s smile as she goes. Fools, all.

“Electric Freak Orchestra!” Theo exclaims, surging up in his seat so intensely that he almost overbalances. Robin has to catch him at the waist to keep him steady.

Harvey smiles, nose wrinkling playfully as he shakes his head. Sabrina mirrors it and they both look at each other and laugh. “I don’t know if four people qualifies as an orchestra,” she jokes.

“You guys always veto my suggestions.” Theo slumps back against Robin’s chest, not seeming especially bothered. “We’re never gonna have a name for the band at this rate.”

“I liked The Hobgoblins, babe,” Robin offers. Theo rewards him with a kiss, and Sabrina feels a little prickle of yearning. It’s amorphous, almost nostalgic; it’s nice to have someone to kiss, and Sabrina has always had someone.

Practice ended a while ago, so they’ve just been hanging out and tossing around band names. The room is sweltering with July heat, making them all lethargic, everyone shiny with sweat and sprawling. Nick’s hair curls with the humidity. He sips from a bottle of electric orange soda, his mouth soft and pink against the glass, his fingers hooked around the bottle’s neck. He’s wearing a plain black t-shirt and jeans, but the sleeves cut off right above his biceps and there’s a little notch in the neckline that shows the hollow where his collarbones meet. Suddenly aggravated, Sabrina pulls her gaze away.

But it only lands on Harvey in his red shirt with the sleeves sheared off, his hair rumpled and smile easy. He plays his acoustic guitar gently, just a thread of a melody, and Sabrina would really appreciate some A.C. out here in the garage. “Let’s go for ice cream!” she says impulsively. “It’s too hot.”

“Aren’t you getting sick of ice cream by now?” Theo wonders. “I’m almost over the freebies.”

“Blasphemy!” Harvey declares.

Theo gives him a wry grin and gets to his feet, reaching down to haul Robin up with him. “We should actually get going.” They share a telling look, something unsaid passing between them with perfect clarity. More than anything, Sabrina misses that — communication without words, unspoken but understood. Theo’s face says, I’ve spent enough time putting up with my friends’ romances and I need to make out with a hobgoblin now.

Sabrina doesn’t begrudge him that, but once they’re gone, she’s left with Harvey and Nick. Piling into Harvey’s truck for soft serve with the two of them definitely feels like the start of something not good, but she also can’t go home until Nick does. She can’t leave him with Harvey. And she can’t be alone with him, not yet.

Every time she looks at Nick, it’s like seeing him at the Academy last week, the visceral shock of something she thought she was completely prepared for. She doesn’t know what to say to him, feeling wrongfooted around him since Hell, but the unspoken words are weighty on her tongue.

Almost as though he can read her mind, Nick speaks, and he hasn’t had much to say all evening. “How about Orpheus? For the band.”

Sabrina’s head whips towards him, feeling a little pain and pleasure at that. She never told him that the original name for Project Handbasket was Project Eurydice, something she’d chosen for its literary allusions, and maybe also because Nick loved hearing her sing so much. He’d even said something along those lines when he offered to fill in for Roz. Can’t deprive Greendale of your voice, Spellman. She didn’t know quite what he was playing at, but apparently the candle spell hadn’t quenched her curiosity.

Harvey saves her from having to dredge up a response. “Nice one, nerd,” he says.

Sabrina, watching Nick, sees a strange and unreadable thing happen on his face. She’s lost the trick of reading him, if she ever had it. “Thanks, farm boy.”

Harvey’s mouth lifts a little. “I can’t do ice cream, but there are popsicles up at the house — just give me a minute.”

Before Sabrina can say anything, Harvey’s out the door, leaving her and Nick sitting on opposite ends of the sofa. Nick sets his finished bottle down before he shifts in her direction, his face wry and handsome, like the old Nick. “Not as crazy as that time I fought a giant squid for you,” he says. “But joining the band may have been one of my more impetuous decisions.”

Sabrina laughs because she wants an excuse to laugh. The tension fizzles away between them so they can smile at each other even though they maybe shouldn’t. “Can I ask? Why did you?”

Nick looks at her for a long moment. She can see the vestiges of his bruised eyes from weeks past, how he was always drawn and tired, on edge. “Why did you agree?”

Sabrina kisses him. She doesn’t intend to. She just does.

Kissing Nick has always felt like déjà vu, from the very first time she did it. It’s as familiar as crossing the threshold into her home, but she doesn’t understand why she’d kiss him now. She’d carved his name into the flesh of the candle, she’d watched the wick split in two, but still she scrambles to get into his lap, thrilling at his grip on her waist. She kisses his pliant mouth until his lips part for her, his hands skating up her back, bared by a lavender halter top. She grabs fistfuls of his hair and she thinks —

Of him telling her she wasn’t worth all the things he’d done for her.

Of all the things she’d asked him to do without thinking twice, never expecting that the well of his devotion had a bottom.

Of seeing him like that, trussed and bound for demons, his body scraped raw.

Sabrina pulls Nick’s hair so hard his head knocks against the back of the couch and he winces, hand coming up rub at his neck. “Too rough, Spellman.”

Somehow insecure and daring all at once, she breathes, “I thought that’s what you liked.” She watches his face change, shuttering closed over its hurt. She slides off his lap. An apology leaves her lips automatically. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have —”

“We shouldn’t have, I’m sorry,” Nick says, but he won’t look at her. “It’s okay. It’s probably best if we — don’t.”

“Right,” Sabrina says, and Harvey saves her once again by tromping back in loudly, eyes a little wild above his grin, three popsicles melting in his hand.

Nick makes a joke about taking his to go, plucking the red one from Harvey’s fingers and then vanishing, in such a rush to get the heaven out of there that he’d hardly said goodbye. Sabrina looks at Harvey and then puts her face in her hands.

Harvey sees them. He doesn’t mean to.

He’s glad of any excuse to leave the garage for a minute or two, even if it’s just to loiter on the linoleum of his unwelcoming kitchen and gulp a little cool air. He stands for a moment with the freezer open and his eyes closed into the chill mist, wishing Roz hadn’t left and wishing Nick would.

Harvey’s felt weird and jittery since Nick came through the door earlier and it didn’t get any better as the evening wore on. Of course Nick can play the bass. And of course he can play like that, better than Harvey could ever hope to, because that’s Nick’s whole thing: being more, wilder and sharper, hot and exciting and self-sacrificing, mean and noble and confusing.

Harvey had another dream about Nick the other day. In it, Nick was one of the Baxter High jocks, stalking the halls in his letter jacket with his cronies trailing behind him, too cool and ultra arrogant like Harvey thought he was when they first met. He passed Harvey, who was sulking behind his open locker, and flashed him an asshole grin, said something like, How’s it going, farm boy? And in the dream Harvey had had enough, he was over it; he got up in Nick’s face and Nick got up in his, but he wasn’t angry like Harvey was. He was laughing. Harvey shoved him up against the lockers, hands tight in the red and gold jacket. Nick curled his fingers around Harvey’s wrists. He tilted his head up, mouth soft, and said, Coward.

Hearing Nick call him farm boy in the garage had brought the dream back to him suddenly, made him feel so awkward that he needed to escape. But Harvey feels kind of bad abandoning Sabrina, so he grabs the popsicles — making sure to get blue raspberry because Sabrina always loved it the most, even though it used to turn her lips purple like she had frostbite — and hurries back outside. One of their very first kisses had been shared against her faux-freezing lips on the same back steps he’s jogging down now. He shakes the thought off.

There’s an owl perched on the roof of the garage, its big boxy shape silhouetted against the fading July moon. It watches him with sharp yellow eyes and hoots three times, distinct and echoing in a way that seems to reverberate in Harvey’s bones. It unnerves him, the owl, and he’s so distracted that he almost walks into the garage without looking. But then he does look.

Through the open door, he sees Sabrina and Nick collide in a kiss that pulls her all the way into his lap. They reach for each other hungrily, heads tilting together, Nick half-obscured by shadow but Sabrina all light. They look how they always look together: oddly right, like a matched set. A goth Barbie and Ken. They look like they make sense together, unlike Harvey, who is a clumsy intruder where they are cool and perfect.

Harvey immediately flattens himself against the sliding door of the garage, eyes squeezing shut then staring out into the dark backyard. Should he go back to the house, give them their space? Is it weird if he just never goes back into his own garage? Should he check to see if they’re done or is — no, that absolutely is creepy.

He hates that a part of him wants to look. What kind of creep wants to look?

Before he can decide what to do, he hears a hiss of pain and then low conversation, jolted and jerky. Suddenly Nick’s voice comes through clearly: “It’s probably best if we don’t.”

Sabrina’s soft answer follows, then the descending awkwardness of silence. Harvey knows he’s not supposed to, but his instinct is still to come through when Sabrina needs it, so he barrels in with plenty of warning noise, pretending he doesn’t know a thing. Sabrina shoots him a grateful smile.

Nick is on his feet right away. He comes over to Harvey to take a popsicle and bring it to his mouth, curved in a teasing smile. Above it his eyes are very cold, blank and dark as the surface of a lake at night. “Such hospitality, Harry,” he says. “See you soon.”

He vanishes like smoke, there and then not. Harvey looks at Sabrina, a little at a loss, and his heart squeezes when she buries her face in her hands. “’Brina —”

But she’s not upset, at least not unduly. When she pulls her hands away, she just looks tired. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

He sits beside her and nudges her shoulder. “Who are you and what have you done with Sabrina Spellman?”

She laughs a little, and that’s better than the exhaustion and uncertainty. She takes the popsicle, too. Nick had taken cherry, so Harvey’s left with lemon, which is fitting. “Things are so weird with Nick. Do you know when I saw him at the Academy, I punched his arm? Like we were bros? Why would I do that? Honestly, what the heaven —”

Harvey doesn’t mean to, but he grins, and soon they’re both chuckling softly. “Breakups are weird. I mean, we should know.”

“Yeah, you used to turn and run if you saw me coming at Baxter High.” She’s teasing and her eyes are bright, which is best of all. Harvey is still proud that he’s able to do that, cheer her up with just a few words, even if memories of those post-breakup days make him cringe.

“That’s a mild exaggeration, okay,” he says, but it’s not really. He’d been such a mess of feelings that it was easier to be angry, to avoid. He thinks of the dream again. That had been a coward’s way out, his dad’s tactics. He likes to think he knows better now. “I think it’s cool that you’re trying to be friends, or whatever. That’s not easy, especially after what happened. That was pretty —” His throat constricts. “Next level. But it’s classic ‘Brina to jump right in the fire. Wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”

“Hm, is that supposed to be a compliment, or…?” They both laugh again. “I don’t know, Harvey. Am I kidding myself that everything can be okay? Am I deluded if —”

She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t have to explain to Harvey about loving someone even when it hurts you, about wanting them around and wanting them gone in the same breath. Feelings are like that sometimes. “You love him. It’s okay.”

“I shouldn’t,” Sabrina says, not in a retiring, self-effacing way, but with her typical firmness, like she’s flipped a switch on Nick and that should be that.

“He’s important to you. You went to Hell for him.” He remembers her at the gates every morning, tireless and determined. “I don’t think something like that is just over, with no loose ends.”

When did Harvey become Nick Scratch’s cheerleader?

“Maybe,” she sighs. She drops her head onto Harvey’s shoulder. “Do you ever miss when things were simpler?”

Harvey thinks of the empty bedroom in his house that no one goes in, with the dark stains on the wall. He thinks of Roz off on a mission to save a witch gone mad. He thinks of the way his stomach dropped when Nick Scratch swanned into his garage. “All the time.”

Roz is prepared to find Blackwood in a makeshift camp in the woods, maybe with a rundown tent next to a crackling fire, like a serial killer in one of those documentaries she always clicks play on well after midnight. But Prudence’s blood has brought them to a vast clearing ringed by trees, within which sits a white clapboard house with a squared-off turret like an old-fashioned church. It doesn’t look like anyone has been inside it in years. Maybe centuries. It’s also plastered with enchantments and glamours so thick Roz can feel them as she and Prudence move closer to the house, like walking into a bubble. If it weren’t for the cunning, Roz wonders if she’d be able to see it at all.

At the steps of the house is a low stone slab gleaming eerily in the dark. There’s no one in sight, but if she listens, under the rustling of leaves Roz can hear a thin, reedy weeping, staccato and raw, like it’s been going on for so long the voice is wearing out. Furious, Prudence stalks forward, but Roz grabs her by the upper arm hard enough to keep her in place. Prudence’s disbelieving gaze travels from Roz’s hand to her face, brows lifting. Unperturbed, Roz tells her, “When I say so, shut your eyes tight. Just do it. Trust me.”

The words make Prudence’s lip curl, but she acquiesces with a nod. Then she draws both of her swords. She had offered one to Roz earlier, but she’d declined, wanting her hands to be free for whatever awaited them. She creeps along in Prudence’s shadow, constantly scanning their surroundings, not wanting to be caught off guard.

“Quick and quiet,” Prudence murmurs. She pushes at the door carefully so it doesn’t creak, letting herself in and leaving it ajar for Roz to follow. But the crying is ringing in Roz’s ears. She can’t figure out where it’s coming from because it seems to be coming from everywhere, like the trees themselves are wailing. She inches towards the altar, which is crusted with melted-down candles, one or two still flickering faintly as it burns to the quick. Wax slides over the stone, but the big stains in the middle are wetter and darker, studded with shards of what looks like thick glass. Wedged underneath is a pile of dirt-streaked fabric, but when Roz crouches to peer closer, she gasps and scrambles backwards.

There is a girl hunched under the altar. That’s where the crying is coming from.

“Oh!” Roz makes an involuntary sound like a nervous bird and drops to her knees in the mud. “You must be Leticia — um. Judith. Right? You definitely don’t remember, but I actually knew you when you were a baby. I took care of you once.”

Judith doesn’t look like she understands, her eyes wide and wild. She flinches backwards as much as she can in the tight space but her arms don’t move with her, and Roz realizes she’s tied to a ring in the stone. Roz really wishes she’d taken that sword, but luckily she pilfered her dad’s pocket knife before she left home. She wrestles it out of her jeans, hands shaking as she tries to flick the blade open. Judith startles again, trying to pull away, and Roz hurries to shush her.

“It’s okay,” she promises. “I’m just getting you free. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear —”

More than anything, Roz wants Prudence to burst through those doors and announce, Well, I’ve killed him and I have Agatha, all done here, let’s go home! But life isn’t that easy. Instead, Roz hears a strange whistle, almost a little tune, and then laughter.

“No, no,” says a cool, girlish voice. “Oh, no, that’s not right. He’ll slime you right up for that. He’ll slurp you down.”

Roz freezes and immediately questions every decision she’s ever made in her whole life that led her to this moment. Then she presses the blade into Judith’s hands before standing up and turning around. Judith should be able to get free, at least. Whatever else happens.

Agatha stands at the foot of the stairs. Roz doesn’t know her very well. In fact, the first time Roz ever saw Agatha was in a vision, her face contorted with wild laughter as she slammed a rock down on a doll in the mines. She doesn’t look that different now — or she does, but it’s different in the same vein, like a well-tended garden left to overgrow. Her hair is still in two black braids, but they’re frayed and falling free of their bindings. Dark lipstick smears over her chin and at the corners of her lips, distorting her mouth into a demonic grin. She wears a long lace dress that Roz thinks is white and brown until she realizes it’s actually soaked in dried blood.

Roz wants to cry. “Hi,” she says uncertainly. “You, um, might not remember me, but I’m Roz —”

Agatha starts giggling, her head rolling on her neck in a parody of amusement, like a broken doll. “Oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” she babbles. “He’s here. He’s here.”

With a delirious sort of triumph, Roz thinks that if Prudence had a cell phone, Roz could actually alert her to what was going on right now. Instead she finds herself half-heartedly calling Prudence’s name in a low helpless moan, wishing it was enough. Agatha’s expression changes instantly.

“Prudence?” Agatha repeats. “Prudence?” She keeps saying it over and over and then she’s charging towards Roz, gaining on her, getting faster. Roz stumbles, hand catching and sliding against the stone. She lands hard on the ground. Without thinking, she says a prayer.

And suddenly Judith lunges forward, wrists freed, and tackles Agatha to the earth in a cloud of rumpled skirts.

Roz lets out a slow breath, eyes closing. It’s always worth it to be nice to someone.

But her relief is short-lived.

“Now, now, girls. Let’s not fight.”

There’s no mistaking that voice, silky and almost musical but so utterly devoid of human feeling that it sends a chill down Roz’s spine. She turns to the doorway expecting Father Blackwood, but what she sees makes her stomach roil. There’s something standing there, a lumbering mass in the vague shape of a man with a wreath of tentacles writhing around what might be its head — what must be, because there’s still a sliver of human skin from which peers a single blue eye. And now that she’s noticed that, she can see a man’s shoulder and arm in the shivering, gelatinous shape — but it’s impossible to tell where he ends and the monster begins. One tentacle is twined around Prudence’s wrists. Behind him stands Judas, holding both swords.

“How kind, how truly thoughtful.” When the creature that was Father Blackwood speaks, it’s not with a mouth, but with an undulating piece of flesh lined with spiraling teeth. “For sacrifices to bring themselves to our door.”

Nick turns up to the Battle of the Bands at Greendale’s Fourth of July festival in a pair of fitted leather pants and a mesh shirt patterned in olive-and-black camo. It is completely see-through. Harvey can see through it. He can see Nick’s chest and his abs and his nipples. Harvey is stressed. So, seemingly, is everyone else.

“What?” Nick keeps saying. “This is what rock music performers wear. I looked it up!”

“Okay, nerd, but,” Harvey says. He does not know how to conclude the sentence. They’re all dressed for a barbecue: Harvey in cut-offs and a tank top, Sabrina in a plaid skirt and prim white top with straps that tie in little bows, Robin in his classic incognito look, and Theo in jeans and a vintage band tee. That’s about as edgy as it gets in Greendale.

“We could have worn mesh?” Theo demands. “No one told me we could wear mesh!”

“Yeah,” Robin says, “That.”

Harvey agrees. They’re all still staring at Nick, which does make it difficult to follow a thought all the way through to the end. It’s a combination of shock that he would and shock that he could, because he carries the outfit off with such ease it almost looks casual. If Harvey tried something like that, he’d get no end of shit from everyone around him — his dad calling him names, jocks jostling him in the halls, rolled eyes. But Nick is drawing appreciative attention from everyone around them. Even the hard glances from the older guys in the crowd, mostly miners, are distant, like they wouldn’t dare approach Nick. There’s no hand fisted in the front of his shirt, the other drawn back for a strike.

Harvey touches his new earring self-consciously. His dad hasn’t noticed yet. When Harvey had that crop top — just one, and it was a present from Sabrina anyway — his dad had hassled him about it until eventually his dad just threw it out. Harvey saw it, under eggshells and coffee grinds, in the trash.

“Um, well, okay!” Sabrina exclaims, emphatic and sharp. “We’re going to go on pretty soon, so we should get ready!”

The fairground is thronged with kids from school who all seem much more harmless out of context, stuck tagging along with their parents or minding a younger sibling. Harvey used to love fairs, the rides and the fireworks, the little kids running around everywhere. He’d painted faces at last year’s Last Day of Summer fair. But now the same things that used to charm him get his back up, everything tinged with pagan eeriness. He can only see the threat lurking in every tent. He notices the same stiffness in Robin’s shoulders, and the way his eyes bounce around from one thing to the next, searching for danger. Harvey shoots him a sympathetic smile, which Robin returns.

The stage is all the way at the other end of the field, past the booths offering hot dogs and ices, past the ring toss and bottle-shooting. As they walk, Harvey watches his friends. Theo and Robin weave close enough to link hands and then nervously disentangle, over and over. Sabrina and Nick chat like nothing is wrong and Harvey reminds himself that she loves Nick, despite everything, and that it’s only a matter of time before they work things out. He’s happy for them, all of them, but he feels a little lonely without a hand to hold. He looks at his phone — again, it feels like the millionth time — but there’s nothing new from Roz.

He’s so busy looking down and feeling sorry for himself that he ends up careening into Mr. Plum from the butcher shop by accident. “Sorry!” Harvey says hastily, guitar sliding from his shoulder as he reaches out to steady Mr. Plum. “Kids these days and their phones!”

Mr. Plum laughs good-naturedly. “Don’t worry about it, m’boy!” he says. “Good luck up there! Have a good night! Hail Satan!” He claps Harvey on the shoulder as he bustles past.

“Thanks!” Harvey calls after him, then, “Wait, what?”

He rushes to catch up with everyone, but they’re none the wiser about any local butchers with unusually Satanic send-offs. Harvey starts to wonder if he’s hearing things.

The temporary stage does not have a backstage so much as it has a stretch of grass where people are quietly panicking. One poor girl from the cheerleading team is vomiting into an industrial garbage can while Lizzie rubs her back understandingly. It occurs to Harvey all of a sudden that he is about to go onto a stage and play his guitar and maybe even sing and people are going to be able to hear and see him. “Oh god,” he says.

“Oh no, Harvey realized he’s about to perform in public,” Theo says. “Hey, Lizzie, that garbage gonna be free anytime soon?”

The first act is already out there, so they have three more nerve-wracking numbers before it’s their turn. It’s just enough time for Harvey to imagine every single worst case scenario: he pukes on stage; he pukes on his guitar; he sees Nick’s sheer shirt out of the corner of his eye and snaps a string again; he trips over a wire and plunges into the audience, who tear him limb from limb for being talentless.

He’s pulled from his thoughts by a hand on his arm, small and pale with dark red nails. “Hey,” Sabrina says softly. “It’s okay. I’ll be up there with you.”

His stomach stops churning so abruptly that he almost wonders if she cast a spell on him. Over her shoulder, Nick grimaces.

All too soon, they’re being ushered onto the stage. They take their places, arrange their instruments. Robin appears at the very front and gives them a loud woo! Sabrina’s family is there, too. Hilda and Dr. Cee snuggle on a picnic blanket while Ambrose smiles wryly, a flickering lighter held aloft at the ready. Zelda stares disconsolately into the middle distance while smoking, puffing into the faces of a nearby family until Marie plucks the cigarette from its holder. Zelda does not smite her, so they must really like each other. Theo’s dad shows up just in time to sling an arm around Robin.

Harvey knows Tommy would have been glad to see him up on stage, trying something that scares him. He knows Tommy would be there if he could be.

There’s no one from the witch school, either.

The emcee gets up to the mic to announce them, looking down at her little index card with a confused expression. “Next, let’s welcome to the stage…” Oh, god, Harvey thinks. They never actually came up with a name. “Entry Number Five!”

They share an awkward wince as the crowd gives them tepid courtesy applause. Harvey takes a deep breath and lets it out slow. “Ready?” He checks in with all of them in turn — Theo and Sabrina and even Nick. When they nod, he nods. “Then let’s do it.”

Theo counts them off and off they go. They tear into the song a little too fast, over-excited or anxious or both. Sabrina’s voice rings like a bell, Theo’s blending with it to make it richer and rougher, Nick a faint echo beneath them. Harvey’s fingers seem to know what to do without him having to tell them. He grins widely at his friends and they grin back, but Nick isn’t looking. He’s focused on his hands on the strings, playing faultlessly but dutifully, not even paying attention to his growing gaggle of groupies at the foot of the stage. It’s half the cheerleading team plus Carl, who isn’t doing the same moon-eyes as the girls but is laser-focused on Nick in a way that feels pretty telling all the same. Harvey expects Nick to get into it, to move around a little or wink, any of that really annoying stuff that would be totally on brand for him. But they get through their song with no showing off — and no mistakes, or puking — and tumble offstage again in an exhilarated jumble.

“Can you believe —!” and “Did you see?” and “I totally messed up, did you notice —” layer over each other as they dissect the performance enthusiastically. They’re quickly overtaken by congratulatory Spellmans (except Zelda, who says, “Charming. Can we go?”) and assorted significant others. Ambrose squeezes Harvey’s arm and purrs, “Quite the rock star, aren’t we,” which makes Harvey laugh and blush.

It’s around then that he realizes Nick had quietly peeled away at some point, and he’s nowhere to be found.

The only booze Nick can find at this stupid country fair is frothy beer pumped out of a keg, but it tastes thin and sour to him after Ambrose Spellman’s cleansing ritual scoured him from the inside out. There’s no point in even trying, though Nick has tried; he’s swallowed mouthfuls of absinthe at Dorian’s and inhaled clouds of opium in the back rooms, but sobriety is a bridle he can’t shake off. He can’t escape anymore. He’s caged in real life, which is brittle and blinding and unforgiving. He misses it, the buzz that would start at his lips and travel down to the tips of his fingers. Another thing gone.

Nick sighs and pours the plastic cup out into the grass. He keeps thinking of that song they’d performed. Nothing here belongs, he’d sung, at practice without really hearing it, and tonight hearing it too much. Nothing here is mine. All those well-wishers and him the odd man out, intrusive and so obviously out of place. Of no use to anyone.

He’s perched on the post of a half-dilapidated fence when the mortal finds him.

“Hey,” Harvey says. He thrusts out a hand. “Corn dog?”

Nick stares at the offensive thing on a stick. “Excuse me?”

“Come on.” He gives Nick his sweet, tired smile. “You guys eat eyeballs. This is nothing.”

Nick half-heartedly rolls his eyes, but he takes it. The mortal has his own, and he’s leaning in for a second bite when Nick says, “Why are so many mortal foods so aggressively phallic?”

He’s satisfied when Harvey chokes a little.

“It’s not a criticism,” Nick says. “Just an observation.”

“Uh-huh.” He laughs a little, awkwardly. “I’ll bet.” He does not seem able to eat the corn dog in Nick’s presence anymore, so his hand hovers down and off to the side, self-conscious. “Uh, so if I ask how you’re doing, are you gonna bite my head off?”

“No,” Nick says, testily, because he can’t now that Harvey has pointed it out. “I’m peachy, Kinkle.”

“You totally seem it,” Harvey says wryly.

Onstage, the Baxter High cheerleaders are doing a dance-heavy pop routine that has the entire crowd on their feet. There’s a little bit of me in you, the girl in front coos, and the denizens of Greendale actually echo it. A little bit in everything you do. She points at the audience and they chorus the line right back at her. She does it without a lick of magic, just magnetism. So much for their hopes of winning. He says as much to the mortal, who only shrugs.

“Who cares?” Harvey says. “It was cool just to do it.”

Nick doesn’t get him, this boy who would do something for nothing. Nick had done it for Sabrina, as he’d done everything else for Sabrina, and all he could feel were her fingers gripping his hair, her eyes sliding off him like he wasn’t even there. I thought that’s what you liked. Nick liked to be pulled and pushed and afterward he looked for a pat on the head even when it hadn’t felt good.

In the end, Nick had done it all for nothing, too.

“I lied, you know,” he says suddenly, still looking away. “I know what you’re probably thinking: what else is new?”

Soft, Harvey says, “I’m not thinking anything.”

Nick scoffs. He watches those girls on stage having fun and making everyone else have fun. He thinks of the open bottle of fizzing potion going flat back on his desk at the Academy. “It was a potion. I can’t play the bass, so I made a potion and then I could. Bottled talent. It’s easy, it took no time at all. And I lied about it, because I lie about everything.”

Harvey doesn’t say anything at first. Then, “Why?”

“People like to hear what they want to hear.” Nick had turned himself into an echo. It had seemed simple and logical: do the things people want, and rake in their praise. Only now he has the sense that there is nothing real about him, that in all that time spent trying to please everyone, he’d never figured out who he was.

Nick doesn’t know how to explain it, exactly, but it’s like his body is a house and that house is empty. First they’d taken the furniture and filled the rooms up with someone else’s things. Then they’d dragged it all back out, scraping over the floors and gouging the walls. And they hadn’t stopped there. They’d pulled up the carpet and peeled down the wallpaper, ripped up the floorboards and left gaping holes in the plaster.

The girls finish their song to a crescendo of applause.

“I don’t think people want to be lied to.” Harvey’s voice is still that gentle tone people use when they don’t want to startle you. It’s how Sabrina talked to Nick after she pulled him out of Hell. It makes him laugh. Bitter noise.

“Yes, they do,” he says. “No one wants to be told the truth. It’s ugly and uncomfortable, and if people know the truth about you, then they have to deal with your feelings and they’d much rather deal with their own.”

He expects some rah-rah mortal nonsense, platitudes about the innate goodness of humanity, but Harvey comes and sits on the fence. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me something ugly.”

Taken aback, Nick looks at him, eyes narrowing. He doesn’t tell Harvey anything. “Why are you being nice to me?”

There are plenty of reasons why Harvey shouldn’t be. Nick doesn’t know how much Sabrina told him, if he’s heard about Nick moaning under the crack of a whip, but he must know something. At the very least he’s put up with Nick being relentlessly unpleasant every time they’re within five feet of each other. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Stupid little mortal, Nick thinks fiercely, but the words spill out of him before he can stop them. “I told Sabrina I hated her.” The answer to two questions at once. “And I meant it.” He hated her for letting him go to Hell, even though she didn’t have a choice; he hated her for saving him, even though she would never have rested until she had. “It was worse than wanting to hurt her. I didn’t care if I hurt her.”

“Sometimes,” Harvey ventures, “When you feel bad, you want everyone else to feel bad, too.” He leans into Nick’s space a little, drops his voice. “I’ve said some pretty messed-up things myself.”

Nick knows that’s true, but he still lets his voice drip with doubt and disdain. “Okay, purity personified.”

Harvey blushes, like he had when Nick arrived earlier that night. Then he shakes his head, like he’s trying to shake the embarrassment off. “I can’t even pretend to get what you went through.” Nick’s spine stiffens defensively, but Harvey continues, “But he came to me once. Um, the Dark Lord. He whispered in my ear. It only took a couple of words — the right words — and it pushed me right over the edge. I did stuff I’m not proud of. But I think the scariest part is he said stuff I already thought. Like…it was already in me, you know? And maybe I would have done it anyway, even without him. I don’t know. Everyone has that dark part in them and everyone gives into it sometimes.”

It’s kinder than Nick deserves. He has given in a lot.

“I know you don’t really hate her,” Harvey adds. “And she knows it too.”

At the other end of the field, opposite the stage, fireworks have started going off in loud, showy bursts. They almost drown out the music. Each new explosion splashes vibrant color across the night sky in glittering curlicues and starbursts. In the crowd, Nick can see Sabrina’s white hair like a beacon, absorbing every color as it flashes — first green, then red, then summer gold. “The only girl in the world,” he muses.

Once he’d thought that she would unlock some door inside him, that in loving her Nick would get all the answers he’d ever longed for. She would make the world make sense. It had been promised to him, in so many words. Once before they’d met, Nick had come spying on her at a fair just like this one, seen her arm in arm with that mortal, achingly in love with each other and looking so happy, so free. And he thought, I’d give anything for that. So he had.

“Whoa.” Harvey gives him an odd look, a smile on his face but brow furrowed, as confused as Nick feels. “Major déjà vu just now.”

“Judas, tie your sister. Agatha, put the seer on the altar.”

Prudence’s father glides down the steps on slithering limbs that were once legs, leaving a glistening trail in his wake. She stumbles along behind him, wrists held fast in the constricting coil of tentacle, the flesh very warm against hers but nothing like human skin. It has the slight tackiness of amphibians, as though it’s secreting something, and the smell is of deep, stagnant water gone fetid.

Agatha disentangles herself from Judith one clawed hand in the earth at a time, while Judith skitters backwards towards the line of trees. Judas approaches slowly, carefully, with both swords drawn; Agatha stalks towards Roz with no weapon but herself. Roz is frozen to the spot in front of the altar, her hand clutching that stupid sack so hard her knuckles bulge. Prudence wonders if it’s full of flannel shirts and disappointment — something nostalgic for her.

Agatha grabs Roz to shove her up against the stone. That’s fine. Prudence knows the mortal can take care of herself and also knows that she will not kill Agatha, because she takes vows seriously and she made one to Prudence. That means Prudence is free to devote all her attention to killing her father, a multi-step plan that starts with a stiletto plunged into one of his writhing limbs (they aren’t just for aesthetics, after all) and then a spell to sever the tentacles, though perhaps she ought to freeze Judas first so he can’t harm their sister.

“I never thought you were stupid, daughter,” her father sighs, his one blue eye roving until it finds her face. She used to wonder that there were no similarities between them, then feared their similarities ran too deep to show on their faces: they were both strong-willed and vicious, and she worried that the only way to gain his love would be to cultivate those things in herself more than she already had. But now that his outside matches his interior, she sees there is little to connect them except biology. “It’s enough to make me regret I ever claimed you. But you will have a use yet. The Beyond One hungers — the All-in-One, the One-in-All — it needs constant feeding and each drop widens the crack a little, opens the door —”

He had almost let her be cannibalized, once. She has never been more than a tool to him. “The confidence of men is astounding,” Prudence remarks. “How many times must you fail before you accept that you’re a failure? Though I’ll allow there’s one good thing you did — I’m reminded every time I look in the mirror.”

He almost laughs. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she does — the crinkle of his eye, perhaps. He could have been any kind of father and this is the father he chose to be. Prudence lifts her heel, but before she gets a chance to bring it down hard into his flesh, Judas does something surprising.

He thrusts the handle of one sword at Judith and swings the other in a wide arc, bringing it down between Prudence and Blackwood. The tentacles sever with a spurt of brackish blood that splatters over Prudence in a salty, greenish spray. She’s free. She breathes his name, Judas, and meets his eyes — dark like hers, even though they didn’t inherit them from the same woman. Judith is already charging, sword raised.

And then Roz shrieks, “Prudence, now!”

Prudence remembers what that means just in time. She squeezes her eyes shut, head turning away on blind trust, not seeing when Roz pulls the head of Nagaina from the sack and turns everyone — almost everyone — to stone. She doesn’t see, but she feels the air change, life turning to lifelessness.

Agatha begins to laugh, a hiccupping laugh that sounds as though it’s choking her, like she can’t breathe through it.

“You can look now,” Roz says shakily. Prudence finds her family transformed, preserved with perfect stony countenances, furious swords paused mid-motion and tentacles no longer twisting.

“How?” Prudence demands, because she doesn’t know yet. “What did you —”

Roz tells her. Agatha must have been too close to her to get caught in Nagaina’s dead glare. “But I think we should really get going,” Roz says fretfully. “Before anything else —”

“Yes,” Prudence says shortly. “Come here.”

Roz pulls Agatha forward, though her heels drag in the mud. “No,” Agatha mutters. “Not again, not tied up, no, Prudence, no —”

Hearing her name in Agatha’s mad voice makes Prudence’s skin break out all over in prickling like pins and needles. It’s difficult to look at Agatha even now, even though all Prudence wanted was to save her, even though all of this is for her. Agatha’s dress, the very same one from the Hare Moon so long ago, is crusted in their sister’s blood.

Prudence pulls the severed tentacles from her wrists like unwieldy bracelets. “Take hold of her and me, and one of them if you can.” She links one arm with Roz’s and lays a hand on Judith’s stone shoulder, looped through Judas’ rigid arm. She makes sure they’re all touching in some way or other when she says the incantation, thinking only of Greendale, of getting home, of being safe.

Her concentration must be off, because they land not in the drylands in front of the Academy, but in the middle of a field packed with mortals. It’s some kind of festival. There are fireworks exploding overhead like canon fire and a band on the stage playing loud, discordant music, a cacophony of drums and electric guitar. Prudence barely has time to get her footing when Agatha screams, her hands clawing at her ears, nails dragging down her own face.

“Is she okay?” some idiot mortal asks, while someone else goes, “Cool statues! Is this like a skit?”

Prudence reaches for Agatha’s wrists but is thrown off; Roz tries next but Agatha shoves her away, knocks her into the dirt and grass. She towers over her, mumbling spells or maybe curses, so Prudence tries to drag her back, succeeding only in becoming the next target for Agatha’s cruel, searching hands. Her nails scrape over Prudence’s throat before her fingers fit around it, her eyes frenzied, lost. “Sister,” Prudence coughs, her eyes wet with sudden tears.

Then, out of nowhere, Agatha slumps into her arms, fast sleep. Prudence looks up, shocked and confused, to see Ambrose Spellman and his aunts standing there, Sabrina and some of the mortals farther off.

“Welcome home, Prudence,” Ambrose says. “Eventful evening?”

Chapter Text

Sabrina Morningstar has no friends in Hell.

She has duties. She gives orders. She calls for an accounting of every soul and goes over it until her eyes are raw with reading and she falls asleep at her desk. She holds meetings. She makes demands. She crushes the opposition of squabbling kings and learns how to command a room without raising her voice. She even has a treaty with Heaven that she’s trying to get the guys to sign off on.

But she doesn’t have friends.

She doesn’t have her cozy bed with the coverlet Aunt Hilda made herself. She doesn’t have her favorite pink pajamas, or the stuffed animals she sometimes still slept with on soul-tired nights. She doesn’t have music from Ambrose’s room to drift off to, or the sound of Aunt Zelda’s heels clacking on hardwood. She does not have Salem purring in her ear.

She has jewels and gowns and a crown of skeletal fingers. She has three demonesses-in-waiting who wake her in the morning for the Grand Arising, when a long line of duchesses and marquesses of Hell arrive to argue about who gets to hand Sabrina her gloves or lace her into her corset. They have the faces of cats and the tongues of snakes; they buzz like bees and promise favors, if their terms can be met.

Sabrina has to be steel-spined with the infernal aristocracy, but she tries to learn her ladies’ names and find out where they’re from, who they are. There’s horned Eisheth and snarling Ghaddar and melancholy Kore. “You can call me Sabrina,” she offers brightly, early on, hoping to win them over in private, at least — like a movie she may have watched curled between her mortal friends, where a princess and her beloved lady-in-waiting plot an escape from a cold palace. But they’re short with her, obsequious, and Sabrina can’t tell if they’re genuinely following protocol or if they’re bitter about serving a half-mortal usurper.

She doesn’t have Harvey or Roz or Theo. Heaven, she’d even take Prudence at a time like this.

She checks in on them sometimes through the large looking-glass propped up on her toilette table. She sees Harvey and Roz having ice cream outside a shop she doesn’t know; Theo and the Other Sabrina spiking a volleyball back and forth at the beach; Nicholas in Prudence’s bed, smiling lazily, his skin sheened in sweat. The way she always seems to see him, with other people.

They look happy, like they’re having fun, and Sabrina is glad for them, even though —

Even though she’s starting to realize that she didn’t know what she was giving up.

She thought it would be enough that another Sabrina was there with them, living that life to the fullest, but she hadn’t considered that no one would be here with her.

Not that she’d want any of them in Hell. Not that she’d want them to see her like this. She’s changing here, she can feel it — there’s something lurking under her hairline, aching under the weight of her crown. The skin there is red and tender to the touch. Sabrina stares at herself in the mirror, her other self and the self she is now, one laughing at a festival and her with her white face, her red lips, her luminous dark eyes, and whatever is growing underneath her skin.

It’s like Nick said, the last thing he said to her. She’s no longer a Spellman. She’s a Morningstar.

Sabrina has never lived with a father before. She’s not sure she likes it.

Lucifer is always there when she wishes he wasn’t and not there when she needs him to be. He’s nothing like the dream of Edward Spellman she held close to her heart for years — a person who was like her, who understood her, who was smart and ambitious and loved mortals like she did. Someone who could sit on the end of her bed and tell her exactly what to do, because he’d already done it once before. But Sabrina has far exceeded Edward Spellman, and Lucifer is all she has.

A week after refusing to back her up in front of the kings of Hell over a minor matter of soul contracts, Lucifer keeps Sabrina waiting in the cabinet room for so long that she starts to think he’s a no-show. She shoots an expectant look at Lilith, who sighs and throws her head back to bellow for a lackey to check on the Dark Lord’s progress. “When might we anticipate his ignominious arrival, hm?” Lilith asks, emphasis on the hm, voice viper-soft and just as dangerous. The demon rushes off.

Sabrina drums her fingers on the table, nails blood red. At her side sits Scylla, a jet-black hell hound who is almost as big as Sabrina sitting down, with upright triangular ears and no eyes. Scylla had been a coronation gift and Sabrina’s suspicious that the dog’s a plant from Lucifer, but she’s still a sucker for black fur. She runs an absent knuckle down Scylla’s snout and sighs.

“If he doesn’t even care enough to show up, can’t I just sign off on this on my own?” Sabrina looks longingly at the scroll she’d brought with her. It has some serious torture reforms in it. She’s keeping her fingers crossed for no torture in future. “I am the Queen.”

“It requires the approval of both rulers, and your father’s infernal power to enact it,” Lilith says. “But you see now how limited a queen’s power can be.” She pauses, words weighty with implication. “With a king around.”

That catches Sabrina’s attention, her eyes flying to meet Lilith’s, but true to form, that’s the exact moment Lucifer chooses to swan in. His black-and-gold jacket is splattered with gore and there’s a spray of blood across his face. “Ah, nothing so invigorating as an afternoon spent agonizing the horde!” He pulls out a handkerchief to dab at his cheek, then leans down to kiss Sabrina on hers. She endures it with little patience. “Waiting long, daughter? Have a snack. Is there wine?”

Sabrina glances distastefully at the molten gold and silver bowls on the table. The food in Hell sucks — it’s all scorpions and pomegranate seeds. “I don’t want a snack. I want to talk about these torture reforms.”

She sees the error of her ways before she even notices the bit of viscera clinging to his left shoulder. She suspects this kind of thing is not high on his priority list. “My dear Sabrina,” he says, “I can’t imagine why you’re wasting your time on nonsense like how much torment is too much torment for the damned. We have much bigger fish to fry.”

They have this argument regularly. “I told you Earth is off limits, that’s the whole reason —”

“Yes, yes, blah, blah.” Lucifer casts about for Lilith, though she hasn’t moved since he came in. “Lilith? Wine?”

Lilith serves him an expression of such flat loathing that he grins. She snaps her fingers for wine to be poured, but looks as though she’d prefer the bottle was thrown at Lucifer’s head.

After a sip, he continues, “I admit, there might not be much left of your beloved Earth soon, but it’s simply the first step in a greater plan for expansion —”

“What?” Sabrina sits straight up, her skin prickling with unease. “What do you mean, not much left?”

He ignores her to grab a pomegranate and tear into it with gusto, fruit breaking open in his hands. “I’ve been waiting to take my revenge on those cloud-gazers since the Fall. If we get Earth, it’s just a matter of pushing upwards into Heaven —”

“What about the balance of the realms?” Sabrina demands. “And this isn’t a time for expansion, there’s too much to do here first. If you would just read —”

The dismissive wave of his fingers makes the scroll roll up so tightly there’s an audible snap. “That was then. Things are happening, my dear. Balance is an outdated concept. Charmingly retro, but no longer serving anyone.”

Sharply, she says, “I want balance. I want to make peace with Heaven. I want to work alongside them.”

He laughs, looking to Lilith like this is the funniest joke he’s heard all eon. Lilith gives him a pained mouth-shape that could be considered smile-adjacent. “There is no peace to be found with those paragons of virtue and judgment. You know they won’t let you in even if you’re the very best girl in Hell. You’re still brimstone.”

Sabrina bites the tip of her tongue against that little flash of bright pain, as though Lucifer had put his finger on an old bruise. She gave up ideas of her own goodness a long time ago. “Maybe if you actually read it, we could come to some kind of compromise.”

The word makes his eyes light up. “If you’re interested in a deal, daughter, then I might have one for you.”

A shiver crawls down Sabrina’s spine, but she shakes it off and sits tall, expression impassive and imperious. “Name your terms.”

“Your witches…” he begins, and holds up a hand when she opens her mouth to shut him down immediately. “I understand you wish them to come to no harm. But their abandonment has a ripple effect. Hecate empowers them now, which is all well and good for her, but I am in need of devotees. Without worship, well — it won’t be pretty.”

Sabrina is caught between a laugh and a scoff. “Are you serious? You want attention? Actually, that doesn’t surprise me.”

Lilith is consumed by a mild coughing fit. But Lucifer is unamused. “I know there’s nothing you enjoy more than speaking whence you do not understand, but it isn’t a joke, girl. Power begets worship. Worship begets power. Get me a congregation and I shall consider your plans with those above.”

“What does that mean? Anyone?”

“Anyone willing to accept the gifts of Satan in exchange for —”

“I am not stealing any more souls! We still have a backlog!”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine. In exchange for their devotion. For now.”

Sabrina thinks about it. The fact that she thinks about it is something. “Not Greendale.”

“It must be Greendale,” Lucifer says airily. “It sits at the entrance to Hell. No place could be more potent. But you may leave your mortals be, if you like.” He tilts his head, smile mocking. “Do we have a deal?”

Sabrina gave up everything for Hell — while giving up nothing at all, somehow — so she has to make that choice mean something. She has to take big swings and make big changes; she has to leave it better than she found it. She holds out her hand. “Deal.”

Something slots into place inside her when she does that. She wonders if this is how Nick felt, infected with residue. She understands a little better than she did before, what it’s like having a darkness inside you that isn’t alien at all, a darkness that feels as though it has found a home.

Lucifer’s voice becomes soft and insidious. “Tell me, daughter, what’s the matter?” When she meets his eyes with surprise, he smiles. “I’m not so oblivious as all that. You miss your other life. Your friends, the family that raised you. It’s only natural.”

He’s sitting closer to her now. She admits, “I didn’t think you’d say that.”

“I want you to be happy in Hell, Sabrina. I hope I’ve made that clear. Haven’t I given you jewels? Beautiful dresses? A familiar? Your own handmaidens?”

Sabrina’s hand tightens in the thick fur at Scylla’s neck. Yes, he had. But she hadn’t asked for those things and she knew they didn’t come for free.

“Perhaps you’d like a companion from your other life. I can bring someone down for you. How about our Nicholas? That would be easy enough, just open up a crack in the Earth and reach through —”

“No,” Sabrina says, hard and automatic. However things ended between them, she’d never make Nick go back to Hell.

“The mortal, then? Or your cousin?”

She aches to think of Ambrose. If she could have anyone in Hell, she might choose him. She hears his voice in the back of her head with every decision she makes, and so she tries to act with his approval in mind. She wants him to be proud.

But she would never bring anyone down here with her. Not ever.

“Alright,” Lucifer sighs, sensing a losing battle. “You could always drink of Lethe and forget. That might ease your pain.”

Sabrina doesn’t want to forget. She just wants the choice she made to be worth what she gave up to get it.

As he leaves, the Dark Lord pauses at the threshold, where Lilith stands with her back against a pillar made of interlocking human spines, gilded and gleaming. He puts his hand against her stomach, warm through the satin of her gown, warm through the encasing flesh of Mary Wardwell’s body, warm through to the demon underneath. “How’s my boy?”

Briskly, Lilith says, “Growing stronger every day.”

“Mm.” Lucifer’s face is not quite a mask, not quite a mirror. There is doubt under his veneer of sportsmanship; he’ll play along until he has a reason not to. “And you?”

“Eagerly awaiting his arrival,” she answers promptly. “Though there’s so much time to go.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Lilith.” His voice is an ominous murmur. “Not so much time.”

He sweeps out with servile lackeys ambling at his heels, leaving Lilith alone with his crown-snatching daughter. Sabrina is in a teenage sulk, slouching in her chair with her cheek in one hand and the other arm flung out carelessly. The hell hound curls at her feet. “What happens when you have your baby? A triumvirate?”

“Don’t be sour because you’re used to being an only child,” Lilith deflects. “I would have thought you’d be happy to have a sibling.”

Sabrina cuts her a wry look. “More people to argue with. How many Morningstars does it take to rule one hellscape?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that punchline.” Lilith glides closer, her sharp-nailed fingers curling over the back of the chair opposite Sabrina. “Frustrated?”

“Definition of.” Sabrina sighs, slumping further and turning her gaze out as her lips draw together bitterly. But her returning glance is calculating. “You said something earlier.”

“Did I?” Lilith wonders. “What did I say?”

“Actually, it’s more like what you didn’t.”

Their eyes lock. Understanding passes easily between them. A queen’s power can be limited by a man who thinks he has a better claim than she does. But without a king around, who can say?

“Are we staging a coup?” Lilith asks. “Should I close the doors?”

“Depends.” Faint amusement in her face. “Is there something I need to hear?”

Lilith was never fooled by hairbands and loafers, all those signifiers of harmlessness that Sabrina Spellman liked to employ. But without them, Lilith must admit she looks dangerous: pale as paper in a red gown with flowers crawling up her torso, a circlet of golden fingerbones glittering at her temples. There’s no underestimating Sabrina Morningstar, that’s for certain.

Lilith closes the doors.

“There is,” she says carefully, “a possible, but very farfetched,” she pauses, “way to be rid of him.”

“And this is the first time I’m hearing about it? Not when he first tried to crown me — when we had to sacrifice Nick?”

Lilith shrugs. “It had completely slipped my mind. He gave me the clue himself, as a matter of fact. How much do you know of Hecate?”

Not a lot, as it turns out. While her family reformed their faith again above, Sabrina was occupied with subterranean politics. It’s interesting — notable, even. Lilith has never known Sabrina to be capable of leaving well enough alone, so the idea that she would abandon the mortal world to go all-in on Hell is unthinkable. She’ll never carry out Lucifer’s earthly plans and the constant threat of them is enough to put her right on the edge of rebellion. Lilith can push her over.

A Morningstar could never stop at just a taste of power. They must consume the entire entrée.

“Hecate is found at crossroads and in-betweens,” Lilith informs Sabrina. “Doorways in particular. There isn’t a door in any realm that she can’t unlock.”

Sabrina’s dark eyebrows lift in one uncomprehending sweep. “And? We tried locking him up. It wasn’t exactly a long-term solution.”

Sabrina isn’t stupid, but she’s not smart either. Lilith sighs. “There is — I hesitate to even call it a legend. More like a rumor. Hecate possesses nine keys, one for every circle of Hell. If one were to collect them all, then they could feasibly — it’s said, though of course I have no evidence to confirm or deny it — unlock a weapon that could destroy the Dark Lord.”

Lilith lets the words hang in the air, appreciating their weight in the silence, almost drowned out by the sudden whirring of Sabrina’s brain. “How do I find them?”

“I believe you have to commit the sin of the circle. And you’ve already accomplished quite a few of them.”

That sarcastic look again. “So you’re saying it’s a piece of cake.”

Lilith’s lashes flutter. Her lip curls. A smile. “Piece of cake.”

Hecate is an old god. Older than angels; older than Lilith. But Lilith has never seen one of Hecate’s keys. She has no idea if the thing is true or not, a real possibility or an internet pagan’s Pinterest entry. She only wants to keep Sabrina busy while she figures out her next step, though she doesn’t discount the idea that Sabrina will inexplicably triumph anyway. If Sabrina disposes of Lucifer, all the better. If not this way, Lilith will find another. Dominoes topple.

“Good to know,” Sabrina says finally, seeming refreshed by the promise of new adventure. “Oh, by the way — can I borrow a face?”

Lilith’s hall of faces will never not be creepy. Behind glass, in cabinet after cabinet, waits face after face. Their mouths are solemn but their eyes mobile, tracking Sabrina as she moves past them, her crimson gown dragging on the obsidian floor with a quiet swish. If she’s going topside, then she can’t be recognized.

She chooses an older woman with red hair that sweeps mysteriously over the right side of her face, eyes a mellow hazel. Sabrina likes the face. It looks nothing like hers but it’s pretty and open, with big features and a smiling mouth. It’s a convincing kind of face. She can imagine it whispering in mortals’ ears about Satan like she’s selling Avon.

Sabrina opens the latch and lets the glass door swing out, but she hesitates as she reaches into the case. She hasn’t left Hell since before her coronation. She hasn’t set foot in Greendale in months. She’s afraid of seeing Harvey, her aunts; she’s afraid that she’ll see herself, the happy-go-lucky version of her who has been indulging in a summer of fun. What will it be like to walk down the streets of her childhood home in someone else’s shoes?

What will it be like to whisper about the devil to people she’s known her whole life?

Empowering Lucifer feels like a misstep. But Sabrina has no guarantee that the quest for the keys will lead to anything; she’s chased enough dead ends to know that plans need back-ups, and if she gets her treaty with Heaven —

She’s reforming Hell. Luring mortals to the path of night doesn’t have to mean what it used to: selling souls and dark deeds, freedom exchanged for power. She can give them both. She can iron out the lies and make them true.

Sabrina steels herself. She takes out the face.

Wearing the borrowed skin, she walks up out of the Greendale mines and down through Main Street. She steps into the first shop she sees, a florist. The door swings shut behind her with the tinkling of a bell and she catches the eye of the woman behind the counter. “Tell me,” she says, smiling with someone else’s mouth. “Are you a woman of faith?”

The conversation ends with a “gee, I never thought about it that way” that seems promising. Sabrina exits with confidence, ready to move on to the next, but she hasn’t taken two steps before she falters.

Theo’s there. Not here but there, across the street with Billy and his gaggle of jocks. Sabrina frowns. Theo doesn’t seem entirely himself. It’s not so much the clothes or the hair — more coiffed, his jacket too-big and tough — but the jut of his jaw, the sarcastic grimace. It’s a Theo she hasn’t seen in a while, small and so angry, clenched so tight. She almost moves towards him, worried, but his eyes pass over her with disinterest, no recognition at all, and she remembers.

She isn’t his Sabrina anymore.

There’s one problem with Lilith’s plans: there is no child.

She’d taken the uninspiring tumble with Blackwood and sold the lie, but it became clearer with every passing day that there was nothing generating inside Lilith besides her usual simmering rage. This will become an issue when, at the end of thirteen months, she has produced no unholy son. Even now the Dark Lord watches her with amiable suspicion, as though he knows but is waiting to see what she’ll do — if she’ll do something interesting, something troublesome, before he cuts her down for good.

Lilith is sick of waiting to be killed.

“There are a few ways around that,” she muses aloud as she wanders up and down her hall of faces. The blank eyes follow her back and forth. She used to keep Mary Wardwell’s face in here, too, but now it’s the only case that almost always sits empty. She likes the faces; they don’t talk back and they don’t tattle. “Set Sabrina and Lucifer against each other. Let her remove him from the equation. One simple assassination, and —”

Lilith is caught by her own reflection. She can see the crown on her head, recall the weight and how easy it was to bear. The crown wasn’t meant for her, but she would take it, one way or another. Killing Sabrina has always been a challenge, it’s true, but here in Hell she’s friendless and alone, a mouse already in the trap.

“But the rabble has never been on my side,” Lilith admits, turning away from the face in the glass to make another round, her footsteps steady as she paces. “A Morningstar heir would give me a better claim to the throne with Lucifer and Sabrina gone. I could raise the child to be loyal to me alone. Raise it in my image. Have my own —” She’s breathless to think it. “Legacy.”

A child of her own. Green and terrible and terribly loyal. Her own little demon, born and bred to wear the crown, to keep the kingdom for themselves. A dynasty.

“Unless.” A sudden frown. “Lucifer could kill Sabrina. And then what?” She locks eyes with a pallid, gray-haired face. If Lucifer triumphed, as he often did, then Lilith would need an heir to keep her alive until she could overthrow him herself. That could take centuries. No matter what, she needs the baby. It’s a bargaining chip. It’s security.

“Well.” She peers at herself again and fluffs her voluminous hair. “Nothing to it but to try again.”

She puts on a robe of finest green velvet, cut low in front, and takes herself to Lucifer’s rooms. Her reception is not what she hopes.

“Oh.” He glances up from a scroll, bored. “It’s you.”

Lilith shoots him an irritated look from under lush eyelashes. Then she rallies, shoulders squared and cheekbones tilted towards the light. “I thought we might talk.”

He gives her a slow and considering once-over that unwillingly makes some dormant feeling spark at the base of her spine. She had loved him with hooves and horns, but she had loved him first like this: the fallen angel, beautiful and a little broken, very much in need of her. Able to make her believe he needed her.

His voice is full of doubt and something darker. “Talk?”

She smirks as she walks towards him, one heel in front of the other, hips swinging. “Doesn’t it remind you of the old days?” she murmurs. “To be here together again? The days after the Fall, when there was so much possibility…” She lets her fingers trail from her sternum down over her stomach. “And promise.”

His hand covers hers, fingers sliding along her knuckles, and she thinks, victorious, yes.

Until Lucifer gives her a light push backwards, not hard but careless. Her heels make a rapid little patter as she steadies herself. “Possibility,” he says. “What a fascinating word to choose.”

Lilith chills. “Meaning?”

“Possibility doesn’t require much in the way of proof, does it?”

With a trilling laugh, she says, “Everyone knows witches don’t show until the ninth month.”

“Hm.” He studies her. His expression isn’t hard but it is unyielding. He isn’t interested in playing her game of seduction. “We shall see, won’t we?”

Lilith understands. He’s handing her rope until she has enough to hang herself with. When the deadline passes, so shall she.

She reaches over and nudges his chin with her knuckle, as patronizing as possible. “Don’t choke,” she says, “eating your words.”

He smiles and she smiles back, but once she’s out in the corridor again, she has to grip the wall and suck in sulfurous air. She’ll just have to make sure Sabrina succeeds. Sabrina will kill Lucifer, Lilith will kill Sabrina, and then —

“Not a successful meeting, then?”

Lilith freezes, turning slowly to glance over her shoulder. Leaning casually against the stony wall is the prince of clay himself, Caliban; last she’d heard, he was still ensconced in the Ninth Circle. He’s wearing a molded leather vest over a bare chest and Lilith finds him immensely annoying. “For the sake of all that’s infernal. How did you get out?”

“Well,” he answers, already smirking. “I’m m—”

Lilith interrupts, “If you tell me you’re made of clay one more time, I’ll introduce you to a kiln.”

He laughs softly. “Do you think I would have put myself in the stone if I didn’t have an exit strategy?”

She hums slightly, because that’s neither here nor there, though she does appreciate a mind geared towards strategy. “I don’t know, you don’t strike me as someone with a great deal of impulse control.”

“You’re thinking of our fair Queen. I learnt patience waiting two millennia to escape Golgotha.”

“Good for you,” Lilith says curtly. She starts walking without looking back at him, but Caliban keeps pace with her. “Now you can go back to lurking outside the Dark Lord’s chambers — if you wait long enough, you might get luckier than I did.”

Her brisk stride carries them down one twisting hallway and then another, towards her own set of rooms. They’re much less grand than the ones she occupied when she sat on the throne. Sabrina has those rooms now.

Caliban’s voice is rich with amusement. “My lady Lilith, I wasn’t waiting for him.” They turn another corner together. Lower, he adds, “I know you’re lying.”

“You don’t know anything, except, it seems, how to keep yourself off a pottery wheel.” Once her door comes into view, Lilith reaches for the knob, but Caliban slinks in close before she can turn it. He’s close enough to make use of his height to pull Lilith’s gaze up to meet his; close enough to whisper. Much too close.

“I can be a useful ally.” His eyes glitter as he makes his promise. “I could fix your lie.”

“Don’t you have eyes for our charming young Queen?”

He grins as he looks away and Lilith knows that he does; that he can’t deny it. But Caliban says, “I have eyes for the crown. I’ll serve any queen who gets me closest to it.”

The word serve drips from his tongue. Lilith’s fingers curl tightly around the doorknob and, for a moment, she allows the truth to stand in implication. She sneers, “What would I do with a child of clay?”

Caliban smirks. “Mold it.”

Sabrina is tired. She’s not used to feeling like this, depleted and worn out, with no one there to pick her up again — none of Auntie Z’s sternness or Aunt Hilda’s little treats or Ambrose’s ribbing. She pulls off the redhead’s face and leaves it at her toilette table before collapsing onto her bed, reaching out automatically to make contact with Scylla’s warm fur.

“Do you think I’m a hypocrite?” she whispers, but Scylla doesn’t answer, not even in Sabrina’s head. Not like Salem, the cat of many opinions. Sabrina sighs.

She would have to go back again. Devotees weren’t built in a day.

Is it bad to want power? she’d asked mortals she had known forever, the parents of her classmates and teachers from her school. She wanted a real answer, but their eyes glazed over with their own soul-searching, their own desires. Is it bad to want to be free and whole? To not feel guilt or shame?

She tells herself she’s just playing the long game.

Sabrina turns over to lay dramatically on her back so she can brood at the ceiling, but she hears something crumple underneath her. She extracts a red piece of paper, once neatly folded but now half-crushed. It’s a message from Lilith. It’s funny, after all those months incognito, her handwriting still kind of looks like Ms. Wardwell’s. Acheron, it reads, followed by an incantation to Hecate.

As soon as Sabrina finishes reading, the missive bursts into flames, singeing her fingers and raining ashes down on the bedspread. Scylla sneezes.

Sabrina’s exhaustion evaporates just like that. All at once, she’s resolved; she has somewhere to channel her feelings now, a mission to undertake. Another chance to get rid of her father. If it works, she’ll never have to do a dark deed in his name again. If it doesn’t, she’ll find another way.

She changes quickly into a more quest-appropriate ensemble: red breeches and a matching jerkin with gold embroidery, a dagger tucked into the top of her boot. She sits at the mirror to quickly brush her hair, but the bristles catch on one of the bumps at her hairline and send a jolt of sharp pain through her temple. She winces, prodding the sore skin gently, and settles for arranging her hair to cover the lumps. She just needs something to hold her hair in place.

Sabrina fishes around in a drawer until she pulls out a black hairband, the only one she brought with her. She slides it on and checks out her reflection, chin lifting. Now she’s ready for anything.

There are five rivers in Hell and they can take you anywhere you want to go, provided you have the money to pay the ferryman. Sabrina goes to Acheron, its waters ruby-dark and burning along the banks. A small boat bobs there, a cloaked figure waiting at its curved prow with an oar in their hands. Sabrina flips a gold coin into the boat. It clatters against the wooden bottom. “I request passage.”

The ferryman bends gracefully to retrieve the coin, then looks up at her. The hood falls back. “Oh my False God, hey!”

“Elspeth?!” Sabrina exclaims, and peers closer. Her skin is gray and eyes sunken, hair thin over her forehead and throat leaking a steady stream of red blood. But it is her, undeniably. “You’re here?”

“Well, duh, where else would I be?” Elspeth waves her into the boat with a cheerful grin made ghoulish by her general appearance. “I signed the Book of the Beast. Hell is part of the deal.”

Of course. The boat shifts gently with Sabrina’s weight and she gestures for Scylla to follow, but the dog sinks into the water instead. Her back legs transform immediately into several lashing, scaled tails.

Elspeth pushes off the bank and they start to drift down the river. “I thought it would be a lot more glamorous, you know? Like, parties every night, cool outfits — your outfit is pretty cool, actually, though I guess that comes with the territory! — but, you know.” An exaggerated grimace causes blood to dribble out of the corner of her mouth. “There was that whole betrayal thing.”

Sabrina’s brows knit sympathetically, remembering Melvin’s terrified return from the pagans. “Right.”

Elspeth chatters on. “But the Dark Lord was really nice about it! He could have stuck me in the Eighth Circle, burning in torment for all eternity! That would have sucked. Instead, he let me join the ferrymen. Ferrypeople? And, like, that’s cool! You get to travel a lot, it’s sort of like being an infernal flight attendant.”

“I’m glad you’re not burning eternally,” Sabrina tells her, which seems like an understatement. “This might be a stupid question, but are you…okay?”

Elspeth beams. “Thank you for asking! I’m okay. It’s a little boring, though, and the ferrymen are really cliquey. Charon never lets me sit with the group at lunch. It’s like, dude, sorry I’m new and you’ve been doing this for six thousand years! Not everyone finds their career right away.”

Sabrina tries to smile, but she can see how pinched Elspeth looks around the eyes; hear the nerves rattling around in her unpausing patter. “I’m sure they’ll warm up.”

“No other option down here, really,” she jokes. The river grows narrower as they spiral downwards in the little boat, until Sabrina could reach out with both hands and brush the dank soil on either side of them. They come aground in front of a shadowed cave. “Well, this is as far as I go. Do you want me to wait?”

“I don’t know where I’ll be coming out,” Sabrina says honestly. “But thanks for the trip.”

Elspeth waves that away. “Services rendered, think nothing of it.” She pauses. “It was nice to see you again. You know, someone familiar.”

Sabrina does smile then, for real. “You too.”

She steps onto the riverbank, Scylla slithering after her, and gives Elspeth one last wave goodbye. Sabrina promises herself that when all is said and done, she’ll fix this — give Elspeth her glamourous nights instead of eternity in servitude.

Sabrina will fix everything.

She stands at the yawning mouth of the cave. It’s studded with dripping stalactites like rotting teeth, but beyond that lurks only darkness, so impenetrable it seems solid to the touch. She closes her eyes. “Hecate,” she breathes, as Lilith had written. “It is said that when you call on the Triple Goddess, she comes to you. I seek your guidance to show me the way forward. May the light of your torches illuminate the dark.”

When she opens her eyes, light flickers along the walls of the cave until it goes so far that darkness swallows it again. Sabrina takes a deep breath and walks on.

Fog rises around Sabrina as she walks until it’s so thick that she can’t see anything but shadows. The sturdy shapes of trees loom in all that white, and beyond them souls wander in silhouette. They’re naked and disoriented, some of them muttering and others crying, all lost to Limbo.

Looking for comfort, Sabrina reaches for Scylla and feels a wet lick against her fingers. She repeats Hecate’s incantation under her breath quietly, trying to trust that she’ll know what she’s looking for as soon as she finds it. Maybe she should have asked Elspeth to stay. Then at least someone would know she was here, someone besides Lilith, someone who wasn’t looking for any excuse to take Sabrina out of the line of succession.

She pushes the thought away and puts her hand down. Scylla licks her.

The last time she was in Limbo, she’d been searching for Tommy Kinkle’s soul. She won’t find him again. He isn’t among the missing left to mill through the afterlife; thanks to her, he won’t ever be anywhere again, his soul reduced to nothing but a supernatural snack.

“I’ve never wished you could talk more than I do right now,” Sabrina says, hand extending again. But this time she finds big, blunt teeth waiting for her — slimy teeth with strange bumpy ridges, teeth that don’t belong to any dog, hell hound or not. In the second it takes to mutter, “Unholy shit,” the Soul Eater surges up to tackle her.

It knocks her flat to the ground. It’s a creature dense with darkness, its snarl somewhere between a purr and a laugh. Sabrina gets one arm up between its snapping jaws and her, but it’s bearing down too heavily for her to hold it off much longer. Her fingertips skim the dagger in her boot. “Scylla!” she screams, but there are only the lost souls to hear her.

She doesn’t intend to be one of them. Her finger close around the hilt just as she rolls out from under the Soul Eater and takes off running. Her arm stings through her leather sleeve so the monster must have broken skin, but she’s tingling all over with adrenaline so intense she can’t feel much else.

It’s gaining on her. She can hear the thumping of its many feet slamming into the ground. Sabrina trips on a branch and goes sprawling, but she doesn’t let that stop her; she grabs handfuls of dirt to haul herself along, realizing a second too late that the dagger has flown from her fingers. Which is right about when the Soul Eater wraps its inky grip around her ankle. Sabrina kicks and she scrabbles, but it’s no use. She can feel the shocking chill of its open mouth, the teeth and curling tongue, the sensation that it’s already pulling her apart, particle by particle —

Sabrina has no one to rely on but herself. She strikes out wildly, trying to make violent contact any way she can, but it’s hard to tell what’s what with the Soul Eater. It has rough fur and bleary eyes, but its shape seems to blur as soon as she starts to get a handle on it. Her knuckles collide with what might be a snout, but her fist sails through as though it’s little more than a cloud. She plunges her hand into its middle, the sensation wet and strange as graveyard dirt, and the monster shrieks. There’s something there, something made of metal. It’s thin and long, with a loop at one end. A key.

Triumphant, Sabrina wrenches the key out of the monster as it howls in pain. She clambers to her feet, whirling to dodge a sudden dark streak that launches itself at the Soul Eater. Scylla. She clamps her jaws around it and pulls it down into the dirt, growling. Better late than never.

Sabrina turns to get the dagger, but finds something else instead. A freestanding black door has appeared in the fog, emblazoned with a silvery waxing crescent.

She slams the key into the lock and turns the handle, pausing only to shout for Scylla before they’re both surging through, diving into darkness.

The key vanishes in Sabrina’s hands instantly. It’s there, and then it’s not.

She pats herself down as though she might have secreted it in a pocket without realizing, then drops into a crouch to search the floor — a shiny beige linoleum floor that her gaze follows up to a hallway lined with lockers. And the person standing framed between them. “’Brina!”

Her heart takes flight. It almost makes her dizzy, the unexpected sound of his voice here in this place. He comes towards her, his brow knit and hair mussed, in his jacket with the sheepskin collar and a black sweater, looking handsome and concerned. “Harvey,” she breathes.

“You’re hurt!” He takes her by the hands and it’s a shock like static electricity. It even feels like Harvey, a hand she could hold in the dark and know in her bones is his. He leads her over to one of the benches and kneels in front of her, setting his backpack down so he can carefully fold back her sleeve and the shirt underneath. There are a few scratches and shallow gouges from the Soul Eater, not bleeding anymore but still tender. Harvey touches them tenderly. “What happened?”

He’s a figment. But he’s a figment who sounds and feels and even smells like Harvey, and he’s the first person she loves who has spoken to her since she came to Hell. She can’t stop looking at him, drinking him in. “Just me getting into trouble as usual.”

He gives her a wry smile. “Sounds about right,” he says. “I’d like to see the other guy, if there’s anything left of him.”

It’s so real that Sabrina giggles, aches with it, and then almost cries.

“’Brina,” he says, aghast. He pulls her hands against his chest, leaning into her legs, and it’s so easy for her fingers to crawl up to his neck; to cup his cheeks.

“I miss you so much,” she tells the figment. “I didn’t know how much.”

“I missed you too.” He sits up slightly on his knees so his forehead presses against hers. “I broke up with —”

Sabrina kisses him. She doesn’t want to hear some nonsense that will make the whole thing fall apart, pull back the curtain to reveal that this isn’t really Harvey at all. She wants to live in the lie for a minute longer.

His cheek slides against hers, faces nudging in close like when they stargazed in the back of his truck. But then he hums, “It’s not me you really want,” and when Sabrina moves back to stare at him, she finds herself looking at Nick.

Nick.

He’s wearing the tux from the Valentine’s dance. He grins at her and he’s healthy, happy, whole. “Stunning as always, Spellman. Only you could get in a fight with a soul-eating demon and come out looking like a rose.”

She doesn’t know what to say.

“Come on!” He gives her a little shake like she’s being awfully strange. “We’ll be late!”

When Nick takes her hand, it tingles all the way up to her shoulder. He tugs her down a hallway suddenly festooned in pink and red decorations, and Sabrina notices that she’s wearing that red dress somehow, the one that Aunt Hilda made for her and said looked like the Queen of Hearts. They burst through the door into the gym like they’re stepping back in time.

It’s Nick before everything. Nick before Amalia and Lucifer’s dark devotion; Nick before Hell left its Satanic residue in him. A Nick who was only ever exciting, and there for her; a dream boy, a dream of a boy. He leads her onto the dance floor with a sparkle in his eyes, but it feels so different now. Sabrina finds herself searching his face for signs of that broken Nick she’d come to know, wondering if he’d been hidden under this one all that time and she hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t thought of him as a person who suffered, until that was all he did.

She doesn’t want to dance. “Nick,” she says, and lays her hand against his neck like she’s making sure he’s solid. She’s caught in his arms and against his chest, a little bit of a ragdoll. Nick stops mid-spin, concerned, and there in the crook of his arm — that’s the first thing that feels real.

“We don’t have to dance,” he says. “We can do whatever you want.”

Sabrina presses her face into his shoulder. She wishes they could just dance, and that she could pretend. But Nick had lied to her so much that she had to hold onto the little fragments of the truth, jangling in her pockets like loose change.

“It’s okay.” Nick smoothes her hair and kisses her temple, carefully avoiding the spots that hurt. “I know it’s not me you really want.”

“Nick,” she starts, uncertain but needing to say something, like maybe, I didn’t think the candle spell would work when I didn’t really mean it. But she’s propelled into a sudden spinning turn that snatches her words away. By the time she stops, Nick is gone.

It’s Caliban now, smirking, his eyes warm. Over his windswept poet’s shirt he wears a vest of molded leather decorated with razor-sharp claws. He keeps one of her hands in his, but bows low at the waist, gentlemanly.

“Revenge may be a dish best served cold,” he says, “but your treachery was unexpectedly hot, princess. Or is it ‘my queen’ now? Will ‘your majesty’ suffice?”

Sabrina’s expression hardens. “What are you doing here?”

Caliban pulls her closer, guiding her into a waltz. “I wonder,” he teases. “Only you can say. Congrats on your coronation, by the way.”

Around them, the students are still dancing, but there’s something different about them now. Out of the corner of her eye, Sabrina catches a fleeting glimpse of a wing, a set of horns, a long skirt or tailcoat. Everything seems — redder, somehow. “What’s the game?”

He leans in close, lips by her ear. “Haven’t you guessed? Can’t you feel it?” His fingers are strong against her lower back. “That rush of heat under your skin. I know you feel it too.”

The crowd presses closer, but they’re blurring together, a wash of faces she can’t distinguish.

“You gave up everything else, so you might as well give in,” Caliban continues. “What else is there in Hell but loneliness and pleasure? Haven’t you had enough of one — aren’t you interested in the other?”

That was the decision she made: freedom for the other Sabrina and power for this one. She would get to have both, but somehow also neither.

His voice is soft and persuasive; a voice that spoke of honor after leaving her to die at a carnival, that promised a softening of hearts while it planned a betrayal behind her back. He lifts their joined hands to kiss her knuckles, and it crackles across Sabrina’s skin. “I won’t slow you down. Whatever you’re chasing, I’ll chase it with you.”

That’s wrong. She can’t remember why, too dizzy with spinning, but the wrongness intrudes upon her in a way she can’t ignore. Caliban turns her again, pulls her back against his front with their arms held aloft, hands joined. “It isn’t really me you want,” he murmurs. “But wouldn’t it be fun to find out for sure?”

He kisses her shoulder. He kisses her neck. He tips her chin up with a finger and kisses her on the mouth, his touch trailing down the front of her throat. His lips part and hers with it, but something cold and metallic touches her tongue; her teeth close on it; she pulls the key from his mouth.

Sabrina opens her eyes to find herself alone in the middle of a lavish ball in Hell, still in her Queen of Hearts dress. The infernal inhabitants of the court are cheering for her, calling her name. She can’t see Harvey, Nick, or Caliban anywhere, but her father is watching from a distance, smug and calculating. “How does it feel?” he calls. “To get what you want?”

Before she can react, the crowd carries her up and onto the throne, a rush of people like a wave she can’t control. Sabrina’s lips crack in a smile, not nervous at all but pleased despite herself, because it’s her name they’re chanting — hers.

Something presses into her lower back. When she looks, she discovers that the back of the throne has transformed, its complicated golden pattern going smooth and black. A half-moon gleams from its surface. There’s a little door there now; it had been the handle prodding at her.

She slides the key in, pushing open a door to darkness, and crawls through. She leaves the Second Circle behind.

Sabrina is in a grand hall.

Carved wooden beams arc high above her. There are no windows, but tapestries line the black stone walls, showing strange monsters and tormented bodies writhing, all in red. The room is empty except for an absurdly long table piled with mountains of food, every dish Sabrina could ever imagine: silver dishes of chilled oysters, whole scaled fish, steaming roasts, apples and plums tumbling from golden bowls, fragrant pies beside tidily iced cakes. Her stomach growls. There is only one chair, for one guest, so Sabrina sits. Scylla curls on the floor next to her.

“Well, here goes nothing.” She splashes red wine into a silver goblet and holds it up to her silent sidekick. “Cheers.”

That first sip unleashes something in her. She’s been so hungry in Hell and she can’t resist filling her plate with slices of roast chicken, a dollop of mashed potatoes, asparagus gleaming in butter. She consumes it faster than she tastes it, so she goes in for more — pork so tender it falls to pieces at her fork, saffron rice, tangy cheeses — a slice of vanilla cake with jasmine icing, flowers piped onto its side — a cup of dark chocolate pudding —

But it isn’t enough. She’s ravenous.

Sabrina stands so she can reach over the table, the skirt of her red dress trailing in the dredges of food on her plate. Scylla whines a little and licks her snout, but Sabrina ignores her. She tears into an orange, the juice sliding down her wrists, over her chin. It’s not enough. She hasn’t eaten well in so long. What she wants is her Aunt Hilda’s food, porridge when it was cold and hot chocolate spiced with cinnamon late at night. But this will do.

She makes her way up the table with bites of this or that, but she’s drawn to this huge roast bird at the center adorned with pomegranate seeds like jewels. She doesn’t know what it is, but she digs her fingers into its flesh and pulls away mouthful after mouthful. It’s so juicy, so rich and well-spiced, that she keeps going back for more — pulling it apart until she sees a flash of gold underneath. There’s something inside it.

Sabrina tears and tears until she reveals golden bones like a ribcage, spokes curving in on themselves. But it isn’t the bird’s bones. It’s Sabrina’s crown.

Scylla is still whining but Sabrina is heedless, singularly focused. She sucks the flesh from all that gold and then places the crown on her head. She is immediately sated.

But then she chokes.

There’s something in her throat — a bone, maybe, she ate too fast. She clutches at her neck, the side of the table; she presses her fist under her ribcage, pushes hard, and, gagging, spits out a key.

She exits the Third Circle.

The Fourth Circle is mirrored like a funhouse. When Sabrina walks in, she walks directly into herself, refracted and multiplied from every angle. She’s a total mess in her red dress and crown, dog at her side, lipstick smeared and mascara under her eyes, skin sticky. It’s strange to see herself like that, and it hurts in a way she can’t quite put her finger on. But when she tries to look somewhere else, she only finds herself again.

The Other Sabrina is in one mirror, topside in her summer dress, pink-cheeked and happy. In another, she’s in her coronation gown with the towering wig and chalk white skin. Another, in a leather skirt and dark cherry top, her hair white and her smiles mischievous. In another golden-haired again in a blue sweater and jeans, looking younger than she can remember being. But that was only nine months ago. That was before her birthday.

The mirrored halls are narrow to navigate and they seem to amplify the sound of breathing as Sabrina and Scylla ease through. Thousands of Sabrinas stare back at her, beaming or blushing, smiling or mocking, with yellow hair or white, dark eyes or silver. She’s never been claustrophobic or self-conscious, but it’s all so close; she can’t hear anything but breathing, not even her own footsteps, and she can’t move without touching a mirror. Being so hyper-aware of her body, where it is and how it looks and sounds, starts to make her breath come too quick.

She sees herself as she is again — messy hair, red dress — but the Sabrina in the mirror smiles and starts to morph. Her heels become hooves, fur rippling up over her flesh; her face elongates and pupils turn rectangular, her crown melting in gold rivulets down the sides of her face. She’s staring at the Dark Lord as he was when she met him, but she’s looking at herself, too.

Sabrina can’t take it. She smashes her fists against the mirror. The glass splinters on the image of herself as Satan, cracks spidering outwards. She hits it again and again until shards rain down at her feet, blood-tinged, and then the whole thing shatters.

Behind it is a door bearing a full moon. The key is already in the lock.

It opens onto the river Styx. This water is jewel-blue and freezing, but that’s not the only reason Sabrina shivers as she wades into it. She’s unsettled from the mirrors, from the sight of herself like that. The heels of her hands are all scratched up and they sting when they hit the water.

Scylla paddles ahead with her paws, monstrous tails moving fluidly behind her, then circles back around to Sabrina’s side. She nudges her head into Sabrina’s hip until she takes hold of the dense wet fur at Scylla’s neck, using her to stay upright whenever Sabrina’s shoes slip against the smooth stones on the river bottom.

This time they’re not alone.

Sabrina hears whispering before she can make out what the words are; at first, the chatter is indistinguishable from the gentle rushing of the river. But she starts to see things at the edge of her vision. Dark shapes moving fast, skittering along the riverbank. Talking about her.

“Selfish girl.”

Sabrina swallows. She ignores the chill tremor running down her back and all the small ways she hurts. She’s made it this far. She’s not going to trip up now. She lifts her chin, determined.

“Arrogant. Does whatever she wants.”

“Pays no mind to consequence.”

The voices seem to come from everywhere and nowhere, the creatures on the bank sidling away whenever she glances toward them. Her jaw sets.

“Craves more and more always. Never satisfied.”

“Takes and takes and takes.”

“Ask Lilith. Ask Ambrose. Ask Harvey. Ask Nicholas.”

Irritation growing, Sabrina demands, “If you have something to say, say it to my face!” There’s only giggling in response.

“Spoiled. Cruel. Doesn’t know her place.”

“Hurts everyone she touches. Breaks them to pieces.”

Her hands are numb and she can’t tell if it’s the anger or the cold. She can feel the painful twinge of her scratches when she curls her fingers into fists. Disgusted, she spits, “Cowards.”

That’s when the first arrow flies.

It punctures Sabrina straight through the shoulder in a bolt of pain that reverberates through her arm and chest. She staggers into the water, gulping it in icy mouthfuls, drinking in the river of loathing. Scylla buoys her back up and laps at Sabrina’s face, tongue hot. It’s enough to rouse her slightly, but when she tries to find her footing, another arrow pierces her stomach. A third grazes her throat. They knock into her one after another, the water turning red with her blood, almost purple in the dark.

“Evil. Sold her soul, signed herself away.”

“Got the Devil in her. And she likes it.”

With a growling groan wrenched from somewhere deep inside, Sabrina rips the arrow from her shoulder. It hurts so profoundly that she screams, a primal sound of fear and rage and frustration. Something swells in her — swells past her, blooming out in a cosmic wave like when she burned the Greendale Thirteen or killed the witch-hunters. Her vision goes silver. Whatever is watching her — all those shadowy creatures — bursts into flame.

When everything is ash, Sabrina sees the arrow in her hand has become a key. There is a red door in the riverbed below her, completely horizontal. She reaches down through the water, fighting its buoyancy to sink the key into the lock. Once it opens, the river swirls down like a drain in a sink, the undertow pulling Sabrina along too, and she falls downwards into —

The clearing in the Greendale woods where she was first meant to sign the Book of the Beast. The Sixth Circle.

Sabrina lands hard on the ground in a rush of river water. It puddles on the forest floor, turns muddy; leaves and small twigs stick to her skin and snag in her hair. She’s drenched and bloody, low on patience, as she drags herself up to the altar where the Book still waits.

The altar’s burning candles bring out the luster of the book’s leather cover. It almost seems to pulse somehow, its energy echoing in Sabrina’s ears like drumming, or her own heartbeat. It’s a luring sort of sound. She leans heavily on the altar and opens the book, but instead of an assortment of names stretching back through the coven’s history, there’s only one. Sabrina Spellman is written in the book hundreds of thousands of times, her own handwriting made alien and unusual to her eyes.

Sabrina sighs. There are only three more to go after this, three more and she’s done. “No more missions for a while, I think,” she says conversationally to Scylla as she picks up the pen. Her lungs still feel wet and there’s ash in her airways. “Let’s take a long nap when we get home, huh?”

If you do something enough, it stops feeling like anything. Sabrina made this choice long ago. She collects a bead of blood on the metal nib of the pen from one of her arrow wounds and writes her name in the first blank space. But nothing happens. There’s no subtle shift that signals a door appearing, and no sign of one along the line of trees.

“What do you think…”

Sabrina bites her lip. She thinks of every Circle she’s passed through so far: the ball in Lust; the crown in Gluttony; her hooved doppelgänger in Greed. The demons in Anger calling her evil. And she thinks of the ultimate act of heresy. The knowledge of what she must do comes so easily that it seems silly it took her any time at all to realize.

She dips the pen in her blood once again and writes, Sabrina Morningstar.

The altar shifts. Under its stony slab waits a small door bearing a waning crescent. Sabrina goes.

The Seventh Circle is only darkness. It’s the kind of dark that presses in on your eyelids whether they’re open or closed, that feels thick like drowning on air. Sabrina wavers slightly on her feet, unmoored but also exhausted, knowing she has to stay alert in case —

In case someone body slams her from the left and sends her crashing to the floor. It knocks the wind out of her completely.

“I was never the same after what you did,” the person hisses. A light clicks on somewhere above them, but it’s swinging back and forth, illuminating the face of Agatha Night in rapid flashes. She’s there and then she’s gone, the planes of her face morphing as the light changes. “Slit my throat and put me in the ground. I was vomiting up gravel when you were done with me. I was never right again.”

“Oh, come on!” Sabrina exclaims. “You can’t still be mad about that. I brought you back!”

But Agatha, or this figment of her, is definitely still mad. She pulls Sabrina up by the shoulders only to slam her back down, pain bursting along the back of Sabrina’s head. She sees stars.

“No big deal, huh?” Agatha taunts. She lifts one arm high and the blade in her hand shines silver in the shifting light. “See how you like it.”

Sabrina’s still dizzy, but she bucks up against Agatha, managing to send them rolling along the floor in the dark. She scrabbles for Agatha’s wrist, but her nails slide against the floor instead. Agatha is all furious movement, impossible to contain or predict, impossible to see. Sabrina manages to catch her by the elbow and she follows Agatha’s arm up until she feels the skin-warm metal of the switchblade. She digs her nails in to make Agatha drop it, then does what she did all those months ago to bring Tommy Kinkle back: she slashes Agatha’s throat.

The overhead light swings back and forth.

“You,” Agatha breathes, bubbling blood, “bitch.”

Darkness descends again. Sabrina keeps her hand tight on the blade. She slips a little on blood trying to stand, but Scylla is back to guide her, heavy body against Sabrina’s legs. Her eyes keep trying to focus on nothing, to adjust to a near-impenetrable gloom, and her pupils must be so huge that the next flash of light is completely blinding — it pops and fizzes like fireworks, one flare and then another as many voices speak in chilling unison.

“Betrayed by our own kind,” chant the Greendale Thirteen, glowing radioactive in the dark. “Hanged. Burned.” The words echo and layer over each other. Hanged. Burned.

“You don’t exist,” Sabrina informs them sharply. “I made it so. You’re ghosts of ghosts. You’re nothing.” The power is quick to her fingers now; one snap immolates one witch’s shade, like killing flies. “I’m sorry about what happened to you, but I’d do it again if I had to.”

If it meant saving someone she loved, or even just saving herself, she would do whatever she had to do. And she does.

Next comes Amalia, but by now Sabrina understands how the game is played. The Seventh Circle is Violence, and this is everyone she’s killed. Scylla handles it for her; she rips out Amalia’s throat.

Sabrina charges on until she comes against the two smug witch-hunters, Jerathmiel and Mehitable. She’s only too happy to do away with them again, Jerathmiel taken out with the switchblade and Mehitable brought to her knees with a spell. “Was it justified?” Mehitable wants to know, voice like poison as she stares up at Sabrina, splattered in blood and merciless. “All the death, all you’ve done? Unclean witch, you —”

Sabrina snaps her neck. You just can’t talk to some people.

But after, something in her stomach does a little flip. It’s that word, justified. Sabrina has always felt justified, even with a string of corpses behind her and blood on her buzzing hands. She had not hesitated. Maybe she should have hesitated?

Her head aches fiercely. She has work to do.

Jimmy Platt is next, then four pagans whose names she never even bothered to know, whose lives she didn’t have to care about. She disposed of them once, and she does it again.

This time, the door is white.

Sabrina lurches into the Eighth Circle like the monster that lives under someone’s bed, the heroine at the end of a horror movie.

But instead of some fresh fright, she steps directly into her bed at home, climbing over the headboard and landing with soggy shoes on her own bedspread. It’s as disconcerting as dropping out of a dream and back into reality, and she sits stunned for a moment, uncomprehending. It’s a facsimile, she reminds herself, but then she’s pressing her face into the quilt just to smell Aunt Hilda’s homemade laundry concoction, sweet and lemony. The coverlet isn’t as whisper-soft as the spider-silk and rabbit fur she sleeps on in Hell, but she’d choose it every day. She doesn’t care what happens for a minute, because this is her bed, lived-in and worn from a lifetime of dreaming.

“Not ready yet, Missus?” Aunt Hilda tsks as she bustles in with fresh towels and a cup of coffee carefully balanced across both arms. “You’ll be late!”

Sabrina lifts her head, tears streaking through the grime on her cheeks but smiling despite it. “Sorry, Auntie Hilda. I’ll be quick.”

“You better.” She gives Sabrina a distracted kiss on the temple, which throbs, and smoothes her hair back as though it isn’t caked with dirt and gore. “Up and at ’em. Breakfast is on the table.”

Sabrina follows her downstairs, savoring each cobweb and creaking floorboard. It seems almost silly, honestly, after everything else she went through — like this is a treat, playing house in her own home, reproduced down to the last mousehole. She sways a little on the landing, her eyes closed, hungrier for this than anything she feasted on in the Third Circle.

Aunt Zelda is at the kitchen table reading her paper and smoking; Ambrose sits on the counter with Salem in his lap, munching toast. “Lose a fight with a blood ritual, cousin?” he teases, which causes Zelda to flick the top of the paper down.

“Oh, for Satan’s sake, Sabrina,” she says. “What did you do now?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Sabrina protests, which makes Ambrose and Hilda smile at each other across the kitchen. “Okay, maybe I got myself into a little trouble…”

Zelda returns to reading, wondering wryly, “Why does that feel like an understatement?”

Sabrina grins, can’t help it. Maybe she’ll let herself have this. Maybe she’ll drink the coffee and accept the gentle ribbing for a minute or two, for as long as she can, because she might never have it again.

And then someone screams.

She screams.

Or, rather, the other Sabrina does — the one standing in the doorway, golden-haired in a white sundress with a black hairband. “Aunties!” the Other Her shouts. “Get away from it!”

“What?” Sabrina says, but everyone has leapt to their feet with alarmed expressions, turning on her as fast as they’d welcomed her home. “Guys, it’s me!”

“I’m me,” the Other Her says, striding in to stand between Sabrina and her family. “It’s obviously a demon, look at those things it has growing out of its head!”

“Quite right, Sabrina,” Zelda says. “An imposter demon. We should have known from the first.”

“Oh, to think I almost gave it my special morning porridge,” Hilda frets.

Ambrose claps his hands together, ready for anything. “So, run of the mill banishment or…?”

“Not with one of these,” Zelda says, eyeing her like a roach about to be crushed under a patent leather heel. “I’m afraid disposing of a fraud is much more hands-on.”

As one, they move to grab Sabrina, fingers uncaring and tight around her arms. They hoist her up onto the kitchen island, dislodging bowls and utensils; the crown tumbles off her head and rolls across the floor. She keeps trying to protest — “It’s me, it’s Sabrina, it’s just that there’s two of us, please!” — but they ignore her as though she’s speaking in tongues.

Sabrina thrashes under their restraining hands, but they hold her fast. Even though she knows it isn’t really Ambrose keeping her arms pinned to the tabletop, it still feels like Ambrose — an Ambrose looking at her with revulsion. Sabrina shuts her eyes tight. “Hecate,” she calls. “I want out. Hecate, I don’t want to do it anymore!”

“Awfully convincing, isn’t it?” Hilda muses.

“That’s what they do,” Zelda says. “Worm their way in until you think they’re one of your own. But they’re interlopers. They can’t be trusted. Hildy — are you ready?”

“On it.” Sabrina opens her eyes to see Hilda has produced a comically long, sharp knife. The razor edge gleams so brightly there might as well be an audible ping! “You’d best do it, Sabrina, my love. No time to learn like the present!”

The Other Her’s eyes light up. She climbs up onto the table and straddles Sabrina, knife in hand. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” she says and, relishing it, plunges the knife deeply into Sabrina’s chest. She screams, arching off the table. Held down by the ones she loves the most.

She thinks of Theo looking past her earlier today, how gutting it had been. Now she knows what it really feels like to be gutted.

“There’s a girl,” Ambrose says. He reaches in to help pull her flesh back, peeling her open with as little feeling as any autopsy in the mortuary. “They look normal enough on the outside, but in there — yeesh.”

“Egotistical creatures, you know,” Zelda remarks disdainfully. One hand presses down hard on Sabrina’s shoulder while the other brings her cigarette to her lips. She ashes into Sabrina’s open chest cavity. “They’ll tear a hole in the world just to get what they want.”

Sabrina turns her face against the tabletop, cheeks wet. Hilda eyes her with an awkward little laugh. “Bit unnerving, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t bother me!” The Other Her sets the bloodied knife aside so she can dig into Sabrina with both hands. Her white dress is splashed with red. “Almost got it, aunties!”

She bites her lip, brow furrowing in effort, and yanks Sabrina’s heart out of her chest. She holds it aloft with a cheerful grin. There’s a key dangling from it on a gold chain. Hilda applauds, and Ambrose offers a sharp celebratory whistle.

“Well done, Sabrina!” Zelda’s lips curve. “I don’t think it was using the thing, anyway.”

Under a prone hand, Sabrina can feel the shape of a doorknob forming. Ambrose had released her arm to ooh and ahh at her heart with everyone else, so she acts fast — snatches the key, turns the lock, and falls, for the final time.

Sabrina doesn’t know what she expected. A flashing neon sign that says MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, maybe, or fireworks that spell out, YOU DID IT, SPELLMAN! A red velvet pillow bearing a special sword stamped with a guarantee to get rid of the Dark Lord. But there’s nothing.

She spills into the Ninth Circle clutching her chest, trying to hold her skin together like an open shirt, but her body has already knitted itself closed — there isn’t so much as a scar delineating the places she was cut open. She pushes her palm against her chest, hard, but there’s still something in there, she can feel it thumping. It was an illusion. It was all an illusion.

She reaches out with slightly shaky hands to gather Scylla to her, pressing her face into that silken black fur. Then she laughs, a strange and helpless sound that she doesn’t have total control over, gurgling up through her throat with mild hysteria. Scylla’s tail does an uneasy swish, but Sabrina rumples her pointed ears, kisses her nose. “I’m okay,” she promises, and it feels true after she says it. “They don’t call it a hero’s journey for nothing.”

Is that what you are? a voice inside her wants to know. A hero?

Sabrina pushes off the ground and dusts off her hands. The Ninth is the hottest of all the Circles, a humid enclave of rough rock home to the worst of all betrayers: Cassius, Brutus, and Judas Iscariot. Their stony faces survey her silently, which is when Sabrina realizes, “Where’s Caliban?”

No answer.

“Cool,” she grouses. “Another thing to deal with. Add it to my list.” There isn’t much space in here, but she circles it, on the lookout for a challenge, a sign. “Hecate. I made it this far. I did everything I was supposed to do. I got all your keys. We had a deal. It’s time to pay up.”

Nothing. The stone faces remain unspeaking. There isn’t even the flicker of a torch.

“Come on.” Sabrina puts her hands on her hips, turning on the spot like she’s searching for a hidden camera. “I did the thing! I —”

Something catches her eye, one of the faces —

Sabrina stops and gives them a sharp once-over, but they’re the same as ever. Brutus, Cassius, Judas. It’s strange. For a second, she could have sworn her own name was there, her own face gone gray as a gravestone. But it was so quick, there and then gone, that she must have imagined it.

The silence is deafening. “Come on,” she says again, more to herself this time, hands curled up tight at her sides. “What’ll it take? What’s —” Something in her wilts. “What was the point?”

There’s no answer. No clues given to her from betrayers gone by, no goddess stepping down with timely wisdom. Scylla has never spoken. It’s only Sabrina, completely and entirely on her own in the quiet. Stuck with herself.

And that’s when she thinks she gets it.

Last time she was here, she had to betray someone with a kiss. Instead, she’d chosen something else. She hunted down Judas’ silver, left Caliban to calcify. She shook hands with herself and stepped out on two separate paths at once. She made a teeny little tear in the fabric of time. She told the biggest lie she’d ever told and did it with a smile on her face. Like he would have. The daughter of falsehoods born to the father of lies. She betrayed her family, her friends, and herself. And that says something about her. Something big.

With perfect understanding, Sabrina leaves the Ninth Circle. In the archway under her feet is a new moon, a black circle burned into the floor.

Sabrina returns to her rooms in Hell awash in blood, physically and psychologically exhausted, but completely calm. The blood coats and cakes her, dried under her fingernails and in her hair, sticky on her lips over the lipstick. Underneath it is fruit juice, river scum, ash, mud. Her pretty little red dress is a map of where she’s been and, like her, it’s torn in places, irreparably stained.

She’s been through it. Technically, she’s still in it.

It was a long road to walk for a metaphor, but Sabrina understands everything now. She is the key. Each ordeal unlocked something in her, revealed something she refused to face. It pared her back until there was nothing but the bones, gleaming gold beneath the flesh. She’d been trying to be the Queen of Hell with one foot in the past, pining over another Sabrina whose life didn’t matter to her anymore. She’d been tangled in her own heart, but it has been effectively gored.

Sabrina is the key. She is the weapon. She doesn’t just have power, she is power. No one’s herald or sword but her own. No challenge she can’t conquer. She thought the infernal part of her was something she had to bury like a body in the garden, this part that wants and wants, but it’s the part that keeps her going. In a battle of wills, there are few who could best her.

In the end, her father was right: she’s never getting into Heaven. But she can have people clamoring to get into Hell. If Lucifer is fueled by worship, then Sabrina will cut his rations. She doesn’t want to hear anyone chant hail Satan anymore; she wants to hear them shout hail Sabrina.

She takes off the dress and the shoes and the headband. She studies herself in the mirror while the handmaids draw her bath, but she no longer has any fear of what she sees. The bumps along her hairline have given way and now there are two horns curling up and back from her forehead, black as ebony and shining.

Hell is where she belongs.

Chapter Text

Prudence draws a bath of milk and rose petals, and in it she scrubs the blood from Agatha’s skin.

She moves the washcloth with care over Agatha’s arms and chest and legs, giving particular attention to her scuffed knees and eternally dry elbows. She buffs dried mud from the lines of Agatha’s palms, which she once read to predict a long life and many lovers — at least three husbands, she swore, while Agatha and Dorcas cackled wickedly. Prudence cleans underneath Agatha’s fingernails, digs the dirt out.

She washes Agatha’s back in circular motions, taking as much time as it takes to do it gently, so Agatha’s skin will not pink with abrasion. Prudence does not neglect the back of Agatha’s neck or behind her ears. With soft cotton, she wipes grit from Agatha’s lashes and makes sure to get none in her eyes. She massages sugar and honey into Agatha’s lips to make them soft again, and sweet. Though Agatha was not one for sweetness, usually. It was always Dorcas who craved it, wanted pastilles and pastries.

Ambrose’s sleeping spell was strong, so Agatha is still drowsy, loose-limbed and malleable as a doll. She looks like one too, her bare face clean now of crusted blood and half-dissolved makeup. “Pru?” she mumbles, but Prudence hushes her.

“It’s me, sister.” The word is like champagne on Prudence’s tongue. “You’re safe.”

Tenderly, Prudence rinses weeks of grime from Agatha’s hair until it gleams, an inky river slipping over her shoulders. She removes chipped polish from Agatha’s ragged nails, trims them to the quick and files them down. It reminds her in a strange way of trimming Leticia and Judas’ nails when they were infants, a small hand left so trustingly in her own. But Agatha’s hands are not quite so vulnerable, the knuckles raw from so much deadly work. Prudence smoothes them with ointment before painting each nail, one by one, black.

She dries Agatha off and rubs salve into her bruises, her many minor lacerations. Prudence had already put the much-abused white lace dress into the fire, satisfied to see it blister and burn, and now she watches the detritus of Agatha’s confinement swirl down the drain. It’s satisfying, if only figurative.

Prudence wraps Agatha in her own robe, the inside lined with fur, and sits her down to brush out her hair. She braids it back in two plaits, the way she has done since they were children, when they used to sit in a circle seeing to each other’s hair, before Prudence sheared hers off. She even paints Agatha’s face, though she knows it might be silly; it will only need to be washed off again come nightfall, and once she’s really awake Agatha won’t be nearly so yielding. But Prudence has a thousand memories of Agatha peering into the mirror, stood close to the glass as she sharpened the precise tail of her eyebrow or lined her lips in black. Dorcas was lazy and liked to be cossetted, so she would wheedle for one of them to do her makeup for her and if they wouldn’t, she’d use a glamour. Agatha always did hers herself, by hand. Prudence feels that in doing it, she’s giving some part of Agatha back to her.

It’s nothing Prudence would ever admit to out loud, but she knows their fracturing is her fault, though she’s blamed just about everyone else — Ambrose, Nicky, Blackwood, even Sabrina. Whosoever crossed her path at the wrong moment. But she was the one who sent Agatha after Dorcas, then sat smugly in the curve of Ambrose Spellman’s arm until all was wreck and ruin. She should have gone, saved them or perished with them. But she hadn’t thought much about them at all.

She won’t be that misguided again.

Prudence tucks Agatha into bed and fastens the bracelet of Dorcas’ hair around her wrist. In some small way, they three are together once more.

Then she ties Agatha to the bedposts, much tighter than before, and goes to confer with the Spellmans.

Ambrose taps a tuning fork against Father Blackwood’s stony countenance and holds back a shudder — even frozen, those writhing tentacles send a chill down the spine. “There’s energy here,” he pronounces. “Faint, but there. If only someone had figured out Circe’s secrets before, you know —” He draws a finger over his neck and makes a choking sound.

“If only we’d turned Faustus to stone years ago,” Aunt Zelda says archly. She stubs her cigarette out and advances closer, one burgundy fingernail reaching out to prod Blackwood’s distorted chest. “There’d be no real harm if he had a little accident, don’t you think? Just a little push —"

The trouble is that Blackwood, Judith, and Judas are all fused together — connected by the furious blade of Judith’s sword against Blackwood’s neck, Judas’ hand on her arm. Disposing of Blackwood would be a truly wicked game of dominoes. “Auntie,” Ambrose warns.

She snatches her hand back as though she must exert equal force to keep it from pushing forward. “I wasn’t actually going to do it.”

Ambrose shoots a smile at Sabrina over Zelda’s shoulder. Before she came around, he’s not sure who he traded glances with when the aunties were being particularly amusing. Maybe that was why he was always so lonely — there was never another pair of mischievous brown eyes to meet.

“Maybe I could talk to Roz,” Sabrina suggests. She sits perched on Zelda’s desk with Aunt Hilda standing beside her, both surveying their stone visitors with comically similar looks of distaste. “There must be a way to do it without Circe. I mean, are we witches or what?”

“We could chip the twins free and shove my father off the roof,” comes an imperious, musical voice from the doorway. “Just a suggestion.”

Prudence is leaning casually against the door jamb with her arms crossed, not quite over the threshold. She’s buttoned up into a short, sturdy dress with lace at the collars and sleeves, her hair in ridged waves and eyeshadow winged out almost past her eyebrows. She looks commanding, and cold.

“It’s a comfort to know someone in this building is thinking creatively,” Zelda remarks, which makes Sabrina huff a laugh.

“Rude,” she declares, fondly. “I get in trouble when I go outside the box.”

“That’s because you tend to go outside the galaxy a bit, love,” Hilda notes, patting her arm.

Hilda doesn’t know the half of it. Ambrose lifts his eyebrow pointedly at Sabrina but she pretends not to notice. “I’m more concerned with the tentacles,” Sabrina chirps. “And my question is: why? Also how? And again, how?”

He knows it’s a deflection, but Ambrose smiles a bit anyway. “His demented obsession with all things eldritch. He finally followed it to its unnatural conclusion.”

“Which means something big and bad,” Sabrina says. “Right? This is worse than Scottish sea monsters or whatever. This has to do with that egg.”

Prudence sashays into the room towards Ambrose. He draws in a breath and holds it, but she’s only coming closer to look at the statue of her father. “It’s all connected, that’s for certain.”

Ambrose’s voice comes out much too soft when he asks her, “What did he say exactly, when you saw him?”

He can’t help thinking of the last time he saw Prudence — a surprise run-in at Dr. Cee’s earlier in the week, the last place he’d expected to find her. Ambrose had gone to pick up a special book he’d ordered about time travel and saw Prudence at the coffee bar, recognizing her instantly even from the back. She wore an aubergine vinyl coat he’d never seen before that fell all the way to the floor and completely covered the stool she was sitting on. She had one arm stretched over the back of the seat next to her, head cocked as she listened to some mortal boy babble, her nails tented under his chin. Ambrose had never been interested in jealousy, but something in him sank at the sight, at the sweet cruelty of her smile. Then she turned to look at him, and Ambrose realized he was already taking a step towards her without meaning to.

“Your favorite hobby,” he called out, trying for roguish. “Boys to torment.”

Prudence’s smile took on a mocking edge. She leaned in to kiss the mortal, dark lipstick against an unprepared mouth and the flash of her tongue before she pulled away. “Jealous?”

“Desperately,” Ambrose said.

“I’m sure you could find someone else to mistreat you.” She stood, the coat creaking with her, and brought the boy along with a finger hooked in his collar. She came close enough that Ambrose could smell amber and vetiver. She smelled like Vienna. “If you’re that hard up for it.”

Prudence left with the boy. Dr. Cee came over with Ambrose’s book. That was that.

It hadn’t felt like her. Or it felt like another version of her, a nightmare-Prudence whom he’d watched fade away over the past few months. Maybe Ambrose just brought out the worst in her.

Despite such callous words, he can’t keep from being gentle with her. In Aunt Zelda’s office, Prudence is every inch the insouciant cat who will lope off at the slightest disturbance, and Ambrose doesn’t want to disturb her. But it doesn’t matter, because Prudence won’t even look at him. When she speaks, it’s to the room at large. She’s solemn instead of mocking; she has more important things on her mind.

“Blackwood was rambling about an entity he called the Beyond One,” Prudence says. “The All-in-One and One-in-All. He was making blood sacrifices to it. Either he hatched the egg or he used it to summon something much worse.”

They all absorb that, the chilling fact of it.

Zelda speaks first. “Where was it you found him?”

“A house in a field somewhere. I’m not sure where exactly. My locator spell was bouncing us all over.” Prudence lowers herself into one of the armchairs, facing away from Ambrose entirely, her back ramrod straight. “I imagine it’s because his blood was changing. It could no longer provide a steady link between us.”

An extreme transformation for a man always seeking riskier games of worship. He made himself into the image of whatever deity he honored, and now that image is openly monstrous instead of obliquely so.

“He said something about opening a door,” Prudence adds. “He was using the sacrifices to do it. Making room to let something in.”

Prudence was right when she said it was all connected. Ambrose’s mind has been working overtime trying to draw connections between the rip Sabrina tore in the fabric of time and all the strangeness that has emerged from it, collecting coincidences and occurrences on the blackboard in his bedroom like a madman. There was the clock crashing off the wall. Something Sabrina told him about a bat with a toad’s head on the Academy steps. Increased incidents of déjà vu. All of these bad omens in a town built on them. But there was no way Blackwood’s obsession with a time-shifting egg and his subsequent grotesque metamorphosis had nothing to do with what Sabrina wrought.

Ambrose looks at her. In a steady voice, he says, “Cousin. It’s time to come clean.”

Everyone else looks at her too.

Foreboding accumulates in the pit of her stomach, and Sabrina almost lets out an airy, nervous laugh. But instead she says, “You’re right. I didn’t think it would help, but there is something you guys should know.”

Zelda and Hilda share twin expressions of apprehensive acceptance; it’s the most they’ve ever looked alike. Sabrina hates that they’re already steeled for her newest mistake, inured to the possibility of another terrible thing Sabrina has done that will make the sky fall down upon them. “Well, out with it, Sabrina,” Auntie Z says.

The truth is locked up in her throat. “Caliban taught me a spell when Roz was turned to stone,” Sabrina says instead. “A Galatea spell. You exchange your true love for the person’s life. But it didn’t work when we tried it, so I wasn’t sure it was even a real spell.”

She sees her aunts relax as Ambrose drops his head in disappointment. Zelda says, “We’ll certainly take it into consideration.”

“Good to have it in the back pocket, at least!” Hilda enthuses. She gives Sabrina a reassuring look that makes her heart clench, though she’s relieved to have sidestepped the big reveal. She knows Ambrose won’t rat her out unless there isn’t another option, so she still has time. She can tell them later. When the moment is right.

“As much as I would like to restore Leticia and Judas, I’m afraid there are more pressing matters to attend to at the current moment,” Zelda says.

“I agree,” Prudence says, and Ambrose nods.

Zelda is supremely pleased to have them on the same page as her. “Litha,” she declares, at the exact moment Prudence says, “Agatha,” and Ambrose says, “Blackwood.”

They pause. Not quite on the same page, then.

“He’s a tentacle monster!” Ambrose gestures emphatically in Blackwood’s direction. “He summoned some unknown being with untold power! Surely that jumps to the top of the list!”

“It will be handled,” Zelda says. “But the celebration of Litha is tomorrow night and —”

Prudence interrupts. “I can’t keep Agatha bound to the furniture for the rest of her life. She must be healed. Something must be done.”

“There are a bevy of calming potions I can recommend,” Hilda begins, but Prudence waves that off.

“I don’t intend to keep her anesthetized either,” she says sharply. “I want her to be herself again, just as she was.”

Sabrina and her family communicate through a series of silent glances. Sabrina has never been good at being delicate with Prudence, because Prudence isn’t exactly the kind of person who responds positively to someone being delicate with her. Ambrose is still wary of hurting her more. Hilda traditionally takes on the empathetic role at the mortuary, but Zelda has no trouble with harsh truths.

“There may be no way to cure Agatha,” Zelda says finally. “The Great God Pan drove her mad with his gaze. It isn’t a spell that can be undone, and even if it were, spells of the mind are incredibly tricky.”

“I don’t accept that,” Prudence says plainly.

It makes Sabrina think of what she herself had said earlier: are we witches or what. “And you shouldn’t. Prudence, I swear I’ll do whatever I —”

“Oh, please,” Prudence scoffs. “As if I value your help, when you deign to give it. You’ve never valued the lives of my sisters. Who was it who nearly killed Agatha in your Cain Pit, all to give some mortal a present?”

Sabrina — tactfully, in her opinion — refrains from mentioning that Prudence had been all-in on that plan. It’s probably painful for her to think about now. “Your sisters never exactly valued my life!” she exclaims instead. “And neither did you! You guys put a blood curse on me just to keep me out of the Academy —”

“Imagine all the trouble we’d have saved ourselves if it had done its job!"

“And there it is! You wonder why I don’t always trust you guys!”

“There’s nothing to be gained from all this squabbling,” Ambrose interjects, voice resonant. “We ought to put our petty disagreements aside and —”

“Refer to me as ‘squabbling’ or ‘petty’ again and see what happens,” Prudence hisses.

The silence that follows is jagged. Sabrina wants to apologize because she knows it’s the right thing to do even if every word she said was true; Prudence is hurting and she should respect that, even if Prudence can’t always do the same. But Aunt Zelda speaks first.

“Regardless,” she says. “There isn’t anything that can be done tonight. The celebration of Litha is tomorrow. It’s the coven’s first official fête as the Order of Hecate and it’s imperative to cementing our fresh start.”

“Right,” Ambrose says. “Because that went so well with the Hare Moon.”

Zelda frowns at him.

Carefully, Sabrina adds, “You know, technically Litha is a solstice festival. It’s kind of long past, Auntie.”

“We weren’t ready then,” Zelda says firmly. “We are now.”

There’s really no talking her out of or around it. There are a few immutable facts of the universe, and one of them is that Auntie Z loves holidays.

“But Agatha isn’t,” Prudence points out. “I can’t dance around a bonfire while she’s locked up like some princess in a tower. I’ll stay with her, and research our newest troubles.”

“Nonsense,” Zelda says. “You’re an important part of this coven and you should be with us. The rest can wait.”

If Sabrina didn’t know any better, she’d think Prudence was touched. There’s a tiny wave of feeling over her face, a sudden vulnerability that is swiftly swallowed.

“Someone else can step in with Agatha?” Hilda suggests. “Keep her company while we’re all —” She makes a few hand gestures to indicate twirling and bonfires, ending the elaborate display with a self-conscious chuckle.

“Yes, someone who won’t be missed,” Zelda says. “Possibly Melvin.”

Prudence shakes her head, then says, “There is one person I would trust.”

When Harvey says, “Hey, you and Roz should come by the shop on my break,” Theo accepts with blithe naivety, thinking only of the days before dating. Back when they could hang out and talk about comics or zombie movies, no tension in their group besides their respective inner turmoils. Even Theo, much hardened by the last few months, can be a little dumb sometimes.

He regrets it now that he and Roz and Harvey are sitting outside I Scream trying to grin and bear it through their ice cream cones. Theo doesn’t know exactly what it feels like to suffer through the slow dissolution of your parents’ marriage, but lately Roz and Harvey have really been making him feel like a child of divorce.

“Hey!” Roz says with as much cheer as she can muster. “I did sort of make it to Battle of the Bands after all!”

Harvey gives her one of his worn-out smiles. “Yeah.” He turns wistful. “I wish you could have heard us, though.” Then he seems to recall the circumstances of her arrival, adding hastily, “And that you hadn’t been, like, attacked by Sabrina’s old priest with tentacles.”

“I wish that also,” Roz says, rueful but smiling.

“It’s too bad you missed Nick Scratch’s wardrobe reveal,” Theo says, perking up. Harvey turns red on cue. “I thought Harv’s head was gonna shoot off into space.”

Roz gives Harvey a friendly nudge. “That scandalous, huh?”

“For Greendale, yeah,” Harvey says, laughing, and Theo is just congratulating himself on saving this outing when Sabrina descends on them as suddenly as if she’d flown in on a broomstick. There’s a clatter of red patent Mary Janes, and then there she is.

“’Brina!” Harvey exclaims. “You missed your shift.”

“Oh, I totally forgot.” She drops onto the bench opposite them. She’s wearing a matching red dress, too. “If only I could be in two places at once!” Her little laugh is sort of odd and stilted. “Actually, Roz, can I ask you a favor?”

Harvey and Theo give each other somewhat alarmed eyebrow-raises. That’s one question no one ever wants to hear from Sabrina. “Famous last words,” Theo says.

“A lot of people are asking favors of Roz lately,” Harvey adds pointedly. Roz smiles and slips her hand into his, but knocks into his arm a little, too. A convivial cut it out.

“I’m actually an emissary for Prudence,” Sabrina says. “See, we’re having this big festival for the coven to celebrate midsummer — I know it’s the middle of July, don’t get me started — and we need someone to sit with Agatha. Prudence is kind of — well. She asked for you specifically.”

With a sharp uptick in his voice that indicates rising anxiety, Harvey asks, “Isn’t that dangerous? She almost strangled Prudence at Battle of the Bands. And, you know.” He shifts awkwardly on the bench. “Their other sister.”

“No, it’s okay, Harvey,” Roz says, smoothing her fingers over his but looking at Sabrina. Her eyes are bright. “I’ll do it. Tell Prudence she owes me one, though.”

Oh no, Theo thinks. Roz has been bitten by the Danger Bug. It’s ravaging its way through all his friends, which means he must be next.

“I’ll make sure she pays up.” Sabrina smiles. Then she gets that light in her eyes, the bad one, and says, “You know what? You guys should totally come to Litha! It’ll be really fun. There’s no ritual sacrifice or cannibalism or sex in the woods. Well.” She pauses. “I can’t actually guarantee that last one. But I made Auntie Z swear she wouldn’t slaughter the bull, so we’re good on the other two!”

“When you say it like that, who could resist!” Theo remarks. “Is it okay for mortals to come? And hobgoblins?”

“Totally,” Sabrina says, probably deciding right then in that exact moment. “You won’t even be the only mortals there. Dr. Cee’s coming, too, even though Aunt Z won’t acknowledge him at all.” She rolls her eyes affectionately. “But that’s because of her own issues, not because he’s a mortal. My witch dad was big on unity, so we might as well start unifying sometime.”

Harvey has been quiet for long enough that Theo can smell the shiftiness on him. “Yeah, sounds cool, ‘Brina,” he says. “Uh, Nick actually, um. Already invited me?”

Sabrina stares at him. “Nick? Invited you?” she repeats, as though Harvey has been speaking Greek. “To Litha?”

“Yeah, uh, after the show,” Harvey says. “Is that okay?”

Theo watches Sabrina forcibly flip her internal switch from not okay to okay! The exclamation point is key. “Yes! Of course. Of course it is. I want you to come.”

She and Roz get down to ironing out details, at which point Theo elbows Harvey violently in the ribs and gestures towards the trashcans so they can throw away their used napkins while flagrantly gossiping. “Dude. Spill.”

“There’s nothing to spill. Nick came by my house —”

“He came by your house?”

“Yeah, just to talk.” As though it’s perfectly normal for Harvey to chat with Sabrina’s ex-boyfriend casually, like they haven’t been simmering with barely-restrained envy every time Theo’s ever seen them together. “I think he’s really lonely.”

“Maybe some sex demons could keep him company.”

“Theo!”

He’s just kidding, because the look on Harvey’s face — the way he said lonely with the air of a boy who knows a lot about being by himself, with only paper and pen for company — really said it all.

“I know you, Harv,” Theo says. “You’d bottle feed a baby vulture if it was in need. Oh wait, you did do that once! Silly me.”

“Shut up,” Harvey says, laughing, and elbows him back, but he does it so gently he barely makes contact, and then he throws his arm around Theo’s shoulders.

Theo knows Harvey. His goodness will always get him in trouble.

Agatha is tied to the chair again, watching them, Prudence and the girl and the other, Agatha doesn’t know her name but she can find it, can still slip ever so slightly into Prudence’s head and learn, Marie. Prudence and Rosalind and Marie. They think Agatha is so helpless and harmless, so happy to be scraped off the forest floor, that she will allow herself to be coddled by mortals and no-name witches who came out of nowhere.

“There is a ritual we can try,” Marie says. Her arms clink with bracelets and she’s dressed in rich velvet, draped tight to her body down to the floor. Prudence wants to be her, a little. Prudence wants Marie to be her mother, a little. Agatha can tell.

Marie’s voice fades out, speaking of spirits and blood flow, invocations and supplications. Agatha had begged Prudence not to tie her to the chair again. She’d torn herself free once but Prudence had gotten craftier and now there’s a spell keeping Agatha seated in addition to the padded bindings on her wrists.

The mortal keeps looking at her, though she’s not quite a mortal; she’s a seer, and there’s an energy in her that Agatha recognizes, an openness of the mind that she and her sisters once used to whisper into each other’s heads.

Dorcas’ hair feels like it’s burning Agatha. Her fingers twitch against the chair, thinking of Dorcas, the sounds she made, her hands coming up to block the knife, the crying —

No no no no no no no. Agatha won’t.

Even all these weeks later, it’s like there are still flutes piping inside her. She can hear a faint whistling like she heard when she saw the god in the woods, something Blackwood had figured out enough to use for his benefit. He would whistle when he wanted her to get someone for the altar and Agatha would lose herself as completely as stepping off a cliff into an abyss.

“She refuses calming draughts,” Prudence says, and the seer looks nervously at Agatha again. “If for any reason you need to release her — and you should not — here’s what you need to —”

Trying to take control of herself is like cupping water in her hands. She keeps slipping through. But if she takes the potions then she sleeps and with sleep comes the awful dreams, Dorcas in the cupboard and the screaming of the thing that Blackwood let out, the terror he prostrated himself for.

Prudence continues, “I’ve been reading to her from Hilda Spellman’s book and she likes that, I think. It makes her laugh.”

“I thought…” Another look, flighty and uncertain. “I thought she didn’t want to be tied up?”

“It’s what’s safest.” Prudence has always made their hardest decisions for them, even when they hurt. Especially then. “You don’t want to end up in a cupboard, do you?”

Agatha meets Roz’s eyes, which were once sightless and now see too much, big and brown and too sweet for her own good, like a deer struck down in the forest. Agatha can sense a weak link.

Agatha wants out.

They can smell the burning from the edge of the forest.

It’s the smell of summer camp and marshmallow s’mores, nights on the beach and the Fourth of July. But the bonfires that Harvey, Theo, and Robin find waiting for them in the Greendale woods lack that same sort of wholesomeness. In between the close darkness of trees come snatches of illumination, shocking and radiant; several bonfires dot the shore of the lake in the early evening, blazing almost white against the still-blue sky, their crackling low and sinister. Silhouetted against the jumping flames are the shapes of witches making mundane arrangements and laying out food, all of them dressed in pale shining gold.

Sabrina told them witches wear gold for Litha, but they boys are a scroungy lot. Harvey managed to find a yellow flannel to wear with his jeans, while Theo is a little more out there in an old jean jacket that he sewed some new gold appliques to. Robin slinks behind them in his typically nondescript clothes, tugging his sleeves over his hands. Harvey gets it. He already feels like he’s drawing too much attention to himself.

Theo gives Robin’s fingers a squeeze as they approach, and it makes Harvey shove his own hands into his pockets. He wishes Roz was here. Maybe it’s stupid, but he feels like he’s losing her to magic a little bit, the way he loses everyone. It’s not as drastic as Tommy or Sabrina, but the allure is the same, and Harvey guesses he’s just not exciting enough. But he shouldn’t really be surprised. Roz is smart and beautiful and vivacious and full of promise, so it’s always been a matter of time until she leaves him behind. He just didn’t think it would be so soon.

His stomach is already in knots when Sabrina bounds up to them in a little gold dress with a Peter Pan collar. Old gold would be the paint color he’d use for it, or antique gold; it’s a mellow and worn-in color, cool enough to offset her colorless hair, which is crowned with oak leaves. She has wreaths in her hands, too. “Guys! I’m so happy you’re here.”

Harvey can see that brightness in her eyes. She loves the woods, she loves her family, she loves her friends. More than anything, she loves having them all together, no one hidden from anyone else.

She drops an oak leaf crown onto each of their heads, but she has to push up onto her toes to reach Harvey, so he helps her, her smiling face turned up to his. “Does it go with my flannel?” he jokes.

“Absolutely not,” comes Nick’s voice from behind Sabrina. “But then again: what would?”

Harvey snorts and flips him off, which Nick seems to like. Tommy did that sometimes, never malicious but always to make Harvey laugh, usually behind their dad’s back during not-too-tense moments. Harvey did it so unconsciously, without meaning to, that it surprised even him a little.

Sabrina’s Aunt Zelda calls her back to help set up, but she hesitates. “Don’t worry,” Nick says. “I’ll look after the mortals.”

Harvey doesn’t know if everything Nick says sounds filthy on purpose or if there’s just something wrong with him that the words look after make his neck heat up like someone lit a match off him.

“Thanks.” Sabrina gives Nick a little smile, but there’s an awkwardness to it, a cordiality that isn’t exactly comfortable, though it isn’t hostile either. Then she’s gone and it’s just them and Nick — and Harvey without someone’s hand to hold.

“Come on, I’ll show you around.” Nick is every inch the host as he gestures them forward. Theo and Robin go on ahead, but then, light and unexpected, Nick’s fingertips brush the leaves by Harvey’s ear so he can touch the no-longer-tender cartilage piercing. “This is cute,” he says, casual and throwaway. “I meant to say before.”

After making sure Roz was okay post-Battle of the Bands, Harvey had driven home alone and tense, unable to shake what happened from his head. He kept seeing those stone people. Prudence’s terror. Agatha shrieking. And Roz with tear-tracks dried on her cheeks, thrown down into the dirt. She said over and over that she was fine, but he was already thinking of calling her when he got in. Until he pulled up and saw Nick Scratch sitting on his steps.

He was still wearing the mesh top, but Harvey politely did not look. “Did something else happen? Is everyone okay?”

Sheepishness stole over Nick’s expression. “Yes, everyone’s fine. Relatively speaking. That’s not why I…” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to make you think that.”

“Okay. No problem.” Harvey waited, but when Nick didn’t go on, he said, “What’s up?”

“I —” Nick was a little hunched, and he pressed his hands over his knees, straightening and looking away. Harvey wasn’t used to hearing him stumble over his words. “I just didn’t feel like going back to the Academy. I can’t go to Dorian’s. And the bookstore is closed, so...”

Harvey hadn’t expected that, but he figured it made sense. The night took a sharp turn for the worse and Nick hadn’t been in great shape to start with. Harvey didn’t really want to be by himself either. “Hey, it’s cool, man. You wanna come in?”

Harvey guesses he and Nick are sort of cool after that. He heated up leftover pizza for them and Nick judged the books on his shelves, borrowing one that he deemed “full of mortal sentimentality.” Then he invited Harvey to Litha before disappearing out the window like Batman. Or maybe more like that guy from Twilight. (Theo used to really like those books, but now he has forbidden the mention of them. Harvey once drew Theo a portrait for his birthday and covered it in glitter, to tease him. Theo said he was a jerk, but he framed the picture.)

Nick had told Harvey that Litha was like Fourth of July for witches, but now Harvey sees that isn’t quite the case. The fires are sweet-burning and smoky with an herbal undercurrent that he can’t place, like incense in church the few times Harvey went. He can feel it in his throat. Heat rolls over them in waves that make Harvey tug at his collar, regretting his outfit choice. There’s already sweat gathering at his temples, though of course Nick only looks gently dewy despite the white button-down embroidered with gold flowers. Still, with the fire cracking and popping, the gentle breeze and sound of birds, the mild sloshing of the water —

It’s not too bad at all.

“On Litha, we celebrate until the sun rises,” Nick explains, his voice very close to Harvey’s ear. “It marks the return of longer and longer nights. Witches crave the coming of the night. We’re not really summer creatures. That’s what all the fire is about — later we’ll light wooden wheels and roll them down into the water, to represent the sun’s descent. The day is swallowed by the night and even though night gives way to dawn again, the hours in between are sacred.”

Swallowed, Harvey hears, and then everything else.

Nick gets them cups of honeyed lemonade with small flowers bobbing at the surface. They eat some not-entirely-strange snacks — sausages scorched on the open flame, roasted pineapple, peaches with honey and cheese, kebabs and roast corn. Harvey starts to walk back some of his more controversial opinions on witch cuisine.

Nick keeps talking. “For those looking to cast —” He checks to see if Harvey is still listening, which he is, and seems surprised but goes on. “It’s a good time for spells of prosperity. Fertility, too.”

“Dear God, I hope not,” Theo says.

“Hecate,” Harvey corrects. He’d Googled the pronunciation earlier.

“Dear Hecate, I hope not,” Theo says.

Nick smirks. No, Harvey realizes: he’s actually just smiling. Huh. “Well,” Nick says. “Don’t be shocked by what you might see, is all I’m saying. Litha can get people a little heated.”

Theo waggles his eyebrows. He’s happily ducked under Robin’s arm, relaxed against his chest. “Oh no, is Harvey’s virtue going to be assailed again?”

Harvey might as well catch a spark from the bonfire and light up like a Christmas tree. He gives Theo his most emphatic oh my god why would you ever say that look, and forcibly keeps his head from turning to see how Nick reacted. He can still remember Nick’s face in the garage before Sabrina saved them from the pagans, Nick’s mild amusement that Harvey was still a virgin. And now he knows Harvey is still a virgin.

Theo’s smile is apologetic and slightly abashed. “Sorry, Harv. It’s just your virtue is legend.”

“I will pay you to stop saying the word ‘virtue.’”

“No one’s virtue is at stake,” Nick says charitably, until he adds, “Especially since Harry’s the only one left in Greendale who has any.”

Theo and Robin laugh, stifled and helpless. Harvey puts his head in his hands, but he’s laughing too. When Theo punches his shoulder, he dares to look up and sees there’s nothing condescending in Nick’s face, nothing smug. He looks like a normal guy having a good time. Even the embarrassment feels good-natured, friends sitting around the fire giving each other shit. It wasn’t that long ago that Harvey would have scoffed to think he’d ever call Nick Scratch a friend.

Then two witches take a sudden flying leap over the bonfire.

They’re immediately followed by two more: Melvin and a curly-haired witch Harvey doesn’t know join hands and jump, flames licking at the soles of their shoes. They land with a little stumble, smiling, before they throw their arms around each other. Across the way, Prudence watches them darkly.

Harvey must have jerked in surprise, because Nick’s hand is on his back, gently patting between his shoulder blades. “Relax,” he says. “It’s a tradition. It’s romantic.”

Romance is more of an extreme sport for witches, apparently.

“Jumping through the flames is something a couple can do to strengthen their bond,” Nick continues. “Or you can set a candle out into the water together if you’re less daring. The unattached look deep into the fire, hoping for visions of their future lover.”

“Burns and blindness,” Harvey says. “Have you guys ever considered just giving flowers?”

Nick keeps doing the smiling thing. It’s unnerving.

Theo and Robin are giggling and talking amongst themselves, in this little private world of two. Robin seems brighter than Harvey has ever seen him. He lost the hat, revealing his pointed ears, and his hair seems to be getting greener by the moment. “You wanna?” Harvey overhears, and, “Okay, this is crazy,” and finally, “Let’s do it,” before they’re both on their feet. They’re going to leap.

“Theo!” Harvey calls, aghast, and wonders if he could get away with the full Theodore, because sometimes the moment calls for it.

“Chill out, Mom!” Theo calls back, rudely, which cracks Nick up.

Theo and Robin take a few steps back, look at each other, and go running — then they’re up, up and over the fire, Robin’s hair bursting verdant green against the canopy of leaves. They land in a heap on the other side, breathless and grinning, to the scattered applause of the witches. Theo kisses Robin.

Harvey’s lips pull up at the corners, but there’s a sigh somewhere in his throat.

“Do you miss her?” Nick asks.

Harvey’s eyes shift to Sabrina a few fires over with her Aunt Hilda, smiling and shining as she sets foil-wrapped food into the flames. Then he realizes Nick isn’t talking about Sabrina. “Yeah,” he says sheepishly. “I wish Roz was here.”

“Would you jump if she was?”

Harvey isn’t sure he’d gamble the strength of his relationship against magic a second time. He thinks of Roz still stone under his rejected kiss, and how she never touched him the same after her second vision. “I don’t know.” It comes out very small.

After a moment, Nick says, “I wasn’t trying to be callous before. About the — virtue. I do think you’re —” He clears his throat. “Virtuous. And it’s nice, the way mortals make things special for themselves. Sometimes I wonder what that must be like.”

Harvey doesn’t know what to do with half of that, and so he says something dumb. “Is that why you and Sabrina, um. Waited?”

He could smack himself in the forehead. But Nick doesn’t seem bothered. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I suppose I just wasn’t special enough. Do you want another drink?”

It’s so swift that Harvey can only offer a stilted nod, but he’s not sure what he would have said anyway. Imagine, someone like Nick Scratch not feeling special.

Roz taps her pen against the tabletop in a persistent nervous patter that only pauses when her jiggling leg picks up the slack. She’s been sitting with Agatha for an hour now. At first she’d babbled, her chipper voice echoing in the emptiness of Prudence’s bedroom, but then she’d wound down and faded out, all her safe topics run through. There were only so many church camp stories you could tell to a former follower of Satan. She was going to read to Agatha from Buxom and the Beast, but she got halfway through one page before the reality of smut written by Sabrina’s Aunt Hilda hit her full in the face and she had to just. Not.

Instead Roz allows herself to lapse into silence, highly conscious of Agatha’s dark, shadowed eyes watching her like a house cat with fantasies of the jungle. Roz tries to ignore the staring as she works on her college application essays, but her pen keeps tap-tap-tapping, the sole of her shoe scuffling against the stone floor. She hums to drown it out and it’s actually pretty soothing, so soon enough she’s mindlessly murmuring lyrics, then outright singing under her breath.

“Crash and burn, all the stars explode to-ni-ight,” she sings, soft. “How’d you get so desperate, how’d you stay alive?”

It takes her a minute to realize Agatha has gone completely still, which is funny because Roz thought she was hyperaware of Agatha’s tiniest movement, primed to bolt if she did much more than clench her fists against her bindings. But now she’s just looking at Roz with a placid, almost sleepy expression.

“Oh,” Roz says. “Do you like that song?”

It’s one of Harvey’s favorites, “Malibu” by Hole. Roz had never even heard of them before Harvey, but she started to like the music because he did, because it made her think of him. She must be missing him. She wonders, fleetingly, how the festival’s going.

In answer, Agatha only arches an eyebrow.

“Oh!” comes out as more of an exclamation this time. Agatha is gagged. Prudence had insisted upon it, because if Agatha could speak then she could undo the spellwork keeping her fixed to the chair. But Roz hated the gag on sight, the way it distorted Agatha’s mouth, forcing her to bear her teeth around it. How is she supposed to tell anyone if she needs something, or if she’s in pain? It seems monstrous to Roz. It must make Agatha feel like a monster.

Whether she is one or not is up for debate. Roz remembers the wild laughter of the girls in the mine, the cave-in that took down Tommy, the dark bloody altar of Blackwood’s. But as dangerous as Agatha may be, Roz finds it hard to look at her without seeing a girl her age muzzled and bound.

Roz frowns, her brow furrowing in righteous indignation, but she’s already made up her mind. She stretches across the table between them and reaches behind Agatha’s head to work the knot free. Their eyes meet and Roz has a sudden flash of irrational fear, like Agatha might bite her fingers off or something. She really doesn’t know what Agatha will do, but she knows what’s right, so that’s what she does.

Agatha blinks slowly. Her tongue flicks out to either corner of her mouth, where the lipstick is a little smeared. “I don’t know it,” she says, more resonant and calm than Roz has heard her yet. “The song.”

“I guess you wouldn’t, it’s a mortal band,” Roz says. “Do you like music?”

Agatha appears faintly amused by small talk. “Sure,” she says. “I was in the choir.”

“Oh yeah?” Roz perks up. “Me too!”

Agatha’s lips curl, not meanly, but not exactly friendly. Roz cringes a little at herself, her overexcited tone ringing in her ears.

“I like all kinds of music,” Roz tries. “I played the cello for a while, and the bass and the keyboard.”

“Isn’t she best in show. I’d give you a round of applause, but —” Agatha jerks roughly against her bindings and Roz’s heart hurtles into her throat. She has to remind herself that Agatha can’t free herself. “What’s a girl to do?”

“I’m sorry,” Roz says automatically, faint. “Um. Are you comfortable? Can I get you a pillow?”

Agatha’s smile is slow and wicked. “I’ve been in worse knots than this. Though I guess I was usually the one tying them. Ask Nick sometime.”

Roz swallows hard. “I would really rather not,” she says politely.

Agatha’s fingertips drum against the sides of the chair. “Yes, you’re a good girl. How’d a good girl get here? Let me guess. You’re doing someone a favor.”

Roz’s voice comes out small. “Yes.”

“Good girls always do favors,” Agatha says. “I took orders. Now we’re both stuck in a room.”

“I — I don’t mind,” Roz says. “I’m happy to, um.” She must sound impossibly corny. “I’m happy to help.”

“Why’s that?”

“Christian charity, I guess.”

Agatha makes a sour face that turns into a full-on petulant head-roll. “A daughter of the False God. Satan save me.” She pauses. “Well. I suppose he isn’t doing that anymore.”

Roz isn’t touching that. She attempts to get the conversation back on neutral ground. “So what kind of music do you like?”

Agatha fixes her with a flat look. “I always liked violins,” she says, sounding bored.

Encouragingly, Roz replies, “Violins are cool. I’d look up some music, but the service really sucks here —” She takes out her phone anyway, but she was right: no WiFi. “Do you play?”

Agatha’s calm is already dissipating, Roz can tell. Maybe the cunning lets her see it. Agatha’s energy changes like she’s vibrating from the inside out; like radio static. “Untie me,” she says, her eyes so dark, so piercing. “Let’s play.”

A warning chill ripples over Roz. “You feeling okay? Do you maybe want one of those, um, potions?” Prudence left some, just in case. Calming draughts, she called them.

Agatha snorts and looks away. A strand of jet-black hair slips free and hangs in her face. She doesn’t answer.

“You don’t like them?” Roz tries. “They’re supposed to help.”

“Help who,” Agatha says sharply.

That hangs in the air for a moment.

“I know I don’t…” Roz takes a breath, leans in, and starts again. “I don’t know anything about potions. So I don’t know if they’d actually work for you. But if you don’t want to take them because you’re…afraid, then, um. Okay. Actually, story time: I’m not sure how much you know about me.” Or how much she cared. “I went blind this year. More than once. Do you know how it feels for your whole life to just go blank one day? Just gone. You’re having fun, sitting with your friends, laughing, and then — nothing.”

It occurs to her that Agatha may not know about going blind, but she does know a lot about disappearing.

Roz pushes on. “I felt like I’d wasted so much of my time not looking at anything enough. Not seeing enough. Not memorizing everything I loved so I could play it in my head a million times. I loved art and books and —” She smiles. “Flowers. I could still do things, obviously, but everything was different. At least I still had music, you know? I might have gone —” Don’t say crazy, she reprimands herself. “Gone off the deep end without music. But even when I got my sight back, I would have these panics that it was going to happen again, because that had happened before. And maybe Sabrina wouldn’t be able to fix it this time. Maybe I’d really be stuck.”

Agatha watches her with that snake gaze, those liquid eyes.

“I started going to a therapist and they referred me to someone who could proscribe anxiety meds,” Roz says. “My parents weren’t thrilled at first, and I wasn’t really either, because I felt like I should be fine. Nothing was ‘wrong’ with me anymore. Why should I need that? What if it changed me?” She tries to use her hands to express herself, how that tight feeling in her chest had finally eased, her radio static turning back into song. “It wasn’t instantaneous, but it made a difference. It helped. So…if those potions help you, that’s not a bad thing. You have to figure out new ways to get by when the old ones stop working.”

Agatha studies Roz. The contempt is gone but her expression is otherwise unrevealing, no sign of comprehension. No sardonic rejection either. Then she says, “Seer. Sing the song again.”

Roz can do that.

When the sun starts to sink down in the sky, the everyday ominousness of the Greendale woods becomes something opulent and lush, a wash of diffused light bringing out an unexpected array of color in their surroundings — orange and pink, ochre and purple, a watercolor spill across the scenery. Harvey wants to sit in the grass and paint it, the way the last gasp of sunlight makes everything it touches richer. The dense black of Nick’s hair becomes silver-gilded; Sabrina is the flicker at the tip of a candle wick, small and glowing. Flowers explode in the underbrush and the leaves turn velvet. Golden hour, when everything is beautiful.

The bonfires are almost molten now. Every time Harvey pulls his gaze away from them, they leave luminous trails in his vision, ribbons of light everywhere he looks. He hasn’t had anything to drink besides lemonade, but he knows most of the witches have been at the good stuff. They’re at Drinking Stage One, where you’re loose-limbed and happy, unbothered enough to share your smiles with anyone. Even Theo and Robin indulge, Theo allowing himself to lag against Harvey more than he would normally, head tilting back occasionally to give him a fuzzy smile that Harvey cheerfully returns. The good vibes are catching, even sober.

Harvey notices that Nick hasn’t been drinking either. But he seems okay, like a little of what he’d been shouldering has been put down for the evening. Harvey’s glad to see it. He thinks Nick likes being able to explain things to him, because there’s a shine to Nick’s eyes when he nudges Harvey to say, “Look. It’s starting.”

The witches — and it’s just the witches, Sabrina and Prudence, Hilda, Marie, and the hedges — form a loose half-ring at the shoreline. They hold torches in one hand and keep rickety wooden wheels steady with the other; at their center is Zelda Spellman, standing so close to the water’s edge that gentle swells break at her feet. Her back is to the crowd, but when she lifts her arms to salute the sky, the witches light the wheels and let them streak down towards the water like comets. Zelda ignites in odd flashes as the wheels pass her, her hair burnished, the rings on her uplifted hands gleaming. They’re swallowed by the water without so much as a gulp, and that’s when Harvey realizes the sun has gone down too, tinting everything blue, all shadow and spark.

“Hecate,” Zelda intones, and the entire clearing falls instantly silent. “I call on Hecate, keeper of the key to the door between worlds. She who unlocks; she who reveals. The witch of three faces, who is found where three roads meet. In the waxing and waning of the moon, you have waited patiently for us to find you again. You have given without demand. You have led us back to our path. We thank you for all you have done for us. We will not forget again.”

Her head tips back slightly and she repeats herself, but it’s musical now, the words tipping and lilting. “I call Hecate of the keys,” Zelda half-sings. “She who unlocks; she who reveals. I call Hecate of three roads. Found in the phases of the moon.”

Everyone else slowly picks up the chant, their voices overlapping in an almost hypnotic rhythm that makes a subtle vibration buzz up the back of Harvey’s arms. He’s never really been a religious guy, even after finding out angels and demons and the Devil are all real, but he can see the appeal. It feels mystical — it is mystical — but he wonders if they’re all true believers in Hecate, or if believing in something is just habit by now. He turns to ask Nick, knowing Nick will like to be asked, but he’s already hustling Harvey into place in the big circle that’s forming. Harvey looks around for Theo, but the drumming has started, and the dancing follows.

Hands clasp and release as they weave past each other in an unceasing chain. He finds Nick more than once, and Prudence, and Grylla, plus witches and warlocks he doesn’t know; Sabrina’s hand slips into his, her smile like a secret assurance whispered in his ear. The witches shimmer in their gold clothes like fireflies in the growing dark, moving faster and faster until the faces blur and Harvey loses track of whose hand he’s reaching for. It’s wild and strange, dazzling and dizzying, but Harvey’s having a good time; he feels exhilarated and buoyed in the best way, as though there’s nothing in the world but the drums, the rushing wind, the next hand. It’s like leaping over a ravine or something, all he can focus on is the next hand and the next, pulling each other forward and pushing past. People stumble and laugh it off, no time to think about where your feet are going, just letting momentum carry you forward.

When the song finishes, they fall where they land. The grass is cool and damp under Harvey’s cheek, overheated by exertion and the still-burning fires. A little vine curls around his wrist and that feels nice too, chilly and green against his skin. He turns to see Nick flat on his back, a flower twining around his throat. Robin is the only one who seems concerning about the creeping greenery. “Is this normal?” he wonders. “Is this a thing that happens here?”

“What doesn’t happen here, my dude,” Theo chuckles.

Harvey turns over, his arms stretched out wide, and smiles up at the stars scattered across the navy sky. “You know,” he says. “This is kind of cool.”

Then the witches start taking off their clothes.

Harvey shoots up. “Oh my god,” he says. “Why are witches like this!” He turns to Theo but finds a traitor in his place: Theo has already shrugged out of his jacket and is pulling his t-shirt off. Harvey immediately looks heavenward. “Theo!”

“When in Rome,” Theo says brightly, unbothered.

Now down to their skivvies, most of the witches are dancing again in the growing gloom, their bodies shining in the dark. Sabrina is wearing some kind of sheer bodysuit with flowers all over it, stockings clipped to garters, and Harvey certainly never saw her in anything like that before, not that he saw her out of her clothes more than a few times, and not that he dwells on those times anymore. The gossamer fabric on her pale skin in the firelight gives the illusion that she’s covered in flowers, like a fairy or maybe Lady Godiva, except that was hair —

“It’s alright, mortal.”

Harvey forces himself to stop looking at Sabrina, what is wrong with him and faces Nick instead, which is also a mistake. Nick is unbuckling his belt as he speaks. He’s already not wearing a shirt. Oh god.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Nick continues. “It’s perfectly alright to swelter to death in your flannel if you’d prefer.”

“That is what I’d prefer,” Harvey says, slightly strangled, and ignores whatever his stomach does when Nick grins. “Death by flannel, sign me up.”

He risks a glance at Theo and Robin for support, but they’ve already dashed off to join the dancing, their foreheads pressed together. Harvey is happy that Theo is happy, but he kind of misses having a ready bro at a moment’s notice. Then he wonders if he dashed off with his girlfriends all the time and left Theo hanging, in which case this is karma and he deserves it.

Well. No one deserves this, but such is Harvey’s life that now it’s what he’s got. He finds his cup of lemonade (he hopes it’s his cup) because he needs something to gulp, but it’s empty when he puts it to his lips. Nick takes it gently from his hands. The witches who aren’t dancing are kissing, and some of them are peeling off in twos and threes to slink into the shadowy trees.

“Don’t worry.” Nick takes Harvey by the wrist, pulling him towards the mass of bodies in motion. “Dance.”

When in Rome, Harvey decides.

Ambrose doesn’t think anyone else has noticed that Prudence is lonely.

He’s not sure anyone else would. She isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary or obviously morose; there’s no skulking around the edges of the party, no tears or teeth-gnashing. She has fulfilled her duties to the coven, laughed with Marie, danced, sang, offered thanks to their new god. But there’s a defensiveness to the way she throws her shoulders back, a daring to the jut of her jaw. She’s used to standing with a sister at either shoulder and now she stands alone.

He wants to say, lash out at me if you want, I don’t care. Or perhaps, no one taught us how to speak of love, but I thought I’d done enough to show it. He wants to tell her, my cousin has her head in the sand and you might be the only person who would listen, and I’m sick of going unheard.

Maybe Ambrose is lonely, so he sees what he wants to see.

He gives Prudence plenty of time to take notice of his approach, side-stepping towards her with so much showy wariness that it almost makes a laugh break past the stern boundary of her mouth. It’s nothing like the cruel smile she’d given him at Dr. Cee’s. It’s more like the Prudence in Paris who huffed through narrow streets but listened to his poetry.

“Just here to say hello. Feel free to run screaming.”

“I wouldn’t waste the energy,” she says dryly. Ambrose mimes hurt, mouthing ouch and thumping a hand against his chest. She snorts.

“Painful, but still better than our last tête-à-tête. At least this time I’m not sharing your attention with — can I say it? — some deeply undeserving mortal boy.”

Prudence is confused, as though he’s telling a joke and she missed the punchline. “I have no idea what you mean. I stopped giving mortal boys time of day long ago.” Her gaze coasts over the crowd, lingering on Nicholas flirting shamelessly with sweet Harvey. “Some of them really put you off for life.”

“I don’t know.” Ambrose follows her sightline and is pleased to see Harvey shrug off his shirt, finally, in all this heat. Had he looked like that when Sabrina was seeing him? If so, good for his cousin and if not, good for Rosalind. “Pluses and minuses.”

Prudence only gives him a vague, “Mm.” She’s wearing a sheer gold gown over black lingerie, a sylph in the woods with her white hair. “If you say so.”

It’s neutral enough to be mistaken for nice, so Ambrose makes a misstep. “I thought you might be lonely. I know you —”

Prudence may slink like a cat, but her ability to go all sharp edges at once calls to mind a pricklier animal. “You don’t know much,” she says snidely. “That’s for certain.”

Ambrose absorbs the blow and carries on. “Alright,” he says lightly. “I can only speak for me. I was lonely, and —

“Are you trying to make friends again, Ambrose?” Her stiletto nails drum against her crossed arms. He has no answer, because in truth he was trying to do more than that. “Do you think my memory is so short?”

“I had hoped your heart was warmer,” he admits.

“Witches don’t have warm hearts,” she nearly spits. “Do you know what I see when I look at you? A mistake, and the long trail of destruction that came with it. Do you know how many things would have been avoided if I’d killed Blackwood when I had the chance? I wouldn’t have two siblings made of stone. I wouldn’t have had to wash so much blood from Agatha’s hands. There wouldn’t be some tentacled thing poking holes in the universe while we dance in the woods, carrying on like idiots.”

“Agreed,” Ambrose says. “You’re the only one having this fight, Prudence. Let me make it up to you. I’ll do whatever I can to help you with Agatha, with all your sib—”

“I’ve had enough of your help to last me a witch’s lifetime,” Prudence snaps, and stalks off.

Ambrose quashes a groan of frustration, his hands curled up tight, and shakes his head. This guilt isn’t his to carry. Prudence had agreed at the time. She agreed to bring Blackwood back, to sacrifice his body to save Nick’s. Grief and pain and a lifetime of rage were fueling her, but understanding didn’t make it an easier potion to swallow. It was like an assassin taking out the witness to a crime — Ambrose had seen Prudence’s true heart, been a recipient of her trust, and she could not let him live to tell. But Ambrose is tired of being a target.

Sabrina’s timing, then, is perhaps perfect, or perfectly terrible.

She’s been slipping out of conversations with him since their meeting yesterday and Ambrose hasn’t had a chance to call her on it. Every time he tried, it was, oh, I’d love to talk, Ambrose, but this firewood isn’t going to gather itself! Or, I’ll totally catch you next time, but Auntie Hilda needs help with all this food! Sabrina likes to get in the way, but that level of helpfulness was undeniably suspicious.

“Hello, cousin,” he says, snagging her arm before she can flit past him. “Any big lies you feel like confessing to your loved ones?”

Sabrina touches a fingertip to her chin and pretends to think about it. “Hmm, no?”

“Hmm, no?” Ambrose mimics. He lets her go. “You must know you can’t put this off forever. Even you, a girl so skilled at evasion she doubled herself, must know that.”

Sabrina smiles like this is all some big joke. “There’s nothing to talk about. The universe hasn’t imploded. As long as we leave the concerns of Hell in Hell…” She shrugs. “I don’t see a problem with it.”

Ambrose’s rope, already at its absolute end, flies out of his metaphorical fingers. “Don’t see a problem with it?” he repeats. “Don’t see — oh, Satan on a stick, Sabrina. What about the clock and the — the toad and — did you notice the woods seemed like they were moving tonight —?”

Her laugh is a mere puff of careless air. “Is this about your obsession with omens? Greendale is a weird place, Ambrose. Weird things happen. They’ve been happening long before I got here and they’re going to keep happening long after I’m gone. That’s what it’s like when you’re perched on the precipice of Hell and populated with witches. There’s no proof that I’m responsible for any of that.”

“You’re being purposefully obtuse because you don’t want to face that consequences of your actions, as usual —”

“Can this wait until after tonight? Get a drink, loosen up. I noticed Plutonius Pan doesn’t have anyone to dance with, maybe you could —”

Ambrose can barely hold in a scoff. “You’re playing the violin while Rome burns, Sabrina.”

She rolls her eyes and tosses those icy curls. “You’re being dramatic, Ambrose. Even if something was going on, it wouldn’t matter. I can handle it. I always do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have some fun. I suggest you do the same — you might feel better.”

Ambrose watches Sabrina go, a flounce to Prudence’s storm, and feels like Cassandra at the gates of Troy, going unheeded while she shouted catastrophe.

Harvey sheds himself in bits and pieces. His flannel first, tied around his waist before it’s flung off and abandoned in the grass. Then his t-shirt peeled up and off, quick so he doesn’t lose his nerve. It knocks the oak leaves off his head, rucks up his hair so Nick laughs and puts his hands in it to smooth it down. The sudden breath of relief gets lodged in Harvey’s chest. “Honestly, this needs more than I can do on such short notice,” Nick muses, matter-of-fact as he fusses with Harvey’s hair, riffling it and patting it back down again. He resets the oak crown and does a last-minute readjustment, tucking a particularly flippy bit of hair behind Harvey’s ear. His fingers brush the little silver piercing again and Harvey remembers, cute.

“Oh my Hecate, Harv!” Theo exclaims, fracturing Harvey’s focus and making him laugh when he sees Theo has slapped a hand over his eyes. And Robin’s. “I’m not supposed to know you have a body. What would Roz say?!”

“I think she knows I have one,” Harvey says, grinning, and laughs even more when Theo makes a face under the shield of his fingers.

“I’m not body shaming you,” Theo says. “But I also cannot know that you have abs.”

Nick’s voice is playful when he wonders, “Something against good news?” Harvey bites the inside of his lip.

He decides to disrobe for several reasons.

One, it is hot, even more humid at night, and his skin had been sticky, slick with sweat under his clothes, suffocating.

Two, it’s odd being the only one dressed in a crowd of exhibitionists. He might as well have a big flickering sign above him proclaiming MORTAL VIRGIN, VERY VIRTUOUS. It made him more vulnerable instead of less, too noticeable.

Three, he’s almost sort of gotten used to the witches being half-naked. They treat their state of undress as though it’s meaningless, neither embarrassing nor shameful.

Four, he’s slightly worried that he’s being culturally insensitive by not taking part and he’s really trying when it comes to witch stuff these days.

Five, body positivity is a good thing, as Theo and Roz have told him.

It’s no different than going to the beach, he rationalizes. He’s been around his friends in their bathing suits a million times. It’s exactly like that. And no one seems to care or even really notice, except for one witch who gets a little handsy while they’re dancing until Nick whisks him away.

Nick is — fun.

Harvey doesn’t know quite what to do with that. He thought Nick might be a showoff when it came to dancing, or effortlessly cool in that way that feels like a targeted attack. But he’s not self-conscious or over the top. In fact, Nick is kind of goofy. He takes both of Harvey’s hands and uses them as an anchor for a turn, lifting their arms high to duck under before nudging Harvey to do the same. He always keeps them an arm’s-length away from each other, but in contact: fingers caught, forearms crossed, circling each other and just being stupid. Dancing. Harvey realizes he’s touched Nick more tonight than he has in the entire time he knew Nick existed, and it’s funny to think he’s already becoming familiar.

Harvey actually likes dancing, but usually when no one is watching him. It’s better if he’s doing it with his friends, or for them. He wanted Roz to have a good time at the Valentine’s dance, so he got over himself enough to bust a move and twirl her around, even with Sabrina and Nick putting him to shame a few feet away. Now everything’s too hectic for anyone to be looking right at him and he can jump around like he’s at a festival or a concert, no big deal.

Sabrina appears in that sudden way she has, like she came in on the wind. Harvey had completely lost track of her and then there she is, her jaw tilted up defiantly. “Let’s dance,” she says, and they make room for her.

It’s different with Sabrina there. Shadows get darker around her, and lights brighter; she sets everything into higher contrast just by stepping into it. Harvey doesn’t know why he thought it would be safe to ditch his shirt as long as he kept the rest of his clothes on, because now he’s once again too conscious of everyone around him — aware of the thin fabric of Nick’s briefs, Sabrina’s bodice so gossamer he can see the hint of a freckle on her side. She leans back into Nick and he bends his head like he wants to kiss her throat, but he doesn’t. That distance, the centimeter between skin and mouth, is something Harvey feels like it’s his neck, his lips. His skin prickles all over, more sensitive than it was before.

Sabrina spins between them, her arms up over her head, so close that her curls brush Harvey’s chin and her hip brushes his, so close between him and Nick that it makes him think about how close he and Nick really are.

He remembers that dream he had about Nick in the woods, hunter and hunted.

Harvey should put his shirt back on. If he knew where it was.

Sabrina is there in her flowers. Nick’s skin is gleaming. And Harvey is losing it a little, but if he could just not look below anyone’s neck —

Nick steps in closer, the pressure of his fingertips a shock to Harvey’s lower back. Sabrina is, for a moment, crushed between them. Her hands come up against Harvey’s chest, hot like hellfire.

“It’s really, uh, warm out here, I need a drink, does anyone need a drink?” Harvey mumbles, words tangling together for how fast they are, but he hasn’t even finished the sentence before he shoots out of the tight knot of people, trying to breathe again. A coward still.

“Aw, poor mortal,” Nick says in Sabrina’s ear. “Got spooked.”

Sabrina doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s doing what teenagers do. She’s dancing with cute boys at a cool party, tipsy on sweet liquor and good vibes. She allows the specifics to escape her; lets herself forget about kissing Nick in Harvey’s garage, Roz looking at her with an expression open and ready to be hurt when she asked if there was anything between Sabrina and Harvey. The candle was supposed to have scorched the caring out of her, so none of it matters. She can arch back against Nick feelings-free; she can press her palms into the solid muscle of Harvey’s chest and have it not mean a thing.

This is her making a point. Playing the violin. No consequences. Nothing she can’t handle.

“He’s not used to you,” she says. It’s a real shock at first, how Nick flirts with everyone, until you realize it’s just a reflex for him. It’s the only way he knows how to relate to anyone, the quickest way to get someone on his side.

Sabrina leans back into him, her head tilting against his shoulder. His hands are on her hips. His arms are around her again and her breathing is a little quick with the closeness of him, which is how it always goes with him. Nick makes her feel dangerous, out of control. Her heart speeds up thinking that she could kiss him if she wanted, even though the last time had been a disaster, and so had the time before that and the time before that. It didn’t matter how many times it got messed up, because if Sabrina kissed him, Nick would still kiss her back.

His hand slides over her stomach, fingertips tripping over the boning and embroidery of her bodysuit. His lips brush against her ear as he breathes her name. Not Sabrina, but, “Spellman.”

She always liked that.

They’ve had so many bad times together in the woods. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a good one? Just one good time to tip the scales a little, to blur the bloody knifepoints and wine-drunk fighting. A night of fun with no complications. Could she do that, now that the candle has taken it all away? She lets her mind run wild with it for a moment — letting Nick pull her into the trees, letting him lay her on the ground, tangling her hands in his hair and knowing that Harvey was nearby, such an — almost.

Her pulse jumps just as Nick’s mouth lands on her neck. “I miss you, Spellman,” he says, and it drops inside her like a stone in still water. She could never sleep with Nick without it meaning anything.

“You can’t just —” She pushes away from him, her hands buzzing. “You dumped me, Nick.”

“I know.” With all the noise and music around them, she sees the words as much as hears them. “But you keep —” He bites back whatever that was going to be. “Do you still want me? What do you want?”

He didn’t have to finish. Sabrina knows what she keeps doing: sticking her hand in the fire to see if it’s going to burn and then getting surprised at the singe marks. She knows it isn’t exactly fair, but she’s never been able to stop pushing her limits. “I don’t want anything,” she says, and wills it true.

He looks frustrated and more than a little helpless. “Then what are we doing?”

“Nothing,” Sabrina says. It echoes inside her: nothing, nothing, nothing.

There’s a tautness to Nick’s jaw that might be hurt, or anger. “Fine,” he says. “Do whatever you want, Sabrina. You will anyway.”

Her temper flares. “I’m not the one who —” She doesn’t let it out, but she sees it land on Nick all the same. She was never the one who; it was always him. “Sorry. Sorry, I just have to —”

Sabrina takes off. He watches her go, as he has before, but it doesn’t feel good this time, or satisfying. She feels frayed at the edges.

Sabrina drops onto the bench next to Aunt Hilda and Dr. Cee, who are cheerfully toasting tidbits while humming old campfire songs, heedless of the lasciviousness unfolding around them. Aunt Zelda is nowhere to be seen, which probably bodes well for Marie, and Sabrina is selfishly glad that Ambrose isn’t here either. She wants Aunt Hilda’s coddling. But even though she immediately gets a hair-ruffle and cheese toastie for her trouble, she doesn’t feel better.

Maybe Ambrose is right. What’s wrong with her?

“You alright, lovely?” The concern in Hilda’s face doesn’t abate when Sabrina offers a tremulous smile and nod.

“It’s just a lot, Auntie,” she tries. “Stuff I thought I was over, but I’m not.”

Hilda studies her for a long moment with her brows drawn together. Too long. Finally, she says, “When Ambrose was talking about coming clean, he didn’t mean about Caliban’s spell, did he?”

Sabrina presses her forehead down against her folded arms. “No.”

“Is there something you want to tell me, darling?”

The answer to that would also be no. What happened to the girl at the ice cream shop who planned to spend her whole summer at the beach? How is it she always ends up back here, embroiled in her own mistakes, her heart still full of cracks?

“I —” Sabrina lifts her head, but as she turns, she catches sight of something in the tight throng of cavorting witches: Prudence all platinum and gold, careening into Nick like a woman on a mission. A crash of a kiss that overbalances him, his arm locking around her waist on instinct.

“Oh, dear,” Aunt Hilda says, trading a quick and uneasy look with Dr. Cee. “Oh, Sabrina, I’m sure that isn’t what it, um — looks like —”

Sabrina swallows a lump. How long had it been since she walked away from him? Thirty seconds? She trains her gaze hard on the flickering fire so she can pretend — to herself, to anyone else — that her wet lash line is just because of light sensitivity. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care.

There’s a distant rumble of thunder, but a moment before the sky parts, Sabrina could swear she sees herself there in the flames, her own face severe and determined, with black horns curling back from her temples.

She gasps a little and jumps, but the rain is falling by then, and she gets lost in it.

The witches keep dancing.

Sunrise finds Nick sprawled in wet grass, naked and muddy, his rain-damp hair a mess of rumpled curls. He’d slept for an hour, maybe, but sunlight pries open the seam of his eyes with unforgiving fingers. His first thought is, I hope Sabrina didn’t see.

Immediately an inner voice counters, so you never have to tell her? Another lie, Nicholas. There’s no more of the devil’s residue inside Nick, but he sometimes hears that patient goading as though there is, that tone of voice that says, you’re going to slip up sooner or later and I’ll be here when you do. They took him out of Hell and then took Hell out of him, but he’s still hearing echoes.

It shouldn’t matter if Sabrina saw. She doesn’t want him.

His stomach clenches when he thinks, but what if the mortal did? That ought to matter even less. Not at all.

Nick shakes himself off and drags himself up, leaving Prudence sleeping on the ground with her dress draped over her like a shroud. He goes down to the water to rinse off before summoning last night’s clothes from the far corners of the clearing, somewhat worse for wear but nothing a spell or two can’t fix. Once dressed, he makes himself useful by helping to clean up, sweeping away the remnants of the fires, disposing of what needs disposing of. Everything is damp and ashen, the ground churned up from so much treading and dotted with fetid puddles. Fire and water are supposed to be baptismal but Nick doesn’t feel clean.

He has this thought in the mornings lately of, oh god, again. He’s still here. Every day he’s still here and must do the same things over again, put himself together again, get through the day again, get through the night again. Every morning he does it, even though his limbs feel weighted down with lead and all he really wants to do is sleep. He can never seem to get enough sleep.

Sabrina was right. It wasn’t her; it was him. It was always him giving in to the worst of himself, Dark Lord in his ear or not. Him thinking, she doesn’t want me anyway so I might as well do it, even though he knew Prudence didn’t really want him either. He works just as well for any girl looking to waste a little time between great loves.

“Dude?”

Nick startles, caught drifting. But it’s only Theo Putnam sitting up in a — well, the only word for it is nest. A nest made up of branches, then lined with soft grasses and petals, shocking blue and lavender against the sun-bleached green. The hobgoblin is still sleeping, but Theo is upright and amiable, sipping a cup of coffee.

“Where’d that come from?”

“Sabrina’s Aunt Hilda is a one-woman B&B,” Theo says. “You cool, dude?” Nick is confused, so Theo adds, “You look really bummed out. And last I saw you, you were basically topless swing dancing with my best friend, so that’s a pretty big change. Did you and Harv have a fight?”

Nick is slightly miffed at the assumption. He’s been getting along with the mortal much better of late. “No. I don’t actually know where he got off to.”

“Probably panicked at the sight of one too many nipples.” Theo rifles through the flowers until he finds his cell phone and taps out a quick message before setting it back down. “Sabrina, then?”

Nick doesn’t say anything.

“I should’ve known.” Theo nods sagely. “You’d think I could spot Spellman heartbreak from a mile away by now. I’ve had more ‘you’re in love with a maniac’ conversations than I’d care to admit. But I guess they’re pretty much evergreen. I mean, Sabrina is a menace to society.”

Nick snorts, because she is, but says, “It’s not her fault. It’s mine.”

“What happened?”

There are so many answers to that question, but he chooses the simplest and perhaps the most true. “I broke her heart.”

Theo squints up at him, all freckles, and then heaves a sigh. “Sit.”

Nick is confused again. “What?”

“Sit,” Theo repeats, with emphasis. “Once in a lifetime opportunity here. I’m gonna talk about your feelings, and I’m going to let you drink my coffee.” He holds the cup out. “It keeps replenishing. It’s pretty boss.”

Nick hesitates. He isn’t sure what Theo is angling for. But the coffee really does smell good, rich and fragrant and warm. There’s steam rising off it. Nick is weak. He sits.

For a moment they’re silent, watching the sleepy witches stir and wander around, making their morning adjustments to the world. Then Theo says, “Do you guys ever get, like, tired? I’m tired, and I’m not even involved.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Nick says defensively. “We’re not raised like you. No one tells us how to fall in love. We don’t get dating handbooks, we get —” He breathes out sharply, thinking of how the Weird Sisters always shut him out of everything. The ex-boyfriend who thought he was too clingy. The girls he’d once overheard talking about him in the Academy halls. So hot, they’d said. But he gets so attached. “Thrown to the wolves.”

“Remind me to have a conversation with you one day about being gay and trans in a small town,” Theo says dryly. “Dude, no one knows what they’re doing. Mortals either. Look at Harv. Best guy I know, absolute shambles in the romance department.”

Nick smiles despite himself and shakes his head.

“It’s true,” Theo insists. “Look, you want an outside perspective? This has been the most insane year of possibly anyone’s life. Like, you turned yourself into a Barbie dreamhouse for Satan to save the girl you loved. That’s a big swing. And I saw you down there, dude. You were wearing a neck ruff and your tongue was in a jar. You went to a carnival like two days after you got back. This is all crazy in the real world. Of course, Greendale isn’t exactly the real world.”

“So? What does that have to do with anything?”

“So?” Theo repeats. “Nick. Do I have to say the tongue thing again? You went through something horrible and you kind of spun out after. Who wouldn’t? It took a toll on your two-month-old relationship? No duh.”

“Is this how you talk to Harry about feelings?” Nick asks critically. “He’s very sensitive, you know.”

Amused, Theo says, “Yeah, I know. And you are too, underneath that sexy and intense exterior.”

Nick smirks. “I always shoot for sexy and intense.”

Theo rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “What you did to Sabrina sucks. So it was probably good that you pumped the breaks. And you know, you’re allowed to give yourself space.” He knocks his hand into Nick’s to reclaim the coffee. “You’re hot and weird and kind of snobby and mean to Harvey, but it’s obvious you would do anything for the people you love. You’re just a hot mess.”

“That’s the third time you’ve called me hot in the last minute. Do you want to wake up your boyfriend and make this thing happen, or…?”

This time Theo punches his arm. “Shut up,” he laughs. “I’m just stating objective fact.”

Nick smiles and looks down at his hands. After a moment, he says, carefully, “I’m not sure I ever thanked all of you for what you did. That the rest of you came to get me, too, when you’re not even my… When I know I don’t really mean anything to you.”

“No big,” Theo says easily. “You would’ve done the same.”

Nick shrugs. “If Sabrina asked me to.”

Theo tips his head to the side. “Did Sabrina ask you to come help us when we were trying to get away from the pagans? She didn’t even know what was going on with us — until she did, not totally sure how, such is Sabrina. But you were going to help us even though you’d dumped Sabrina like two seconds before and she hated you right then. Don’t write yourself off. You showed up.”

Something prickles in Nick’s chest and spreads out through his body, a sensation like a good swallow of whiskey. “You’re very generous.”

Theo grins. “Tell Harvey you said that.” He offers the coffee back. “Have you ever even talked to anyone about what happened?”

Nick has to stamp down hard on the memory of the Hare Moon. “Who would want to hear about that?”

Theo looks at him, seems to realize that Nick is serious, and puts his head in his hands. He rakes his fingers through his hair and mutters something that sounds strangely like baby vulture. “Okay. At the risk of pulling a Harvey — we’re going on this camping trip, because Robin is all about nature and he’s been wanting to, plus we haven’t done it since we were kids. Harvey’s brother used to take us. Do you want to come?”

Nick blinks. “Why? I’m not your friend.”

“Sure you are,” Theo says. “You’re in the band, dude.”

Nick’s throat gets a little funny and tight. “If Sabrina says it’s alright.”

“I say it’s alright.”

Nick presses his lips together. He hands Theo the mug. “Okay, then. I’ll come.”

Prudence wakes with her head pillowed on her folded arm, a ladybug trundling along her elbow. The grass around and under her is dew-wet, and her skin has puckered slightly in the way it does after too long in the bath. She’s alone. Nick hadn’t woken her. He just left her.

She isn’t surprised, but her teeth set so hard it aches far back in her jaw. An angry inhale rattles around her chest like a little storm, the same kind of anger that had pushed her into Nick in the first place. Ambrose thought she was lonely, so she would show him what her loneliness looked like, and it looked like Nick Scratch opening his mouth for her tongue. All the same, it was a mistake, using one man to upset another one and being alone after all of it anyway. She shouldn’t have stayed last night. Her plan was to wait out the ceremony and return to Agatha, but she had let herself linger and that was on her.

She slips on her lingerie and tosses the dress over her head so it comes down around her in a golden cloud. She reaches back for the zipper, starting violently when she meets another pair of hands on the metal. “Star of the morning,” she swears, clutching her chest, because it’s only Zelda Spellman, rather immaculately pressed for a woman who spent a night under the stars with her lover. “A hello would suffice.”

Zelda makes a soft sound of amusement, gesturing Prudence around again so she can get the zipper. “Hello,” she says pointedly. “On your way?”

Prudence straightens her dress so it falls correctly. “I’ve left Agatha too long already.”

Zelda steps back, cigarette in hand, and puffs. “You did your duty admirably last night. I was glad to see it.”

Prudence knows what she means — and what she doesn’t — but still has to smother a half-strangled laugh. “Thank you, Sister Spellman.”

“We can be more familiar with each other than that,” Zelda says. Prudence immediately knows what kind of conversation she is about to be subjected to. “I’ve been wanting to have a word with you, as it happens.”

“Can it wait? I really must —”

Dismissively, she interrupts, “Neither Agatha nor Ms. Walker are in particular danger. I’ve had this on my mind since the other morning.”

Prudence smiles, and her teeth grind. “By all means.”

“I’ve noticed you lately. Don’t think I haven’t. You seem — especially sharp-edged, I’ll say. It’s understandable. However.” Zelda takes a drag, the gesture businesslike and impersonal despite her words, as though this is any evaluation with a student under her tutelage. “As someone who has…craved the acknowledgment of undeserving men in weaker moments, perhaps my words will have some weight.”

“Don’t think you and I are the same,” Prudence warns.

“No, but similar.” The acerbity seems to set Zelda at ease somewhat. “Not all loves are the same, Prudence. Not all will have the same effect. The Dark Lord didn’t want us to form attachments because it would make us too strong. Loneliness isn’t the thing that will make you impervious to harm. But you know that. You prize your family, as you should. And your family will be here for you no matter what. We belong to Hecate now. We have no need of old traditions that no longer suit.”

Prudence smiles again, and this time it has bite. “Forgive me for being confused. We do cycle through deities so.”

She doesn’t have the facility Zelda Spellman does when it comes to replacing one idol with another. Sometimes she misses the girl who thought there was truly a place for her in the Dark Lord’s heart. Faith was simple. Now it’s ashes, and Prudence is fed up on false promises. She knows she has been useful to the Spellmans from time to time, but coven is not synonymous with family. No one will catch her except herself. She will burn until she burns out.

“I don’t need a talk from someone looking to soothe their nephew’s broken heart,” Prudence adds. “I have somewhere to be.”

Zelda waves her cigarette in a vague circle. “I won’t stop you. I’ve said my piece.”

Prudence is glad to go.

A muttered spell takes her from the woods to the Academy, startling a drowsing Rosalind, who is slumped in the chair beside the bed, singing in a sleepy mumble. “Apologies,” Prudence says. “I didn’t intend to be so late.”

“If you had a cell phone —” Roz smiles and stretches, in good humor for someone who spent a night in a hard wooden chair next to a mad killer. “You could have texted me.”

“I shall curse your entire family line with muteness if I’m made to listen to one more tract on mortal technolo—” She stops mid-word, because her traveling eye has finally registered that Agatha is fast asleep in bed, completely unmuzzled and unbound. Her arms are above her head, wrists bare of restraints. Prudence hisses, “Have you lost your wits entirely? Do you have a death wish? What did I tell you about —”

Roz brings a finger to her lips to hush Prudence. “Relax.” She takes Prudence by the arm and pulls her a few feet away so Agatha won’t stir. “I have this theory.”

Prudence arches a brow. “Theory?”

“About Agatha and music,” Roz says, quick and excited. “I kind of stumbled into it, but then I found some books in your library and — basically —” She straightens up, outright beaming. “I think I can help her.”

Sabrina leaves before the sun comes up. She doesn’t feel like dancing in the rain, so she buttons up into her little gold dress and goes, casting an umbrella spell to keep herself dry. She starts on the long walk home, arms wrapped around herself even though the rain only seems to have made things hotter, like being trapped in the bathroom with the warm water running. She cuts through the trees, the undergrowth squelching luxuriously under her shoes, and does take some comfort from the sound of the leaves rustling with raindrops, shaking with wind. These are still her woods, whatever happens in them.

She winds her way up the road, but she doesn’t see Ambrose until she’s past the cemetery. He must have teleported, because he’s already back to being the cozy Ambrose of her childhood, dressed in a well-loved t-shirt and striped pajama pants, wrapped in a silk robe despite the heat. He has a plate of toast balanced in one hand. Sabrina knows it’s buttered and slathered in fig jam, because that’s what Ambrose likes, and knowing that is a strange rush of comfort too, almost piercing in its intensity. Ambrose is home to her as much as the house is. She wants to run and put her head in his lap. She wonders if he stayed long enough to see Prudence with Nick, but it might not feel the same to him as it does to her. He’d been with Nick once, too.

Ambrose is aware of her when she gets to the foot of the steps, but he doesn’t say anything, or even look at her. There’s a subtle change in how he carries himself, from careless repose to careful tension. When she reaches the top, lingering just under the overhang of the roof, she waits. He doesn’t react. She clears her throat, shifts her weight. “Ambrose.”

He glances at her warily. “Yes?”

Sabrina bites her lip. She knows what she has to do. “We need to talk.”

Ambrose’s shoulders relax and he shifts over, patting the bench beside him. “So let’s talk.”

Chapter Text

“I didn’t know he’d slept with Prudence!” Theo exclaims. “I never would have invited him if I knew!”

A rapidly-shifting landscape whips by behind his head as they rocket out of Greendale in Harvey’s old truck, on their way to a weekend at the Midvale Campgrounds. No one’s ever heard of anything weird happening in Midvale so it feels safe, and it’s the same place Tommy used to take them — used to take Harvey and Theo and Roz, because Sabrina was never allowed to go.

“I mean, I probably wouldn’t have,” Theo adds, sounding less convinced. “He’s sad and cute, it’s very easy to get bamboozled.”

Sabrina offers him a cool half-smile before she looks towards the truck window, watching the woods blur out into a stretch of field and road, all that green going scrubby and dry. “Any time you talk to Nick, odds are he just slept with someone.”

She catches Roz and Harvey wincing out of the corner of her eye, and Theo sucks in a breath. “Okay, ouch,” he says. “You are serving major Zelda Spellman right now and it’s kind of scary.”

Her head rolls against the back of the seat as she turns towards them and smiles idly, sunglasses sliding down her nose enough to peer over them. This does not appear to be less scary, judging by the expressions on her friends’ faces. “Apple doesn’t fall far.”

They all piled into Harvey’s truck together: Sabrina up front with him and Roz, Theo and Robin in the truck bed, leaning in through the open window to shout over the rush of the highway. Theo had bullied Harvey into letting them sit back there so they could all ride up together (“Harv,” he had said, “You are not driving to Midvale, dropping them off, then coming back to Greendale to get us, you complete nut.”). Harvey keeps shooting fretful glances back at them and it makes Sabrina’s smile turn a touch more genuine. With a casual finger twitch, she casts a spell to keep the boys fixed in place, like a magical seatbelt. They could go over a cliff and Theo and Robin wouldn’t move an inch.

“Nick and I aren’t together,” Sabrina says decisively, words she’d practiced in her head over the last week. “He can do whatever he wants. It’s not like it’s the first time he slept with Prudence. He used to date the Weird Sisters.”

Harvey tangles his fingers with Roz’s. “Wait. Like…collectively?”

“Mhm.” Sabrina helps herself to the open bag of chips in Roz’s other hand. It has gone somewhat limp with shock. “I thought I’d mentioned that before. No?”

“Might’ve blanked it out,” Harvey says hoarsely.

With a rueful sigh, Roz says, “This makes it slightly more awkward that I invited Prudence and Agatha too.”

“What?” Harvey drops her hand reflexively, then seems to realize and slips his arm around her shoulders instead. “Agatha? Is that — is that safe?”

“She’s doing really well! I mean, she hasn’t attacked anyone in the last few days and Prudence says she doesn’t even have to be tied down all the time now. Plus, I have a little surprise that should help.”

“Oh great,” Theo says, a soft wild laugh in it. He tries to melt flat into the truck bed but finds himself stuck stubbornly upright. “What the hell.”

“Guys, I walked in on them having an orgy once,” Sabrina says. “This is nothing. Relax.”

Her friends do not look relaxed. Harvey crushes Roz closer, despite the driving.

“Litha was so cool until I realized everyone else was having fraught romantic dilemmas,” Theo sighs. “I never expected to attend Burning Man in Greendale.”

“Witches have kind of an expect the unexpected lifestyle,” Harvey offers dryly. He rubs Roz’s arm.

It’s been over a week since Litha, but it feels more like a month, or maybe a year. Sabrina has the kind of morose maturity that comes with too many realizations in too short a time. She had been ready to lay everything out that morning on the porch, rain-damp and worn out, Ambrose quick to comfort her. She still had the image of Nick and Prudence playing out in her head, the sensation of Harvey’s chest under her fingertips. Somehow that felt worse than everything else — a sign of how much it had all spiraled, how little control she really had. She thought she’d erased every last little feeling, but the impression of them remained, pressed down into the paper.

She’d done exactly what Prudence said. Two candles, three names, and a wick split neatly in the middle.

“Big picture-wise, I know the Nick stuff is nothing,” she said, slightly embarrassed to even mention it when there were frozen statues of mutating high priests to deal with, eldritch threats, perpendicular timelines. But it was knotted up in her stomach all the same. “I can’t figure out why I’m so upset about him. Why I still —”

She swallowed.

“I don’t think it’s exactly abnormal, cousin.” Ambrose was indulgent now that she’d come to him sad-eyed and penitent. “You loved him, of course you —”

Sabrina bit her lip. Ambrose got that look on his face again.

Patiently, he pivoted to, “What did you do.”

“Nothing!” She held firm, then immediately gave in. “Just a tiny little cord-cutting spell, nothing major!”

He pressed his face into his hands. “Sabrina.”

“It didn’t even really work,” she grumbled. “Some good it did me. I should know not to listen to Prudence.”

Ambrose sighed, then laughed a little, and rubbed her back before pulling her under his arm. “Feelings aren’t static. They evolve. They fade, they surge. They can go away and come back. You may think something is over and suddenly it’s not. Perhaps you banished one feeling, but the rest weren’t so easily dismissed. Perhaps it did work but you fell for him all over again — crazier things have happened. History oft repeats itself.”

Sabrina pressed in close, glad to be back in his good graces. “Now I know why witches prize their cold black hearts.”

“No, you don’t.” It’s not unkind. “You never could.” Ambrose let her have half his toast, then ventured, “Now there’s the small, almost insignificant, utterly minor matter of your quote-unquote ‘supes crazy idea’ —”

Sabrina smiled. “Yes. We have to close the time loop.”

“We have to close the time loop,” Ambrose repeated with relief. “I was thinking we —”

“Kill her?”

“Lord below, Sabrina! I was going to say we go back to the moment it happened and —” Ambrose’s voice faltered like he’d been put on mute and a wide false grin blossomed on his face. Sabrina didn’t understand until he shouted, “Aunties! Back so soon?”

Hilda and Zelda hustled up the walk with Dr. Cee trailing behind them, his arms full of cooking equipment and at least two leftover wooden wheels. “Clean up went quicker than I thought!” Hilda said cheerfully. “You know, I saw Sweet Harvey asleep in his car, bless him, but he’s got all your friends home now, I think the night was a bit much for him —"

The tips of Sabrina’s fingers tingled. She sat on them to make them stop.

Hilda and Dr. Cee were stopped at the threshold by Aunt Zelda, who managed to loom large enough to block the door frame, smoke wafting from her in grayish clouds. “Goodbye,” she said pointedly to Dr. Cee, not mincing words. “We have no more need of you at this hour.”

Hilda huffed, but Dr. Cee only smiled. “Might as well get used to me — I’ll be a permanent resident this time next week! Do you think I could get a shelf in the fridge?” Silence. “Half a shelf?”

Zelda exhaled smoke. “Sister, are you certain you wish to be tied to man with such a tepid sense of humor, even for the relatively brief length of a mortal lifespan?” She flicked ash in their direction and swept inside. “At least Faustus was funny.”

Hilda and Dr. Cee exchanged a look. “I’m counting it as a win,” he said. “She acknowledged that we’re engaged!”

All the arguments about Hilda moving out had resulted in a simple, if controversial, solution: Dr. Cee would be moving in instead. As glad as Sabrina is that her Auntie Hilda isn’t leaving them after all, it had turned the house into a hotbed of wedding planning and sibling sniping, without much spare space to have whispered conversations about resetting time loops. She and Ambrose hadn’t been able to get a minute to themselves, and Sabrina was adamant about not telling the aunts yet. She didn’t want to ruin Hilda’s wedding with another one of her bad decisions.

She didn’t want to face their disappointment again.

Sabrina has built a careful castle of half-truths around herself and gotten too comfortable living inside it. One pulled brick will bring the whole thing down and then she’ll be standing in the rubble, braced for the worst and knowing she deserves all that and more. Especially because there’s something she hasn’t even told Ambrose yet.

Ever since the fires at Litha, she’s been seeing the Other Sabrina everywhere. At first she thought it was a fluke, but now that eerie face is always waiting for her in the mirror, or reflected in the glass cabinets, glimpses caught at the edge of her field of vision. It’s her, but it’s not. Her face beneath two black horns, pale and powerful, strange and deadly. The her she would have become if she went to Hell.

She’s not sure what it means, but she’s not ready to find out.

Sabrina has been so focused on fixing things that she ignored what was really broken, let her problems pile up around her until she couldn’t see a way out. At the very least, the camping trip should give her the chance to talk to Ambrose alone, to make their plans. She can still fix it. She really can this time.

A witch needs very little to spend a night in the woods — a soft bed of grass, a sliver of moonlight. Mortals appear to need a great deal more than that.

Prudence watches passively as Sabrina Spellman and her coterie of misfits pull out coolers and pots and pans, plastic cutlery, bags of synthetic mortal snacks, unwieldy nylon tents made of flashy fabrics, and rolled-up sleeping bags. The witch-hunter has taken the lead on putting it all together, which is fine with Prudence, because it’s embarrassing enough that she consented to be here. She’s certainly not going to help.

She wouldn’t have come at all — one bad night in the woods had been enough to turn her off them for quite a while — but Agatha had curled her little finger around Prudence’s and asked, “Sister, if I’m good?”

She had been good, only once biting Melvin during breakfast, which was more or less deserved. And Prudence felt, uncomfortably, that she owed something to Rosalind. Roz had by now done several favors for Prudence without expressing what she wanted in return. Prudence did not appreciate being in someone’s debt, particularly when that someone was a cheerleader for the False God, so she had relented. But she has no plans to take her eyes off Agatha.

Until Ambrose Spellman steps grinning from behind a tree, brushing off his clothes and calling, “Cousin! Sorry I’m late, I was busy hiding all the sharp objects from Auntie Z so we wouldn’t come home to a crime scene. What did I miss?”

The space between Prudence’s shoulder blades becomes a knot of tension. She slides her fingers into Nicky’s hair, earning a faint smile amidst his rapid chatter with Roz. “But have you read the analysis of Euripides by the witch Menodora —”

To which Roz gives an enthusiastic, “Yes! I only did a cursory search of your library, but there was so much evidence that the crashing of cymbals was intrinsic to the frenzy of the maenads, so I figured the opposite could also be true! Gentle music could have a calming effect —”

“It makes complete sense,” Nick says. “Now have you considered —"

Prudence begins to tune him out, as she has often had to do over the years, and trades a measured look with Agatha. She raises an eyebrow and Agatha raises one in return, then mimes a dramatic yawn, which makes Prudence smirk.

“Actually, that reminds me —” Roz says, beaming, when she’s interrupted by the witch-hunter dropping a kiss on her cheek. “Oh, Harvey, do you need help?”

He shakes his head, smiling. “Nope, you do you. Just couldn’t resist.”

Nick presses his lips together, gaze tracking the witch-hunter back to the pile of tents. There seems to be some debate going on with the hobgoblin about whether tents are truly preferable to nests of wildflowers. Prudence hopes someone attacks them so she isn’t bored for the entire evening.

“If you’re in the mood for a little experiment…” Roz reaches into her purse and pulls out a small white rectangle and two even smaller plugs. More mortal nonsense.

Nick, whose shoulders had visibly slumped when the witch-hunter did not acknowledge his presence, perks up again at the promise of academia. “Oh, yes, I’d love to see this.”

Roz holds up the plugs. “Agatha. Do you mind?”

Agatha watches Roz like a curious cat watches a canary in a cage, but she nods and lifts her face up permissively. Without hesitation, which Prudence respects, Roz puts one of the plugs into each of Agatha’s ears, then smoothes over the hair tucked behind them. Her hands freeze awkwardly in midair before she coughs and returns her attention to the rectangle. Prudence’s nose wrinkles. It’s a worse version of one of their fool phones.

“Those are wireless headphones,” Roz says. “And I found this really ancient iPod of my mom’s. Sabrina actually helped me — she cast a spell to sort of bring it back to life, and the charge shouldn’t run out anymore. If you do this —” She illustrates, the device clicking faintly as she navigates it. “Then there are all these songs here — violins, right? — and any time you start to feel stressed out, you can just hit play. And here —” She touches the earbuds again. “You can still hear outside noise too, or you can just take one out, or —” Sheepishly, she falters. “Basically, music whenever you want.”

“Mortals go to such extreme effort for things,” Prudence sighs. “It’s just an earworm spell.”

“I think it’s ingenious,” Nick declares, to Roz’s blushing pleasure. “Mortals make magic for themselves.”

“Did you put that song on it?” Agatha wants to know. “The one you sang to me?” She murmurs a few lines, and Prudence’s chest clenches at the sound of her sister’s voice, soft and simple and singing. At this rate, she’ll never be out of Rosalind’s debt.

“Hey.” The witch-hunter has popped back in to press a bottle of fizzing something-or-other into Roz’s hand, ducking to kiss her neck. “You’re singing my song.”

Agatha’s eyes narrow. “Hm,” is all she says, but it’s enough to send him back half a step.

“But really it’s everyone’s song,” he says. “Technically!”

Sheepish again, Roz reaches up to ruffle his hair. “Yes, that’s on there. Anything I thought you might like. And nothing too, you know. Loud.”

Agatha gives her a considering look, then half-smiles, slow and dangerous. She falls back against the grass, fiddling with the pod, before taking out an earbud to offer to Roz. After a moment’s pause, Roz takes it and lays down beside her.

Nick opens his mouth to speak but falls silent as soon as the witch-hunter wanders off again. This confirms Prudence’s worst suspicions. “Oh, Nicky. Really?”

When Sabrina first came to the Academy, Nick had grand ideas about getting involved with her and the witch-hunter both. He thought it was the ideal dating solution. Prudence had hoped all that was over and done with, but apparently no one gets that lucky, least of all her.

Nick takes her hand, kisses her knuckles, and looks pointedly at Ambrose. “Oh, Pru. Really?”

She purses her lips and gives his jaw a scratch. “Fine. I won’t if you won’t.”

Nick smiles. And once he’s absorbed in asking how the pod works, Prudence allows her gaze to — surreptitiously — slide in Ambrose’s direction. He shows no sign of being worse for wear. In fact, he looks better than he had at Litha, charming all the mortals as the sun slips down in the sky behind him.

Then their eyes meet. Ambrose’s grin turns gentle. He waves. Bristling, Prudence looks away.

She thinks if she ever said sorry, she might say it to him.

Night falls coolly on the campsite, temperature dropping enough for Robin to feel a shiver as mist rolls in off the water.

“Makes me think of summer camp,” Theo says wistfully. “Harv and Sabrina could never come, but there were like three years in a row where I pretended to love Jesus just so Roz and I could make lanyards and play capture the flag together at church camp.”

“That’s hideous,” Prudence says. “However, the element of deception redeems it slightly.”

Roz smiles at Theo over the fire, all of them ringed around it as they eat their hastily-made dinners. It burns low and small, logs crackling. “We would have killed for a night like this. We loved spooky stories.” She glances at Sabrina, mischief sparking. “I used to —”

“She used to demand that I give her a written list of scary stories ahead of time,” Sabrina interjects, grinning now.

“You always had the best ones!”

“All of which I got from Ambrose —”

“All of which I got from Auntie Zelda,” Ambrose admits. “But they were just regular stories for her.”

Theo’s voice leaps in excitement. “Roz would memorize them so that she could perform them for the sixth graders, except once she made this kid so scared he cried and she got in huge trouble —"

“I cried more than he did!” Roz says, laughing, as Harvey slings an arm around her. “I felt so bad!”

“Softie,” Theo laughs. His hand is on Robin’s knee, but his attention is elsewhere, so focused on his friends that he hasn’t looked at Robin once this whole conversation. Robin has been ready to catch his eye and smile, to show he’s having a good time, but Theo hasn’t even spared him a glance. And if Theo doesn’t, nobody else will.

Robin has met many mortals, but he’s never been close to any before. He always blamed his family for that; it was tough to explain that you needed a friend when your adoptive dad insisted mortals were merely meat for the gods. But now Robin wonders if he’s been spoiled by a life spent on the sidelines. He used to think he was good at fitting in, but fitting in in his family meant making yourself as inconspicuous as possible. Now he only knows how to be invisible. It’s a habit he still has, and a hard one to break when Theo’s friends manage to keep up an almost unceasing back and forth that leaves very little room for jumping in. He doesn’t know half their references. Sometimes when they’re all together, Robin feels like he’s not even there.

“I do feel that story was improved by the addition of crying children,” Prudence says, rising to get herself a drink from the cooler. “But if I have to hear one more adorable tale of your misspent youth together, then I’m going to be forced to roast someone over the fire.” Robin ducks his head with a smile, so he almost misses Prudence coming back and sitting right in Nick’s lap. “We can start with the witch-hunter.”

Harvey and Sabrina make the exact same face at the exact same time, a perfectly attuned expression of disgruntlement. It reminds Robin of when cats lay their ears flat against their heads.

Prudence’s lips curl as she tilts her head back over Nick’s shoulder to murmur in his ear, “I know Nicky wouldn’t mind eating him…” It’s quiet enough that only Robin and Theo can hear, because they’re the closest.

“Pru,” Nick warns. She laughs.

“Who did the seating chart here and how did I end up at the juncture of scandal and drama,” Theo demands. He’s trying to be funny, but there’s a little bit of truth in it too, or there must be, because he says things like that all the time. Robin pokes at his dinner — at least they’d remembered he didn’t eat meat — and doesn’t say anything.

“Show me a spot in the circle where you wouldn’t be mired in drama,” Nick says, and Theo nods and fist-bumps him, like fair point.

“It’s true,” Sabrina says. “Drama does seem to follow Nick wherever he goes.”

Their eyes meet over the fire, sharp and equally dark. “Only because I’m usually following you, and it’s just part of the entourage,” Nick says.

There is a beat of painful silence. Robin opens his mouth even though he doesn’t know what he’s going to say yet, hoping for something that breaks the tension, a joke that isn’t too weird to laugh at, but —

“Okay!” Roz claps her hands together. “Singalong, anybody?”

Her good cheer earns a lukewarm chuckle. “Darling Rosalind, as much as I would adore a bit of kumbaya before bedtime,” Ambrose says, “I’m going to suggest we all retire instead. Best to get ahead of the teenage theatrics before they take a turn for the worse.” He touches Sabrina’s shoulder and gives her a significant look, all her anger abruptly melting as she nods.

Secretly, Robin’s relieved. Sabrina must be, too.

There are four tents altogether: one for him and Theo, one for the Spellmans, another for Roz and Harvey, and the last one for the witches. Everyone disperses for their nighttime rituals, comes back, chats, wanders off again; Robin is a little unmoored amongst them, either stranded by himself or following at Theo’s heels.

Ambrose and Sabrina vanish first, deep in conversation, but the other witches lay out to look at the stars. Robin thinks he could maybe join them, because he knows as many constellations as anyone, used to find them in the sky every time they moved from town to town. He can do it. He steels himself to take a step, to lay down and speak. But he can’t. He can already feel how unwelcome he is, this stranger amidst friends who is only here because Theo said so.

Harvey looks at least as out of place as he does, lingering uncomfortably next to his empty tent. He’d gone to the bathroom and came back to find Roz pulled down between Prudence and Agatha with no sign of coming up soon. Robin shoots him a reassuring smile, which Harvey returns, and that makes him feel a bit better. But Harvey is nice to everyone, so it doesn’t exactly count.

“Begone, witch-hunter,” Prudence declares. “Girls only.”

“Nick’s there,” Harvey points out.

“Nicky actually knows what to do with a pile of girls.”

Before his face can fall, Roz laughs, but not meanly; it’s an uncertain sound, a nervous giggle. She starts to extricate herself. “I’m actually really tired. It’s getting late…ish, and we should get up bright and early!”

Agatha complains with a grumble, her black-nailed fingers curling around Roz’s arm. “No, don’t. Come stay in our tent.”

“Yes, we’ll make a trade,” Prudence says, eyes sparkling darkly. “The witch-hunter can have Nicky.”

“I have a name, you know,” Harvey complains.

“Do you? It’s obviously not very memorable.”

“I don’t mind.” Nick sits up too quickly, his eyes on Harvey, and runs a hand through his hair. “We can share.” He smiles. “Let the girls have their fun.”

Robin remembers how Nick was at band practice, his searching gaze craving approval or attention, whatever came first. Robin wonders if he does the same thing, always reaching for Theo to make him feel safe.

“Um.” Harvey swallows. “Um, I’m…cool.”

This sends Agatha and Prudence into peals of cackling laughter, through which the word rejected! is faintly heard. Nick scowls and looks away, reddening.

Robin feels a tug on the back of his shirt.

“I know it’s better than a soap opera, so I hate to interrupt,” Theo says, smiling. For a moment Robin forgets to be insecure at all. “But down to snuggle?”

“Always,” Robin says gratefully, and lets himself be led away.

Being handmaid to the Queen of Hell is a way better deal than being a ferryperson. Elspeth really lucked out.

Now instead of being little more than a bus driver for the undead, she gets to lounge on silk pillows, pet the Royal Hellhound, and eat as many scorpions as she likes. Even at the Academy, she didn’t have it this good. After Sabrina returned to raise her from the depths of the infernal transit system, she gifted Elspeth with a suite of rooms and a whole new wardrobe, as many gowns as she could ever want and a velvet ribbon to go around her ruined throat. Sabrina made Elspeth her new Mistress of Revelry, too. This is the kind of stuff she envisioned for her afterlife during all those nights in the desecrated church, listening to Father Blackwood drone on and on about eternity in blissful flames. It’s totally glam.

Elspeth is getting ready for tonight’s masquerade in Sabrina’s rooms, with Sabrina’s own ladies-in-waiting to attend on her. Ghaddar laces Elspeth into a green velvet gown with big puff sleeves, the kind of thing she’d wanted for her Baptism but her mom said was too showy. She can be as showy as she likes here. Fuck you, mom, she thinks happily, preening in the little mirror Ghaddar holds up for her, the only uncovered mirror allowed in the room.

Sabrina has a weird thing about mirrors lately.

Elspeth chatters on like she usually does, filling the silence of Sabrina’s chamber with her inane questions. She doesn’t like to hear too much about Greendale after she kicked it, just in case they had fun without her, but she would like to know if Melvin cried, or if Nick Scratch looked sad when he heard she was slaughtered. “I know he was, like, really busy at the time, but that would be cool,” Elspeth says wistfully. “If he looked sad.”

Another of Sabrina’s ladies, Kore, is carefully weaving her white hair into an elaborate braided updo around her shiny new horns. The looking-glass on the vanity table is shrouded in heavy black fabric. “Um, Nick was pretty sad in general around then,” Sabrina offers diplomatically. “It’s possible some of it could have been about you? He definitely wouldn’t have wanted you to die.”

Sabrina Morningstar is totally cool. But Elspeth always knew that. She still thinks fondly of the time Sabrina raised her from the dead, floating in the middle of the church all shot through with arrows, her eyes blank and silver. She has that vibe all the time now. There’s something still and dangerous to her, her uplifted posture and little smirks, the horns that jut proudly from her temples.

“I hope so,” Elspeth sighs. “I know it went tits-up for you guys, but he was so hot. You should bring him back to Hell. I heard Lilith used to make him walk around in nothing but a neck ruff, some of the lower demons actually started a cult of worship around him and the Dark Lord had to —”

“Elspeth.” Sabrina uses her quietest voice, the knife-edge one that means Elspeth has to very much stop talking. “I’m actually good without hearing this story.”

“Right, boss, sure thing.” Elspeth salutes her, then does an ankle-dip curtsey for good measure. “You got it.”

Sabrina’s lips curve slightly and she tilts her head so Kore can place the magnificent crown atop it. The circlet’s golden point nestles perfectly between her horns. “Would you like to see?” Kore asks, reaching for the shroud on the mirror, but Sabrina stops her hand.

“That’s alright,” she says lightly. “I bet it looks great!”

Elspeth has heard that a lot of rulers get cracked at a certain point, but she hopes Sabrina sticks it out long enough for Elspeth to marry a duke of Hell or something first. She’ll need to guarantee her position before it all goes up in flames.

She holds out her hand for Sabrina. “Your Majesty? Let’s get fucking turnt.”

Sabrina laughs and lets Elspeth pull her out of the room, down the long corridor, and into the hall, where the full splendor of Elspeth’s masquerade awaits them. She checks to make sure Sabrina is suitably impressed and she is, her face aglow from the hanging braziers with their glittering flames, smiling as she looks from one wonder to the next. Elspeth arranged for contortionists to hang from golden swings, their bodies twisted into inhuman shapes (a pretty easy feat considering bones are kind of loose in general down here, but it still looks cool). She collected the finest musicians from each of the Nine Circles. There’s even a sexy flogging station next to the photo booth. It has everything that makes for a good party. Her talents were totally wasted on earth.

Sabrina’s eyes linger on a fire pit where a pair of iron shoes are being heated for a later entertainment. Elspeth knows Sabrina doesn’t really dig the torture stuff, but the hellish nobility expect at least a little torment for any ball to be deemed a success. Elspeth had to acquiesce. She’d practiced an apology ahead of time — she picked a really bad soul to dance in the burning shoes, she swears! — and opens her mouth to launch into it when Sabrina suddenly clutches her hand. There’s a gasp trapped in her throat, and her black eyes have gone wild. “What?” Elspeth presses, worried. “What is it? Don’t worry, I told them they could only have two hours of torture, it’s —”

“It’s okay, it’s fine.” Sabrina’s eyes close tight and she touches her horns as though she’s checking that they’re still there. “I thought I saw — her again, but it’s — it’s fine.”

Elspeth has no idea what she’s talking about. She really needs to get a political marriage locked down in case Sabrina loses it.

Before Elspeth can ask Sabrina to elaborate, the Dark Lord himself sweeps over to offer her an arm. Elspeth resists the urge to fan herself; she wouldn’t mind playing host body to him for a couple of weeks. “I’m glad to see you devoting yourself to more than just treaties these days, daughter,” he says, beginning to lead Sabrina away. “Every damnable debutante deserves a little fun.”

She reaches back to squeeze Elspeth’s arm as she goes. “Speaking of treaties, actually —"

Praise Sabrina, queen of multi-tasking!

Elspeth takes a tour of the room to make sure everything is going according to plan before she allows herself to unwind with her signature cocktail (prosecco and the river water of Lethe, so delish). She surveys her work proudly, glad to have done a good job. No one ever let her do anything like this topside. As if in answer to her thoughts, a voice purrs in her ear, “Incredibly impressive.”

Elspeth is already smiling before she even looks. The guy, whoever he is, is wearing a mask, but she can tell from the softly waving blonde hair and visible abs that she’s cool with him giving her a once-over. “It was nothing,” she demurs.

“Hardly! I’ve spent a millennia in the Pit and never seen a fête so fabulous.”

“It’s really thanks to Sabrina,” Elspeth says loyally. “She’s such a good queen. She lets me do whatever I want, because she’s super busy, so she needs someone to pick up the slack.” Her chin lifts. “I can do that.”

The stranger plucks two flutes from a passing Cthulhu with a tray and holds one out to her. “What else does your mistress let you do?”

Sabrina is so cool. Elspeth never gets tired of talking about her.

She tells him all about it.

Nick wakes with a jolt. Someone is screaming.

For a moment he thinks the sound is inside his head. It wouldn’t be the first time he woke to an echo of Hell, a shriek he didn’t recognize as his own until afterwards, when his throat was sore with it. But this is no nightmare: somewhere nearby, someone is shouting.

He pushes Agatha’s leg off him and ducks out from under Prudence’s arm, ignoring their sleepy grousing so he can go investigate. Outside, he finds Sabrina, Ambrose, and Harvey all standing uncertainly in the darkness, half in and out of their tents, listening intently. Harvey gets one look at Nick and exclaims, under his breath, “Come on!”

“What?” Nick says.

Harvey gestures at him vaguely and then puts his face in his hand; Nick looks down, confused. He’s wearing briefs. Does the mortal expect him to swelter? It’s July.

Though it is especially cool for the middle of summer. The evening mist has thickened into something approaching fog, making it difficult to see across the campground to where the arguing is coming from. “I say we cast a nice big silencing spell and go back to sle—” Ambrose begins, but he’s cut off by an agonized shout and the sound of flesh impacting flesh.

They trade uneasy looks, but it’s Sabrina who squares up, annoyingly cute in her pink button-down pajamas. “Come on, guys. Let’s go see what’s up.”

They follow her, creeping slowly across the grassy plain to the next small gathering of tents. “I know I say this like once a day now,” Harvey murmurs. His hair is all rumpled at the back. “But does anyone else think this is weird?”

“No, we think it’s completely normal, that’s why we got up in the middle of the night.”

Harvey gives Nick a flat look. “No, dude, I meant —

“What did you mean, dude —”

With a quelling wave, Sabrina says, “Shh! Look.”

There are ten mortals or less ranged around the campsite, their fire long since embers. A few teenage girls huddle nervously, their eyes wide; an older man is sobbing uncontrollably; a woman walks in skittish circles, muttering to herself. In the center of the clearing, a burly mortal is facing off with a bearded man, both of them breathing heavily. “I’m sick of it,” the first man growls, seething. “You fuckin’ asshole, I’m sick of it!”

“Excuse me,” Sabrina tries. “Is everything —”

The burly mortal launches himself at the bearded man, both of them crashing to the ground and rolling in the dirt in a way that is unfortunately not at all titillating. Ambrose casts a privacy spell to deter anyone else from coming near while Nick and Harvey rush forward to pull them apart. Nick almost immediately takes a wayward elbow to the face, force throwing him back down onto the grass.

“Hey!” Harvey snaps, grabbing the man who’d struck Nick. “Watch where you’re —”

The man’s fist crashes full-force into Harvey’s cheekbone. Nick’s hands are up instantly, ready to cast and careless of mortals, when Sabrina speaks.

“Stop.” There’s an echo of magic in the simple word, and the violent melee pauses. The burly man still has Harvey by the collar, fist drawn back for another hit, but he stills. Weeping echoes in the quiet. When Nick looks around, he finds one pair of fearful eyes after another. “What’s going on here?”

What’s wrong with all of them?

“None of your goddamn business,” the bearded man snarls. He tries to move but finds himself stuck in place. “This is between me and him!”

“I think,” Sabrina says, soft but ringing, “that everyone should take a deep breath and go back to bed.”

Nobody moves, but the energy in the clearing shifts. Nick can feel it. The crying man settles into gasping, gulpy breathing.

“That’s nice,” Sabrina murmurs. “That’s good. Let’s all just calm down.”

Some of the tension leaks out of the men, but they seem as muddled as sleepwalkers. The burly man releases Harvey and studies his hands as though they have become unfamiliar to him, running a finger back and forth over his knuckles. Nick’s hands are tingling too. The skin is as strange and sensitized as a burn, but when he looks, there’s nothing there. His palms are pale and unmarked. It’s surprising, but he doesn’t know why; for some reason, he expects to find something there. He opens and closes his hands. His palms itch.

“Nick?” Harvey asks. “You okay?”

Nick’s head jerks up and he glares at Harvey. “What do you care?”

Harvey backs up, hands raised. “Jeez, man. I don’t, okay?”

Nick knows he doesn’t.

“Looks like we aren’t the only ones who know how to stir up trouble,” Sabrina jokes, smiling. Hands on hips, she radiates the sense of a job well done, a problem squashed and conquered. Nick doesn’t feel quite so relieved.

“Don’t you think —” he starts, but he’s interrupted by one of the mortal girls, who jumps up, gesturing excitedly, and calls out —

“Hail, Sabrina!”

Her friends erupt in giggles as they converge on her, all shushing and secrecy. But they can’t help sending Sabrina shy little waves, whispering to each other from behind their cupped hands. There’s reverence in the way they stare at her. They know her, but more than that, they adore her.

Nick watches horror blossom on Sabrina’s face like a night-blooming flower. That’s when he begins to put one or two things together: those girls are not her friends. This isn’t some kind of inside joke. And Sabrina knows something about it, because there isn’t even a tinge of confusion in her growing dread. She looks as though a horrible question has just found an answer.

A telling shiver races up Nick’s spine. Harvey meets his eyes, and Nick knows he feels the same thing. “Do you know her, ‘Brina?”

Sabrina shakes head slowly. “No. I’ve never seen her before.” Her expression shutters as she pulls her gaze from the girls, fear swallowed by false bafflement. “Weird, huh?”

She’s lying. Nick doesn’t know about what, exactly, but he knows she is. If anyone could tell, he could. He’s the expert.

“Spellman,” he says, with patience he doesn’t feel. His palms burn. “What did you do.”

“Nothing,” comes out of Sabrina in an aggressive, automatic mutter, her whole body recoiling from the accusation in Nick’s eyes. With an abrupt about-face, she starts back in the direction of their campsite, stalking through the fog like there’s fire at her heels. “Though that’s a really funny question coming from you, Nick.”

“And that’s an evasive answer.”

The boys have to hurry to keep pace with her, but they still lag a step or two behind; Sabrina is glad she can’t see their faces and whatever is written across them. “’Brina, nobody’s mad, we’re just confused,” Harvey tries, but Nick disagrees.

“Speak for yourself, farm boy,” he says. “On both counts.”

The ruckus has brought everyone out of their tents, bleary-eyed and yawning. Prudence has an arm around Agatha, who’s fidgeting in place and humming slightly as her eyes roam the clearing. Robin clutches Theo’s hand tight enough to be concerning, and Theo pats him gently before glancing at Sabrina with a quizzical quirk of his eyebrow. They always look to her to tell them what’s going on when everything goes wrong.

But Roz is the first to ask. Her breath catches at the sight of them and she rushes over to Harvey, cupping his bruised face tenderly. ”Oh my god, what happened?!”

“Cousin,” Ambrose says carefully. “Perhaps you and I could talk this over in the tent…?”

“No.” Harvey’s voice is surprisingly strident, eyes on Sabrina past the gentle cage of Roz’s fingers. “Enough whispering. You guys know something. We shouldn’t have to be in the dark about it.”

“I second that,” Nick says.

“Oh, now you’re on the same side,” Sabrina huffs.

“It’s not about sides,” Harvey says. “You gotta tell us what’s going on. Why did that girl back there react like you were —”

“A queen,” Nick finishes softly, dangerous. The word drops heavily into the quiet.

One brick pulled and then another, and now Sabrina’s tower is trembling.

When she doesn’t say anything immediately, Roz ventures, “’Brina… Just a question, no judgment, but are you — are you still the Queen of Hell?”

“No!” Sabrina says, and then, “Not — exactly.”

“Oh, holy Hecate,” Prudence breathes, pressing her middle finger between her eyebrows.

“I’m not,” Sabrina says, which is the truth, it’s just unfortunate that the truth is also, “But I…am, too.”

If she expected a weight to lift from her shoulders, she might be waiting for a while. Her friends’ faces are impassive but unsurprised, prepared for anything from her. And? they seem to say, standing around with cocked hips and folded arms. What else?

Sabrina closes her eyes and presses on. “When the pagans came, I didn’t help. I went on my quest for the Unholy Regalia instead. Caliban trapped me in the Ninth Circle for years and when I finally got out, earth had been overrun. All of you were dead.”

Her voice gets stronger as she continues, “I went back in time to fix it,” because she always fixes it, and they should know that too. “But I created a time loop in the process. There were two of me — the one who saved you, and the one who didn’t.” She takes a breath, and she can hear how it wavers in a throat thick with tension. “I never closed the loop. I let her — the Other Sabrina — reign in Hell. And I came home. To you guys.”

“Hail, Sabrina,” Harvey murmurs, half to himself.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Prudence directs this sharp question to Ambrose, who can only offer a helpless, silent assent. She scoffs, shaking her head, and Sabrina feels a spike of guilt: another betrayal.

“It’s not Ambrose’s fault.” She sinks down onto one of the logs by the dying fire. “He’s been trying to make me deal with this all summer.”

“That doesn’t explain why that girl in the clearing knew you,” Nick points out. Theo raises his arms in a perplexed shrug, but Harvey waves him off, like, later. “She was a mortal. What does a mortal know of the Queen of Hell?”

“I think…” Sabrina swallows against the tiny kernel of knowledge inside her that says she more than thinks; she knows. “She must be planning something. The Other Sabrina. I don’t know exactly what, but — something.”

“She’s you, so stands to reason,” Ambrose remarks with more dry amusement than Sabrina could muster right about now. “But humor us: you think that because…? Any specifics you may have kept from your cousin? You’re making your guilty face.”

For Ambrose, sarcasm is a thin line between genuine bitterness and good cheer; right now, she’s not sure which this is. “I’ve been seeing her. Me.” It’s barely above a whisper. “The Other Sabrina. Just glimpses. First in the fires at Litha, then in the mirrors at home.”

Ambrose exhales. “That I didn’t know. That — Sabrina. That could be the timeline trying to right itself, to merge. It could — there are about fifty theories running wild in my head right now —”

“At Battle of the Bands…” Harvey trails off, his brow knit. “I could’ve sworn I heard the butcher in Greendale say, um, ‘hail, Satan.’ I thought maybe I was imagining it. But now, after that girl —”

“You can’t go by Mr. Plum,” Theo says dismissively. “He sucks. He would definitely worship Satan on his own.”

Harvey’s face is too intent for a smile to crack it. “’Brina, what if Hell is…spreading? Getting into Greendale, Midvale…”

“And here I was hoping a father with tentacles was all I really had to worry about,” Prudence sneers. “It’s enough to make a girl nostalgic for eldritch terrors.”

“It can’t,” Sabrina says, and she means it with all the willpower in her body: it can’t, she won’t let it. “We weren’t ever supposed to cross paths again, that was the point. Hell in Hell and earth left alone, the balance restored. She and I promised. I could be me and she — she could take care of everything else and —”

“Balance?” Nick repeats. “How can you even pretend to care about that?”

“I do care!”

“If you cared, there wouldn’t be two Sabrinas wandering around right now!” he explodes. “The only thing you care about is you. And power. Like father, like daughter.”

It stings like a slap. “Don’t you dare.”

“I’m sorry, Spellman, what am I supposed to think?” His hand hits his chest and flies out, breadth of his gesture encompassing both of them, the whole campsite, the entire situation. “What’s your justification for this one? You always find a reason to do whatever you want, so what is it this time? Who did this help, except you?”

Sabrina opens her mouth but is, uncharacteristically, at a loss. It takes her a moment to find her voice. No one helps her in the silence, not even Ambrose. “Did you want my father to rule in Hell? Did you want me to have to leave, to live down there? I was keeping everyone safe this way. I was making sure everything —”

“Wow.” The complicated sound that leaves Nick isn’t a laugh or a scoff, or even the precursor to a sob. It’s a little of all of them, and something else besides, a formless noise of real anger. “Did I want your father to rule? No. No, Sabrina, I didn’t. That’s why I trapped him in my body. To stop him, and to save you, so you wouldn’t have to be his queen. I broke myself into a million pieces. And for what? So you could pick the crown back up as soon as you put it down?”

A chill sinks into Sabrina’s skin. “I had to do that to get you out.”

“Right,” Nick says. “You had to become Queen. You didn’t have a choice. You couldn’t have crowned Lilith, or found another way, made another deal. The only option you had was to make a grab for power. The only option you had was to split yourself in two so you could control everything and everyone around you.”

“That’s not fair, Nick,” Sabrina says tightly. “I’m not trying to control anyone!”

She remembers finding him with his face smeared red and green, thinking he was dead. Nick lied to her practically from the minute they met. He pretended to love her because her father told him to. Show a pretty girl a good time. He made a fool of her for letting him get close at all. He drank himself into oblivion. He filled himself with poison. He cheated on her. He asked her in the woods if she still wanted him, and then he went to bed with Prudence.

“You’re trying to control a kingdom,” he says. “And keep all of us on a short leash of ignorance.”

It hurts so much that Sabrina feels like she’s cracking down the middle. It shouldn’t be possible for someone to hurt her so much, and especially for that someone to be Nick. She erased him. She burned him out. “This is why I did that cord-cutting spell,” Sabrina snaps, wanting to hurt him, wanting him to know just how far she went to snuff out her feelings for him. “So I would never have to feel like this because of you, ever again.”

But somehow she did anyway.

Silence reigns. Then Theo says, “That what now?”

Nick straightens, and certain things seem to shift into place for him. “A cord-cutting spell. It allows the caster to erase their feelings for someone. It’s a very simple spell.”

“Or it should be,” Prudence says wryly. “Doesn’t seem to have done much in this case, does it?”

“I did it after Nick and I broke up,” Sabrina adds, glancing at Theo. “You need two candles with one wick. I put my name on one, and his and Harvey’s on the other. Then you light the wick and when it snaps, it’s supposed to —” It takes a moment for her words to catch up to her, but they ripple through her friends first, and Sabrina thinks, oh no.

“Wait,” Roz says. “Harvey’s name? Why would you put Harvey’s name on it?”

Sabrina mouth opens without a word to fill it and closes again.

Prudence stares at her, caught between horror and amazement. “You put Nicky’s name on the same candle as the witch-hunter’s?”

“Um,” Sabrina says. “Yes?”

Prudence laughs outright. “You infernal idiot!” she declares. “Was there a shortage on candles? Not enough time to do the spell twice? Lucifer below.” She draws her silk kimono up over her shoulders and leans in. “All you did, spawn of Satan, was push your feelings into them.”

Sabrina’s brow furrows as her gaze slides from Nick to Harvey. Suddenly they’re the focus of the circle, and Harvey squirms a little under so much attention. “That actually explains a lot,” he says, and when he’s greeted with an array of raised eyebrows, adds, “Not that — um. I mean…yeah.” He clears his throat.

“I don’t feel any different,” Nick announces brusquely.

Prudence snorts. “What does that not surprise me?”

Embarrassed, Nick looks away. “You tricked your true love into having a crush on me,” he says. “How’s that for pawns in the game?”

He stands for a moment with his hands on his hips, shoulders hunched and body angled away from her. With a final glance, too quick to read, he leaves. When he strides into the fog in the direction of the trees, no one stops him.

“I wasn’t trying to control anyone,” Sabrina says in a small voice, to no one in particular. “That’s not what I was doing.”

“Yeah, but you…” Harvey’s voice rises and falls, gives out and starts over. “You lied to all of us. Again. Not a little lie, ‘Brina. A big one. It could have been dangerous, we could have gotten hurt.”

“Harvey —”

The hurt on his face is so bright. It’s the same hurt he had all those months ago after Tommy, when he first found out that someone he trusted could lie to him so completely with a smile on her face and say it was for his own good. “And I could get that, maybe. I know you. I know you get these big ideas and you can’t help chasing them down. But, ‘Brina…” A small notch forms in his forehead, mouth twisting unhappily. “I can’t believe you did another spell on me.”

A cold little tear, maybe selfish, streaks down her cheek. “I didn’t want to hurt you. Or Roz. That’s why I —"

“You weren’t even going to tell me. You said it by accident. You got caught.” He glances in the direction Nick went, then squares himself to go another way. “I can’t really look at you right now, Sabrina.”

Harvey goes, too. Roz takes half a step after him on instinct, then stops. “Do you remember,” she says slowly, “when I asked you if you still —” She clears her throat, lips pressed together, and Sabrina nods, so Roz won’t have to say it. At the beach, a million and one years ago, she had put her heart on her sleeve and asked if Sabrina still had feelings for Harvey. “You lied then, too.”

Sabrina’s heart seizes. “Roz —”

“I have to see if Harvey’s okay,” she says. “He is still my boyfriend, after all.”

Roz heads out after him, calling his name, and Sabrina is left in the rubble.

“I’d ask if there was anything else,” Ambrose quips, “but I might not get a straight answer even then!” He begins rifling through one of the coolers. “I pray to whoever we’re praying to that one of you packed hard liquor.”

“And that there’s more than one bottle,” Prudence says. “Agatha, do you —” She turns on the spot. “Where’s Agatha?”

“That was more revelations than anyone should have revealed to them, least of all me,” Theo says. “I don’t want to know anything else, goodbye and goodnight, see all of you in the morning, when hopefully everything is different!”

He reaches for the tent flap, pulling Robin along with him, but Robin digs his heels in. “Typical,” he says tersely.

Theo blinks at him. “Um, quoi?”

“Stop your insipid blathering,” Prudence hisses. “Has anyone seen Agatha?”

She ducks into her own tent, and Ambrose checks theirs; Sabrina knows she should help, but she feels fused to the log, unable to do more than wrap her arms around herself and shiver.

Prudence reemerges, looking wild. “She’s not here. She’s not here!”

“Don’t worry,” Ambrose tries. “I’m sure we could —” Prudence takes off before he can finish the sentence. “Sabrina, do you want to — Sabrina?”

Sabrina closes her eyes, bows her head, and takes a breath. When she lifts her chin again, there’s renewed fire in her eyes. “I can fix this,” she says fervently. “I can fix all of it.”

“Harvey!”

There’s a rushing in Harvey’s ears like wind. He moves through the trees, threaded through with fog like grimy candy floss, and all he can think is: another spell.

Anger starts as an ember, and then he gives it little things to eat. Blows on it gently with frustration and feeds it small bits of righteousness. Another spell. Like Harvey was a pet or a toy, a fragile thing too stupid to understand so it had to be mollified with lies. As though he couldn’t be trusted to control his own feelings, so Sabrina had to nudge them into place, add and subtract. All that confusion and guilt he’s been swallowing is there because she made a mistake. Sleeping in his car during Litha because he wanted to go back into that tightly packed crowd and find them again, touch and be touched. Now this knot in his stomach over Nick —

“Harvey!”

Another spell, and there’s a chance he would never have known. That’s how magic works. It slips into your life so effortlessly that you didn’t even notice it wasn’t always there, and you get used to it and give in to it and start to like it. You think it’s funny and a little misunderstood; you see the appeal and you forget all about the danger. Harvey forgets too much. And Sabrina keeps too much from him, always has.

“Harvey!”

His hands are in fists. His sneakers pound against the packed earth, crunching leaves and twigs beneath him. His heart slams up against the inside of his chest the same way it did when Dad would shove him against the wall. But Harvey knows too well what it’s like on the other side — to be the one doing the shoving. To be the one who picks up the gun. He feels like that now. Like kindling. His father’s quickfire fuse.

Roz is breathless when she gets ahold of him, latching onto the tensed muscles of his arm. “Why didn’t you stop?”

“I — couldn’t,” Harvey says, strangled.

Looking down at her upturned face with its worried frown, it occurs to Harvey that this is the first time they’ve been alone together since before she went on that trip with Prudence. There have been no more desperate late-night kisses, no hands held on dates to Dr. Cee’s. They’re supposed to be taking a break but they’re not broken up and neither of them knows what to do with that, or how it works.

“You’re upset,” Roz says. “We all are.”

She doesn’t text him first thing in the morning anymore or call him before she falls asleep. Every time Harvey reaches for his phone and finds nothing waiting for him, his stomach drops. The disappointment has been so deep he hasn’t even tried to fix it. She probably doesn’t want to talk to him, he rationalizes. She’s probably busy.

“I didn’t know Sabrina was going to do that,” he blurts. “With — whatever that spell was. I know —” I know you’ve been worried, he almost says, but he can’t bring himself to let it out. He thinks of her face when he’d haltingly told her about Caliban’s spell, the one that didn’t work, the one he said was a trick. He amends, “You know I love you.”

That’s his truth. But Roz’s face doesn’t smooth. “She obviously felt like she had some reason to put your name on there.”

“How she feels is how she feels,” Harvey tries, and pushes away the thoughts that rise in him: Sabrina’s fingers brushing his when they put Roz back together, her turning away from him in the hall at the Academy, twirling with her at the ice cream shop, her head on his shoulder in the garage, her body against his at Litha. “I think she’s just messed up about Nick. I don’t think it’s really about me.”

“Right,” Roz says. “Nick.”

Hastily, Harvey pivots, “I know things haven’t been great with us since you went off with Prudence, but —”

Roz takes a half-step back. “Oh, so now this is my fault?”

“What? No, that’s not what I —”

“Because if I had to pick a moment, I’d say things started going wrong when I saw you and Sabrina kissing.”

Harvey stares at her in disbelief. “In a vision! It wasn’t real.”

“The cunning doesn’t lie,” Roz says sharply. “It hurts, but it doesn’t lie.”

His anger flares. He doesn’t lie either. “I don’t know what to tell you! It didn’t happen. I haven’t kissed Sabrina since we’ve been together.”

Roz gets a strange look on her face. It’s reminiscent somehow of the men at the other campsite — lit up inside but not altogether there. “When was the last time? The last time you kissed Sabrina?”

Harvey hates that his heart jumps. “Months ago.” Sabrina pressed against him on the couch in the library, hesitant but wanting in a way they hadn’t really been before, because they didn’t know then how easily it could all be over. A kiss that lasted all the way home. “When you were sick, and we were doing Romeo and Juliet.”

If he expects that to help, it doesn’t. Roz’s face falls and she blinks rapidly against sudden tears. Harvey is horrified, but when he moves closer, she moves back, again. “Not in your garage?”

“What? No. Why do you — did you see that?”

She nods. Her second vision, the one she didn’t want to talk about. “She was sitting in your lap. On the couch.”

“Roz, that was Nick,” he says urgently, feeling as much relief as bewilderment. “I don’t know why the cunning would show you that, but it was Nick. Not me.”

“You saw them?”

She says saw like it’s suspicious, as though Harvey had been peering through a hole in the wall. “Yeah, by accident. Whatever you’re thinking, Rosalind, I swear —”

“Did something happen with Nick at Litha?”

It’s so completely the last thing Harvey expects to hear that he reels a little, white noise in his head. “What?”

Roz studies him with eyes that always seem to see something he doesn’t. That’s not new; Harvey has always lagged behind. “He said you had a crush on him.”

Harvey has already buried that somewhere in his subconscious. He can’t handle it without feeling a third degree burn of embarrassment. “Nick probably thinks everyone has a crush on him.” To be fair, most people did. “Did you…see anything else?”

Nick’s hand on his back, Sabrina crushed between them.

That makes Roz straighten. “Why? Is there something I should know?”

“No, I just —”

“Is that why you’ve been all over me lately? Is that — on my god.” She turns and walks off, digging her fingers into her temples. Harvey reaches for her before the fog can swallow her up.

“All over you? You’re my girlfriend, I —”

“Am I?” Roz demands, whirling on him. “You got your job with Sabrina this summer and I hardly saw you. I decided to do one thing on my own, to help people who needed it, and ever since then it’s like you don’t even know I exist. You never call me anymore, or try to touch me. Then Litha happened and now you’re kissing me and holding my hand, and —” She stills. “Just like you did when you dumped Sabrina. When we got together. And suddenly you were looking at me like you’d never seen me before.”

Harvey’s jaw sets. “Sabrina has nothing to do with you and me.”

“She’s my best friend,” Roz says. “Your first love.”

“We both love ‘Brina,” he protests.

“Yeah, but only one of us loved her the way you did.”

His heart jump-starts again, but he reminds it sternly: another spell. “You had other boyfriends before me. I’ve never been upset or jealous or — or bothered by —”

“I never loved anyone before you, though,” Roz says, quiet enough that it cuts through the bluster. “Even when we were kids, I —”

Her voice breaks off. Harvey pulls her to him and kisses her, tastes a tear that must have slid down her cheek unseen and kisses her harder because of it. Roz returns it like she always has, keen and sweet, blossoming for him. Then she breaks away and pushes him back.

“Stop it!” she says. “Don’t pretend a kiss can make this better.”

“I’m not. But Rosalind, no matter what, I lo—”

She shakes her head. “Don’t.”

“It’s the truth!”

“Your truth.” She looks away. “The truth I wanted to hear.”

Harvey doesn’t understand. If she wanted to hear it and he wanted to say it, then why wasn’t it working? Why wasn’t it enough?

Her gaze becomes measured and knowing like when she tutors him in calc, but with a sadness so deep he can’t comprehend where it came from. “I used to be afraid that you only wanted me because you didn’t want to hurt anymore. Because I couldn’t hurt you.”

Flatly, he says, “Rosalind, that’s crazy.”

“Is it? I was already your friend. And I liked you more than you liked me. I was safe.”

“If you think this doesn’t hurt me,” he says, “then I don’t know what to say to you.”

Steadily, Roz says, “I don’t think you’ll be hurting for long.”

The kindling catches a spark. “Is this it? Are you breaking up with me over some spell I had nothing to do with, that I didn’t even know —”

“We got together because of a vision.” She’s stiff now, formal and unlike herself. “I don’t know why we shouldn’t break up over a spell.”

“Because it’s ridiculous.”

“Tell me you don’t love Sabrina. Tell me why I see her every time you and I try to —” Her lips press together. “Tell me about Nick.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” he snaps.

It echoes between them, the sharpness, and Harvey hears a note of his father in it; the finality with which he would sometimes hit the table, the way he’d shut down conversations before they could start.

“Fine,” Roz says. “I’m exhausted. I can’t talk about this anymore. I’m going back to camp, I’ll stay with Prudence and Agatha —”

He can’t help scoffing. “Yeah, your new best friends. I’m sure they have nothing to do with this.”

Roz blinks, half turned away. “Seriously?”

He shrugs, shoulders jerking. “I get it. Magic is a helluva lot more interesting than watching me draw in my room. And I know how Prudence talks about me, like I’m a dog or something —” He doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore. He doesn’t care that she’s friends with Prudence, he actually likes Prudence; he thinks she’s funny and pretty cool, even if she’s also really mean and scary. But it’s like there’s something inside him pushing the words out, filling his mouth with venom. “And I guess it doesn’t bother you that Agatha’s a killer —"

“She was in trouble too —”

“— her own sister —”

“She’s not well!” Roz explodes. “Harvey. I’m not doing this. I’m not. You need to cool down and I need to sleep. We’ll talk about this tomorrow, when you’re not being completely irrational.”

Tension runs up the back of his arm from his clenched fingers. “Will we still be broken up tomorrow?”

Roz returns his gaze evenly but doesn’t say anything for a long minute, only shrugs like she doesn’t know what else to tell him. “Yeah, Harv,” she says finally. “I think so.”

This time he doesn’t stop her from leaving. He holds his fist tight until his nails are embedded in the flesh, until his hand trembles, and then he hauls back and slams his knuckles into the nearest tree. Hurt reverberates all the way up to his shoulder, but it’s a good hurt, so bad he can’t think through it.

Then the tree hits him back.

Nick is lost.

Emotion had carried him too far into unfamiliar trees, but that wouldn’t normally be an issue. Nick was raised in the woods, so he’s never ill-at-ease in them, no matter which woods they are. He isn’t fearful of what lurks in the shadows or feasts in the dark. There were so many nights when he fell asleep under a green canopy with the fur of the wolves rough against his cheek; so many mornings punctured by the chattering of birds. But the fog has turned the trees into ghostly sentinels, each identical to the next, and Nick can’t remember which pair was the last he passed. Which direction he came from. Everything is dense and quiet, no murmur of human voices or crackling fires to be heard.

He only wanted a moment to himself. A quick breath caught away from Sabrina, her big dark eyes holding so much anger and pain that Nick couldn’t seem to stop causing, a lash because he couldn’t be a balm. She hurt you, too, he thinks, but shuts it down swiftly. Whatever Sabrina did, he did worse. That’s how the song goes. She was saving realms and he was only mired in self-absorption, clumsily gluing his jagged pieces together and cutting up everyone else in the process. He was a distraction, he’d said it himself, and Sabrina was doing things that mattered so much more than him.

He can’t believe her. He can’t believe she —

No, he thinks, and almost laughs. He can believe it. He can believe anything of her. Of course she wouldn’t have given up Hell, wouldn’t go back to pom-poms and ice cream cones when there was a kingdom waiting for her. He can’t believe he ever thought she had. In retrospect, it seems absurd that he was so quick to accept that she would be happy with a smaller world after she had tasted a much bigger one. That was why he fell for her, after all. His girl who took big leaps and suffered the consequences.

Consequences being relative.

Nick starts walking in another direction, listening carefully for voices but hearing none. There’s only the wind and the crickets. His hands still feel oddly tender, but the pins-and-needles tingling is nothing new. It comes with the chest-tight feeling, the sudden breathlessness. It’s been happening to him on and off since Hell. Without potions to alleviate it or drinks to down it, Nick just sort of pretends it isn’t happening. He knows he’s not going to die from it. It’s just a consequence. Nick has had his fill of those.

He told Sabrina he was a distraction and she took it to heart. That must be why she did the candle spell. Without him weighing her down, she was free to do whatever she liked — live two lives at once, have everything she wanted and more. It explained why she was running hot and cold with him, cool in the Academy’s halls and overheated in her mortal’s garage. That she still wanted to fuck him didn’t seem like anything unusual to Nick, because most people wanted that if nothing else from him, but obviously she could no longer pretend affection when she had cut the cord, severed their ties, unburdened herself of his drama and narcissism.

But it is…too bad, about the mortal. Nick supposes it makes sense now, knowing it was only a spell. Why else would Harvey give him the time of day?

Too bad, he thinks again, flexing his numb fingers. Nick hadn’t minded being his friend, for a little while. Hadn’t minded being looked at like that, by him.

Nick scans the trees, hoping for something familiar to catch his attention. He thinks he remembers the knot in that trunk, but it’s hard to be sure. That felled log seems like one he’d passed on his way out, but he isn’t sure about the stump next to it. Still there is no sound but the rustling. The rest of the world could have dropped away and Nick would be none the wiser out here.

His hands ache. He rubs them together idly to try to relieve the tension, pressing his thumb into the center of his palm and sinking in, in, into something wet and hot, that feels almost like —

Nick jerks his hands apart, and nerves burst along his back and shoulders. His heart races. Hands don’t work like that. They shouldn’t feel like that. When he looks down at his thumb, there are several shallow, irritated depressions in the skin.

Teeth marks. There are teeth marks on his thumb.

Something bit him.

Nick has stalled between two tall oaks, their low branches woven together just above his head. The backs of his hands are completely normal, but he touches them with tentative fingertips just in case. The skin is smooth and unremarkable. Terrified, he carefully turns his hands over.

There in the middle of both palms are two open mouths, hungry and wanting, full of teeth.

Revulsion is ragged in his throat. He snaps his fingers closed and shuts his eyes, but he can still feel them — the lips against his fingertips, the slippery heat of tongues.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Nick says aloud, firmly. He tells himself that when he opens his hands again, there will be nothing there.

His fingers uncurl. He finds pale palms blank of anything but a few scratches, from being clutched closed so tight. He exhales slowly.

Then a deliberate touch trails up his spine, like the playful tease of a rough fingertip. Nicholas, the wind says. Have you been bad?

Nick jolts and sprints without a second thought, choosing flight instead of fighting whatever madness lurks in the Midvale woods. But the rustling of the trees follows him, a cacophony of whispers finding a single voice.

What’s your pleasure, Nicholas? it asks. Pain?

Something curls over his chest, sliding down from his shoulder to wrap around his waist, and Nick rips at it wildly, pulling apart leaves and twigs. A vine. Another catches his wrist with the strength of a grasping hand but Nick yanks himself free, racing through the trees until a root lifts to trip him and he sprawls, landing hard on his knee with a scraping surge of pain.

You asked for us, the woods say. One of each. The fog is so thick now that Nick can’t see more than a foot in front of him. The vines slither up his legs, twist through his hair, hold him fast to the cool damp earth. Don’t you want us to make you feel better?

Or make you feel worse?

When he tries to push himself up, he buckles. The mouths are back, lascivious and grotesque in his dirt-spotted hands. He tries to rip them out with his fingernails, but they bite at him, and he could swear the leaves are laughing. Nicholas, they sigh, like he is so very silly. The vines brush flirtatiously against the back of his ear, his neck, along his sides. The wind caresses and the vines pluck, trying to drag him back into the depths of the forest. Come in, the leaves shiver, come in out of the cold.

And Nick thinks, fuck this.

He fights. He remembers being in Sabrina’s room after she pulled him out of Hell, her kiss waking him from sleep like something from a fairytale. He remembers the mortal’s easy smile, standing at his door and ushering Nick inside.

Nick pulls himself out of the embrace of the earth hand by hand and stumbles on, half-falling and dodging trees, until he charges into a misty clearing. Something is not right here. All around him, the undergrowth whispers and crackles, the sound growing stronger and closer until he knows with certainty —

There is something in the bushes.

Roz has never felt stupider. And it doesn’t help that she has no idea where she is.

She’d plunged headfirst into the fog with tears in her eyes, furious and heartbroken but not wanting Harvey to see, because he would pull her in close and she knew she would go. She would collapse against his chest and let him hold her, and maybe they’d make up and she’d let this whole sorry thing drag on for another two months. Or more. Two months or more of Harvey sounds painfully good right now, and bad at the same time. It sounds like sneaking out of her window at night to run over to Harvey’s house and kiss in his foyer: something she wasn’t supposed to do, but often did anyway.

She’s never been a woodsy girl, for as much time as she seems to spend in them. She took a wrong turn somewhere and can’t find any of the trails or campground signs. Theo isn’t picking up his phone. She could go back the way she came, except — she can’t.

Instead Roz lays her hands on the bark of the nearest tree and says, “Cunning, you owe me one.”

She doesn’t see a path so much as feel one, following her feet as they track through the underbrush with renewed purpose. The cunning has always allowed her to see, but Roz has been resistant, even stubborn. She picked out the parts she liked — Harvey kissing her in the hall of Baxter High, the stuff of a million midnight fantasies — and let the rest fall away. She should have known the warning when she saw it: heartbreak up ahead.

Prudence had warned her, too. Who hadn’t? Even Theo had received the news with trepidation, said, Harv, huh? with a clenched-teeth grimace Roz wanted to believe was a smile. Just like she wanted to believe it when Sabrina said it was okay, when Sabrina told her it was over between her and Harvey, even though Roz knew in her gut it couldn’t be. She’d grown up with them. She saw the whole thing start to finish and she’d been envious enough to let it blind her.

Her truth. The truth she wanted to hear.

But she hadn’t had all the information. She never knew that Harvey had kissed Sabrina during Romeo and Juliet, a time Roz always thought back on with tenderness because it was when Harvey started to look at her differently, his gaze gone soft. He brought her homework and chicken soup when she got sick, but maybe he only did it out of guilt. If things had gone differently, Roz could have come back Monday morning to find Harvey and Sabrina holding hands again, Sabrina up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek the way she used to do. He asked Roz out instead. Not because he loved her more, but because he couldn’t have Sabrina.

Sabrina’s true love, like Nick had said. Not Roz’s. Not a love that could wake her from stone.

Not a love that belongs to her anymore.

Through the fog, Roz can make out a series of red ties affixed to a row of trees — the first sign of a dirt trail to somewhere. It’s better than nothing. She sends up a prayer of thanks and steps forward, just in time to get bodied from the right and slammed down into the earth, her back hitting the ground flat.

It happens so quick that it knocks the air out of Roz’s lungs. One second she’s upright and the next she’s not, her hips pinned by someone’s weight and her head spinning so much she wouldn’t be surprised to see cartoon birds circling her. The fog is thick as a cloud, like being in a plane and looking out the window into nothing but white, so she can only see the shape of the person above her — just a dark outline of head and shoulders ringed by trees.

Then Agatha leans forward, her hands pressed into the soil on either side of Roz’s head. “Fancy meeting you here.”

The crazy thing is, Roz is relieved. It’s crazy because Agatha is covered in blood all down her front, her thin silk nightgown sticking to her with it, the black fabric wine-dark and her skin streaked crimson. There’s even a spray of blood across her delicate face. Leaves in her hair. She looks like Snow White got into trouble, a princess escaping a hunter. Except Agatha is the hunter.

She isn’t wearing the earbuds, either.

“Agatha,” Roz says, inching around the words. “Did you do something?”

Agatha hums a soft, inconclusive sound and lifts a hand like she might brush Roz’s hair back before thinking better of it. “Don’t worry. It’s not mine.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Roz says faintly.

Agatha smiles slow, with teeth. “Oh, right. That is what worries you.” She leans so close her dark hair slips off her shoulder and grazes Roz’s cheek, fingers crawl-walking playfully up Roz’s arms and leaving behind wet spots of blood. “He tried to grab me, and I didn’t like that.”

Roz stamps down on a rush of fierce protectiveness. Agatha sometimes says things out of time — talks about Blackwood when she means someone else, or offers non sequiturs that might have made more sense six months earlier. Still, Roz thinks, it doesn’t actually matter if Agatha is talking about tonight or any other night; no one should have grabbed her. Maybe what happened in the woods, whatever it was, triggered her.

As soon as she thinks it, Roz’s stomach does a sour little backflip. And I guess it doesn’t bother you that Agatha’s a killer, Harvey had said.

“No one should touch you unless you want them to,” Roz tells her.

“You’re very sweet, for a mortal,” Agatha muses. “Is that why Prudence likes you so? She made a pet of you. She never would have before, not for any mortal, especially one with your…allegiances.” Her fingers dip under the collar of Roz’s t-shirt to find the small gold cross she wears, twisting it around for a moment before dropping it thoughtlessly, now smudged with blood. “Though Prudence isn’t quite as pious as she once was.”

“Not a pet,” Roz says. “A friend.”

“See?” Agatha’s fingers trail down the center of Roz’s chest and over her stomach. “Sweet.”

“Thanks…I guess. Agatha, do you think you could —”

Agatha’s eyes slip closed and she shifts slightly, her full weight settling on Roz’s thighs and head tipping back like she’s listening to something. It exposes her throat to the low light of the woods, flesh lit faintly silver from obscured starlight. “I hear it sometimes,” she breathes. “The flutes. Can’t you hear them? They make me want — so much.” Her eyes, heavy-lidded, refocus on Roz. Her hands contract on Roz’s soft stomach, relaxed fingers tensing. “Bad things.”

Blood shines on Agatha’s skin. Someone’s blood, someone Roz doesn’t know, who maybe deserved it or didn’t, if you could even say anyone deserved that. Someone who might be dead now for no other reason than the vagaries of Agatha’s mind, turned into a prism by a strange god and sending fractured light in every direction. Maybe it’s wrong of Roz not to blame her, but she doesn’t. Nevertheless she feels her first shiver of real fear, because in one of her frenzies Agatha had butchered the person she loved best in the world, and Roz is most certainly not that.

So she panics.

Roz bucks Agatha off — or tries to. She can’t quite dislodge her, instead unseating Agatha just enough to twist underneath her and scramble away. Agatha grabs the back of Roz’s shirt and she makes an involuntary nervous noise, kicking back at Agatha without really wanting to hit her. Agatha catches her by the arms so Roz throws herself to the side, both of them rolling, hanging onto each other. Roz feels the edge of Agatha’s teeth against the flickering pulse point of her throat, Agatha’s mouth full and hot on Roz’s skin.

Roz gives them one final push. They land in a pile of half-dead summer leaves and grass, Agatha on the ground beneath Roz with her wrists held down. She surges up once, her eyes full of light and laughing, all that blood on her face.

And, desperately, Roz sings.

She sings whatever comes into her head. It doesn’t work at first, Roz’s voice shivery and uncertain in her mouth, no rhythm, feeling dumb in the silence of the forest. But Agatha watches her with those intent cat’s eyes and Roz’s voice gets stronger and louder until she can see the shift happen, Agatha’s face clearing and calming. The tension leaks from her body until she’s pliant under Roz, no longer a creature of nails and teeth but a girl again, a girl in trouble.

Roz doesn’t care if it makes her a hypocrite. She feels better, too.

Ambrose deeply regrets the lack of hard liquor in the camping supplies, though it’s his own fault because he really should have seen this coming.

Following the flight of half their friends and enemies, Sabrina has entered full fix-it mode, her white hair in mad scientist disarray. “I’ll just do the candle spell again, that’s the simplest place to start,” she mutters, diving into their tent and returning with Ambrose’s bag. She searches inside it for something but comes up wanting, though she goes so far as to stick her head under the leather flap. “You didn’t bring candles? Why didn’t you bring candles?”

“I wasn’t aware you were going to try to perform any rituals in the middle of the night,” Ambrose remarks. “I thought this was a weekend of chatting and drinking, not mania and shocking revelations.” Then again, “Though I really should have seen that coming.”

Sabrina’s mouth barely quirks as she drops the bag. “It’s okay, I can teleport home really quick and get the candles, then I can do the spell right and separate myself from Nick and from Harvey, and them from each other —” She pauses. “Do you think I need six candles? You know what, I’ll grab eight to be sure —”

Ambrose privately thinks it’s a pity the whole Nicholas-and-Harvey situation didn’t go anywhere, because he was holding out hope after seeing Harvey without a shirt on at Litha. Alas. “Cousin, were you even listening to your mortal? Do you really think he wants more magic cast on him?”

Firmly, she says, “I have to undo what I did.”

“Priorities,” Ambrose cautions. “I think the greater concern is that most of our comrades have vanished into the night, and the rest —” He sighs in the general direction of Theo and Robin, who have been bickering for the last half an hour at least. “Well.”

(“We’re only in the dumb woods because you wanted to be!” Theo exclaims, hands thrown up towards the sky with ultimate exasperation. “You never shut up about the stupid woods! One day I’m leaving Greendale and moving somewhere where it’s all concrete.”

“See, I knew it,” Robin says. “I knew you didn’t respect hobgoblin traditions at all. I’m just, like, some fun diversion for you because there aren’t any other available guys in town!”

“Dude!” Theo says. “What the fuck!”)

Sabrina appears to take in what Ambrose is saying, but Sabrina is excellent at giving the impression of listening and then running off half-cocked to do whatever she had decided to do in the first place. “You’re right.”

The words are chilling. He has no idea how Sabrina is going to interpret this once she puts it through her Sabrina Translator.

She lifts her hands, back straightening. “I’ll summon everyone back to camp. Maybe I should put us in a bubble so they can’t go anywhere? Or I can freeze them in place! I’m getting really good at that without even needing to nail down footprints. Actually —"

“Sabrina,” Ambrose interrupts, slightly sharper now. “You are not listening to me. You’re cocking your head to the side and making your listening face, but you’re not really doing it, and you never do, which is why we’re in this mess in the first place!”

Ambrose hadn’t really thought he was angry — frustrated, impatient, at the end of his rope for sure — until outrage exploded from the tip of his tongue. He supposes he’s been sitting on that for a while.

Sabrina studies him with that sweet face she’s had since she was little, the face that caused nothing but trouble and always managed to get out of it, too. The one that said I’m sorry I let the sacrificial goat out of the pen, Auntie Z, or I didn’t mean to pour the snake soup down the sink, Aunt Hilda! Ambrose always shook his head and smiled, amused by her childish shenanigans, but age and power have only made Sabrina lovelier and more terrifying.

“I know, Ambrose,” she says. “This has been really hard on you. And that’s unfair. But I don’t want you to worry, because I know exactly what to do. I’m going to kill the other Sabrina and then I’m going to kill the Eldritch terror. I swear. It’s all going to be fine.” She smiles at him, her sunny one. “I’m cleaning up my mess. Just like you wanted.”

Ambrose stares at her. “How would you know what I want — what anybody wants — if you never bother to ask? You just decide for us. Did I say to kill your other self? No! We don’t have any idea how that will affect the timeline, or if doing it will hurt you, because she is you! And the veil between you both is obviously thinning!”

A furrow appears between Sabrina’s brows. Across the dying fire, Theo and Robin are still going in circles.

(“You’re terrified of being soft!” Robin accuses. “You’re so afraid of what it means if people don’t think you’re tough and untouchable and unconcerned —”

“Big whoop!” Theo exclaims. “Humans have shit to work through! Not everyone is a millennia-old forest sprite!”

“I’m a hobgoblin!”)

“I don’t understand what you want from me,” Sabrina says, just a hint of tension in it for the first time. “I’m doing what you want. I’m trying to do what everyone wants and no one is ever happy about it. I protected Harvey and I took care of Nick and I didn’t get in Roz’s way and —”

“And that’s all up to you, is it? Everyone’s life rises and falls on what Sabrina decides?”

She frowns. “I never said that.”

“You want to be everyone’s savior and sometimes that means you don’t leave room for people to decide what they want for themselves.”

“I get it. Tonight’s theme is Pick On Sabrina. But that’s not fair!”

“And what you’ve done is fair?”

“I thought it was what was best!”

“For you!” Ambrose flares. “For you, always for you! Sometimes I wish you’d just say so outright instead of hiding behind your good intentions. Witches are selfish beings, and you’ve always pretended to be different. But maybe dear Nicholas was right after all. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own. Sound familiar?”

Sabrina stills, not even a flutter of hair catching on the breeze. Ambrose knows right then that he has gone too far, but he can’t take it back — and he’s not entirely sure he would if he could.

(“If you’re always over the drama,” Robin says, “what are you going to do if I stop being easy? Are you gonna throw up your hands and give up on me, too?”

“You’re already not being easy!” Theo says. “This is super annoying!”

Robin’s mouth tenses into an unhappy, awkward shape. “Then I’ll make it easy,” he says, and speeds off in a sudden blur.)

“I don’t think I need to hear what you have to say anymore,” Sabrina says icily. She has drawn herself up fully in the same way Aunt Zelda has of unfolding to her full height, shoulders back and chin lifted. With a flick of her fingers and a murmur of Latin, Ambrose finds his mouth sealed shut — lips locked together, no way for a word to get out.

Incensed, he throws a wordless spell at Sabrina in return. It’s a joke spell, usually, an old mime bit he picked up in Paris a million years ago that keeps her stuck in an invisible box. Sabrina throws herself up against its narrow sides, furious, and tries to cast a dancing jinx in revenge that only rebounds and makes her tap dance in irate circles. Ambrose laughs himself silly, muffled, with his mouth closed.

He gestures towards her and taps his lips. Let’s make a deal. She nods. He lifts his spell and she lifts hers, then immediately hits him with a dizzying jinx. Affronted — and now quite nauseous — Ambrose counters with a batwing hex.

Theo turns from where he’d been watching Robin go and his eyes widen, brows jumping. “Oh shit,” he says, looks around, and huffs. “How am I the only one here?”

The thing in the bushes is Prudence.

But she isn’t acting like Prudence.

She hurtles out of the greenery in a flurry of tears and torn silk and throws her arms around Nick’s neck. He catches her instinctively but is careful of touching her with his bloodied hands, her shoulders bird-boned and frantic beneath his fingers. “I did it, Nicky,” she whimpers. “It’s my fault.”

He frowns, twisting slightly but unable to see her face, pressed fast to his damp neck. She’s hysterical, most of her words lost to an overwrought jumble against his skin. “This wretched —” he hears, and, “Never let — happen again —” then, “She isn’t anywhere, Nicky,” and finally, “I saw her!”

After a minute’s fruitless attempt at decoding, Nick realizes the reason his neck is damp is because Prudence is crying on it. Her last sentence is the clearest, penetrating the thick incoherency of her tears. “Who?” Nick asks gently, pulling back to touch her jaw with ginger fingertips. He searches her face. “Who are you talking about, Pru?”

“Her,” Prudence breathes, trembling. “Dorcas. She was in the mist, Nicky, I saw her — she told me I might as well have held the knife myself, I didn’t protect her and now I’ve lost Agatha, they all keep slipping through my fingers —”

She launches herself at him again, a tight hold, especially for Prudence who has never held onto him. Tied him up, tied him down, gripped violent handfuls of his hair, and once put her head on his shoulder. But never held him. Nick would know, because he’d always wanted her to. Before they started going out, he would see her in the halls with her arm loose around Dorcas’ waist or gently stroking Agatha’s back, and he craved it.

This isn’t Prudence.

Not literally, but certainly she’s no version of Prudence he knows. He wonders if these are the things she keeps locked up inside and never lets anyone see, this terror and vulnerability that comes from all the love they were never allowed to have.

Like the whispering of the trees asking if he had been bad; the lasciviousness of the leaves against his skin; the craving in his hands for someone to hold. Like Dorcas in the mist.

Over her shoulder, Nick opens one hand, to check. There is no mouth there, just flesh abused and hurting. “It’s the fog,” he realizes. “Not us. It’s doing something to us, but this isn’t us, Pru.” He pushes back but doesn’t let her go, keeping a grip on her shoulder. “Take a breath. Okay?” He inhales slow and deep, waiting for Prudence to do the same, her own still wavering. “This doesn’t feel like you, does it?”

She shakes her head, though she says, “But, Nicky, I saw her —”

“The fog is playing tricks on us. I saw things too.” He straightens enough to look around, determination in the set of his jaw. “Okay. Let’s get back to camp and figure this out.”

There’s enough of a gap in the treetops to see a stretch of stars. Nick’s mother had shown him constellations in a few in books when he was very small but Amalia murmured them in his mind over and over until he could use them to navigate without thinking. They often moved under the cover of night, with only the stars to guide them.

Once Nick has calculated where they are, he uses a twig to sketch out a quick compass in the dirt. He sets the stick down and recites the incantation for safe passage, which causes it to spin briefly before stuttering to a stop, pointing towards a copse of trees.

That’s the way they go, hand in hand.

Until they come upon the mortal losing a fight to a tree.

Harvey is fully embroiled in branches, huffing and puffing and biting down on strangled curses as he attempts to wallop the trunk. The tree, being a tree, appears completely innocent.

“This is the boy you like?” Prudence asks doubtfully. Nick shoots her an unamused look, but he’s privately glad to hear her sounding more like herself.

He goes to rescue the mortal from his unfortunate fate, but Harvey does not go easily; twigs and branches snag in his hair, scratching at his skin, and he seems so lost in his fury that he doesn’t realize Nick is Nick and not another adversary.

“Harry!” Nick exclaims, grabbing him by the arms. “You’re fighting a tree! Some perspective!”

This gets through enough that Harvey pauses, breathing hard, and meets Nick’s eyes with his own much clearer. That’s when Nick finally gets a good look at him and sees an assortment of injuries have joined his bruised cheekbone from earlier: a cut bisects one eyebrow, his lip is bleeding, and a collection of bruises trail down his arms. Nick thinks of the vines dragging him down into the dirt and regards the tree with new suspicion.

“There’s something mystical going on, I’m just not sure what,” Nick tells him. “Can I —?”

Harvey’s right hand is equally damaged, the knuckles split from what Nick can only assume was repeated contact with a sturdy trunk and rough bark. Hesitant, and perhaps a little curious, Harvey nods.

The simplest and oldest spells are often the best. Nick learned his first healing spell when he took a spill off Amalia as a child and his father kissed his scraped knee, one of a few scraps of sweetness in Nick’s scattered memory of childhood. It’s the only one he ever mastered in any reliable capacity. He brings Harvey’s hand to his mouth to kiss his knuckles, eyes closed so he misses when the skin knits together and smoothes out, though he hears Harvey’s slight intake of breath.

Mist swirls around their ankles. Harvey frowns at the dried blood and dirt on the back of Nick’s hand, and he rubs his thumb with rough care over the stains. His hand continues up Nick’s forearm and over his bicep, landing a little to the front of his shoulder. He squeezes. “Thank you.”

Nick stills. He wonders if he can get away with healing Harvey’s hurt lip, too. “Of course.”

“Something happened?” Harvey guesses. “To you too?”

“Yes,” Nick says, “And —” He remembers Prudence suddenly and, flustered, breaks their held gaze to find her waiting, hip cocked and eyebrow raised. But her face is still wet with tears, eyes red-rimmed.

“Prudence,” Harvey says, sounding faintly unnerved by the prospect, “have you been crying?”

It is imperative they return to the campsite as soon as possible. Nick does the compass spell again, quickly, and they head off with Prudence leading the charge.

Which leaves Nick and Harvey lagging behind, probably hearing the echo of the same words in their heads: Sabrina’s feelings, pushed into them. Nick’s own angry declaration. Tricked your true love into having a crush on me. “I guess it explains a lot,” Harvey ventures awkwardly. “The, um. Spell thing.”

Nick’s brows lift, lips quirking. “So you said.”

Harvey’s laugh is mostly exhale, and he looks away, back of his neck flushing. “I had these dreams,” he admits, glancing back. “About you.”

“Me too,” Nick says.

“What were yours?”

Nick half-smiles and shakes his head, shrugging it off. He’d been having the dreams since the Dark Lord dragged him into his own personal Hell, long before Sabrina’s misstep: dreams of rescue, with the mortals coming for him and treating him as a friend; Harvey putting his arms around him and Nick, wanting so much more than he was able to express, laying his head on Harvey’s shoulder.

“Yeah.” Harvey ducks his head. “Mine were pretty wild too.”

“I’m honored,” Nick says dryly, and Harvey laughs, flush rising in his face.

“Not like that,” he says, but Nick suspects it’s a little like that. He smiles to himself.

As soon as the trees begin to thin out, they can hear voices raised in alarm, each shout echoed by flashes in the fog like lightning. “Weird time for fireworks?” Harvey says uneasily, but Nick isn’t half so optimistic.

They rush out into the field towards the glow, skirting the dim shapes of tents as they crop up in the haze, and discover that it isn’t fireworks, or lightning, or anything equally banal.

Sabrina and Ambrose are dueling in full view of the entire Midvale Campgrounds. Nick is abruptly grateful for the fog.

Sabrina shouts a spell that flings Ambrose up into the air; while still airborne, he counters with one that knocks her onto her back. Sabrina scrambles to her feet fast enough to turn Ambrose briefly green, which he bounces back at her with a quick mirroring spell. He makes it so she can only speak in riddles, and she rhymes him into flipping upside down. Theo looks on helplessly, phone glued to his ear, until he realizes they’re back. “Where have you guys been!” he says, punching Harvey’s shoulder before feeling instantly bad and patting him. “Major witch stuff is happening!”

Nick raises his hands to at the very least blanket the grounds in a glamour when Prudence streaks towards Ambrose, deflecting Sabrina’s next hex with a flick of her wrist. She plasters herself to his side, tears sprung anew. “I’m so sorry,” she says, and keeps saying. “I would take it back, every word, if only —”

Ambrose pauses with stunned tenderness to brush his thumb over her cheek. “Shh, shh,” he hushes her, no questions, duel apparently forgotten. “It’s alright, Prudence. It’s alright.”

“Dudes.” Theo takes them in, both Nick and Harvey generally worse for wear. “What the hell happened out there?”

Harvey waves a hand. “You don’t want to know. Where’s Roz?”

Nick ignores whatever twinges in his chest.

“I’ve been calling her for twenty minutes. The service is all messed up here.”

“That’s not the only thing,” Harvey says grimly.

As though on cue, Sabrina has begun to collect herself, rising in one fluid movement to hover a few inches off the ground. Her hair stands out all around her head, her eyes darkly electric. Magic gathers at her fingertips, crackling. Nick has to catch her before she adds something else to her list of regrets, because this isn’t her as much as the mess in the woods wasn’t him, wasn’t Harvey, wasn’t Prudence. It was part of them, certainly, but not the whole. Not what they would choose, if given a choice.

“Spellman!” Nick calls. “If you ever loved me at all, you’d stop what you’re doing!”

Her hands tense into ragged talons, magic still sparking, but her dark eyes find his and hold on. Relieved, Nick shouts, “The fog is —”

Right then, a blur of motion heralds the arrival of Robin Goodfellow, who interrupts, “The fog is doing this to us!” Bits of grass and campground litter kick up in a tiny tornado at his feet as he slides to a stop. “It’s the fog!”

“Yes,” Nick says, deflating, thunder stolen. “I was getting to that.”

Robin takes little to no notice of him, anxious brown eyes fixed on Theo. “I ran so far that I couldn’t remember why I was even angry in the first place,” he says. “Then I realized I’d outrun the fog. It was bringing out all these things I only feel on the worst days, I didn’t mean them, I swear —”

Theo lights all the way up. “No, babe, I didn’t mean it —”

Harvey seems both dismayed and heartened by their reunion, but mostly perplexed. “Did you guys have a fight?”

They’re too busy clutching each other to answer. Sabrina drifts over, calmer now but still silver-touched, her voice almost echoing as she says, “You’re hurt.”

Nick assumes she’s talking to Harvey, so he’s surprised when she reaches for his hands. “Yes,” he says. “But that’s not important. If we invoke the tempest, we can dispel the fog. Or at least push it from the immediate area, which will give us more time to deal with —"

“Hold your horses.” Her hands are warm, but not skin-warm; more like touching the tip of a wick right after it’s been blown out. She concentrates, gaze shifting inwards, and a full body shiver sweeps over Nick, erasing every injury he has — his scratched palms, bruised knees, the elbow he took to the jaw. Then she reaches out for Harvey and does the same to him, his skin clearing as though the night never was. They stand there for a moment, the three of them.

Then Harvey says, “We should go find Roz,” and the moment breaks.

“And Agatha,” Ambrose points out, his arm protective around Prudence. “We’ll handle Nick’s tempest here. It’s a good idea — pity I didn’t think of it.”

“It’s the simplest solution,” Nick deflects.

Harvey has gathered Theo and Robin to go after the girls, but he pauses to tap Nick’s arm lightly. “Hey, don’t do that,” he says. “You figured it out. That’s pretty cool. I could still be out there, you know. Punching a tree.”

“Oh,” Nick says. “Well. I’m not sure you’re a good judge of this, you might have been doing that even without the nefarious fog.”

Harvey rolls his eyes and shakes his head, checking Nick’s shoulder as he goes. Nick watches his retreating figure vanish back into the trees.

He takes Sabrina’s hand, and she takes Ambrose’s. Ambrose already has Prudence’s and she holds out hers for Nick to close the circle.

As four, they tip their faces to the sky and call the wind.

Morning dawns humid and cruel, but the fog has mostly dissipated, leaving them exhausted and jumpy as they huddle around the charred remains of the firepit. Harvey sits by himself to one side, Nick alone on the other. Roz is between Agatha and Prudence, who has donned dark sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat that casts all but her scowl into shadow.

“If anyone,” she says, voice drawn tense as a bowstring, “ever mentions anything I did last night, they will be subjected to a memory charm so vicious that you’ll be lucky if you remember how to pick up a spoon to eat your cereal.” She pauses. “Though perhaps it would be easier to murder you.”

“Good morning to you, too, Pru,” Nick quips.

Theo and Robin, at least, seem to have made up after whatever went down between them. Harvey still isn’t totally clear on that, but he’s happy to see them clinging to each other again, Theo in Robin’s lap while they trade reassuring kisses. “I’m never telling anyone about any of this,” Theo says. “I’ve had enough of the woods to last me until I die. Sorry, babe.”

Vehemently, Robin says, “No, babe, now I get it. Full agreement.”

The glare of the early morning sun makes everything better and worse: the dark has been banished, but the things that lurked in its shadows stand exposed. They have all said too much to each other, told harsh truths, were forced to face what they had comfortably omitted. Harvey can’t stop looking at Roz, and the way she keeps catching her mouth before the corners can droop, forcing her expression to remain neutral when it’s obvious she feels anything but.

“Hey, Rosalind,” he tries. “Um. Do you think we could step away for a minute?”

She doesn’t look at him. Her hair is in two neat braids and her arm is linked with Agatha’s. “What else is there to say?”

“A lot,” Harvey protests, but Roz is no longer listening.

Ambrose chooses that moment to return from his intel-gathering mission around the camp. “Alright,” he says, hands clapping together. “Seems last night was a bit of a wild one for everybody, but the mortals are mostly blaming a bad strain of local weed and some misidentified mushrooms — thanks in part to yours truly. No one died, praise Hecate, but there were quite a few tears and some people badly hurt.” He pauses. “One report of an attack by a crazed schoolgirl in braids.”

Roz slips her hand into Agatha’s, their fingers intertwining, and Harvey finally drops his gaze.

“However,” Ambrose continues. “The victim only received some scratches and a light head wound, so he’ll be doing just fine soon enough. Cheers to a light head wound!”

Nobody cheers, but Roz does gamely say, “That’s good! I mean, it could be worse!”

“Speak for yourself,” Prudence remarks.

“Yeah.” Sabrina draws in a breath, her hands stretching to curl over her knees and shoulders coming up in a hunch. “I really don’t think it could have been worse.”

Ambrose lays a hand on her back, hesitating slightly in a way he wouldn’t usually. “Come now, cousin,” he says lightly. “Don’t jinx us.”

They share a faint smile, but Sabrina’s brow is still knit, and Harvey can tell she’s gearing up to speak. “I know we don’t know why last night happened.” Each word sounds carefully chosen, coming out slow and complete. “But there’s a chance it has something to do with me throwing off the balance of the realms. And with that and — and everything else —” Her gaze cuts from Nick to Harvey to Roz. “I’m sorry. I was impulsive and…selfish. I didn’t do it on purpose and I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I did it, all the same. I’m sorry I lied. But I’m going to fix it. I promise. I love you guys more than anything. I only wanted to be here, with you; I couldn’t imagine giving you up. I would never hurt you. I want you all to be happy. That’s all I want.”

They’re quiet.

Theo speaks first. “We love you, too, ‘Brina.” A grin finds his lips like he can’t help it, and Harvey feels a gentle ache, because they were always the wild ones, the fighters. Roz and Harvey were there to keep them from going off cliffs, and sometimes had to settle for going after them once they had. “Even if you’re a menace to society.”

He reaches out to fist-bump her and Sabrina chuckles, still slightly teary. Not everyone, however, is as willing to cliff-dive.

“We’ve come to expect it,” Prudence says. “This isn’t exactly the first time anyone here has been treated to the Sabrina Spellman apology tour.” Ambrose says her name softly, but Prudence only shrugs, unapologetic herself.

“We’re all really tired, ‘Brina,” Roz says. “Let’s just add last night to the list of stuff to deal with after we’ve gotten some sleep.”

Harvey isn’t sure how he feels now. In the grand scheme of things, what Sabrina had done to him was small; not quite a corpse in the bedroom, or memories wiped from his mind. She’d been trying to take care of herself, and them too, and she hadn’t known how it could backfire. But Harvey hates that there are feelings inside him that didn’t come from him, the softness for Nick superimposed instead of arising naturally from the shape of Nick’s smile, the pull of his loneliness. It’s like none of it matters now. The conversation they had at Battle of the Bands; Nick looking critically through his bookshelves; his fingertips brushing the silver hoop in Harvey’s ear. Now it’s all so embarrassing, when before it had been —

Inconvenient. Unexpected. Complicated. But not bad.

That’s what scares him so much about magic. He can never tell how much of it is him and how much of it isn’t. In the woods last night, his body had been a mere avenue for anger, and he doesn’t know much of that was in him already, looking for a way out — the way alcohol let his father vent frustrations he’d collected over a lifetime. Maybe it was the fog, or maybe Harvey has a rage inside him that he’ll lose control of one day. Nick may have healed him, but he can still feel his fist slamming into the tree over and over, not even caring if he broke his hand on it. The Devil doesn’t whisper in your ear if there isn’t a part of you listening.

“Okay.” Sabrina’s still smiling, but it has become fixed, almost frayed at the edges. Harvey wonders if she’s as scared by what she almost did as he is. “How about — um. I’ll see if I can find us some good coffee or — or something, and we can be on our way. I’ll be right back.”

She hops up, eager for an exit, and Harvey almost stands on instinct. Even if it’s weird between them, she’s still Sabrina; he has to see if she’s okay. But the silent sense of accusation emanating from Roz keeps him rooted to the spot a moment too long, and Nick gets up first.

He goes after Sabrina before Harvey gets a chance to.

Sabrina doesn’t get a coffee, or something. She goes down to the check-in cabin by the entrance and sits on a sawed-off log to take one deep breath, then another. It was not a good night. She’s had a couple of those lately.

“Spellman.”

She looks over her shoulder to find Nick standing a few feet off in his black Henley and jeans, his hair freely curling. “Are you here to tell me everything’s my fault again?”

The corner of his mouth lifts and he shakes his head. “No,” he says, coming around to sit next to her. “Sounds like you’ve already internalized that one. I wanted to see if you were okay. And to apologize.”

“That’s my line.” She hadn’t been crying, not really, but a tear or two may have made its way down her face; she brushes her fingers over her cheeks matter-of-factly, trying not to draw attention to it. “Isn’t it?”

“I thought we could share, if you don’t mind.”

There’s something different about Nick today. He seems at ease in a way he hasn’t been in a long time, more like the Nick she first met, unbothered and unruffled. “I don’t.”

He nods, then knocks the back of his hand into hers in a friendly way. “I’m sorry for a lot of what I said last night. Especially about your father. That was a low blow. I don’t think you’re anything like him.”

He once told her that when he looked at her, all he saw was Lucifer. Every time Sabrina finds her other self waiting in the mirror, all red lips and black horns, that’s all she can see too. “There are certain things we have in common,” she says wryly. “I want power. I always have. I still do, even now. I’m jealous of myself for having it, because I don’t have it.” She pauses. “We also both hate onions.”

Nick smiles. “Wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.” There’s warmth in him that was absent last night, a kind of fondness that feels divorced from all the twisting turmoil of prior months.

Her brows draw together slightly. “You seem different.”

“I had a big night,” he jokes.

Sabrina studies him. “Seems like. What happened out there?”

“Same thing that happened to you,” he says. “I had to look at the parts of myself I was afraid of. The ones I hate.”

Her stomach does a funny thing, not quite a roiling and not quite a drop. She wishes she’d had breakfast. “Yeah,” she breathes, thinking of the power crackling at her fingertips, what she might have done to Ambrose. “What’s the verdict?”

“I’m not just the things I’ve done.” He says it like he’s still not sure, but he meets her eyes without guile or hesitation. “Or the things that have happened to me. You know?”

The funny feeling travels up into her chest. “Yeah.”

This is what has been sitting between them for weeks and weeks: the things Nick did, and the things that were done to Nick.

Nick breathes in, and then he begins. “He took me apart, your father,” he says. “He found all the things I hid and wrenched open all my doors. I thought none of it would matter anymore once I left, because I was really good at keeping those doors locked. But it was out. I couldn’t put it back.”

There are things Sabrina knows about Nick and many things she doesn’t. She thinks she was a little afraid of it all, after Amalia. The hugeness of it, when she had so many other things to think about. Everyone in her life had always been there; there were no secrets to uncover except her own. But Nick was a variable, a person with a past she couldn’t neatly reconcile. “You never wanted to talk about it,” she points out. “I didn’t want to push you if you weren’t ready.”

She hadn’t wanted to be derailed by him, either. Maybe that was selfish. She liked her dreamy, helpful boyfriend and she wanted him back, even though it’s possible that was never really who Nick was. That was a part he played for her.

“I still don’t really want to,” he admits. “Who wants to hear about that? Who wants to say it? I didn’t want you to pity me. I didn’t want to hold you back. But.” He presses his thumb into the center of his palm, hard. “It started to feel like I’d done it for nothing. You were still the queen. We hadn’t really gotten rid of your father. It made what I did feel empty and showy and false, because I didn’t do it for noble reasons. I didn’t do it for the world. I did it so you would like me again, and it ended up being something you didn’t even need me to do. I hated myself. I resented you. And you had more important things to deal with. That felt like proof.”

Softly, she says, “Proof of what?”

“That I didn’t matter,” Nick says. “None of it mattered.”

Her eyes smart and she has to blink several times to clear them. “You were in so much pain it scared me.”

“Me too,” he says.

She wants to take his hand but she’s not sure she’s allowed. “You mattered.” She’s not going to get through this morning without crying, after all. “You matter to me so much.”

She isn’t sure Nick is going to get through this morning without crying, either. “I didn’t to me. My body didn’t feel like it was mine anymore. I didn’t care what happened to me, or it, or anything.”

That makes something shift in her head. She remembers what Agatha and Dorcas had said to him that first morning back at the Academy and how he reacted. Now you’ve been with Sabrina and her daddy. At the time she had been angry for him but she didn’t really —

She didn’t get what that meant, exactly. “Is that why,” she says carefully, “with the, um, demons?”

Nick stiffens, but he answers, “Maybe. At least with them, I could control when the pain started and when it stopped.”

It hurts her to hear that.

He sees it, and says, “That’s why we had to break up, Spellman. I said such awful things to you. I did such awful things. I needed time, you know? I needed space.” He seems to realize as he says it, “I needed to protect myself. But I’m sorry. For all of it.”

“Me too.” Sabrina couldn’t take away Nick’s pain, or anyone else’s. She couldn’t control how or when something would hurt. “I guess you do crazy things when you’re heartbroken.” Her lips curve, a little. “Even ruin the balance of the Realms.”

Nick smiles, too. “Perfectly valid and understandable response.”

“I thought so.” There is one more thing she has to say, because she knows she’ll regret it if she doesn’t. “It wasn’t for nothing, Nick. You have to know that now.”

He nods and then holds out his hand, palm up. “It’s enough, if it was for you.”

She slips her hand into his. Their fingers curl together. They hold on.

Her voice is lighter when she speaks again and she feels lighter, even after everything. She doesn’t feel weighed down. “What am I going to do about the Harvey of it all?”

Nick says, “We’ll make it up to him.”

Warmth spreads through her chest. “And Roz?”

“Threesome?”

She punches his arm and he laughs, rubbing the spot. She laughs too. “That can’t be your answer to everything!”

“It works as an answer to most things,” he teases. He stands, pulling her with him by their joined hands. “Come on, Spellman. Let’s go clean up some messes.”

“Okay,” Sabrina says, and smiles. “Let’s do it.”

With Sabrina off no doubt boo-hooing into Nicholas’ exceptionally sturdy shoulder, Prudence takes the opportunity to place herself in proximity to Ambrose. He’s helping to tidy the campsite with subtle spells, minor enough for wandering mortal eyes to miss. She clears her throat and he greets her with a smile, too knowing and too charming, a twinkle in his eye that says, I saw you cry and now I know you have vulnerabilities like everyone else, ha ha.

Though Ambrose might have already known that.

“Don’t twinkle at me, I’m here to demand your silence,” Prudence says, and if it comes out halfway teasing, then it’s through no fault of her own. She must still be under the influence of evil fog, or else its aftereffects, like a hangover.

Ambrose puts his hand over his heart. “I swear never to reveal a single tear.”

“You better not,” she threatens. After a moment’s resistance, she adds, “I also wanted to confirm what I said.”

His head tilts, too amused. “Which was?”

When the fog had come upon Prudence, it slithered into all the fissures and cracks in her armor. Its smoky fingers pulled away one plate at a time until she was left unprotected, helpless and weak, entirely alone. No sisters. No siblings. No friends. Only blame echoing around inside her head and the knowledge that she had ruined everything herself, on purpose, because she was too afraid to be looked at by someone who loved her.

No. To be seen.

Prudence despises weakness, but more than that, she hates being ruled by fear. There’s no power in being afraid and people make stupid decisions when that’s all they’re motivated by.

That’s not how Prudence is going to live her life.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Truly.”

Ambrose smiles. “Thank you, Prudence. I appreciate that.”

She waits, but when nothing else is forthcoming, she says, “That’s it? I yelled at you. I blamed you for things that weren’t your fault. I ignored you. I was cruel.”

“Yes. And you apologized.”

She stares at him. “That’s it? I said I’m sorry and it’s all just…fine?”

“Yeah,” Ambrose says with an offhand shrug. “No one makes Prudence Blackwood do anything, especially admit she might have been wrong. So this must be quite serious. And I’m a simple man, really.” He flashes her a grin. “Glad to be on good terms.”

Prudence doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“But I do have one question,” he adds.

Relieved, she says, “Yes?”

“How was the sex with Nick? Because I’ve heard incredible things about the effect of Lithian fires on the libido —”

Prudence shakes her head and half-turns away, but he catches it when she smiles.

“No?” He’s smiling, too. “Too bad for Nicholas. Too bad for you.”

“You know as well as anyone he’s always reliable in that department,” she says archly.

“I do know,” he agrees, nodding. “Next time it might be polite to extend an invitation.”

She rolls her eyes, though the effect is somewhat lost behind her sunglasses.

Very casually, Ambrose says, “You know, you might have done a cord-cutting spell. Since you suggested it to my cousin. Would’ve made sense.”

Prudence lifts one eyebrow above the line of her glasses, so he can see it. “Why would I go and do a fool thing like that?”

This smile of his is softer, almost shy, and he ducks his head. Before Prudence can tell him not to get any wild ideas, Rosalind bounds up with the hobgoblin at her heels.

“If you have more terrible news, save it,” Prudence warns. “I’ve reached capacity.”

Roz hesitates, which means it is most certainly more bad news, but then she plunges onwards. “It isn’t bad, exactly.” She exchanges a look with Robin Goodfellow. “But we were talking and…Robin?”

Robin is a jittery little thing and his words come out cluttered, start of the next jumping on the end of the last so it takes a moment to figure out what he’s saying. “I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but there are all these weird puddles around here even though it didn’t rain last night and the water is, like, fetid —"

Prudence glances around and does indeed spot a few brackish, dark spills.

“I saw them the morning after Litha, too,” Robin continues, all in a rush. “And that night the trees and flowers were moving like they were alive. They curled around us — and Harvey said a tree hit him last night, plus Nick got attacked by vines —”

Roots had plucked at Prudence’s ankles, too, trying to trip her.

“We think it might be eldritch,” Roz chimes in. “Remember those trees at your father’s hideout? They were so strange. They sounded like they were crying, or at least amplifying the sound of Judith. It wasn’t normal.”

Prudence slides a sideways look to Ambrose, who is already alight with new theories. “If the fog does have something to do with Blackwood’s monster, then its sphere of influence must be growing. If only we had more detail on what he was doing, holed up in that house.”

“There is someone who would know,” Roz says carefully. “Better than anyone.” She meets Prudence’s eyes and they are instantly on the same page.

“Agatha,” Prudence breathes, gaze flying to where her sister is sitting with the witch-hunter and Theo Putnam, who is steely-eyed but also clearly terrified. “I can’t believe we didn’t think to ask her before.”

“She wasn’t exactly in a position to report much,” Ambrose points out. “But now that clever Rosalind has figured out how to quell the madness of the maenad, who knows what secrets she might hold?”

Roz beams. “I really think there might be something —”

“Guys?”

They turn to find Sabrina walking up hand in hand with Nick, which is only typical. Poor witch-hunter, left out on the fringes again. Sabrina isn’t looking at them, however; her attention is drawn to the horizon, eyes shielded against the sun. There is the smallest thread of tired trepidation in her voice when she asks, “Is that what I think it is?”

They follow the line of her gaze towards the highway that leads to Greendale, which is now submerged in fog so soupy that the road is entirely obscured, the long line of it curving into a white wall of mist like it’s leading off the edge of the world.

“We didn’t get rid of it,” Nick breathes.

Ambrose stamps down on a swear. “Just pushed it onwards.”

“Great,” Sabrina sighs. “Right in time for Auntie Hilda’s wedding.” She cranes around towards them. “Did I mention I hate Midvale?”

Lilith rises from bed and reaches for her green velvet dressing gown, fastening it down the front on her way to the adjacent washroom. She checks her barley and rye seeds, an ancient trick, but finds none of them have sprouted. She sighs, lingering for a moment in front of the large mirror to look at Mary Wardwell’s face: beautiful, drawn, and telegraphing too much danger.

“Anything?” comes Caliban’s voice from the other room.

Lilith reappears in the doorway. “No,” she says. He lounges against the pillows in a louche way, one arm above his head and silk sheets low on his hips, hair a golden tumble.

“Too bad.” He grins at her rakishly. “Try again?”

“You’ve rather run out of usefulness in that department, Prince of Clay.” It’s a dead end, anyway; too much time has passed and she’ll never be able to pass off another man’s child as the Dark Lord’s now. The clock is running out.

“But in others, I reign supreme,” he says. “I got an interesting tidbit from our Queen’s dippy little handmaid. Barely had to do a thing, she was only too happy to talk.”

“Do tell.”

“Well.” Caliban shucks off the sheets and reaches for his trousers, pulling them up and tousling his hair aside in an impressively coordinated gesture. “Our Lord might be happy with Sabrina’s work building a congregation in Greendale, but it seems she hasn’t been entirely honest with him. She has a cult of worship dedicated solely to her in a little town called Midvale. It’s growing every day, apparently.”

“And so is her power,” Lilith muses. She thought Hell might eat Sabrina Morningstar alive with loneliness, but that had been mere wishful thinking. The Dark Lord’s darling daughter has found a way to excel despite Lilith’s best efforts to dispatch her. She completed Hecate’s quest, sprouted horns, charmed the denizens of the Underworld, and now she has her own group of mortals to boost her power.

Luckily Lilith had planned for such an outcome. Her contingency plans have contingency plans.

“She’s certainly made a success of herself, even above my expectations.” Caliban faces her across the bed, smirking. “So, my lady Lilith, what do we do now?”

Her crown has spent too long on the head of another.

Lilith lifts her chin. “We take action.”

This calls for war.

When they get home from the camping trip, Harvey edging just over the speed limit to outpace the mist, he crashes immediately on the couch. It’s the immersive nap of a little kid, blissfully empty and so deep that he feels like he’s emerging from a thousand-year coma when he hears a knock on the door. He answers it stumbling, his hair all stuck up and a little drool dried at the corner of his mouth.

He looks like that, so obviously the person on the other side of the door is Nick. The sight of Harvey ignites amusement in his dark eyes, but he tactfully does not comment. Instead he holds up a pair of black candles connected by a long white wick. “I think we have some unfinished business.”

“Oh,” Harvey says, disappointed but not wanting to show it; hoping it only comes across as surprise. “Right.”

They sit together on the top step, the candles set down between them. Nick looks polished and perfect, his hair gleaming darkly against the gathering clouds. The fog hasn’t rolled into Greendale yet, but it will.

He shows Harvey how to carve their names, one on each candle. “Now, intent is important,” Nick says, putting on his officious professor voice. “You want to reverse Sabrina’s spell, so you have to concentrate on those unwanted feelings as you light it. Her intent was muddled, which is partially why the whole thing went so wrong.”

Harvey nods. He understands this much, at least. He saw Sabrina and Nick holding hands. Whatever was broken between them must have been mended and now Nick wants to tie up loose ends before they start over. No need to have Harvey complicating things. He gets it.

But he still wavers when he picks up the lighter.

“I know magic is a sore spot for you,” Nick says. “But it’s only a tool. The person wielding it can control where it goes. You’re trying to free yourself of something you didn’t ask for. You don’t have to worry.”

“Right,” Harvey says again. The thing is, he isn’t worried. He’s only thinking about what it’ll be like after. If he’ll stop thinking Nick is funny, or will no longer recall the brush of his fingers with a heat he wants to repress. But he can’t say that, so instead he flicks the lighter on and holds it to the wick until it catches. Together they watch it burn and break.

“That’s that,” Nick says.

“Yeah,” Harvey says, stomach sinking. “That’s that.”

Chapter Text

The bell above the door tinkles merrily as Sabrina pushes into the ice cream shop. She’s dressed in her pastel-striped uniform with the hat sitting jauntily atop her hair, skin peaches and cream with lips glossed strawberry sherbet pink. “Hey, Harvey.”

He straightens up behind the counter, hands still behind him tying the belt of his apron. “Hey.”

She’s hesitant; he’s wary. Music pipes through the speakers too cheerfully for the awkwardness between them, and it reminds Sabrina of the time she’d made a sprinkle storm for him, just for fun. He hadn’t minded magic so much right then, because he didn’t know about the candle spell and Sabrina hadn’t allowed herself to think twice about it.

“I didn’t think you’d show. You’ve been missing a lot of shifts lately.” Harvey goes to the sink to wash his hands and Sabrina notices the streaks of blackish dust across his knuckles and behind his ear. Her stomach twists with recognition.

“Are you back at the mines? I thought —”

“Dad says it’s time to get serious now that school’s getting closer.” Harvey’s voice is crisply matter-of-fact. Sabrina hates the sound of it like that, the way his eyes shutter just a little bit whenever his dad comes up. “It’s only a couple times a week.” Off her look, “It’s fine, ‘Brina. I’m used to it by now.”

“Here. Let me —” She reaches up uncertainly and, when he doesn’t stop her, lets her fingertips just barely brush the side of his neck, magic whisking the coal dust away. He lays his hand over the spot after, rubs at it like it itches. “I wanted to talk.”

Harvey sidles past her. “Got a lot to do,” he says, like he hadn’t even heard her.

He means wiping down the counters and setting the chairs down; readying cones and paper cups to be filled with a rainbow array of flavors. But when Sabrina says, “I know,” she’s thinking of this morning in the kitchen, Aunt Hilda peering fretfully through the window, where dispersed mist hung close to the grass. Sabrina and Ambrose had been keeping it at bay with tempest spells, but it kept slithering back in, lacy tendrils wrapping around their town.

“I think it’s nice weather for a wedding,” Zelda remarked airily from behind her newspaper.

Hilda waved a dishtowel at her with a frustrated grumble. “Oh, you, with your — don’t.”

“Of course, if it really bothers you, we could always postpone the wedding until —”

“Zelda.” Hilda gathered up the breakfast dishes, body language busied and nervous but voice uncommonly firm. “Hush.”

Sabrina’s brow furrowed and she reached forward to curl her hand around her aunt’s wrist. “Auntie Hilda, I don’t want you to worry,” she said. “This will not ruin your wedding. I won’t let anything ruin the wedding.”

Zelda flicked the newspaper down. She and Hilda shared a look brimming with things unspoken, the kind of silent communication they’d developed after sixteen years in the same house with Sabrina. “Darling,” Hilda started carefully. “Is there something —”

“I’m actually running late!” Sabrina pressed a kiss to one cheek, then another. “Ice cream isn’t going to scoop itself!”

Out of the fire and into the ice. Sabrina watches Harvey across the shop, his shoulders up by his ears self-consciously, the silence heavy between them. He’s been an open door to her for as long as she’s known him and Sabrina isn’t sure she ever quite recovered from the first time he shut, his lock twisting and leaving her on the outside. She’s gotten glimpses inside since then, but he’s keeping things closed down today. She doesn’t really blame him. Every time she tries to protect him, she ends up hurting him instead.

Don’t try to justify it, Ambrose had advised. Just say you’re sorry. “Harvey. I really want to apologize to you specifically for —"

He stops sweeping. His fingers grip the broom handle and then release, like a tensed fist. “I know. I heard you the first time. You’re sorry.”

She pauses. “You don’t forgive me.”

“It’s not about that.” The counter is between them again, though now they’re on different sides of it. “I just have to get everything straight in my head. Figure out how I even…really feel.”

You tricked your true love into having a crush on me, Nick had said.

Sabrina swallows. “I didn’t mean to do that,” she says softly. “Mess with your feelings. I thought I was only changing how I felt.”

She sees from the unhappy shape of his mouth that he doesn’t like that either. Despite herself, she feels a little jolt somewhere in her chest, because if Harvey is upset that she wanted to cut the cord between them, then maybe —

“I need time, ‘Brina,” Harvey says. “You gotta give me a minute.” He takes a breath. “It’s not just about me. You can’t — you can’t do stuff for our own good and not even let us know you’re doing it. We’re in this together, all of us. The only way we get out of it is together.”

Sabrina’s heart shivers. “Does that mean we’re still on the same team?”

“Yeah,” Harvey says, staring at her. “We’re always gonna be on the same team. There’s no fight if you’re fighting alone.”

It’s like pressing a puzzle piece into an empty space and making a picture, the sudden clarity in Sabrina’s head where there has been only fog for days. There’s a part of her that is always waiting for Harvey to tell her he can’t do this anymore, that he can’t handle it, or her. That he wants nothing to do with her magical half, the way her family used to be so ready to snub all things mortal. Standing with a foot in two worlds meant always expecting a rejection from both.

But being angry at her does not mean the people she loves will stop loving her.

“Thanks, Harvey,” she says, trying to convey so much in one word that it comes out more trite than she intended. “That means a lot.”

When Sabrina gets home, she stops on the threshold and takes a deep breath. Then she pushes the door open and calls, “Auntie Hilda! Auntie Z! There’s something I have to tell you!”

It’s time to come clean. There’s no fight if she’s fighting alone.

“I think my favorite part was when you shouted, ‘Auntie Zelda, who do you think taught me to crave power?’” Ambrose clutches his chest and pitches his voice higher in a parody of Sabrina’s, hitting the edges of her accent slightly too hard. “‘You did!’ And then all the windows rattled in their casing!”

He cackles as he makes space for extra seating in his room, preparing for the influx of guests they’ll be having shortly for their conference on all things eldritch. Ambrose has been the one keeping track of the evidence, so it’s really the best place for it. It’ll be a bit of a tight fit, but Ambrose has never been one to complain about a surplus of visitors in the bedroom.

Sabrina rolls her eyes, not unsmiling. “Ambrose, it’s not funny!” she protests. “I thought Aunt Hilda was going to sic her spiders on me.”

“Personally, I think she’s gone off spiders a bit, though a web cocoon is the only thing we haven’t tried to keep you from running wild,” he teases, grinning. “At least it didn’t turn into a full-fledged duel.”

He’s kidding, but Sabrina winces as she dislodges a heap of silk robes and old band tees from a dusty armchair. The confrontation with the aunts had gone about as well as could be expected. Ambrose was proud of Sabrina, really — she said her piece and stood her ground, didn’t prevaricate or deflect. Hilda and Zelda were in a snit, but Ambrose had been too, at first; he knows the shock and anger will wear away soon enough. He’s rather giddy that it’s all out in the open now, no longer his burden alone but something they can finally face together.

Giddy is not the word he would use for Sabrina, however. Ambrose stops fussing with the chairs so he can survey her, his head tipping thoughtfully to the side. “You know there’s no hard feelings over what happened at the campsite, cousin. We were all out of sorts.”

Her mouth does a half-hearted twist that would only count as a smile under the best of circumstances, which these are decidedly not. “I know,” she says, but it sounds perfunctory. “It got me thinking, though.” She drops into the armchair. “Ambrose, I want to ask you something. A favor.”

“Of course,” he says, magnanimous now that he’s in a good mood. “Whatever it is, let’s —"

Ambrose is cut off by the telltale rush of teleportation. Nick Scratch appears suddenly in the middle of the room with a tiny gust of wind that ruffles the open books and sends a few notes fluttering to the floor. Sabrina hops to her feet quick as popcorn in a pot.

“Spellmans,” Nick says in greeting. He nods at both of them but saves his smile for Sabrina, a slow and sweet one that she catches and gives back to him, nose scrunching adorably. Ambrose suppresses his own amusement at the sight of them, shy like two courting youths at a ball, eager to brush hands.

“I brought my research.” Nick drops a thundering stack of library books atop Ambrose’s desk with a snap of his fingers. “Managed to grab a few books Blackwood left behind when he first fled.”

“Nick, that’s amazing,” Sabrina says, coming over to lay her hand on one embossed cover. Ambrose watches Nick glow.

“Certainly couldn’t hurt,” Ambrose agrees. “Where are the girls? I thought they were coming with you.”

Nick hesitates, then says, “Pru and Agatha might be running a little late. She’s having a hell of a time getting Agatha to agree to come.”

Sabrina’s eyebrows draw together. “Why? I thought she was doing much better.”

“That’s why,” Nick says. “If you were doing much better, would you want someone to drag you back into the darkest time in your life?”

An uncomfortable beat passes between them, the three people most involved in dragging Nicholas back from the brink. He’s come a long way since then.

Ambrose pats him on the back gently, and Nick relaxes. He clears his throat. “I’m sure she’ll manage. You know Pru.”

“A terrifying pleasure and a force to be reckoned with,” Ambrose remarks. “I have no doubts.”

But Sabrina appears to be harboring a doubt or two. “A lot of this rides on what Agatha may or may not have to tell us. She was there when the thing — whatever it is — was birthed. She was —” Nausea contorts her mouth. “Feeding it.”

“Lucky for us, I have a very sweet bribe on hand,” Ambrose says. “Since our aunts aren’t spinning mad at me — not much, anyway, as I was merely an innocent victim of Sabrina’s folie de grandeur — I was able to get Auntie Hilda to make her famous cherry almond Danish. Coincidentally, Agatha’s favorite! May help smooth things over a bit.”

Again there’s a hitch in Sabrina’s expression, which isn’t the effect Ambrose intended his good-natured ribbing to have. Nick notices it too, glancing at Ambrose curiously as he loops an arm around Sabrina in a light squeeze. “Why don’t I go get it? Make sure everything’s ready before everyone gets here.”

“Thanks, Nick.” Sabrina’s hand covers his briefly. “Harvey and the rest of the Fright Club should be here soon.” She bites her lip as she connects the potentially awkward dots of Nick and Harvey stuck together in the same small room. “Is that — is that okay?”

“Of course,” Nick says smoothly. His arm slides from her shoulders so his hands can slip into his pockets, the picture of insouciance as he drifts back towards the door. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Harvey fidgets on the Spellman porch, feeling a little out of sorts and out of place as he always does here, no matter how many times he comes to Sabrina’s. It’s an imposing house in his memory, a place with doors and windows always firmly sealed, where the dead were brought downstairs and black-clad mourners sometimes milled the yard. Back when he was still with Sabrina, he’d sometimes come down at night to toss pebbles at her window, waiting for her to appear like a lantern in all that darkness, golden and glowing.

But he’s here to see Roz today. It’s official Fright Club business, so she’ll have to show up, even though she hasn’t been answering any of his calls or texts.

That’s what’s really holding him back. It isn’t the spookiness of the Spellman house but the social dynamics waiting inside it, two best friends turned ex-girlfriends and a — whatever Nick is. But Harvey has done much scarier things than face down a bunch of people he actually likes, so he gets over himself and rings the bell. He can hear it echoing ominously in the Spellman foyer, like a church bell from a hundred years ago.

There’s a shuffle inside, then a pause. Quick footsteps carry across the carpet and the door wrenches open with a magnificently eerie creak, revealing Nick Scratch in a short-sleeve black button down, his hair a glossy shell. His face does something unreadable, there and gone before Harvey can even begin to decipher it. Then he smirks. “Harry. Good to see you. No drool this time.”

Harvey’s hand immediately flies up to the corner of his mouth, but then he scowls. “Are you starring in a regional production of Grease or something? Nice hair.”

Nick fingers jump to his shiny pompadour and he frowns. “Sorry, not all of us want to look like fashion died in 1996. Are you coming in?”

“You’re blocking the door,” Harvey points out. Nick moves aside just enough for Harvey to sidestep past him, his back pressed to the door but still so close his jacket brushes the front of Nick’s shirt, a kind of contact without touch. Harvey is buzzing, his heartbeat leaping in odd places, like his pulse is bounding through his body with nowhere to land. “Did it start already?”

“No, you’re the first. Aside from me.” Nick wanders back through the house, leaving Harvey no choice but to follow. “I was just getting something from the kitchen.”

Nick moves through the rooms with the ease of someone who has every right to be there. There are no signs of discomfort, no skittish side glances or stiffness of spine. It might as well be his house. He belongs in it.

Harvey isn’t surprised. He tells himself he’s not. He saw Nick and Sabrina holding hands at the campsite, he knew it was only a matter of time.

Nick opens the fridge and bends down to look inside it. Casually, he asks, “Any more dreams?”

Images flash quick through Harvey’s mind: Nick in the woods, wolfish; Nick in a letterman jacket, letting Harvey push him around. He clears his throat. “No. You?”

Nick shrugs. He emerges from the fridge with a small basket covered in a red and black check cloth, peeking under it before tucking the fabric down securely. He starts to come back the way he came but Harvey misreads the side of hall he’s heading towards, so instead of moving out of the way, he steps directly into Nick’s path. They both step to the same side again, Harvey chuckling with strained embarrassment, because oh my god why is he like this. Nick smiles and puts one hand on Harvey’s waist to tug him gently out of the way. Harvey’s laugh dies dry in his throat.

He doesn’t speak again until Nick is on the stairs. “Do you think it’s going to be weird? Uh, now that everyone knows? About the spell?”

“Why would it be weird?” Nick wonders, and the smirk is back. “Having a crush on me is just good taste.”

Harvey laughs, shaking his head. “You’re such a jerk. No one said I had a crush on you except you!”

Nick grins. “Wishful thinking, I guess,” he says, and winks. Harvey doesn’t know what to do with that but he’s still smiling as Nick continues up the stairs, about to follow when someone speaks from the doorway.

“Oh.” It’s Theo, eyes big with realization. “Oh.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, as you were, just putting some pieces together over here.”

Harvey hadn’t even heard Theo come in. His stomach does a nervous rumble but Nick is gone when he glances up, already through the doors at the top of the stairs. “I don’t think anyone is really here yet, did you get a ride from your dad or did —"

“Dude.” There’s something genuine, if pitying, in Theo’s face. “I thought you guys did the whole —” He mimes lighting two candles and then a small explosion, for some reason.

“We did.” Harvey pulls at his collar. “What about it?”

“Harv.”

Whatever Theo is hinting at, he obviously expects Harvey to get it, and Harvey very much refuses to. “We should head upstairs before —”

Theo sighs. “Man, my gaydar really sucks. Bi-dar? We’ll get to that. Dude.” He comes closer and takes Harvey by the arms, looking up at him very seriously. “You know it’s okay if you have a thing for Nick, right? I mean, potentially problematic, really fast, very on brand, but — okay.”

After everything with Robin at the campsite, Theo has been trying to be better about emotional conversations. He’s even checked in to ask how Harvey’s dealing with what he will only call The Roz Situation. Harvey appreciates it, but it’s not necessary.

“I don’t have a thing for Nick.”

Theo studies him without saying anything. Harvey wishes he wouldn’t, but he can’t look away or it’ll seem like he’s flinching. “It’s okay if you do, though,” Theo repeats.

Problematic, fast, typical. All of that sounded very okay. “He’s already back with Sabrina.”

“Is he?”

Basically, Harvey thinks. “Anyway, I’m waiting to talk to Roz.”

“Are you?”

Harvey’s fingers curl around the bannister, wood carvings rough to the touch. “We were just talking,” he says defensively, but there’s the jumping of his pulse again, the phantom feel of Nick’s hand on his waist, the look in his eyes when he did it — mischievous, bright. “Sure, the spell made things — confusing, or whatever you want to call it, but it’s not a big deal. We fixed it. Now maybe Nick and I can be friends and that would be cool, but it’s definitely — I’m not —"

Harvey doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. He doesn’t want to say something stupid or offensive. He doesn’t want Theo to feel bad.

“Okay,” Theo says, in this quiet voice he doesn’t use a lot, one with a lot of space in it. He squeezes Harvey’s arms and lets them go. “That’s cool too.”

Harvey knows Theo isn’t trying to be condescending, but he feels a little condescended to anyway. He’s the only one who gets to say what is or isn’t going on, and nothing’s going on.

It’s done. It’s over.

Harvey is waiting for Roz on the steps of the Spellman house. This is exactly what she didn’t want.

He pulls himself to his feet as soon as he sees her, an upwards push like gravity is trying to keep him down. His eyebrows are worried over those sad puppy eyes, mouth unsure if it should go for a reassuring smile or an understanding frown. This is where Roz could get into trouble, because her heartstrings are tugged the way they always are for Harvey, and she’s just not interested in tenderness today.

She hurries past him on the porch, where the open door awaits like an oasis; if she gets over the threshold, then the tightness in her lungs might ease and she could breathe again. But Harvey says her name, “Roz,” and his fingertips brush her arm — not grabbing, but stilling, falling away as soon as she stutters to a stop. “Rosalind.”

Her name in his voice prickles painfully in her chest. “Harvey.” She only half-turns, doesn’t give him a full look at her face.

“I think everyone’s here. But I was hoping we could take a minute to talk.” He sounds hopeful. “I really wanted to —” Roz shakes her head and he falters. “I came so I could talk to you.”

Roz turns a little more, heel grinding against the wood, and tells him the truth. “I don’t think it’s me you’re here for.”

She goes before he gets to say anything else.

It isn’t any easier upstairs. Roz hasn’t been in Ambrose Spellman’s room since their days planning Nick’s breakout from Hell. She finds a full house waiting for her: Sabrina and Ambrose, Nick and Prudence, and lastly Theo, who gives her a rueful little wave that Roz appreciates. “Thank Hecate, Rosalind,” Prudence says. “Took you long enough.”

Sabrina is right behind her. “Roz,” she says, warm and contrite like Sabrina can be, ready to make up before she’s even acknowledged what’s wrong. Roz doesn’t blame Sabrina, not rationally; she knows any lie Sabrina told her about Harvey was a lie she also told herself. But Roz’s heart is another story, and it’s been through a lot lately.

“Hi,” Roz says curtly, and watches the tentative optimism fade from Sabrina’s eyes. “Where’s Agatha?”

“Isn’t that the question du jour?” Ambrose remarks. “She’s having a little trouble with the spotlight at the moment, poor thing.”

Roz frowns. “What does that mean?”

Prudence steps forward, arms crossed. “She’s refusing to say anything about what she went through with my father. Locks up tighter than a cursed jewel-box. Obviously, I understand, but these are extenuating circumstances.” She stiffens, spine straightening and shoulders pushing back. “She’s closed the lines of telepathy between us as well.”

Roz has spent enough time with Prudence this summer that she no longer reads haughtiness in the lift of her chin, or impatience in her pursed lips. Prudence is hurt and trying to pretend she’s not. Roz touches her folded arms lightly. “Let me talk to her. Where is she?”

Agatha has curled into one of the small nooks that decorate the Spellman house at odd intervals. This one is a dissected octagon with a window-seat and built-in shelves stacked with grimy tomes and mysteriously sticky jars. Agatha has her knees folded up to her chest and her arms around them, cheek to the window. She has the earpods in. That makes Roz smile.

Roz knocks loudly on the wooden frame of the entryway so she won’t surprise Agatha, who turns and takes her in with something like resignation. “Hey,” Roz says. “What are you listening to?”

Agatha shows her the old iPod. It’s a Corelli concerto. Roz spent all night looking up violin music when she made this for Agatha. She liked Corelli, too.

“Let’s share,” Roz says, so Agatha gives her one of the earpods and they listen together in silence for a minute. “You and Prudence both used to date Nick, right?”

“You could say that. For me it was mostly sex.” Agatha is detached, deadpan. She fiddles with the bracelet of red hair around her wrist. “Dorcas went in for the whole boyfriend experience. Prudence acted like she didn’t.”

“You didn’t care? You weren’t jealous?”

“No,” Agatha says. “Witches don’t get jealous, because it means we felt something to be jealous of.” Roz frowns, but Agatha is unbothered. “Anyway, I never liked Nick much. He’s good for sex, but he’s clingy.”

Roz nudges her ankle against Agatha’s. “Don’t be mean,” she chides, and a corner of Agatha’s mouth lifts in a smirk.

“Are you trying to goad me into a personal conversation so I’ll tell you what you want to know about the egg?”

“A little,” Roz admits. “But mostly I’m dreading sitting in a room with my ex and the two people he wants more than me. Is that selfish? I should probably be more worried about the big threat. More worried about the world than me.”

“If it’s selfish, I like it,” Agatha says. “What’s the point in wanting to save the world if you don’t care about all that petty stuff?”

A flood of feeling hits Roz in the gut, knowledge and warmth and surprise wrapped up together. She laughs softly. “Yeah,” she agrees. “What’s the point?”

They share a long look before Agatha lets out an aggrieved sigh and shifts over, her and Roz hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. “Okay,” she says, like a sulky teenager. And she spills.

Agatha tells Roz that her brain was still scattershot when she first found Blackwood. When she asked him to take care of her, he agreed that he would; she wasn’t sure of much but she knew she needed someone, because Prudence had always looked after her before but she was busy now, off with Ambrose, and Dorcas was dead, her blood still hot on Agatha’s hands.

“He birthed the egg in Greendale,” she says. “At the altar where we have our Dark Baptisms, on the stone where we sign. He made the clearing into a temporal church, like he did when he took the twins away. That’s probably why it took you so long to find us.”

He made a deal with the Eldritch Dark. Agatha doesn’t know what the creature looks like, or where to find it. It’s beyond seeing eyes, existing just outside the world they live in, but there’s a little tear in the fabric of time that it could get in through. Sometimes she would see that — a rip in the world with something oozing through it, a tentacle and an eye that was all black except for the mossy pupil. Blackwood agreed to enhance its power in exchange for the same. He wanted to be one of the most powerful beings in existence. He wanted chaos, the world torn asunder, and — above all else — revenge on the Spellmans. That was when he started to change.

“It needs blood,” Agatha says. “To grow. Blackwood would play the pan pipes and let me loose so I could bring people back. Any people. Children, sometimes. I would hold them down. The twins wouldn’t help. They were scared all the time. Blackwood would have given them to it too, but I didn’t —” Her steady voice, which has not pitched up or down in feeling since she began, crackles. “I knew Prudence wouldn’t… So I kept bringing more people.” She clears her throat. “It needs to make them hopeless first. They would stay on the stone for hours until they fell apart. They would scream and cry and beg. And then they would get very quiet. Closed up inside themselves. That was when the monster could feed. And Father Blackwood would hand me the knife.”

Agatha’s dark gaze is luminous, her mouth flat. Deep down, all the way at the back of her eyes, Roz can see something hidden, held pinned under a layer of stone.

Agatha asks, “What do you think of me now?”

Prudence stands outside the alcove with her back against the wall, close enough to hear Agatha’s litany of horror but not so close as to be seen. Her hands twist together, the knot of fingers digging into her sternum like a mangled kind of prayer. She keeps her breath stopped in her lungs, because if she doesn’t, she might sob.

She wishes Dorcas were here. Dorcas could always make Agatha laugh, because she was wicked but guileless, as impulsively sweet as she could be capriciously cruel. It had never been Prudence alone before. There was a reason they were three-in-one, so there was always someone to keep the peace or fill the silence, to iron over misunderstandings and kiss away tears. Agatha had been the one to tear into Nicky after that abysmal breakup, when fury froze Prudence to the spot; Dorcas could soothe when Prudence had forgotten how. Now there’s no balance. Agatha would rather share her secrets with a mortal girl.

Prudence hears Roz murmur something to Agatha that is no doubt kinder than anything Prudence could manage. She wipes her tears with the heels of her hands and breathes a spell to make her complexion pristine again, then hastens on to Ambrose’s room so they don’t catch her snooping. He glances at her with concern, but Prudence only shakes her head.

Roz returns with Agatha moments later. She’s the one who takes center stage to relay all Agatha had to say, excising the bloodier details and cutting her eyes to Agatha as she does so. No talk of children held to sacrificial altars. Only the facts. Prudence doesn’t look to see if Agatha is grateful. She doesn’t let her hand toy with her sister’s braid or stroke the back of her neck. She isn’t wanted. In answer, she will not want.

“It sounds to me — and I’m sorry to say it, cousin — that perhaps the timeline splitting was the very thing that let the Eldritch Dark in,” Ambrose theorizes with a penitent grimace. He brings up a cupped hand and separates two fingers a sliver. “Like a crack in a pipe, it’s been leaking in bit by bit.”

“But it’s not at full power yet, or it would have already turned Greendale into its own personal nihilism buffet,” Sabrina says. “What it’s done so far — the fog, the trees attacking, all that — that’s all it can do.”

“So we have time,” the witch-hunter says. “Right? That means we have time to figure out how to defeat it.”

“Exactly.” Sabrina smiles at him. Nicky, standing at attention just behind her, softens his gaze somewhat. So much for putting an end to that.

Prudence curls a hand over Roz’s shoulder. Roz glances at her, slightly surprised but not ungrateful. Her back straightens up and Prudence thinks, good girl. “It needs blood,” Roz points out. “Like Agatha said. It needs victims. It must be getting them from somewhere without Blackwood hand-delivering them.”

Theo gestures between himself and Roz. “We can check for missing persons?” he suggests. “I know Greendale gets a lot of those, but if there’s been an uptick lately —”

“Brilliant,” Roz says, and they share a smile. “If they all disappeared from the same location, then maybe we can even figure out where to find it!”

Sabrina beams at them, for a moment prouder than she is anything else. She declares, “First we cut off its food source, then we sew up the tear, and finally close the time loop.”

“Quick question,” Nick interjects. “How, exactly?”

Sabrina waves that off. “We’ll figure it out. Right now, we know what we have to do. That’s enough.”

Ambrose claps his hands together and catches Prudence’s eye, grinning. “Go team go.”

“Why the long face, cousin? I thought we were charging on towards victory.”

Ambrose finds Sabrina sitting on the steps in the foyer after everyone has gone, the house quiet as a grave again. Her legs are crossed at the ankle and shoulders drawn up, arms stretched out and resting on her knees. It’s not the posture of a general ready to lead her little ragtag army into war, the way Sabrina had been just half an hour earlier upstairs. There’s a kind of wry despondency in her face, and she seems to sigh without sighing. He takes that as his cue to sit.

“Alright. Talk to Cousin Ambrose. What is it?”

“Remember how I had a favor to ask you? Right before Nick got here?”

“Of course,” he says. “Speaking of Nicholas, I noticed —”

She shakes her head slightly. Sabrina doesn’t want to talk romance. This must be important.

She contemplates Ambrose for a moment, like she’s searching for words on the very tip of her tongue. “I want you to bind my powers.”

Ambrose laughs. “What?”

“I’m serious,” Sabrina says, and she is, so his laughter is cut short like a needle pulled off a record. “I want you to bind me. Keep me from doing harm.”

Ambrose can only stare at her. “I don’t understand. Haven’t we learned our lesson from the ordeal with the mandrake? How are you supposed to defeat a gelatinous Eldritch being without powers?”

“I don’t mean take them away. Just dull them a little.”

“Sabrina, we need all the power we can get right now.”

“I know, but —” She blows out a breath. “You don’t get it. I got so much stronger stuck in that stone all those years. When we fought, I was holding back, but I could feel my control fraying. I don’t know what I would have done if Nick hadn’t stopped me.” There’s urgency in her now. “During the duel, all I could feel was the power, like — like being electrocuted. No. Like I was the electricity.”

This must have been bubbling under the surface since Midvale, or maybe before. “Isn’t that what this whole thing is about? You wanting power. Being unafraid to wield it.”

“I could have hurt you,” she says, voice breaking. “I could have hurt everyone.”

Ambrose understands abruptly, with not a little wonder. She is afraid, he can see that now. His fearless cousin who charges headlong into disastrous situations with a casual, we’ll figure it out later! Who would leap off roofs and into ravines. Who split herself in half so one could have power and the other freedom.

He softens and slips an arm around her. “I won’t,” he says. “I never would. I’m sorry. You blow the world up, then that’s how I go.”

He means it as a joke, a bit of humorous hyperbole, but it comes out as what it is: the truth, no more and no less. Sabrina tucks her head against his shoulder. Ambrose rests his cheek against her temple.

“But also, please don’t blow up the world,” he adds. “Have you ever considered self-control? I know you may have been born without that part of the brain, but —”

Ambrose laughs when she elbows him and catches her ‘round the middle, tickles her sides and feels relief when she laughs, too.

“Let’s worry about nicer things.” He flashes her a showy grin. “Which one are you going to take as your date for the wedding?”

Sabrina rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling.

She’ll be alright. He’ll make sure of it.

The morning of the wedding dawns shrouded in fog.

It clings to the trees, too thick to see through, an expanse of ghostly white with the mere suggestion of shapes in it: a hint of skeletal trees, graves lumbering along the low line of the ground. The little wedding arch and chairs they’d set up have been completely consumed. Fog presses in at Sabrina’s window, stranger than snow and more ephemeral, but impossible to penetrate. Worry pokes its pessimistic finger between her eyebrows, but Sabrina refuses to let it take hold.

Until she finds Aunt Hilda in the kitchen in her coziest floral robe without a stitch of makeup on, sticking a fork directly into her wedding cake.

“Auntie Hilda!” Sabrina exclaims. “What are you doing!”

She had made so many cakes until she found the one that was perfect, a sweet yellow cake with vanilla frosting, each layer shot through with lemon and blueberry. It stands a towering triumph with a big gaping hole in one side, crumbs tumbling down to the tabletop.

Hilda barely reacts, staring dully at windows gone white with fog. “What’s the point,” she mumbles. “Zelds said it. Might as well put the whole thing off. Why would I get a day to myself, hm? With my luck, a great big tentacle will come swooping down from the sky and knock me over as soon as I say ‘I do.’”

Determination hardens Sabrina’s expression. She pushes their argument from her mind and takes Hilda’s arm. “I told you I wouldn’t let anything ruin your big day. I meant that.”

“That’s all well and good, love, but look at it. Done and dusted.”

It’s possible that Hilda’s despair is at least partially the fog’s influence — Sabrina can feel it herself, an itch at the back of the neck that bodes ill — but it isn’t just that. Sabrina knows how much this means to Hilda and how much she has given up to get it. She agreed to stay at the house instead of moving out. She ceded space to Marie for Zelda’s sake. She sacrificed a little of her independence in the hopes of having the life she wanted with the man she loves. And she had to weather Sabrina’s latest bombshell at the worst possible time.

Hilda’s approval isn’t as hard-won as Zelda’s, but it hurts more to lose. To come to the end of all that acceptance and find hollow disappointment there, cold as can be. When Sabrina finally told them what she’d done, Zelda had been all bluster, but Hilda was still, her voice low and without so much as a stammer. How many times, she had said, must I ask you not to lie?

Hilda had given them all a million chances, suffered a million letdowns, been buried in the garden countless times. And then she did it all again until she could do it right. Sabrina learned that from her. It’s one lesson that has never let her down.

Sabrina owes her. They all do. So she’s going to give her aunt the best wedding she can possibly have with the perpetual threat of universal destruction hanging over their heads.

She stands, all five feet two inches in her fluffy slippers and pink pajamas, hair haphazard, and shouts, “Auntie Z! Ambrose! Marie! Dr. Cerberus! FAMILY MEETING!” Her voice bounds through the house with a magical boost, finding every corner and cranny and drawing them down to her.

The Spellmans and company gather around the table, everyone in their pajamas and Sabrina standing firm at the head. “Sabrina, the shouting,” Aunt Zelda laments. “At this hour. Can’t Hildy simply get married next month — or next century —”

“No,” Sabrina says, resolute. “Today is Auntie Hilda’s day and she’s going to get exactly what she wants. That means no complaining, no digs, no lollygagging! Everyone is Team Wedding first, and everything else later.”

“What exactly is lollygagging, because it sounds like something I’m very interested in,” Ambrose starts, arms extended in a lazy stretch, but Dr. Cee hushes him. He nods at Sabrina and salutes. She nods back.

“Dr. Cee, if you can please handle the cake and that — uh, big gaping hole, that would be great,” Sabrina says. “Marie, Ambrose, Auntie Z: you have to whip up a zephyr the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Get that fog the heaven out of here. But try not to blow the house down. Does everyone understand what they have to do?”

“Oui, chérie!” Marie calls, and when Zelda looks at her, “What? She’s a girl on a mission, I can appreciate.”

Amusement catches Zelda off-guard, a splinter under her armor. Sabrina grins and Marie does too; Zelda, faced with all those good intentions, huffs and throws up her hands. “Fine! We’ll take care of it. First the wedding. Then the imminent destruction of the town.”

They break, everyone heading in their different directions, but Hilda catches Sabrina by the arm. “Sweet,” she says, softer than she’s been in days and maybe a little teary. “You know I love you?”

Sabrina does know, but it still hits her like it had with Harvey in the ice cream shop: the sudden shock of being loved. “Even though I installed my other half in a subterranean monarchy that allowed a monstrous creature of unknown power to slither into our hometown, then pretended I didn’t do it so I could sling ice cream and go to the beach?”

Hilda smiles and cups Sabrina’s cheeks, drawing her down to kiss her forehead. “Yes, you wild girl. Even then.”

Sabrina’s eyes are wet, but bright. “You’re going to be a beautiful bride, Auntie Hilda. But to do that, you’ll need to put on a wedding dress first.”

Hilda looks down at her well-worn fleecy robe with a raised-eyebrow wince. “Right you are, love. Will you —”

“I’ll be up in a minute,” Sabrina assures her. “I’m just going to grab — well, lots of coffee, honestly.”

She hustles Hilda up the stairs and is just turning back to the kitchen when there’s a knock at the door. She frowns. It’s way too early for any guests to arrive, and she can only see a vague silhouette through the narrow glass panels in the door.

Please don’t be an Eldritch monster, she thinks, and opens the door to find Harvey standing there, a haze of mist behind him.

“’Brina,” he says, and smiles, his sweetest one. His hair’s all rumpled but he’s in a suit, a daisy in his lapel and another held carefully between two fingers.

“Harvey.” She tries to crush the little flutter in her chest, but she’s never really been able to do that successfully. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m early, I know. I just had to see you.”

She smiles and pats her hair down. “You’ve seen me,” she teases. “How do I look?” She strikes a little pose in her jammies and watches affection suffuse Harvey the way it used to, back when they let themselves look at each other like that.

“Beautiful,” he says, soft but honest.

Sabrina shivers. Hearing him talk like that is sweet and sharp at once, a thrill like innocently misbehaving, sneaking a cookie from one of Aunt Hilda’s baking sheets before they’d cooled. “Harvey.”

“I miss you,” Harvey says, his eyes big and earnest. “I really miss you.”

Caught off guard, Sabrina can’t suppress another flutter. “I miss you too,” she says automatically, then remembers herself — remember Roz, who still won’t speak to her. “Not that that isn’t nice to hear, but last time I saw you, you barely said two words to me. You were still so angry.”

“I know.” He’s sheepish. “I probably should be, after everything you’ve done. Tommy. Abandoning us for the witches. Lying to me our whole lives. Casting spells on me without me knowing. But.” He pauses. “I don’t know how to stay mad at you, ‘Brina.”

There’s salt in that sugar. But whatever Sabrina is going to say — and she truly doesn’t know what it will be, her throat stopped up with so many things she’s kept at bay for the last eight months — is preempted by Ambrose sliding into the room. Literally. He’s in half his tux, one dress shoe in his hand and his tie loose around his neck. “So, news,” he says, then spots Harvey. “Oh, hello, Sweet Harvey. You look very dashing.”

“Ambrose. News.”

“Right.” He refocuses on Sabrina. “It seems spells are no longer working on the fog? It appears to be…eating them?”

“Eating them,” Sabrina repeats.

“Yes, everything we throw at it just sort of — absorbs.”

Sabrina exhales. “Okay. Plan B, then: the wards are stronger at the Academy, so let’s pack up everything and head over.” She turns back to Harvey, apologetic. “Things are really hectic right now. Is it okay if we pick this up later?”

“Hey, of course. I get it.” Harvey holds out the flower. As it passes from his hand to hers, he catches her fingers, holds onto her. He bends to press a kiss to her knuckles. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Okay,” Sabrina breathes.

“That answers my question,” Ambrose remarks. “Sorry, Nicky.”

“Nick!” Sabrina exclaims, jumping. Her hand leaves Harvey’s and the flower falls. He frowns. “We should send a message ahead to Nick. And everyone else. They can get things started before we get there.” She grabs Harvey’s arm one last time. “I’ll see you there?”

He promises, “You definitely will.”

“Spending the night here was weird,” Roz admits.

She’s laying on the next bed over from Agatha in her very mortal t-shirt and sweatpants, her hair in a mauve bonnet. Her eyes are on the ceiling above, inscribed with all kinds of strange symbols meant to control them, protect them, keep them safe.

Agatha curls onto her side. “Scary?”

Roz had come for what she called a sleepover, since they were all going to that Spellman sham wedding together today. The sleepover wasn’t like anything Agatha had ever done before. They didn’t summon the dark forces or hold a séance; no one wore lingerie, and when Agatha put her hand on Roz’s thigh, she only got a friendly pat for her trouble. Instead they ate sweets from prepackaged plastic bags and Roz tried fruitlessly to connect to the nonexistent Wi-Fi before she made Agatha watch a film she already had on her computer. It was some nonsense involving puffed sleeves and romantic misunderstandings.

Agatha didn’t hate it.

“Yeah, kind of,” Roz says. “I kept having to tell myself that I didn’t have to be afraid of the ghosts.” She has a way of smiling a little all the time without really meaning to, her lips curling up at the edges with every other word. Perhaps it’s natural. Perhaps she’s been taught by her puritanical society that a woman is only meant to smile.

This one is slightly embarrassed, despite herself.

“If you were frightened, you could have slept in my bed.” Agatha reaches across the space between them, but Roz hesitates before taking her hand, just far enough away that their fingers barely link. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Oh,” Roz says, flustered. “That’s okay. I survived the night.”

Agatha snorts, dragging Roz forward to playfully nip at her fingers before releasing them. She gets up stretching, aware of Roz watching her. Music is a faint buzz in her ears all the time now and Agatha hums along, pleased.

“Time to get ready?” Roz asks, and Agatha assents with a nod.

Agatha had been surprised when Roz turned up at the Academy, pillow under her arm and bag in hand. She thought telling Roz about her time with Blackwood would be the final nail in the coffin, so she had done it half as a dare, holding out her hands and asking how red they were. But instead of pulling away, Roz has only drawn closer. I’m your friend, she told Agatha in that little alcove at the Spellmans’. I’m still your friend.

Agatha has always had sisters, but never friends. It seems there’s no end to Christian charity.

Roz puts on one of her good girl mortal dresses, a cranberry thing made of false velvet with embroidered flowers at the hem and on the sleeves. It’s sweet. Agatha decides to match her, donning a blood-and-rust gown with a high neck and long sleeves that’s sheer to the waist, a pattern of embroidered vines preserving her modesty for Roz’s sake.

Roz’s eyes widen at the sight of her. “Um,” she says.

“Thank you,” Agatha says, smirking. “Come here.”

She sits Roz down to do her makeup, buffing blush onto her cheeks and brushing bronze pigment over her closed eyelids. Agatha is quiet with concentration, everything hushed except for the sound of violins. And then Roz’s soft murmur, “Thanks for this. You know, letting me stay over and everything.”

Agatha hums a wordless response. She hadn’t done anything except open the door.

“I’ve been kind of lonely lately,” Roz admits.

“Your witch-hunter is no great loss,” Agatha tells her, but Roz shakes her head, almost ruining the flick of eyeliner Agatha is trying to perfect. She scowls, lifting the brush away, and waits.

“It’s not that.” Roz’s eyes open, only half-lined but strange and beautiful, different from how she usually looks. “I think I was lonely even before that. It kind of felt like…I couldn’t talk to Harvey the same anymore, because he was my boyfriend, or Sabrina, because she was his ex. Theo pretends like he doesn’t play favorites, but.” Her shoulders lift and drop. “He always looks out for Harvey.” Another of those faint smiles, like she isn’t even aware she’s doing them. “No one to drown my sorrows with.”

“Prudence would tell you there’s no point in feeling sorrow for someone who doesn’t want you. Close your eyes.”

Roz does. Agatha resumes her makeup.

“But that’s only because she spent so long hoping her father would want her,” Agatha continues. “And he never did. Now she resents that she was ever sorrowful.” She wipes a smudge from the corner of Roz’s eye. “I only resented that she didn’t share her sorrows with me. Open.”

Roz’s lids flutter open.

“So I don’t mind sharing yours,” Agatha concludes. She studies Roz’s face for a moment, deciding, “Lips.”

The lipstick Agatha is wearing is still sitting on the table, a gold case that uncaps to reveal a lush dark red. It looks like velvet once it’s on, a dense swipe of color that makes Agatha feel like a woman in a painting. A different woman than the one she is, one that maybe never went mad at all. It matches Roz’s dress exactly.

She nudges Roz’s chin up, then taps her lips lightly to part them. Agatha is good at going without a liner, but to compensate she’s slow and deliberate; she drags the bullet over Roz’s bottom lip and makes her press her lips together, then outlines the top with meticulous care. She’s conscious of how still Roz is, barely daring to breathe but flushed with so much heat Agatha can feel it radiating off her.

She runs the edge of her nail along the corners of Roz’s mouth to make the line precise; the pad of her finger brushes over Roz’s cupid’s bow. The job is done, but her fingertips linger under Roz’s chin, no longer propping it up but just hovering there. Taking pleasure in her little tremble.

“Thanks for saying that,” Roz whispers.

“Stop thanking people for nothing.”

Roz smiles again and leans in to butt her forehead against Agatha’s, gentle enough not to hurt but with just enough force to startle a laugh from her. “That’s nice,” Roz says softly, and Agatha hates how much she likes to hear that. “I like when you laugh.”

Agatha tips her face up, but just then there’s a clamorous rapping at the door that makes Roz jerk away, hand flying to her chest. Nick pops his head in, and the rest of him follows. “Ahh,” he says, taking them in with a slow wicked smile and sounding genuinely rueful. “Sorry, girls. Just got a message from Sabrina.”

Agatha considers hexing Nick, but Roz is already on her feet, reaching for Agatha’s hand. Typical. It’s terrible to be friends with a do-gooder. “Is something wrong?”

Nick steps aside to usher them through the doorway. With a small sardonic chuckle, he says, “Isn’t it always?”

“Melvin, I swear on all that’s unholy, if you don’t put the correct stresses on your Latin —”

The Academy of the Unseen Arts is alight with activity, and Nick has been rushing around in the middle of it since he got word from Sabrina. He took it upon himself to split their dwindling student body into teams, sending half to fill the grand hall with chairs and some semblance of decoration while the rest work on strengthening the wards — if Melvin could ever manage to figure out his pronunciation. Nick even dispatched a few students to check the building’s façade for cracks, just in case the fog found a creative way to creep through.

Nick hopes, with a little tug behind his sternum, that Sabrina will be pleased.

He tries to get himself together while he’s running around, fastening cufflinks with his suit jacket thrown over one arm, his bowtie draped around the open collar of his tuxedo shirt. It might not be good manners to show up dishabille to Hilda Spellman’s wedding, especially considering how she feels about him, but Nick can’t deny that it is a look. He stops to catch his reflection with a sly smile and fluffs his hair, which is softer today, curling loosely. He wonders what the mortal will have to say about it. If he says anything.

“Nicky!”

He turns when he hears his name. No, actually, Nick thinks, head whipping back to his reflection — that Nick had moved first, looking off to the side a second before Nick himself did. He stares hard at himself but the image in the glass only returns his unfriendly expression, mirroring his suspicion.

And then it smirks.

“Hecate’s hounds, Nicky, how many times do I have to call you?”

Nick drags his gaze from his reflection to find Prudence waiting, unimpressed, with her hands on her hips.

“Falling for yourself, Narcissus?”

Nick rolls his eyes, but the edginess doesn’t quite leave him, jangling along the back of his neck, the palms of his hands. “I think the fog is playing tricks. We should put more people on ward duty.”

“I’ll take care of it, if you take care of the pack of mortals who just arrived.” She smirks. “I know there’s at least one of them you won’t mind handling.”

“Hilarious, Pru.” But Nick is already searching over her shoulder, unable to help himself. Instead of Harvey, he sees his reflection again, dashing through the open doorway that leads to the entrance hall. That’s how his brain perceives it, seeing his own body apart from his consciousness within it, pristine and put-together in his tuxedo with the double-breasted jacket buttoned and bowtie tied. “What in the —”

Prudence hooks her arm through his. “Are you cracking up, Nicky? I would’ve thought you were in your element. Absolutely thrilled to be given something to do.”

“No, I just…” Nick allows Prudence to drag him towards the doorway so he can find out if he’s on the other side of it, but once they’re through, it’s only the other students milling around, hurrying from one task to the next. “I could have sworn —”

“You know the fog makes you see things,” she says. “Please try not to fall apart before the vows. I won’t have anyone to heckle the mortal groom with.”

Despite himself, Nick smiles slightly. “I like Dr. Cerberus. He always saves books for me if he thinks I’ll like them.”

“That’s right, I forgot you have such a fetish for mortals. And look — there’s yours.”

Nick turns. Harvey is here, tall and handsome with a daisy in his jacket. And he’s kissing Roz.

The floor drops out from underneath Nick, and he’s embarrassed about that before he lets himself be anything else. He knew better than to wish for something so unlikely, almost impossible. He’d brought the candles to Harvey himself. The whole thing had been a spell to begin with.

It was just a bit of fun. A flirtation. Nick has had so many of those. They never mean anything.

“Oh, Nicky.” Prudence leans down to rest her chin on his shoulder, looking up at him through her lashes. She doesn’t sound sympathetic, not that he’d expect as much from Pru. She’s almost gleeful. “Poor little lover. Well, almost.”

Stiffly, Nick says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then, “It was only a matter of time.”

If it hadn’t been Roz, it would’ve been Sabrina.

“That’s true,” Prudence agrees. “You probably should have taken advantage when you had the chance. That’s what the old Nick would have done. What’s a little deception with the one you love? At least then you might have fucked him out of your system.”

Nick jerks away from her, frowning. “What the heaven, Pru?”

“Don’t be drag, Nicky. You used to be such fun.”

He clenches his jaw. “What, when I let anyone do whatever they wanted to me? Yeah, lotta fun.”

“Please,” she scoffs. “That’s what you like. Half of the clientele at Dorian’s knows that. Actually, more than half. At a certain point, you just stop counting, don’t you?”

“Never get tired of being a bitch, huh, Pru?”

She laughs, and pretends to be singed. “Ouch, Nicky.”

He shakes his head and turns away. He can’t deal with her right now, can’t deal with watching that mortal make another mistake out of fear, can’t handle any of it. He wants a drink, not that it’ll do him any good to have one.

“Come on,” Prudence calls after him, as though he’s just being a wet blanket, a spoilsport. “He erased you twice. What did you expect?”

She’s right, is the thing. The shame of having expected anything more burns low in his stomach.

Sabrina sets off to find Nick as soon as she lands at the Academy with her family.

After the whirlwind of changing plans, they’d linked hands and teleported to Zelda’s office, dressed in their best with the wedding cake balanced precariously between them. It wavers dangerously on its stand as they find their footing, the tiny figurines on top — Dracula and Frankenstein’s Bride — nearly toppling. One of the artfully arranged lemons Dr. Cee had used to hide the hole rolls off and hits the floor, but the cake stays upright. Sabrina doesn’t hate the metaphor.

“Meet at the grand hall in ten,” she declares. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

Everyone hastens towards their respective missions: Zelda eager to micromanage the Academy students downstairs; Marie to perform a protection ritual at the door; Dr. Cee to deliver the cake; Ambrose to locate Prudence; Hilda to take care of some finishing touches. Sabrina wants to check in with Nick, but more than that, she wants to see him — is excited to see him in a way she didn’t feel allowed to be before, when everything between them was still in knots. She knows that time is tight, and she was the one who ordered against lollygagging, but she just — wants to know if he’s wearing a tux, and how he looks in it; wants him to see the bright blue tulle dress she’s wearing, Harvey’s daisy wound around her wrist.

The Academy is in disarray, but it’s the good kind. Everyone is working towards the same goal and that goal is making Aunt Hilda happy. It fills Sabrina with warmth to see how everyone has come together for this last snatch of celebration before whatever comes next — kids hanging asters and verbena over the doorways, affixing bows to the columns, lighting pink and red candles so the halls of the school glow richly.

It’s all working, Sabrina thinks, it’s all actually working.

That good feeling lasts until she lets herself into Nick’s room and finds him in bed with Prudence and Agatha.

It might be worse than the demons at Dorian’s, worse than Litha. Nick ensnared between them, a tangle of limbs and open mouths, Agatha’s long dark hair and Prudence’s nails, her fingers curled against Nick’s scalp. Sabrina gulps air so hard it feels like she swallowed something solid, frozen in place and thinking only, again? She forgave him and he did it again?

“In or out, Sabrina,” Nick says. His suit lays in scattered pieces on the floor — a jacket here, a shirt there — and he leans back in Prudence’s arms, Agatha’s lips trailing down his chest. He arches an eyebrow at Sabrina. “Still too scared?”

Sabrina’s expression hardens. “Is now really the time for this, Nick?”

“You wait too long, it’ll never happen.” His head rolls onto Prudence’s shoulder, her roguish smile pressed into his neck. “Didn’t you and I find that out the hard way?”

“The not-so-hard way, I thought,” Prudence remarks, and the three of them laugh, Sabrina ablaze with humiliation and anger. And hurt, that she could still be so stupid.

“What about —” Sabrina bites the words off as they come, but they find their way out of her mouth anyway. “What about everything you said to me, everything we talked about?”

It’s enough, if it was for you.

“Jeez, Spellman,” Nick says. “You bought that?”

“Must’ve been a good line.” Agatha’s voice has a mocking lilt. “Look at her face.”

Sabrina backs out of the room and lets the door slam, moving unseeing down the hallway with her breath stilted until she’s in the entryway, people around her. Melvin says something to her about the wards and another girl asks when things are starting; Sabrina answers, but she doesn’t hear what she says.

She reminds herself that today isn’t about her. She can save this for later, when she has the time to feel it; she shakes herself off, tucks and rolls emotionally like she’s so good at. She rubs reassuring hands over her own arms and her fingers brush Harvey’s daisy, sweet against her skin. He’s supposed to meet her here, but there are no messages on her phone, so Sabrina goes looking for him.

And she finds him, bending to kiss Roz’s neck.

He’s somehow taller and narrower than ever in his dark suit. She has daisies in her hair, a whole bunch of them.

It’s déjà vu in the worst way. Ages ago in another life, back at the Valentine’s dance, Sabrina had felt the same sensation watching them, all hollow inside. She splashed cupfuls of red punch down into the emptiness and put her cheek on Nick’s shoulder, willing him to fill up the space. Look where that got her.

She stalks over to them before she knows what she’s going to say, before she remembers that she has to tiptoe around the wrong words so Roz won’t hate her more than she already does. “Harvey,” she says. “Can we talk? You and me, for a minute?” It doesn’t come out right. It sounds too personal, even though it is too personal. “Sorry, Roz, um —”

Roz snuggles closer to him. Harvey rests his cheek on her daisy-laden hair. “It’s cool. You can say it in front of her.”

“Yeah, ‘Brina,” Roz adds. “Say it to my face for once.”

Sabrina sucks in a startled breath. When she opens her mouth, she’s got nothing.

“I think she wants to talk about this morning,” Harvey speculates. “I think maybe she got the wrong idea about a couple things.”

Sabrina stares at him, mildly horrified. “And what idea is that?” She doesn’t care if Roz knows now; Roz should. “That you think I’m beautiful, that you miss me?”

They laugh like Nick and Prudence and Agatha had, like everyone knows some big joke Sabrina doesn’t. “Jeez, ‘Brina,” Harvey says. “You really think I would choose you after everything you put me through? I mean, Tommy alone. That was messed up.”

“I’m surprised we still talk to you sometimes,” Roz muses. “But you do have to adjust your expectations, as a friend. Who would expect more from a witch?”

“That’s true. I don’t think they feel stuff the normal way,” Harvey remarks. “She’s never really been the same since she signed her soul away, has she?”

“I mean, not that there was much to give away,” Roz says. “She is the Devil’s daughter.”

Harvey and Roz would never talk to her like this.

It’s a stray thought that flickers through her mind in a muddle of frustration, but once it hits her, it sticks. Harvey and Roz would never talk to her like this. Not if they’d just gotten back together after a Sabrina-induced breakup. Not even under the influence of an eldritch fog. Not ever.

Sabrina goes from feeling like she’s in front of a firing squad to feeling a delirious kind of peace, prickly and floating. She could laugh out loud. She gives them — two people shaped like her friends who are very obviously not her friends — a fixed smile and starts to back away slowly. “You guys are so right,” she says, nodding, one foot behind the other. “Try to enjoy the abnormal festivities! I have to go check on something, be right back!”

She takes off. She gains ground, darting through a doorway and down the hall, around a corner and smack into Nick. His expression changes instantly. Agitation gives way to the same soft-eyed pleasure he’d had greeting her in Ambrose’s room. “Spellman! Cute dress.”

It’s not what she’d expect from someone who was just caught having a threesome with two of his ex-girlfriends.

“Nick?” Sabrina ventures hesitantly. “Can I ask you a potentially very weird question?”

He smiles curiously, already anticipating. “I wish you would.”

It feels like enough of an answer that relief hits her in a wave. But she asks anyway. “You weren’t having sex with Prudence and Agatha five to ten minutes ago, were you?”

His eyes widen, eyebrows climbing. “Uh,” he says. “Prudence and I had an argument five minutes ago, and Agatha has been putting up decorations with Roz since I got your message this morning.”

Almost laughing, Sabrina grabs him by the jacket and pulls him in for a hug, quick and friendly. She lets him go before he even realizes what’s happening. “Something weird is going on.”

“At this point, that’s pretty much implied, Spellman,” he says, and she laughs for real. He grins.

“Just give me a minute to make sure.” Sabrina pulls out her phone and calls Harvey, fingers still half-hooked in Nick’s jacket while she waits for it to connect.

“’Brina!” Harvey says. “I’m really sorry, I’m running super late — I got into it with my dad this morning, but it’s fine and I’m almost on my way —”

“Harvey,” she interrupts. “Did you come to my house today?”

“What? No. I’ve been home all day. Why?”

“Stay put,” Sabrina orders. “I’m sending Nick to come get you. I’m not totally sure what’s going on, but I think it’s in the ballpark of, uh.” She meets Nick’s eyes and pulls a face, something like a bemused shrug-wince. “Evil doppelgängers, maybe?”

“Oh, that makes sense,” Nick murmurs, as Harvey lets out a sharply anxious, “What?!”

“Just stay put!” she says again. “Nick is on his way!” She hangs up. “I have to warn my family, can you —”

“Already on it, Spellman.”

She loves that about him, the way Nick knows something has to be done and does it, already giving her a sharp nod and lifting his hands to cast the teleportation spell, all business. But then he pauses. “What did he say to you? The, uh, other me?”

Sabrina shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

Nick accepts that with a half-smile and vanishes. Sabrina goes in search of Spellmans and discovers Aunt Hilda at the threshold of the grand hall in her delightfully bonkers polka-dot dress with the big organza puff sleeves. She turns when Sabrina calls her name. “Oh, blast, what is it now?”

Sabrina’s gaze goes past Hilda to the seated crowd, everyone stock-still in their chairs, posture very precise as they look back over their shoulders with identical wide smiles.

“Aunt Hilda,” Sabrina says. “I hate to say it, but it looks like the wedding might get postponed after all.”

No sooner does she say it then the guests rise, still smiling, and attack.

Harvey has no idea what to do.

He stands at a loss, stuck between his front door and the coatrack, keys in one hand and phone in the other, departure momentarily arrested. He wants to get out of the house, even though his dad left after they got into it — more bullshit about how Harvey isn’t enough, or isn’t what he’s supposed to be. The energy of those shouting matches always lingers afterwards like the whole house is full of static electricity.

But Harvey trusts Sabrina, somehow, still, and more than that, he trusts Nick.

He decides to wait outside, but he’s only a few steps into the fog before he realizes that was a dumb decision, so he heads for the truck. It feels weirdly safe, like it still holds some of Tommy in it. It has none of their dad’s imprint at all. The truck was something Tommy saved for and bought himself; something he left for Harvey.

He’s about to wrench open the handle when he hears his dad say, “Harv.”

Harvey freezes. It’s muscle memory, the way that specific inflection of his dad’s voice makes him seize up, get ready to be grabbed or struck. “Dad,” he says, turning. So calm on the outside. “I thought you went to work.”

“Yeah, you’d like that, me out of your way.” Mr. Kinkle does something with his face that’s almost smiling, but it does the opposite of what a smile is supposed to do. “Meanwhile I’m the only one keeping us afloat. You get to tool around in that garage with your guitar. Sit on your ass in that ice cream parlor, dressed up like a —"

Evil doppelgängers, Sabrina had said. Harvey searches his father for signs of falseness, but it’s hard to tell. He’s got the same look on his face as he did when he drank: hard but wry, a knocking-back-beers-with-the-guys kind of look. His dad has been keyed up since the fog rolled in, but Harvey has too, so he’s tried to let it slide. Whenever his dad got on his case over the last few days, Harvey thought about almost breaking his knuckles on that tree and forced himself not to react. It’s nothing he hasn’t said to Harvey before. Though it’s been a minute since he heard that particular word.

“I’m gonna go,” Harvey interrupts. He’ll text Sabrina; she’ll get a message to Nick; it’ll be fine. “Sabrina’s aunt is getting married and there’s a lot going on, so —”

“Just like you,” his dad sneers. “Fucking coward ready to cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Bet that’s how it happened. How I ended up with you instead of him. Bet you left him under there, under those rocks, while you ran.”

Harvey stiffens. “You don’t get to talk to me about what happened that day.”

This is an old fight. Harvey has already said everything he could possibly say on the subject. He would have traded places with Tommy in a second. He wishes he had been the one to push Tommy ahead of him when the mines collapsed. He would have done anything to go back in there to get him. His dad knows that. He saw it. He was the one who called it quits on the search. Who buried a hardhat for the insurance payout. His dad was —

“Oh, I don’t, huh?” Mr. Kinkle says. “Tough guy all of a sudden. But I know better.” His eyes glint. “That boy was here again the other day. Wasn’t he? I saw you two sitting out on the porch. You think I don’t know what that means?”

Harvey’s stomach twists. “I don’t give a shit what you think it means,” he snaps, voice high and sharp the way it gets when he’s upset. His father hates that, always has; used to harp on about it when Harvey was younger, make cracks about counting down the days until his voice broke. Maybe Harvey should have known something as simple as the way he speaks would be enough to set his dad off, but things have been good enough for long enough that he forgot to keep himself steeled for the worst. As a result, he’s caught completely off guard.

It happens fast. His dad slams him against the side of the truck so hard there’s a metallic ringing, then lets Harvey crumple to the ground, wind knocked out of him. “Who are you to talk to me like that, huh?” he demands, on Harvey now, raining blows.

Harvey tries to get his hands up to block them. “I’m your son!” he exclaims. “I’m your son, too!”

But there are no punches pulled, and one gets through with a starry shock of pain to Harvey’s temple. He’s been taller than his dad for a while now, but somehow his dad always seems so much bigger. Right now, looming over him again, it’s like Harvey is back to being a little kid, Mr. Kinkle’s favorite target. Sometimes it seemed like nothing made him as mellow as taking it out on Harvey, not even the booze.

“Thinks he’s such a big fucking man, but you’ll always be that pathetic little twerp looking for a pat on the head —”

Harvey strikes out wildly and slams into his dad’s nose. There’s a brutal crunch. A spray of blood splatters over Harvey’s face, in his mouth and his eyes, bitter and blinding. Freshly enraged, his dad’s hands lock around his neck. Strong hands. Hands that once picked Harvey up when he was little, held him in the cradle of his arm at the stove and showed him how to make pancakes shaped like the letters in their names. H for Harvey, T for Tommy. R for Rebecca, their mom.

Hands that have grabbed Harvey more than once. Jerked him out of the way, pushed him into walls. Hit him. Hands coiled tight with so much anger and all that weight pressing down on Harvey’s throat now, cutting off his air, uncaring if he strangles.

Please don’t be my dad, Harvey prays as his scrabbling hand finds a rock. Please be a double. Please don’t be my dad.

He smashes the rock into his father’s head. Once. Again. Until it’s over.

Harvey shuts his eyes tight against a sob. He lays there on the ground wishing the same thing over and over until suddenly someone is pulling his dad away, and that someone is Nick.

“Oh, little mortal,” he murmurs, taking Harvey by the front of his bloody jacket and hauling him up to his feet. Harvey stumbles, still in shock, but Nick holds onto him and keeps him upright. “Look at you. Look what happened to you.” He cups Harvey’s face and wipes away the blood, especially careful around his eyes. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry, it’s not him. It wasn’t him.”

Hope leaps in Harvey’s chest and he meets Nick’s eyes wildly, finding him so calm and put-together that it’s almost surreal. “It wasn’t?”

Nick shakes his head. “No. You have to be careful, you know. They come from the fog. It made them.”

Harvey brow furrows. “How do you know? Sabrina made it sound like —”

“We should get going.” Nick curls his hand around Harvey’s wrist. “We don’t want to hang around here too long.”

Harvey nods, a little jerkily, and tries not to look down at his dad — or whoever — is lying there. “Right. Okay. We have to go to Sabrina — at the Academy, right? — and figure out what’s happening, how to stop it.”

“No, not there.” Nick’s fingers tighten but his other hand is so gentle on Harvey’s cheek. “Let’s go somewhere we can be alone. You want that, don’t you?” His thumb trails down Harvey’s jaw, brushes the corner of his mouth. He leans in slightly, voice low and cajoling. “Don’t you want to be alone with me?”

In the split second it takes Harvey to recognize the viscerally wrong feeling in the pit of his stomach, Nick explodes.

He combusts. He bursts, blood and gore everywhere, tearing apart at the seams and showering the ground in shreds of skin, suit, muscle, bone. Harvey is awash in bits of him, blinking stupidly into the red haze until it clears to reveal — well, Nick, standing there with his hands raised for defensive spellcraft.

“I hate that guy,” Nick sighs, shaking his head. “Harvey. Are you alright?”

It’s the wrong name, but even so, Harvey knows this is the right Nick. He’s not sure how, but he does. Something about the juxtaposition of his grumpy expression and the raw look in his eyes that Harvey is only just beginning to understand. Nick is frowning, rumpled and wary and a little annoyed, but he’s here. Harvey knew he would be.

Harvey’s head is still full of fog, but he scrambles over to Nick and sort of careens into him, a collision that becomes a hug. His arms wind tight around Nick’s neck and shoulders, needing to feel him solid and real. And needing to be held, too.

Nick tenses at first but then his arms slip around Harvey, tightening in increments until they’re just standing there, holding onto each other so fiercely it hurts a little. “Why weren’t you inside?” Nick demands, smoothing down the back of Harvey’s hair. “I looked all over the house for you. I thought something happened.”

“Something did,” Harvey murmurs, muffled because his face is pressed into Nick’s neck.

Nick’s arms adjust, but don’t let go. “Are you hurt?”

“Dunno yet,” Harvey admits. He pulls back to look at Nick in his disheveled suit, and then to kiss him, so easy that it’s almost unconscious, thought made action without any of the considering steps in between. There’s unkissed and then kissed. Harvey catches up a moment too late, and he thinks Nick does too; they’d stumbled into it, and realization gives the kiss a surge of sudden heat. Harvey’s hands are just barely in Nick’s hair, a loose grip half-curled against the nape of his neck, but they dig in, and he can feel Nick clutching his back. The kiss breaks just to mend, Nick catching Harvey’s bottom lip between his, small and affectionate but then hotter, lips parting, mouths open. The taste of blood between them.

When they part, there’s blood on Nick’s face too, smeared across his lips and cheek. Harvey automatically goes to wipe it with his sleeve, but that’s also covered in blood, and it makes them chuckle a little, quiet and shaky. “Sorry about that,” Harvey says.

“You should be, this was a very nice suit before you got here,” Nick says, joking but as gentle as Harvey has ever heard him. Harvey searches Nick’s face, held between his hands, and thinks, so there was a spell, so what. He’d be glad either way that Nick is alive, and here. After a moment, he can feel Nick trembling under the scrutiny, a fine vibration that surprises Harvey, but when he strokes Nick’s hair, he breaks their held gaze.

“We should —” Nick starts, and Harvey doesn’t let him finish.

“Right,” he says, and they both let go, coming back to themselves, allowing distance between them again.

“If we’re fast, we can check on your father to make sure he’s alright,” Nick says. “I didn’t see him inside. Once we confirm that was the double, we can circle back to the Academy.”

Harvey can’t believe Nick would think to suggest that. “Yeah, please,” he says. “He’s at the mines. Or he should be.”

“Great,” Nick says. He holds out his hand — to teleport them, Harvey realizes. “Ready, farm boy?”

Harvey slides his hand into Nick’s and holds on. “Ready.”

Chaos descends.

The grand hall, just moments ago bedecked in blossoms and banners, is in disarray, everything half-pulled down and shredded, candles spilling wax onto the flagstone, chairs knocked asunder. Hilda Spellman, grappling with Hilda Spellman, shouts, “Must you get in the way of my own bloody wedding!” and the other answers, “You’re getting in the way of your own bloody wedding!”

The trouble with fighting doubles is not knowing who’s who. Prudence brandishes her sword to wound instead of kill, menaces apart pairs of roiling doppelgängers, drags her classmates away from themselves.

“If you come with us, you’ll be perfectly safe!” insists Dr. Cerberus, or else a double who shares his face. He’s appealing to a Zelda Spellman who may or may not be the real one, his hands gripping her upper arms tightly. “You will serve a greater purpose for the Master!”

Doppelgänger, then.

Zelda jams her heel into his foot, declaring, “I serve no master but myself.” With a casual twist of her fingers, she sends his head spinning in one direction and his torso in the other, neck neatly cracked and body folding to the ground in a heap. Her smile is triumphant and terrible. “Well, that was satisfying.”

Prudence pushes her way through the crowd, considering anyone who raises a hand against her to be an enemy. When someone grabs her shoulder, she turns blade-first, swinging in a wide arc that nearly catches Ambrose across the stomach. He jumps back just in time, but the tip of the sword slices the fabric of his shirt, revealing a strip of warm brown skin. His eyebrow quirks. “Terribly sexy, but perhaps point that somewhere else?” He winks. “Until later, anyway.”

Prudence rolls her eyes with a laugh. They catch each other’s shoulders as they return to the fight, and the small gesture gives Prudence something — a boost, a spur to action. She dives back in with renewed vigor, though she almost trips on her skirt on her next forward thrust. She’d chosen a black silk gown that clings to her hips and thighs, skimming close as skin. It’s very effective aesthetically, but not exactly her first choice for battle. When she stumbles a second time, she bends to rip the skirt open to the thigh.

She hears a wolf whistle. It’s Melvin, blood-spattered and bowtie askew. “What do you say we make it best two out of three —”

Prudence beheads him. No loss there either way.

“Nice move,” remarks a droll, dry voice, so familiar that it could be inside Prudence’s head. She comes face to face with herself, another Prudence smirking in a long aubergine coat, twin swords in her hands. Prudence only has one sword; she gave the other to Roz. “Unfortunately, I already know all your moves.”

“Goes both ways,” Prudence says, and swings.

Steel crashes against steel. The Other Prudence evades every advance, blocks every strike, but she doesn’t get one in, either. It’s like fighting a mirror, exhilarating but infuriating: every move matched, each step predicted, but neither of them faster or smarter than the other. When Prudence brings her blade down, the Other Prudence meets it with the crossed X of her own swords. She has the advantage there — she could keep Prudence pinned in place with one while she stabs forward with the other — but she doesn’t take it. Instead she shoves Prudence off, circles back for more.

Prudence would never let an adversary go if she had a clear shot. That’s when the words of Dr. Cerberus’ double come back to her: you will serve a greater purpose for the Master. They aren’t trying to kill them. The doubles are trying to take them.

Just like that, Prudence has the edge.

She ducks down and kicks out, sweeping the Other Prudence’s legs out from under her and sending her sprawling to the ground. Her swords fly from her hands, skittering across the stone. Prudence stands over herself, smiling. “And to think I had such high expectations for you,” she says.

Her blade lifts, but before she can bring it down, there’s a sudden vicious clamp of teeth around her wrist. Pain radiates up Prudence’s arm and the sword falls with a raucous clang, her wrist left reddened with lipstick and blood.

“Good job, sister,” praises the Other Prudence.

Another Agatha is there, her lips and chin dripping crimson, a certain wild light in her eyes. She looks like a siren, fatally beautiful; she looks how she did in the woods with Prudence’s father. Like the real one, her hair falls in a precise black wave over one shoulder, her gown a rich red. But she isn’t Prudence’s Agatha. Prudence knows. She would always know.

This Agatha charges her. Prudence sidesteps it, but Agatha hooks an arm around her waist as she goes, bringing them both crashing to the floor anyway. The Other Prudence is suddenly gone, and that rankles Prudence more than anything else — that any version of her would run out on any version of Agatha. That she would leave her to fend for herself.

Prudence brings her knee up hard into Another Agatha’s stomach, and it serves as enough of a distraction for Prudence to scrabble for her sword. Her fingers close around the hilt, but Agatha’s are back on her wrist, pressing into the bite marks. Prudence clenches her teeth and bears it, but when she gets the sword in hand and has the chance to drive it up into her attacker, she only sees —

Agatha, her sister. Not hers but too like hers to hurt.

It’s a brief moment of hesitation, but it’s enough. Another Agatha grins and reaches down to grab her. Prudence almost lets her. Her vision swims, doubles, or doesn’t — it actually is Agatha standing over the doppelgänger’s shoulder, taking her by the hair and dragging her away from Prudence without so much as a flinch. Prudence pushes up onto her hands and then stands, limping slightly, her body all over bruised. She tosses the sword to Agatha, who catches it with one hand.

They used to fence together, in different Academy days.

Agatha slits her double’s throat, a kind of revulsion crawling over her face that smoothes away as soon as it appears. Prudence remembers what Nick had said to her in the woods when she was lost and hysterical, facing the worst of herself. “That’s not you.”

“It’s part of me,” Agatha replies.

“Not the only part,” Prudence tells her. There’s so much more she wants to say, all of it stopped up somewhere in her chest because she’s not sure if it’s what Agatha wants to hear, if it would help or hurt. In the end she holds out her hand, pinkie extended.

Agatha takes it.

And back into the fray.

When Ambrose is jerked back against a strong chest with a sword to his throat, he hopes it’s only Prudence feeling a little frisky. But alas — it is a Prudence, and decidedly frisky, but not quite the correct combination. “All you have to do is come with me,” she purrs, her mouth by his ear. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Terribly, torturously nice,” Ambrose agrees. “I’d like nothing better. However —” He snaps his fingers and teleports out of her grasp, reappearing a few feet away. “I suspect those violent delights would have violent ends.”

Her cruel, cold smile is a poor copy of the one he wants, like a postcard reproduction of a masterpiece. It’s the smile that starts the gears turning in his head, and then the outfit: a long coat of shiny aubergine vinyl, the same as she’d worn in the bookstore that day.

“It was you, wasn’t it,” he says with dawning understanding. “At Dr. Cee’s with that mortal boy. Not her.”

The Other Prudence’s lip curls. “I am her.”

“No, my dear,” Ambrose says, stepping back. “You most certainly are not.”

There’s alarm in her eyes. An outsized reaction to what he’d said, or so he thinks until his back bumps up against the wall. Except it can’t be, because there isn’t supposed to be a wall there; certainly not one so warm, less like stone and more — amphibian? When he touches it, it’s sticky, and his hand comes away with the substance, colorless and viscous, like mucus or slime. Ambrose grimaces and closes his eyes, and lives in a beautiful world of denial for another ten seconds before he makes himself look at it.

He misses his beautiful world of denial instantly.

“Eughh!” He scrambles out of the way just in time. The thing moves inexorably onwards, looking like Blackwood had, a mess of oozing and tentacles with the shape of a man somewhere inside it. It has dark brown eyes, panicked and trapped, and the vestiges of high cheekbones, what might have once been an archly appealing grin now turned to a rictus of horror. What’s terrifying is not that it’s unrecognizable, but that it very much is.

It’s Ambrose’s face, lost within the monster.

The thing rumbles on like a tank, leaving a wet trail behind it. The Other Prudence shoves him in its direction, but Ambrose lets momentum carry him all the way past, watching with blunted dismay as she’s overtaken by it. By him, this nightmare of himself. An Ambrose who failed, he thinks. Who became the very thing he sought to stop.

He truly could have gone on quite happily without that particular bit of psychological dread made manifest.

The doubles have been careful to collect instead of damage — Ambrose can only assume their master needs its food source replenished — but Ambrose’s seems to have no control either way. Anyone or anything in its path gets sucked up into it, chair or wedding guest; apprehension becomes acute terror when he sees it catch the edge of Aunt Hilda’s wedding dress, then her foot.

Is it really his Auntie Hilda, or the other? He has no idea, but he can’t let her be pulled into one of its many mouths like pits of fleshy quicksand. Ambrose grabs for her hands. “Stop it, let go!” she says, and tries to bat him off, even as her legs vanish, even as it consumes her to the waist. “I don’t want you to be hurt!”

“Not taking comments at this time,” Ambrose remarks, and yanks, though he only gets dragged closer and closer. It has her by the shoulders. A cry looses in his throat. Her hands slip out of his, and he watches it gulp her down until only a little finger pokes out from within it, and then that’s gone too.

Ambrose shuts off. He doesn’t make a decision either way, it just happens: he sits where he stands, in the glue-like goop it has left everywhere, and knows that he has failed. That the thing was designed of his failure, and so became a prophecy.

Then he’s jerked suddenly to the side — part of his jacket rips free and remains adhered — while his rescuer leaps back in to plunge her sword to the hilt in the Ambrosian nightmare. Gravity drags Prudence down so the thing splits open, spewing intestines and intestines and somehow yet more intestines. And then Auntie Hilda, spluttering and covered in ooze, but alive, absolutely alive.

Prudence wipes the back of her hand across her perspiring brow, leaving behind a glimmering smear of something unnameable. Her dress is torn, her arm bloody, her sword ablaze. She’s radiant.

“You’re better than that,” she says reproachfully. “Get it together.”

Sweeter words have never been heard. Ambrose laughs and takes her hand, pressing his mouth to the inside of her wrist so the ragged wounds there knit back together. “As you command it, so shall it be,” he says, and this time her smile is not cold or cruel at all.

“I’ve been thinking,” Roz, or “Roz,” as Sabrina has come to think of her, says. “What kind of friend would do what you did?” She crouches behind Sabrina to tie her hands, continuing, “I mean, Harvey and I are meant to be. A godly pair. We were chosen by forces beyond our understanding. I was granted a vision. What more confirmation do you need?”

Sabrina fidgets, the rope rubbing against her wrists, and tries to remember all the hands-free spells she knows. “So true,” she mutters, not listening.

“It’s just a witch’s nature,” Not-Harvey says amiably, ambling up with something in his hands — a bucket or maybe a pot, its contents sloshing darkly. “They don’t have a lot of self-control. And they’re always trying to corrupt good mortals.” To Sabrina, he adds, “Did you know your warlock boyfriend would have had both of us at once, if he could? Isn’t that disgusting?”

Sabrina’s ears prick up. “Well,” she says.

Harvey sets the bucket down and kneels in front of her. “Don’t you want to be different?” he wonders earnestly. “I know it scares you, to have the Devil in you. To be the heir to so much wickedness. Don’t you want to be free?”

Over her shoulder, Roz picks up the thread enthusiastically. “Don’t you want to cast aside your life of sin so you can submit to a greater power? Our Leader will make you part of everything in the universe. The wind, the water, the earth, the sky — they all answer to him. You won’t be bound to any worldly authorities. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

They had dragged Sabrina to the altar and tied her to a chair, spouting words of goodness and gospel while the melee unfolded before them. Sabrina keeps up a steady hum in her head to drown it out, but it’s difficult to ignore poison dripped in your ear by someone you love. Hearing those words in their voices, measured and reasonable as the real ones, makes something in her chest tighten.

Like when Not-Harvey presses, softly, “Don’t you want to be clean?”

“No, thank you,” Sabrina chirps. “I’m perfectly fine just as I am.”

He cups her cheeks between his warm hands, searching her face. “You’re lying. I know you don’t believe that.” He sounds so gentle. “But I can make you tell the truth.”

A shiver runs down Sabrina’s back. She starts to whisper a quick protection spell, but Roz cuts her words off with a hand on her throat. “Now, now. None of that.”

Harvey raises the bucket. “It’s for your own good,” he says, like he really means it.

“Wait!” Sabrina exclaims — as much as she can around the pressure of Roz’s fingers. “You’re right. I want to be clean. Totally. I want that. Take me to your master.”

Harvey pauses. “Do you mean it?”

“Cross my heart,” Sabrina says. Roz releases her and she coughs a little, finds her voice again. “You’re right. I hate that the Dark Lord is my father. It feels like everything in my life has been spinning out of control ever since I found out. I don’t like having this — this potential for darkness. All I ever wanted was to be a good person and I’m afraid it’s my destiny to be like him.”

Sabrina knows what makes a good liar. There has to be just enough truth in it for it to feel real.

Harvey smiles. “That’s good. That’s really good, ‘Brina. Now just get the rest of your witches to fall in line and we can go. All of this can end.”

Her brow furrows. “The rest of —” Her gaze tracks over the room, watching her family and friends and classmates duke it out with enemies who look exactly like them. Putting herself on the line is one thing, but she would never do that to them. “Just take me.” She wants to sound rational, but it comes out too hasty, overeager. “You don’t need them. I’m powerful, right? Your Master could feast on me. It doesn’t need —”

“Look at you, falling for her lies again.” Roz sidles up to Harvey and presses close. “You know what you have to do. She left you no choice.”

He nods heavily, as though he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. “You’re right,” he sighs. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, babe.”

The bucket comes up again. Sabrina doesn’t know what’s in it, but she isn’t taking any chances; she snaps her fingers behind her back so the ropes catch fire, singeing her wrists but splitting apart so she can pull free. The pair of doppelgängers react immediately: Roz shoves Sabrina’s shoulders back down so she can’t stand up, and Harvey upends the bucket over her head.

Sabrina screams.

Whatever Harvey pours on her is clear and cool like water, but it burns all of her exposed skin — her face and collarbones practically sizzling, arms turning bright red. “It’s holy water,” Roz says, pressing down harder when Sabrina jerks against her hold. “Don’t you feel it making you pure?”

“But —” Sabrina gasps. “I was baptized —” The hurt is so intense it could shock her out of her body. “This shouldn’t — I —"

Sadly, Roz says, “’Brina, your dad is Satan. It’s going to take a lot more than a baptismal prayer to save you. You really —”

Her words cut off in a guttural gurgling and a spurt of blood hits Sabrina in the face. The point of a blade sticks out of Not-Roz’s chest.

“Jeez,” says Roz, from behind her. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be really sanctimonious?”

Sabrina peers up, dazed with pain, to see Roz yank the sword back, her hair a cloud of curls and lips painted dark red.

“Rosalind!” Not-Harvey cries out. “What has gotten into you!”

Roz swings the sword and plunges it into his stomach, remarking, “Not your biggest fan right now, either.”

Once she’s sure they’re both down for the count, she drops to her knees in front of Sabrina, her eyes warm and reassuring. “Tell me what to do,” she says urgently. “Can you do a healing spell or should I grab someone?”

Sabrina stares at her, a little overcome and still smoldering slightly. “You saved me.”

The corner of Roz’s lips quirk. “Well, duh.”

Sabrina dives at Roz, clutching her tight despite the way it lights up the nerve endings of her tender flesh. “I’m sorry,” she says thickly.

Roz hugs her back, but carefully, wary of making her injury worse. “Weird moment for it, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

Sabrina laughs, a rough sound, and she lets Roz bring her back down off the altar. Her skin is an unpretty ache, but nothing she can’t handle. They look for Ambrose or the aunts, until their attention is drawn by the doors of the Academy pushing open to reveal Harvey and Nick, both covered in blood to varying degrees.

“Spellman!” Nick calls, appalled, at almost the same moment as Harvey’s, “’Brina! What happened!”

“Harvey, Nick!” She rushes towards them and feels Roz fade back slightly. She isn’t sure if that’s a blessing or a bad omen. “Just some doppelgänger torture. What happened to you?”

“About the same,” Harvey says, his eyes raking over her anxiously. Nick touches her jaw lightly and tilts her head up to kiss her forehead, then her shoulder and arm; the blistering skin smoothes and heals under his mouth. When the last whisper of pain has faded, Sabrina lays her hand along his cheek, thankful. She could have done it herself, but she likes that he did.

Harvey grabs her other hand unthinkingly. “’Brina, it’s taken over the whole town. We went by the mines and they were a mess, total chaos.”

“There are people fighting in the streets,” Nick adds. “Doors of houses thrown open. It looked like half of Greendale was abducted.”

Sabrina absorbs that and takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.” Any number of people could have been snatched while they were busy with their own battle — people without their powers or defenses. The Eldritch Dark could be getting stronger every second.

She has to put an end to this.

Sabrina rights one of the toppled chairs and climbs onto it, giving her voice a magical boost when she shouts, “Everyone clasp hands! Right now!”

Nick frowns. “What are you going to do?”

Sabrina hops back down, taking his hand on one side and Harvey’s on the other. “Force them back to where they came from.”

The boys exchange a look over her head. “How?”

“I have no idea,” Sabrina says confidently.

All around the room, hand meets hand, and the remaining doubles are herded into the big circle formed by their bodies. “Banishing spell!” Sabrina shouts, and Aunt Zelda is on it instantly, shouting the Latin incantation so the rest of the room can pick up the words, starting a slow chant that gains power as it goes on.

Sabrina closes her eyes and tilts her head back, thinking of how she’d felt dueling with Ambrose, being at the mercy of Not-Roz and Not-Harvey. Thinking of her town torn asunder once again. The anger in the pit of her stomach starts to boil and bubble, then races up her back and down her arms. There’s a gasp but Sabrina barely hears it. Her body is rising up into the air, higher and higher. When she opens her eyes, everything is silver.

“Faces false that come from fog, go right back where you belong!” she orders, her voice echoing roughly around the stone walls. Thunder crashes outside, followed by a sudden downpour of rain. Heavy drops pelt the rooftop, and lightning streaks across the sky.

There’s lightning inside her, too. Sabrina’s power crackles at her fingertips, the surface of her skin, her eyes and mouth. She detonates, the room filling with light before it plunges into darkness.

Then Sabrina is falling, falling, falling, but she knows someone will catch her.

The circle breaks, a clean swoop gone jagged as they stagger backwards, catch their breath. They look at each other, taking stock of who’s hurt and in need of healing, who’s gone and who remains. The doubles have vanished, as have most of the bodies, but there are still a few lifelessly sprawled; hard proof of mistakes made. Nick sways with Sabrina in his arms, but Harvey catches him, one hand on his back and the other on Sabrina. By the time Ambrose and the aunts rush over, her eyes are already fluttering open like Briar Rose waking from a long nap.

“Is it over?” Sabrina asks. “Did I do it?”

“You’re mad, absolutely bonkers,” Ambrose tells her, half-laughing with relief, and pulls her in, Hilda and Zelda right behind him to hug and scold her. Hilda kisses her cheeks and Zelda strokes her hair and Sabrina laughs, so unsteady on her feet that Ambrose might be the only reason she’s upright. Nick and Harvey stand a few feet off, fond and wistful.

Everyone finds a seat, whether it’s on the ground or the edge of a table, one of the many tumbled chairs. Ambrose brings Sabrina to sit down and lets her rest against him, both bleary-eyed with the exhaustion that comes from the absence of adrenaline. Everyone looks like they’ve been sucked into a tornado and spat out again, the entire coven left wondering, did that really happen? Did they really do those things? Is it really over?

It is, for the moment. That’s all anyone can say.

“Aren’t you glad to have your full powers now?” Ambrose says, giving Sabrina a teasing nudge. “You saved the town, again.”

“Does it count as saving if I’m the one who maybe got the town in trouble?”

Ambrose makes a noise of distaste. “I don’t like this self-effacing Sabrina, I’d like my madwoman back, please. Take the compliment, cousin.”

She smiles and he’s struck by how young she looks, with her bare face and damp hair. Only sixteen. “Ambrose. Did you notice that I didn’t have a double?”

He nods. Neither says what they’re thinking, which is: she already has one, and hers is still out there.

Melvin gets the idea to pop the champagne and cheer to Sabrina, passing around the bottles that weren’t unfortunately smashed. “Oh, come on,” Prudence says, right on schedule. She’s sitting with Roz and Agatha, and snaps her fingers to get one bottle to themselves. “Did you hear that spell? It hardly rhymed!”

“It was an assonance rhyme!” Sabrina insists, and Prudence scoffs, but it doesn’t feel mean-spirited. Ambrose clocks her loose-limbed swagger, the way she leans one elbow on her propped sword; Prudence is having fun, and fun at Sabrina’s expense is some of her favorite kind.

“If you bothered to attend your classes instead of running wild schemes every second, you might have a better grasp on your rhyming,” Prudence dismisses.

“Oh, you get a better grasp of your rhyming,” Sabrina shoots back, and Prudence actually laughs. It’s catching, one to the next, a kind of silliness, delirious amusement. They laugh so much they barely need something to laugh at. Anything someone says sets them off again — Aunt Hilda doing her impression of bursting forth from the monster dripping goo, Roz mimicking her ultra-religious double.

“They weren’t all bad!” Theo tries, leaning back against his boyfriend’s shoulder. “I mean, me and mine just shot the shit until Gloopy Ambrose got him.”

“Gloopy Ambrose!” someone crows, and fresh giggles ripple through the room. Ambrose groans, a grin behind it. “Petition to never make that nickname stick, please. Let me live with dignity.”

“Why start now?” Prudence teases, eyes glittering, and even Ambrose has to laugh.

Aunt Hilda’s chortle turns to a champagne hiccup, and she covers her mouth. “I say save this cleanup until tomorrow and let’s all get some sleep,” she suggests. Dr. Cee takes her free hand and holds it in his lap between his own. She smiles at him and he smiles back, the simple pleasure of two people who just like each other. “Best take everything on with fresh eyes.”

“Sister, I’m disappointed in you,” Zelda remarks. “Giving up so easily?”

Hilda makes the familiar expression of apprehensive confusion that she often makes around Zelda. “Yes? Not much else to do, after the day we’ve had.”

“There is one thing that must be done.” Zelda rises, one heel broken and skirt smeared in all manner of carnage, hair awry — but lipstick still perfect. She terrifies Ambrose and he respects her deeply. She goes to stand at the altar, hands clasped in front of her. “In fact, Sabrina made it clear that it was at the top of our list of priorities.”

Ambrose and Sabrina and Hilda trade looks, excitement rising in a sudden dizzy wave. “Auntie, are you saying —”

“I am the High Priestess of the Order of Hecate,” Zelda says. “It is fully within my power to officiate the ceremony.”

Hilda looks over at Dr. Cee. “What do you say, my love? Just as you pictured it?”

“Better, my dear,” he says, and kisses her hand.

Ambrose and Sabrina grin at each other before hopping to their feet, hands held as they hurry to the altar. Marie gets up, too, and goes to wait on the groom’s side. “Everyone should have someone stand up for them on their wedding day,” she tells Dr. Cee, who seems genuinely touched.

He and Hilda take their places, somewhat worse for wear, but rather better for it, too.

“Witches, warlocks,” Zelda intones, before her gaze slides sideways to Marie and she smirks. “Voodoo priestesses. Mortals, hobgoblins, river witches, hedge witches — we are gathered here today to witness the union of my sister, Hildegard Antoinette Spellman, to this man who thinks capes are daytime attire.”

Ambrose squeezes Sabrina’s hand. She squeezes back.

The party continues at home. Everyone wedges into the Spellman house to share drinks and slices of wedding cake, and whatever else Hilda and Marie whip up in the kitchen until Marie shoos Hilda away to dance with her new husband. Ambrose vanishes the furniture with a spell so everyone can dance in the viewing room — haphazard, punch-drunk dancing with Roz and Agatha lending their voices to a steady stream of records, so much sound and chatter and laughter that the entire house feels brightly alive.

Sabrina spots Harvey across the room nursing a cup of punch and watching the crowd, his expression sweetly melancholy. She sidles up sideways so he can’t see her coming until she bumps her shoulder into his arm. “Recovered from the ceremony yet?” she asks, light and playful. “I noticed you seemed a little overcome.”

She caught him wiping away a tear or two while Theo grinned and thumped his back. Our tender flower, as Theo always said.

Harvey ducks his head sheepishly. “You know I love weddings.”

When their fifth grade teacher Ms. Kelly got married, they’d all gone, traipsing down the aisle ahead of her with handfuls of petals. Harvey had cried then, too. Sabrina held his hand and gave him her handkerchief, because she was the only fourth grader on the planet with a hand-embroidered handkerchief.

“I know,” she says gently, warm. The moment lingers, neither awkward nor entirely comfortable; she thinks of his stiff shoulders at the ice cream shop just a few days ago.

“Miz Spellman seems really happy,” he offers.

Sabrina agrees with a nod, gaze flicking towards where her aunt is arm-in-arm with Dr. Cee. She can also see Theo spinning Robin; Marie tilting Auntie Z’s chin up for a kiss; Nick dancing with Prudence. She expects a surge of jealousy, but none comes. They’re having fun, and she’s happy for them.

She wants Harvey to be happy, too. “I know we lost track of each other a little bit today,” she starts, studying him for a reaction. “A lot happened.”

On the phone he’d sounded fine, but busy, and almost an hour later he’d arrived looking like a slasher movie survivor. He still looks like that, though the blood is dried and flaking; he’s hardly out of place, everyone still in their battlefield best.

“It’s been a weird day,” Harvey acknowledges with a nod. “A weird year. A weird life, actually.”

She laughs, and he lets himself smile. “You know, your double was the first one I saw. He came by this morning, bright and early.” She bites her lip and touches her wrist, where the daisy had been. It isn’t exactly a nice memory; when the doppelgängers attacked, the daisy had turned to teeth and bit her. But she keeps replaying the moment all the same — Not-Harvey holding it out, wanting to see her later. What he said isn’t as important as how she felt hearing it. She hadn’t known. Hadn’t let herself know. “He said —”

Harvey’s eyes had widened in alarm when she started talking, and now he cuts her off hastily. “Whatever it was, don’t believe it,” he says. “Don’t believe anything he said.”

“Of course,” she says, swallowing disappointment with a smile. She thought it might mean something, that his double came to her like that. “Anything an evil doppelgänger says definitely can’t be held against you.”

“That’s what the movies taught me,” Harvey jokes.

Nostalgia prickles at the back of her neck. Sometimes she misses so much being that girl chased up the lane, spun onto her doorstep and kissed. “He really was a poor man’s Harvey Kinkle,” she says, nose crinkling. “Makes me twice as glad I have you.”

He seems surprised, though she can’t imagine why. He starts to say something but falters, and in the pause, Nick catches their attention. He’s nudged Prudence off in Ambrose’s direction and is coming toward them, smiling mischievously. Sabrina subtly straightens, but doesn’t realize until she notices Harvey doing the same thing.

“No one’s dancing,” Nick notes, eyebrows raised. “Don’t you two know you’re at a party?”

“I haven’t been asked,” Sabrina teases.

Nick holds out his hand. “I’m asking.”

She takes it, but Harvey is already pulling away, hands in pockets. “I’ll catch you guys la—"

Nick catches his elbow. “Not so fast, farm boy. I know you have moves.”

Harvey’s expression is unreadable but searing, a shock that warms Sabrina all the way through. When he shifts his gaze from Nick to her, she tilts her head and says, “I’m asking, too.”

So they dance — the three of them not knowing what to do at first, then loosening up, jumping around like idiots. No one touching, but close enough to.

When the celebration starts to wind down, witches disappear with little pops or drowse on available surfaces, their hands half-curled around wineglasses or propped under their heads. Harvey is tired enough that he gets it, and he’s been blood-crusted for enough of the day that he would really like not to be.

“You can clean up here!” Sabrina suggests, and he can see in her a slight unwillingness for everyone to go, for the night to end and tomorrow to present some fresh horror. He doesn’t let himself look too much at Nick, but he can feel those dark eyes watching him, a wolf in the woods. “Better than walking home covered in blood.”

He can’t argue that. A bath is drawn for him upstairs in Sabrina’s bathroom; it’s odd to be allowed into that space, where Harvey has only really been in passing. He likes Sabrina’s room and he’s intimidated by it, the strangeness and privacy, her own sacred space. He closes the door on it and sheds his stiff, splattered clothes, sinking into the steaming water with an involuntary moan. He realizes all at once how much he’s aching, the pain in his muscles, his throat; the arm that held the rock. He pushes the thought away and dunks under the water, emerging when he hears a knock. “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” says Nick, and the door opens slightly to reveal his profile, gaze averted. There’s a pause where all Harvey can hear is his heartbeat gone suddenly wild. “Do you mind if I come in? Just to clean up. In the sink.”

“Uh,” Harvey says. “Sure.”

He draws his knees up and wraps his arms around them, back hunched, as Nick comes in. He only glances at Harvey once with a quirked eyebrow. “I won’t look,” he promises. “Your virtue is safe.”

Harvey snorts and shakes his head. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a real jerk, Scratch?”

“You have,” Nick says pleasantly. He turns the taps on and stands at the sink, shrugging out of his tuxedo jacket and then making quick work of his shirt buttons, stripping to the waist in a brisk, business-like way. Harvey feels the surface of his skin sensitize, and he’s aware of being naked like a bad dream; that sudden realization when you’re in front of the classroom, or late for a test. Why did he say Nick could come in? What was he thinking?

Harvey knows what he was thinking.

Nick splashes his face and then grabs a washcloth to scrub at the more stubborn bloodstains. Drops of water roll down his neck and onto his collarbones, over his chest. Even though Nick’s back is to him, Harvey can see him reflected in the mirror, scrubbed skin freshly pink, tender in a way that begs to be touched.

Harvey had kissed him. He kissed Nick.

Like he’s reading Harvey’s thoughts — which, oh god, witches can actually do — Nick meets Harvey’s eyes in the mirror. “You missed a spot.”

“I thought you weren’t looking.”

Nick’s lips twitch. “You started it.”

Harvey’s ears go pink and he looks away, feeling the heat along the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he admits. “I did.”

“That’s the funny thing.” Nick returns his attention to clean-up. “I thought we’d taken care of that.”

Harvey doesn’t like the way he phrases it, like whatever was brewing between them was an infestation, or a busted pipe; something to fix and move on from.

“But you’re looking,” Nick continues. “And you kissed me.”

“You kissed back,” Harvey says defensively, and is immediately embarrassed. He’d copped to it and now it was out there, no denying it, even if he wanted to deny it. That kiss is there between them.

“I’m not the one who cast the spell,” Nick remarks.

Harvey opens his mouth to snap something else, but then it hits him, what Nick means, and whatever he’s going to say evaporates. “I don’t have good luck with spells,” he offers finally. “I’m mortal, so. That’s probably why.”

Noncommittally, “It’s possible.” He holds the edge of the sink, his back revealing all the tension his voice won’t. “You were upset. You had just experienced something horrific. You wanted to feel better. I’ve been kissed by plenty of people for worse reasons than that. You don’t have to — You can go on your merry heterosexual way and not think twice about it, if you don’t want to.”

Harvey frowns. Then he says, “Come here.”

Surprise bows Nick’s back and he’s frozen for a moment, the way he’d been when Harvey hugged him; as though he’s an animal paralyzed by headlights and doesn’t know which move to make next. Eventually he listens, turning and kneeling on the floor beside the tub.

Harvey doesn’t know what to do with Nick now that he’s got him here. Nick takes over, picking up Harvey’s abandoned washcloth and getting the spots he missed — around his ear, under his jaw. Harvey’s throat is dry. No one’s ever done that for him before.

“Maybe,” Harvey starts, and stops, because the room feels hushed now, air close and warm. “Maybe the spell just cancelled out Sabrina’s.”

“Meaning?”

Meaning whatever’s left is just him. “It must have,” he says, skirting around a straightforward answer. “I started looking at you because of what she did, but…”

Nick stills again, something cagey in the way he holds himself when he’s waiting for bad news. “What, mortal?”

Harvey catches Nick’s elbow before he can pull back, bathwater sloshing. “I’m still looking. That’s gotta mean something. Right?”

Nick’s hand curls around his bicep in return. Harvey’s sitting up in the water now, bringing them closer, face to face. “You tell me,” Nick says. A dip appears between his eyebrows, almost fretful. “You’re the only one who can.”

Harvey’s gaze falls to Nick’s mouth, and he misses that stupid smirk, because if Nick was being cavalier about this, then it would be easier for Harvey to pretend. But with all the charm worn away, Nick is just worried, and Harvey doesn’t want him to be. He tilts his head and Nick closes his eyes and there’s a knock at the door, jarring enough that they break apart.

“Just me!” comes Sabrina’s bright voice from the other side. “I bring towels and clothes.” She steps into the room, and there’s a flicker of surprise when she sees them together, but it’s quickly extinguished. “They’re Ambrose’s, so I hope you don’t mind punk bands and striped silk.”

She holds up one t-shirt with a garish logo that makes Harvey smile. He always liked how Ambrose dressed. “Thanks, ‘Brina.”

She dips her head in a nod, setting the pile on the nearby chair. She hesitates with her hand on the doorknob, surveying them with an uncharacteristic indecisiveness. Harvey’s about to ask what’s wrong when she says, “Do you guys mind staying tonight? I just —” She clutches the knob, a tiny convulsion, and he’s struck by how drained she is, pale and tired. Her electrifying feat must have taken a lot out of her. His hero, always. “I don’t really want to be by myself.”

Who are they to say no to that?

Nick undresses and slips into Ambrose’s pajamas without fuss, naked for such a brief instant that Sabrina feels a little guilty for even noticing until realizes Harvey noticed, too. Smiling, she holds out a towel so he can be screened rising from the reddened bathwater, and he steps into it gratefully. Once it’s wrapped around him, she says, “Hold on,” and pushes onto her tiptoes to blow gently on his wet hair so it dries all at once in a soft fluff. Nick smiles at them and holds out his hand for her; they leave Harvey to get dressed on his own.

They crawl into bed together, Nick on one side of Sabrina and Harvey on the other, tucked close under the quilt so they can all fit. Sabrina snuggles in even closer, her head on Harvey’s shoulder and Nick at her back, his arm around her waist.

It’s the fastest she’s fallen asleep in months.

Chapter Text

Sabrina wakes up in a tangle.

First she registers warmth, the blankets kicked away but Sabrina still enveloped, cozy; the particular living heat of another body, and another body. The thump of someone else’s heartbeat and the gentle rhythm of their breathing. Her cheek is on Harvey’s chest, rising and falling with each even inhale; he’s turned towards her slightly, and her knee is tucked over his hip. Nick curls close behind her, flush against her back with his legs folded under hers. When she glances up, she can see the edge of his profile, his head on Harvey’s shoulder and their faces tilted together.

She pushes up slightly, curious, and the movement causes Nick to stir. She remembers that he’s a light sleeper, always vigilant. “Good morning,” she says softly. Nick is still too sleepy to be charming, so he frowns and rubs a hand over his face, one eye closed tight against the early sunshine.

“Morning, Spellman,” he mumbles, rough-voiced. She’s hit with the impulsive desire to kiss him, so she does — lightly, on the cheek. She hears a slight intake of breath, which means Harvey is awake, his hair very fluffy from sleeping on it freshly dried and something helpless in his expression. Nick adds, “Morning, farm boy.”

Nick nudges her, so Sabrina leans over and kisses Harvey on the cheek too, unable to entirely subdue her smile. But once she’s close to him like that, something shifts, or settles. His cheek is a little rough under her mouth like maybe he has to shave. He’s holding himself so still that it seems to sharpen the memory of the days when he didn’t, when every kiss they shared was as easy as saying hello or smiling.

She pulls back — not much, but enough to meet his eyes, her lips buzzing from brushing his skin. He’s so vulnerable, so open and hesitant, that she touches him lightly; just her fingertips on his cheekbone and in his hair. She kisses him. It’s a gasp of a kiss, as though they’re both surprised, even though the only thing Sabrina can’t believe is that it’s been so long since she was allowed to do this. She’d said goodbye to him with a kiss once before and this feels like running into each other again, old friends.

The whole time Nick’s hand is on her waist, a warm weight through her shirt. They’re still all caught up together, so it’s no trouble at all to let herself fall back against him and meet his mouth over her shoulder. It’s maybe the most honest kiss they’ve ever had, even more so because Harvey’s here to see it. Sabrina’s hand is on Harvey’s chest and she can feel the thud of his heart against her palm, captured by the cage of her fingers.

Kissing Nick has always felt like one of the delicious things she was once promised, the taste of butter and untold power, the boy who made her feel like it was worth being a witch when she thought it could only mean wickedness. It’s the kind of kiss sailors might dash themselves on the rocks for. His mouth is soft and yielding, as if by letting her take what she wants, he’s getting what he wants, too.

Her skin is all-over sparks. Nick is very awake now, his eyes dark and alert; Harvey flushed and uncertain with lips parted. Sabrina feels the words form on her tongue, do you want to maybe, but before she can speak, Nick has wrapped his hand around the back of Harvey’s neck and swept in, laid him back for a kiss —

For a kiss Sabrina thinks is maybe not their first one.

There’s immediacy to it, a certain click of things fitting together, but no clumsiness. Harvey doesn’t seem taken aback at all, though he does have that little worried notch between his brows, and he glances at her — a sideways look under his lashes, still kissing Nick. Her heart jumps. She can’t help pushing back in, stealing the kiss away.

It all gets a little out of hand after that.

Sabrina slides into Harvey’s lap, Nick’s lips on his neck and then her hands in Nick’s hair pulling him back to her. It’s a mess, a whirlwind, kisses traded and pressed wherever’s available — the corner of someone’s mouth, the edge of their jaw, a tender throat. Sabrina kisses Harvey’s chest over his heart; Nick’s teeth find her earlobe. Together she and Harvey strip Nick’s shirt off and press him down into the bed, Nick grinning, happy to be at their mercy.

“Fair’s fair,” Sabrina teases Harvey, nose brushing his. She finds the hem of his t-shirt and quirks an eyebrow, enjoys his playful smile as he lets her remove it. And it’s that thought, fair’s fair, that has her opening one button of her pajama top and then another until it slips from her shoulders. Nick and Harvey are looking at her with awe, flushed and breathing hard, maybe thinking about what could come next — what they want to come next.

“Do you want to —” Nick starts, olive skin gone pink, curls in disarray. “What do you want?”

For the first time, Sabrina knows the answer without hesitation. “You,” she tells him, with a kiss, and, “You,” to Harvey, their hands climbing up her bare back, enfolding her in their arms. Everything that was missing before is here in front of her now, and Sabrina would. She wants to.

Which is when Ambrose flings the door open and declares, “Cousin, sorry to wake you, but —"

Mayhem. Sabrina shrieks and grabs Harvey’s castoff shirt, fumbling to put it on. Harvey flings himself to the far side of the bed as though she and Nick have suddenly become lava. And Nick — Nick is fine, actually, and laughing.

“Ambrose!” Sabrina exclaims. “You can’t just let yourself into people’s rooms!”

Ambrose is frozen in incandescent joy. He’s the happiest Sabrina has ever seen him. He’s beaming, his grin so wide he could catch flies. Prudence peers over his shoulder, eyebrow arched in consideration. “Nice one, Sabrina,” she remarks, not unimpressed. “Didn’t know you had it in you. Nicky, I am, of course, deeply disappointed in your choices.”

Ambrose remains too delighted for speech.

“What is so important that you had to barge in here first thing in the morning?” Sabrina demands, even though she knows there are many things that are important, and dangerous, and needing to be dealt with.

Ambrose finds his voice again. “Nothing,” he says resolutely, trying to back up. “Absolutely nothing, please, as you were — come down whenever you’re ready — no rush — enjoy yourselves — Use protection —”

He gives Prudence a little bump backwards but she doesn’t budge, half-heartedly rolling her eyes. “There’s news,” she says. “We’ll see you as soon as you’ve put on your clothes.” Her gaze trails over Harvey, head tilting. “Though you’re free to stay as you are, witch-hunter.”

She turns on her slippered heel, pulling Ambrose along with her. “Apologies!” Ambrose calls out as he goes, looking genuinely bereft. “Next time hang a sock on the doorknob!”

Sabrina huffs a frustrated sigh and falls back on the bed, the mood officially ruined.

A night with Ambrose needn’t be anything remarkable. Prudence reminds herself of this, wrapped in his robe at his kitchen counter, pouring herself a cup of the coffee he made especially for her before anyone else was up, waking her with mug in hand and lips against the back of her neck. She’s spent countless nights with Ambrose, and a battle could get anyone’s blood pumping. Just ask the idiots upstairs.

Ambrose is still glorying in outsized pride for his cousin’s antics. “It’s too bad the greeting card industry hasn’t caught up to witch culture,” he remarks wistfully. “I could really use a ‘Congratulations On Your First Attempt At A Threesome, Dear Cousin’ card right about now.”

Prudence snorts, leaning back against the counter. “We’re coming up on a year since her baptism. It took her long enough.”

Ambrose grins and comes closer, a look in his eyes that Prudence recognizes. She meets him with an outstretched hand, which Ambrose takes and kisses, his mouth traveling over her fingertips and knuckles to the back of her hand, her wrist, all the way up the inside of her arm until he’s gotten to her shoulder, her collarbone, her neck. Prudence curls her fingers under his chin, passes the pad of her thumb over his lips. He bites her gently, and she smiles.

“Call the meeting, Ambrose,” Prudence says. “We don’t have all day.”

He releases her with a disappointed grumble, but his eyes flash, dark with promise. Prudence clasps her cup against the center of her chest. She guards the warmth almost jealously.

Spellmans stumble in one by one with their paramours — Hilda and her husband, Zelda and Marie, and lastly Sabrina followed by a visibly mortified witch-hunter and a remarkably relaxed Nicky. “Just once I’d like to get through the paper before I have to hear about another dead mortal,” Zelda complains. She eyes Harvey. “Why is he here?”

“Auntie, be nice,” Sabrina scolds, then turns to Ambrose with brows knit. “Is there another dead mortal?”

“Quite a few, unfortunately,” Ambrose says. “I took an early astral visit to the Greendale Police Department and it looks like the doppelgängers did end up getting a good chunk of the townsfolk. And there has been an increase in missing persons.” His eyes flick towards Prudence. “I saw Prudence’s double with a boy weeks ago. Turns out I might have been the last person who saw him alive.”

Unease ripples through the room. Prudence bristles, though she’s not especially bothered by her impersonator absconding with a mortal boy; such is Prudence’s reputation, for better or worse. It’s the idea of the other alone with Ambrose that rankles, another her unraveling threads that Prudence had plucked at one too many times herself.

“The Eldritch Dark must not be as starved as we thought,” Nick says. What he doesn’t say hangs in the air: what else has it done while it lays in wait? What plans has it made for them?

“But it’s a picky eater,” Prudence remembers, recalling what Agatha had told Roz. The Eldritch Dark could only feed when its victims despaired. It would wait out their screaming and crying and pleading until they had given up and gone quiet. Perhaps it wants them to go quiet, too — that’s why it sent fog to torment them, doppelgängers to needle them. “It can’t take us until we’ve given up hope.”

Instead of sulking, they had celebrated.

“You know, that isn’t half —” Ambrose springs away from the counter, alight with an idea, and does a quick pacing turn before summoning a book. “In Blackwood’s research, there was something…” He trails off in a mumble, flipping pages, then points emphatically at a passage, saying, “The Eldritch terrors, they aren’t like any monster we know. They aren’t petty, they aren’t self-concerned. They don’t care. It’s no grandiose battle of good and evil. They’re nothing. Negative space. The absence of — of love and passion and interest, all the things that make life worth living. They’re voids. Voids consume, but they do it by making you become like them — hollowing you out.”

“Then it’s already lost,” Sabrina proclaims, on her feet with hands on the table like a regular little dictator.

“That’s sweet, Sabrina,” Prudence purrs. “But I don’t think an ageless being from another dimension is going to roll over and play dead in the face of Spellman optimism.”

Sabrina’s eyes have a dangerous glitter. “Why not?”

In the significant silence that follows Sabrina’s pronouncement, the witch-hunter ventures, “I mean, that sounds cool. But how do you actually go up against the void? Like…where is it? Can it whip up another army? Is it going to attack us or…is it going to be like The Neverending Story where stuff just starts getting sucked up into it?”

Nicky perks up at the mention of an unending story, and Prudence watches him internally squash the studious part of himself that really wants to ask about it. “He’s right. How do you fight something that exists just outside your world?”

He gives Harvey a pat between the shoulder blades, absent and lingering, but Harvey squirms under the attention. Nick frowns.

“Um, is there something in Mr. Blackwood’s book about getting rid of it, maybe?” Harvey leans his elbows on the table, then catches a glare from Zelda and hastily sits back. “Since he’s the one who called it?”

Nick crosses his arms over his chest, raised eyebrow a dark slash of derision. “If there was, don’t you think it would have come up by now?”

Ambrose confirms that there’s nothing more to be gleaned from Prudence’s father’s scrambled notes, the documentation of his descent into obsession. “I’ve read and reread those books until my eyes bled,” Ambrose says. “Metaphorically speaking. If Blackwood knew the answer, he kept it to himself.”

Feeling rumbles through Prudence, a rolling stone of resentment and buried anger. “We could ask him,” she says, flat and careful, each word measured and spat. One startled glance after another greets her.

“I’d rather be stoned alive than wake Faustus,” Zelda drawls, followed by a few quick drags of her cigarette, a jerk of the hand that reveals more than she’d probably like.

“If we even could,” Hilda adds. “Without that Circe.”

“If it can be done, I’ll do it,” Prudence says grimly.

“Prudence —” Ambrose starts, but she doesn’t allow him to finish and she refuses to meet his eyes.

“If it can’t, then nothing is lost.” Prudence sets her coffee on the counter with an air of finality, cup still full but gone cold now.

Marie is the one who speaks next, and her steady determination is more palatable to Prudence than Ambrose’s concern. “Then you’ll have my help, cherie.”

Prudence nods. Marie returns it.

“We can’t count on that, though. It could be another dead end.” Sabrina drums her fingers on the tabletop, attention drawn inwards. “We have to go back to where it went wrong. I have to close the tear, and to do that —” Realization stills her hand, and her chin lifts. “I have to summon Sabrina Morningstar.”

“Well, yeah,” Ambrose says. “Obviously.”

“Were you not planning on that already, love?” Aunt Hilda wonders. “Because I thought —” She looks around. “Sort of the whole thing, isn’t it?”

“I can’t imagine why it’s taken you this long already,” Aunt Zelda adds. “We’re short on time as it is, Sabrina.”

Sabrina deflates slightly under their unenthusiastic eyes. She had expected, if not pushback, then at least some healthy caution. She doesn’t typically have to supply caution herself. “You know what could happen, though,” she warns. “What will happen. If I pull myself off the throne in Hell, it’s all going to come crashing down — my father will be after me again, Lilith probably has something up her sleeve, it’ll —"

Summoning Sabrina Morningstar will destroy the worlds she’s been so careful to keep separate. She knew this day was coming, but she had been happy to let it be tomorrow’s problem; there were secrets to keep and ice cream to serve, lazy afternoons on the beach she’d never give up, more pressing dilemmas to be dealt with. She was content to honor the deal she’d made: Hell in Hell, her here on Earth, and never the twain shall meet. Letting those boundaries dissolve will create as many problems as it solves.

Zelda waves off her concerns carelessly. “What’s one more despotic deity after the year we’ve had? We’ve come face to face with the Dark Lord before.”

“Yeah, and you know what happened before,” Sabrina says. Her hand curls over Nick’s on the cushion between them, immediate and protective. He lets their fingers entwine.

Hilda softens. “Maybe the Eldritch — thing’ll take care of him,” she says optimistically. “Just —” She makes a slurping noise. “— him right up, like Sweet Harvey said.”

“That’s not exactly what I said,” Harvey tries, but Sabrina sits bolt upright, hand falling from Nick’s as an idea takes hold.

“Wait,” she says.

Ambrose covers his face. “Oh no.”

“Quick,” Prudence hisses. “Someone come up with something less mad before she says it —”

“I was kidding!” Aunt Hilda interjects hurriedly. “Just a laugh! A silly, harebrained idea! Nothing to carry on about —"

“What if,” Sabrina begins, a nervous hum traveling through the room as they resign themselves, “What if we could lure my father to the right place at the right time — say, wherever the Eldritch Dark is creeping in — and just let it…take him?”

“And absorb all that infernal power?” Nick says, adding sarcastically, “How could that go wrong?”

“Maybe they’ll cancel each other out!” Sabrina suggests. “Like a controlled explosion.”

“There is literally,” Ambrose says, already stressed, “no scientific or magical theory to support throwing our former Lord Satan into the gaping maw of an otherworldly being to depose him.”

“So?” Sabrina smiles. “That means there’s nothing to disprove it, either. Sounds like a fifty-fifty shot at success to me.”

Now everyone is expressing the full spectrum of mingled apprehension and horror she had first anticipated. Except for Harvey, who looks contemplative as he says, “I mean…it could work?”

Sabrina directs an even sunnier smile at him. “It’s on the table,” she says, satisfied.

They break after that. Prudence and Marie vanish into the office to discuss methods for enlivening Blackwood, Ambrose staring after them with a stifled longing to help. Hilda and Dr. Cee decide to go into town to see how much damage was done by the doubles. Zelda heads to the Academy to retrieve some of the restricted books on summoning, Nick at her heels; he kisses Sabrina goodbye before he goes, but only pauses in front of Harvey with a slightly stiff, “See you, Harry.”

Harvey wants to go home to check on his dad, but promises to be back with the Fright Club in time for the summoning. Sabrina follows him to the door, catching him before he can go through it. “Hey. You okay?”

He nods, giving his hair a ruffle and looking distractedly towards the kitchen, though Nick is no longer there. “Um. This morning was kind of crazy, huh?”

Sabrina bites her lip against a smile. “Fast?” she wonders.

“A little,” Harvey admits. “We should probably, um — talk, but I don’t — I —”

When all he seems capable of is a haphazard mumble, Sabrina decides to cut him a break. “Harvey, I don’t know what I’m doing either, if it helps. I don’t have a plan for this. I don’t know if there is a plan for this. But I know it felt good when it was happening. It felt right. I hope it was like that for you, too.”

He sucks in a soft breath. “I wish Ambrose and Prudence hadn’t —” His face heats up and he looks away, embarrassed.

“I know, we really have to learn how to respect a closed door around here,” Sabrina jokes. “You don’t know how many times I wish I’d knocked in this house. Once I found Auntie Z and Marie —”

He laughs, which is what she wanted, catching her cheek in the warm expanse of his hand and stopping her speech with a touch, fingers falling away too fast. “’Brina, I can barely look your Aunt Zelda in the eye as it is. Don’t make it worse!”

She grins. “I’m just saying, it could happen to anyone and frequently does.”

“Maybe here,” Harvey says. “I’m not so sure about other houses.” He sighs, in and out quick like he’s trying to shake off tension. “Speaking of, I should —”

“Right,” she says. “Be careful, okay? Call me. Text me. Just — I don’t want anything to happen to you out there.”

Impetuously, she reaches up to brush her knuckles over his cheek, wanting to touch him one more time before he goes, in case she can’t later. Harvey closes his eyes, leaning into her for a moment before he steps away. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

She smiles a little. “Not soon enough.”

Not everyone lives by the same rules. Harvey knows that better than most.

He walks home slowly, hands in the pockets of borrowed track pants that are too short at the ankle, and stops every time someone needs help. He steps in to hold someone’s door steady as they rehang it; he joins a crew lifting a big branch that had fallen into the road; he walks confused old Mrs. Huang back to her house and her grateful daughter. No one looks at him sideways, but he still thinks it would probably be better if his dad saw him in his bloodied suit instead of a pair of crimson pants and a t-shirt that dips low enough to reveal his collarbones.

Harvey’s rules involve not being Harvey as much as possible.

He goes home and sits across the kitchen table from his dad, watching him polish off breakfast he probably made in the microwave. Harvey plays spot the difference. His dad is more amiable since he quit drinking, has less of that loose menace, but it still seems conditional — as long as Harvey dials back on art in favor of basketball and music, has his arm around a pretty girl, does his shifts in the mines. As long as he makes himself look like Tommy, or at least a passable version.

Harvey doesn’t really mind doing those things. He loved his brother. Loves.

“What the hell are you wearing?” his dad mutters. It’s the first time he’s really looked at Harvey since he got here. “Worse than that damn ice cream uniform.”

A hum of tension travels up the back of Harvey’s neck. “I like it.”

His father snorts, uninterested. “You would.”

Harvey and Nick had only checked in on his dad from a distance after the thing with the double. There was too much going on, men trapped in the mines with nightmare versions of themselves, and it was strange to see his dad when he could still feel the sensation of hands on his throat; still feel the weight of the rock. He doesn’t think his dad would do what the double did. But there are other things his dad would do, and has done.

“You gonna stare at me all morning?” his dad says, with that mean old grin, leaning back and brushing his hands off. “I gotta get back down there. Don’t know what that storm was about, but it’s left us with a shit ton of work to do. Could use an extra hand.”

“No,” Harvey says. “I have stuff to do today.”

His dad’s eyebrow arcs. “More important than helping your old man? You know those mines are your legacy, boy. Gonna be yours one day.”

Harvey says, “This is more important.”

His dad is unsettled, Harvey can tell. “What’s up with you today?” The question is unwieldy, unused to being asked. “You get rattled around in that mess last night?”

Harvey opens his mouth and shuts it. He wants to say, I hate that I inherited your anger, or maybe one too many hits made it contagious. I hate that I still want you to like me and you won’t. I hate that you’re the only family I have left.

Harvey thinks it, and feels it, and then he lets it go.

“Sort of,” he says finally. “I guess I finally understood something. I’m not the son you wanted. I won’t ever be. But you’re not the dad I wanted, either.”

His dad is kind of blindsided by that, confused and maybe angry, already starting to speak when Harvey gets up.

“I gotta go,” Harvey says. “I have to meet someone.”

After he changes, he drives down to the old grade school playground, where they said they’d meet. Harvey sits on a swing to wait, and after a little while Roz sits on the swing next to his.

“Hey,” she says. “Last night was pretty crazy, huh?”

Harvey nods, his slight smile hoping for friendliness. “Ended better than it started.”

“Mine was kind of a rollercoaster.”

She hates rollercoasters, they always make her sick. It’s a small and silly bit of knowledge that Harvey has and will always have, like knowing her favorite food (raspberry cheesecake) and her favorite hymn (“Morning Has Broken,” which Harvey only knows because of Cat Stevens). “Have fun at the wedding?”

He remembers her singing with Agatha.

“Yeah.” Roz’s head tilts to the side. “You did, too.”

It isn’t a question, but he confirms it anyway before self-consciously pivoting to, “I’m glad you came. I didn’t think you would.”

“Well, you’re my ride to the big event, so I kind of had to.” She bumps her swing into his to show she’s teasing, but then gets right to it. “I know you wanted to talk, so…”

“Apologize, really,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Rosal— Roz. I’m sorry about what I said, when we were camping. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry it ended like this.”

“But not sorry it ended?”

Harvey clutches the chains of the swing, but makes himself say, “No,” even though he doesn’t want to hurt her more than he already has. It’s the truth, and he owes her the truth. “I think it had to.”

Roz’s smile is small and unconscious, without humor. “Yeah,” she sighs. “I think so, too. Can I ask you something?” Of course she can. “When you first asked me out…was it because you really liked me, or was it just because of Sabrina? Because you were hurt and I was…there.”

Harvey twists to face her and Roz twists too, keeping themselves in place with her sneaker anchored against his. “I was hurt. Because of Sabrina. Because of Tommy. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real, that I didn’t — love you. I don’t think I would have gotten through the year without you. You gave me a reason to — to want to get up every day and not just give up.”

Her neutral expression makes the most minute shift towards feeling, her brown eyes taking on a sheen and lips pressing together ever so slightly. “We had a good run,” she says, chin lifting a little, and it’s only on the last word that he hears a waver.

“The best,” Harvey says, and means it.

Roz loses her resolve then, turning away quickly so he can’t see her face, and Harvey reaches out to squeeze her knee. “It’s okay.” She clears her throat and shakes herself off, returning calm and clear again. “I’m okay.”

They sit for a moment in silence, absorbing the end together, until Roz gently pushes Harvey’s hand away. Their chains twist back and they sway side-by-side.

“Can I ask you something else?” This time Roz is wry and a little cynical, but not without mischief.

“Anything.”

“You and Sabrina and Nick.”

Harvey blows out a breath. “Me and Sabrina and Nick.”

“Is that — what is it?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I don’t know what it is.”

This morning had felt like Harvey was still dreaming, but Ambrose and Prudence walking in effectively brought him back to earth. It was a bucket of cold water, reality infringing on fantasy. For Sabrina and Nick, those lines could be so much thinner; Sabrina is a practiced tightrope walker when it comes to moving between worlds, and Nick doesn’t know any other way. They’re magical and beautiful, not tethered to anything. They can do things Harvey can’t. Nick used to have three girlfriends at once. Sabrina has never met a rule she couldn’t bend.

Harvey is nowhere near their level. He does a full-body cringe every time he remembers that the guy he likes saw him naked in a bathtub.

Oh, right, and there’s that. The guy he likes.

With an anxious glance at Roz, Harvey asks, “Do you think we can be friends again?”

“I hope so,” she says. “I liked when we were friends.”

“Me too.” Harvey smiles. Roz returns it. He nods towards his truck. “Want to go summon the Queen of Hell?”

She hops off the swing. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Sabrina perches on one of the low tables in the greenhouse while Aunt Hilda snips stinging nettle and sweet briar into the basket in her lap. Aunt Zelda stands aloft with a tome in her hands, turning each page with a sharp flick and a trail of smoke, creating a narrow ring that rises to the ceiling like a wicked halo. Through the open door, Sabrina can see Nick seated at the kitchen table with piles of similar books. The sight makes her smile.

“Of course, as there has never been a Queen of Hell, there’s certainly no methodology for summoning one,” Zelda remarks.

“But there you’ve got urtica dioica,” Hilda says, showing Sabrina one of the tightly scalloped nettle leaves. “For protection. And sweet briar —"

“Said to be planted by the Devil himself,” Zelda interrupts. She surveys Sabrina. “Not unlike you.”

Sabrina looks down at the tumble of green and pink: the happy flowers that disguise dangerous thorns; the slender stems that prick and burn. Deceptively innocuous until you lean in a little more. She understands. “Aunties,” she starts uncertainly. “I’ve been sort of feeling —"

“The idea is to weave them into a ladder.” Zelda stabs at the book with a burgundy nail. “To create a bridge from here to Hell. You’ll bleed as you weave, and the blood is essential — it’s the strongest link between you.”

“What a fun time,” Sabrina says wryly. Hilda gives her a sympathetic pat on the leg, though her bulky gardening glove makes it more of a gentle buffeting. “Really looking forward to that.”

“Getting started is always the hardest part,” Hilda soothes. “I’d do it for you if I could. But I’ll have my salve on hand as soon as you’re done. You’ll be right as rain in no time.” She drops the last rose into the basket, care and commiseration in her eyes. “Now what were you about to say, love?”

Sabrina opens her mouth again, but that’s when Harvey and Roz arrive, standing side by side like two people in an elevator who only sort of know each other — they have that sense of distance and closeness at once, uncomfortable but cordial. Harvey explains that Theo couldn’t get away. “It seems like the farm got kind of damaged in the doppelgänger thing,” Harvey tells her. “Theo said something about double the horses, except they were evil horses? Anyway — he’ll be here when he can.”

Sabrina nods. “Well, thanks for coming, guys. I really appreciate it.”

“’Course,” Harvey says. “What do you need?”

Roz nods, hands on hips and ready to go. “We’re here to help.”

Sabrina bites her lip, because what she really wants is to talk to her best friend, though she’s not sure she’s allowed. Then she spots Nick pretending not to listen behind them, utterly still with his head cocked like he’s reading. He hasn’t moved his pen or turned a page since Harvey came in. A lightbulb clicks on in Sabrina’s head.

She smiles, wide and with teeth. “I need Roz, but Harvey… Why don’t you go help Nick with the summoning circles? There are a lot of symbols — we could really use your artistic skill.”

Harvey swallows. He glances over his shoulder at Nick, who returns the look warily.

Sabrina keeps smiling.

Explaining sacred geometry to a mortal in the close claustrophobia of the Spellmans’ embalming room is not what Nick expected from his afternoon. It had been such a promising morning.

It’s a small space to work in, even with the gurney pushed aside to make room. They kneel together on the unforgiving tile and sketch out strange shapes with oily pigments, each placed at precise intervals along the wide circles. At their backs are storage freezers that likely haven’t been cleaned since Ambrose Spellman tried to blow up the Vatican, and the tile absorbs all that chill. It smells of decay and formaldehyde, an underlying waxiness from the chalks they’re using mixed with the odd sweetness of split pomegranates, which wait to lend a seed to each rune.

Harvey’s elbow keeps knocking into Nick’s, or their hands bump as they reach across the circle. Once they both try to go in the same direction at the same time and almost head-butt each other. Whenever Nick explains something, Harvey hastens to do it but then he does it wrong so Nick has to reprimand him and wipe away the mistake, Harvey’s frown deepening by increments. “The runes are mathematically placed,” Nick says for the fourteenth time, so repetitive that Harvey starts talking before the last syllable is out of his mouth.

“Well, I flunked pre-calc and I don’t know your weird witch math —”

“Math is the same wherever you go, mortal, perhaps I ought to have invited your clever girlfriend down here instead.”

Defiantly, “Yeah, you probably should, I bet she would have been great.”

“Which one?”

Harvey glares at him. “Either.” Then, “I don’t have a girlfriend right now.”

Nick smirks, and something in his chest eases slightly. “Let me explain the algorithm to you again.”

Harvey rolls his eyes. “Alright, nerd. Give it your best shot.”

The chalk is black and red, dense as oil pastels so it clings to the floor in thick lines. It clings to their fingers, too, and to Harvey’s forehead when he absently brushes his hair back. Nick reaches out without thinking to whisk away the smudge, but Harvey jerks back, a flinch so instinctive that Nick frowns.

Fine. He understands.

Except he doesn’t, actually, because the mortal has been the one to make every move. Nick wouldn’t have, he promised himself that he would only take as much as he was given, but the mortal had kissed him and looked at him and acknowledged that he liked it. He had sighed under Nick’s mouth this morning and peeled his clothes off with no sign of hesitation. Nick can comprehend theory and variables, is not as ignorant of mortal courtship as he once was, but these are — what had that mortal book about dating called it? — mixed signals.

“Um, sorry,” Harvey says in a small, miserable voice. “Can you pass me the —”

He reaches for the black chalk Nick’s holding, but they collide and the chalk drops, cracking into three pieces. Nick scowls. “Look what you did!”

“What I did? It was a mistake!”

Nick snatches the pieces up and fuses them back together with a spell. “Like this morning, I guess.”

Harvey recoils slightly. “Nick —"

Nick bites the tip of his tongue. He can practically hear Prudence in his head. You are being needlessly pathetic over this mortal. There are dozens, you realize. Find another one. Nick hushes her. He likes this one. “You obviously regret it.”

“I never said that.”

“You haven’t said anything. You don’t have to. You flinch every time I touch you.”

Harvey flushes. “I don’t. I —” His hands flex nervously in his lap. “I don’t mean to.”

“It’s fine,” Nick says forcefully. He attempts to return to what he’s doing, but somehow every rune he’s ever learned has fallen out of his head. “You tried it and you didn’t like it. No one would hold that against you.”

“Nick. That’s not —” Harvey struggles to explain what it is or isn’t, settling on, “Can’t you see how this is all a little crazy? We kissed for the first time yesterday and this morning, we almost had —” His voice drops until it can barely be heard, like he’s about to intone unspeakable dark magic. “Sex.”

Nick is aware that mortals must do everything at a paradoxically glacial pace despite their brief lifespans, but he has also had sex with people immediately following first kisses. Sometimes preceding. By comparison, he has known Harvey quite a while already. “And?”

“And!” The word pitches back up sharply. “That’s not normal!”

Nick’s jaw locks. “For you,” he snaps. “It’s not normal for you.”

“Well, yeah, I’m talking about myself,” Harvey fumbles. “Sorry for asking you to respect a boundary!”

“Asking would imply that you’ve said at any point how you feel or what you want. All you’ve done is made it very clear that you don’t want me —”

“Stop saying that, that’s not true —”

“Did you enjoy it?” Nick interrupts. “Did it feel good?” The room swerves into sudden silence, and even Nick can hear how his tone is dangerous, dark and tempting. He lets it deepen, each question coming out quieter and slower. “Did you want it? Did you think it was hot? Were you happy?”

There is a tight, airless moment and then they’re surging towards each other, up on their knees on that bruising tile, kissing furiously. Harvey gets his hands in Nick’s hair to the knuckle and holds on, tugs his head back just to kiss him again. With a torn-off moan, Nick bites Harvey’s lip, hard, and that’s when he pushes Nick away, panting.

“Dude!” Visibly frazzled, Harvey runs his hands through his hair. “What the fuck.”

“Sorry,” Nick gasps, but he isn’t, actually. He would never admit it, but he can’t catch his breath either. They’ve smeared the circles, the lines all swirling together and the knees of their jeans stained black and red. Nick wants Harvey to pull his hair again. Harvey’s bottom lip is already deeply pink and swelling, skin bearing the impression of Nick’s teeth. It’s not the only mark on him — a memory of their morning remains on the line of Harvey’s tensed neck, a small rosy discoloration almost lost to shadow.

Nick reaches out and lets his fingers brush the little love bite. He wants to leave a million more. “I did that,” he says, and meets Harvey’s eyes.

He feels a sharp intake of breath against his fingertips. Harvey grasps his wrist and hauls him in so hard that Nick loses his balance, but Harvey catches him, kisses him; they melt onto the ground, Nick’s elbow making first contact before Harvey presses him down, kisses traded gracelessly. Nick searches out another spot on Harvey’s throat, thinks maybe there, just under the jaw where his pulse is — but almost as soon as Nick’s flat on the ground, Harvey scrambles back again.

“I don’t know how to do this!”

Nick closes his eyes and inhales once, deeply; holds it, exhales. Opens his eyes. “You were doing fine until just now.”

Heavy-lidded, Harvey watches him, the weight of his gaze dragging over Nick’s body and then back to his face. “I like you,” he says, a kind of quiet fierceness in it. “I’m not saying I don’t like you.”

“Then what are you saying?” When Harvey can’t come up with an answer, Nick sighs and turns away, pushing himself back to standing. “I’m not asking for your hand in marriage, Kinkle. I just want to go on a date.”

The summoning circles are a mess beneath them. They’ll need to be completely redone.

“We have work to do,” Nick says, finally. So they do it.

Roz and Sabrina sit at either end of one of the stiff couches in the Spellman parlor, the way they used to at Roz’s house as little girls, their knees brushing as they peeled pictures from magazines and talked about the cutest boys in their class. Sabrina only ever wanted to talk about Harvey. Roz never minded listening.

Now Roz thumbs through one of Zelda’s incredibly confusing books while Sabrina’s fingers nimbly twist nettle and briar into long ropes. Roz can’t help wincing every time she catches sight of Sabrina’s irritated hands, the pale skin scored with scratches and patches of pink rash. Sabrina seems hardly to notice, eyes on the finish line. She used to make lanyards during recess the same way, single-minded, and Roz thinks again of how things have changed, stayed the same.

Occasionally they hear a loud clang from the embalming room below. After maybe the third time, Roz says, “That doesn’t bother you?”

Sabrina pauses, considering, and says, “No,” with a shrug. Her lips quirk. “I’m sure they’re working it out.”

Roz can imagine. “I think it would make me crazy,” she admits. It is making her a little crazy, knowing Harvey is down there with Nick, knowing — just knowing. Sabrina must be able to sense it on her, or see it in her face, because her silence is palpable. There’s no good way to talk casually with your best friend about her boyfriend introducing your ex to polyamory. “Sorry. We don’t have to talk about it.”

Sabrina is careful in tone and body, her movements precise and gaze averted, focused only on what she’s doing. “We can, if you want. If there’s something you wanted to know, I would tell you.”

Roz shakes her head. “I’m good,” she says honestly, joking, “In fact, maybe tell me less. Avoid telling me anything. Don’t put me in the group chat.”

Sabrina doesn’t laugh, though she offers up a faded half-smile. With surprising melancholy, she asks, “Are we going to be those girls who stopped being friends because of a boy?”

It sounds so simple when she puts it that way, a boy, but it isn’t just a boy. It’s Harvey. He’s always been the boy.

“’Brina,” Roz says after a moment. “Did it feel like this for you when I started going out with him?”

Sabrina doesn’t ask what she means. She doesn’t have to. “Yeah,” she sighs, rueful. “Yes.”

It has always embarrassed Roz, faintly, that they fell in love with the same boy, but the ache of sympathy she feels now is almost nice. Sabrina is the only one who could ever possibly understand, and so is Roz. “Then we’re even,” Roz says firmly.

It may not feel even yet, but she’ll wait.

Hope sparks in Sabrina. “Are you sure? I mean —” She musters some humor, nudging her foot against Roz’s ankle. “I kind of feel like Agatha is your new best friend. You’re not trading me in?”

“Never,” Roz says, and she knows it’s true. “Anyway, Agatha and I are just friends. I mean, just regular friends. I don’t know her that well.”

Sabrina laughs. “You probably know her better than anyone besides Prudence. Take my word for it, she doesn’t warm up easy.”

“Oh. Oh, no, that’s not —” Roz waves that off. “I’m just the right person at the right time. She’s going through a lot and I’m — you know, I’m easy to talk to. And I’m an outsider, so I can’t really compare her to who she was before. It’s not — that’s all it is.”

Sabrina’s eyebrows lift. “Okay. Really convincing, by the way.”

Roz smiles and ducks her head, gaze falling to one of the book’s frankly upsetting diagrams of human transubstantiation. She flashes it at Sabrina with a theatrical grimace and they both chuckle; Roz is fine with letting the conversation wind another way. “How do you feel about this whole thing? The summoning.”

Sabrina stops weaving. She sits there with blossoms and leaves in her lap, hands bloody, and admits, “Kind of hesitant, if I’m honest.”

Roz gets that. “I can tell you from experience that it’s going to be really weird. With mine — I knew she wasn’t me, but I could see how she was made from me. If that makes sense?”

Sabrina nods.

“But I know you know I’m not a religious zealot who’s obsessed with her boyfriend.” She smiles a little and, after a moment, adds, “And I know you’re not just the devil’s daughter.”

They never talk about that, not really. Sabrina will make an offhand comment every so often, grimly resigned, but the news was neatly synthesized; next to father in her head is an asterisk and a footnote. But Roz was sure that couldn’t be it, and the way Sabrina reaches for her now feels like confirmation. Roz meets her hand and clasps it tight without a second thought. Blood sisters, she thinks, like pricking your finger at a sleepover and pressing it to your friend’s, which Roz was always too scared to do.

“I’ve been thinking about something the other you told me,” Sabrina says. “She was talking about the Eldritch Dark. She said the wind, the water, the earth, and the sky all answered to him. And I keep thinking about how you fight something that can be everywhere and nowhere. Something you can’t see.”

Something that’s more inside of you than out. It had followed them all over Greendale; followed them to Midvale; been everywhere they were even when they didn’t know it. But then Roz realizes, “The doubles kept trying to bring us somewhere, remember? There must be a place it all springs from. A leak. Somewhere it’s easier to make contact.”

The wind, the water, the earth, the sky. Roz runs the words over and over in her head like a riddle, looking for a way to unlock them. The wind, the water, the earth, the sky. It has a rhythm like music. In the past when people set up cities, they chose places with resources; locations that had everything they needed. “Maybe it’s somewhere it can access all those things at once,” Roz hypothesizes, mulling it over. “Where can you find the wind, the water, the earth, and the sky, all touching?”

They look at each other. And they both know exactly where.

The ritual doesn’t work. Prudence didn’t expect it to.

They do it three times, Prudence and Marie, in the echoing emptiness of the Academy’s main hall. Their bodies make up the only noise — the shush of bare feet across stone, the thud of each stamped step, the clink of jewelry and fullness of voices raised in song. They’re in perfect synchrony as they move around the trio of frozen Blackwoods, but neither Faustus nor Judith nor Judas so much as twitch a finger.

Intent is everything, so perhaps Prudence’s doubt is the problem. Or the seething anger that simmers every time she looks at her father’s smug stone face, thinking, you deserve all this and worse, a grave of stone is too good for you. “Can’t say we didn’t try, ma bichette,” Marie says. “There will always be another way.” Her hand closes on Prudence’s shoulder. “For everything you seek.”

“Yes,” Prudence says, back straight and fists curled, chin raised, always. “I’m familiar.”

Some travel the path of night with clasped hands and clear passage; not so for Prudence.

“He wouldn’t tell you anything.”

Agatha’s voice resounds from one of the many doorways, but she’s only a silhouette, a slight shadow like a familiar that hasn’t yet chosen its shape. A moment later she steps into the room and becomes herself: short black dress, twin braids, arms folded over chest. Dry and drab, she adds, “Even if he had something to tell.”

Marie hums in agreement. “Little to be gained from a bitter man with a heart bent towards domination and revenge.”

There’s just enough emphasis on the last word that Prudence throws Marie a sharp look. “Is that a read?”

Amused, Marie asks, “Is that how you heard it?”

Prudence bristles, which makes Marie laugh.

“Don’t take it so personal, cherie.” Her shrug is as elegant as slipping on a dress, and she accompanies it with an insouciant flick of the wrist. “Perhaps reconsider the things that might fulfill you.”

“My father’s head on a platter would do just fine,” Prudence retorts.

“Would it?” Marie gestures at Blackwood. “Then why hasn’t it?” She shakes her head without waiting for an answer, as though it isn’t for her to say, and lets the point stand, sashaying past Prudence in the direction of Zelda’s office.

“Hardly a platter,” Prudence mutters. She rounds on Agatha and her conspicuous silence. “What of you? Do you also think vengeance is empty and emotionally unsound?”

“Not me.” Agatha’s smile widens and curls, a changed smile since her time in the woods, like a doll with a demon in it. “If you held the blade, I’d gladly bare his throat.”

Prudence relents, but still shakes her head slightly. “You wouldn’t have to.”

“Why not? Too broken to be trusted?”

Prudence stares at her. They stand on either side of the statues; Blackwood is between them, and so is everything he’s done. “Too dear,” she snaps.

“I see,” Agatha says after a moment, with dangerous softness. “Everything beloved must be put out of anyone’s reach, even yours. Is that what happened with Ambrose?”

When Ambrose asked if she wanted him to be there for the ritual, Prudence didn’t know how to say yes, so she said she could handle it herself. It wasn’t a lie. She could, and she had. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”

“Lack of imagination was never your issue.” The corner of Agatha’s mouth curves. “I won’t be safer tied to a chair, or put on a shelf.”

Prudence raises her eyebrows. “You will if you stay there.” Agatha laughs, which allows a little of the tension to bleed from between Prudence’s shoulders. “I won’t allow you to be hurt again.”

“I’m already hurt,” Agatha says. “So are you.”

“I’m angry,” Prudence corrects. Anger has a purpose, a goal greater than her; it’s almost divine. Hurt is petty and solipsistic. Prudence has no interest in wallowing when she can strike. “How is it he always gets what he wants? No care paid to anyone in his way, least of all you or I. Everything is a means to his end. And even now, like this, his plans are still being realized — exactly what he hoped for about to come to pass.”

“At least he’ll never get to see it,” Agatha remarks, coming closer to stand by Prudence’s side. They study Blackwood together. Now his smugness seems almost comical, a fool who isn’t in on the joke. “Our clever little seer. Never expected her to pull a severed head from a bag.”

“To think I almost didn’t bring her.”

Agatha tilts her hand towards Prudence, fingers curled except for the littlest one. Prudence’s fist loosens and she extends her pinky in return. “It’s good you did.”

Archly amused, Prudence notes, “Something in the air with mortals lately.”

“Oh, hush,” Agatha says. “You like her.”

Prudence couldn’t deny it, so she doesn’t. When Agatha tugs at their joined hands, she allows herself to be pulled away without a last look at her father and the twins, a monument to the mistakes she’s made.

Perhaps there is no anger without hurt, and no hurt without a certain kind of wanting.

When it comes time for the summoning, they gather below: Sabrina, the aunts, and Ambrose, as well as Nick, Harvey, and Roz. They clutch red pillar candles wide enough for wax to pool beneath the wick without spilling, small molten puddles like B movie blood. A greater variety flicker at their feet, a sea of red candles creating tiny pockets of heat, giving the room a glow meant to emulate somewhere much lower. Halved pomegranates lay glistening on the gurney, their seeds spilling across the floor. They worked for Persephone, so odds are.

“If I move, am I gonna start a house fire?” Harvey mutters from between locked jaws, and Nick hushes him with a nudge of his elbow. Ambrose notes the red chalk ground into the back of Nick’s shirt and streaking across the nape of his neck, the same as on the knees of Harvey’s jeans, and sketched onto the tiles. Ambrose’s fingertips ghost along Nick’s neck, and he shows him the pigment when Nick turns.

“Interesting,” Ambrose teases in a hushed whisper, and Nick answers with a helpless grin. Harvey watches them, frowning, but looks away before Nick can catch him at it. Interesting, indeed.

Then Sabrina says, “Nick?” And he steps forward to join her at once, standing opposite each other across the three circles, layered like the phases of the moon, the sigil of Hecate. In the center Sabrina has scrawled her own name, or almost her own — Sabrina Morningstar red as real blood, with a flourish.

She and Nick carry long wands, tips dragging along the floor as they weave in and out along the circles’ curves. They move through the complex choreography in perfect harmony, no missteps or second-guessing, well-matched as partners in a dance. Nick’s dark head and Sabrina’s light one, gleaming in all that candlelight. They pause at each rune to intone a Latin incantation, voices overlapping and resounding in the small space, calling across realms. Demanding a return.

When they meet in the middle, they seize each other’s hands. “Sabrina Morningstar,” they shout, as one. “We summon thee!”

Ambrose echoes the call, with Zelda and Hilda following suit, then Roz and Harvey. Sabrina’s name rings out from every corner until the candles suddenly flare and the room is, for one terrible moment, full of fire.

Sabrina and Nick leap backwards, springing apart to bare the center circle once again. Sabrina flings her woven ladder down between them and light explodes — a different kind, a deeper heat, a burning brightness. Poppies spill from the ceiling and blanket the ground, which begins to crumble inwards.

“Sabrina Morningstar,” Sabrina declares. “I fix and hold you in my grasp! I keep you bound by my will! I demand it! I summon thee!”

The deliciousness of disloyalty is better than Lilith could have ever imagined. She hasn’t tasted such sweetness since before the fall.

She positions herself center stage, standing at a rakish angle so the light hits Mary Wardwell’s cheekbones just right, shadows her blue eyes under a heavy fall of lash. Today she chose a gown fit for a queen, with a tight bodice mosaiced with rubies and knucklebones. The only thing it wants for is a crown.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Lucifer asks, bored, waving a hand in her direction. He’s thrown himself loosely onto the throne, one leg bent and the other casually akimbo, leaning his elbow on the bump of one massive gold thumb. Sabrina perches on the other, legs demurely crossed at the ankle. Lilith sees what she’s doing, though she doubts anyone else does: Sabrina has placed herself slightly above Lucifer, her corona of silvered hair brighter than anything that could be laid upon it.

“I believe,” Lilith says slowly, “the word for it,” her shoulders push back, her posture tall and proud, “is coup.” She smiles. “Your majesty.”

Thus cued, the denizens of Hell rise behind her. Not a great number of them, but a fair few, and among them at least a few lesser royals, a duke or two, a countess, but more than that the hardscrabble demons and nightmares, misunderstood succubi, goblins, furies — all the creatures who have been pushed down by the Dark Lord for millennia, who see in her someone else who has not been heard. Someone who might listen. Not a spoiled brat from the land above, but a creature like them. Green like them.

Unfortunately, some of them are just there for Caliban. Lilith will take what she can get.

Sabrina is on her feet already, angry little fists at her sides. “Lilith, what are you doing?” she hisses, ignoring it when Lucifer raises a finger to silence her. “I thought we —”

She falters on the edge of being caught and teeters back a step. Lilith says, lightly, “Thought what, my queen? Pray tell — unless you don’t want your father to hear what you’ve been up to.”

Sabrina’s jaw tenses. Lucifer hasn’t reacted, but Lilith knows him. She knows the way fury makes him still, and the cruelty that waits behind composure. “Are you sure this is wise, Lilith,” he says, and does not ask.

“Where has being wise gotten me?” she wonders, deceptively soft and breathy. She almost smiles; he almost returns it. “I think I’ll try daring instead.”

Caliban chooses that moment to brashly break away from the crowd, coming to stand behind Lilith like a good lieutenant. “You’ve worn the crown long enough, Lucifer Morningstar,” he announces. “Some might say too long. Which is why —”

“Heaven and hell, please stop talking,” Lilith murmurs, managing to close her eyes and roll them simultaneously, so from the outside it must look like a flutter of pure white beneath her eyelashes. “You’re a silent partner in this endeavor. Try to remember.”

Sabrina surges forward, betrayed. “Caliban? You’re behind this?”

From Lilith, “Please don’t give him more credit than he deserves.”

“Come now, milady,” Caliban says with that devil-may-care grin, tossing his golden hair back. He’s visibly delighted to find himself in another melodramatic tête-à-tête with Sabrina. Lilith could gag. “We weren’t the only two hatching a plot. Don’t be envious that we got there first.”

“The we,” Lilith says. “Dial it back.”

Lucifer has finally latched on to the implication, and he raises a quelling hand. “That’s twice now there’s been mention of your scheming behind the scenes. If there’s something I should know, daughter —”

Of course Lucifer is more affronted at the thought of his darling daughter rebelling, even though it was clear from the first that Sabrina was not one to be controlled.

“She’s been a busy little bee, our queen.” Caliban smirks. “I’ve heard tell of a congregation branding themselves Daughters of the Morningstar, chanting hail, Sabrina in the Midvale woods.”

Storm clouds darken Lucifer’s face.

“How did —” Sabrina bites her tongue. “That’s absurd! I’ve been building a following for my father. The audacity —”

“It was a tip,” Caliban says. “From your little friend.”

Next to the dais, the dead witch with the slit throat mumbles oh shit and starts to edge behind the other ladies-in-waiting. Sabrina’s eyes close and she winces. “Okay, maybe I have a tiny cult, but let’s focus on the coup at hand here!”

“Because apparently I have so many to focus on!” Lucifer snaps.

Sabrina takes a moment and then draws herself up to her full, and very much inconsiderable, height. Arrogant and outraged, she radiates power in a way that cannot be taught or learned, but has passed to her through some incomprehensible mix of nature and nurture, with a dash of Satanic residue. “I made you a promise once, Caliban,” she says, a low threat. “Remember? I said I’d slit your throat ear to ear before I let you take my throne. If you thought the stone was bad, you have no idea what I’ll do to you now. I gave up everything to bind myself to the underworld. I battled through the Nine Circles. I made Hell a part of me, and now I’m part of it. If you think you can kick me out with an angry mob, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

Her gaze, cold and dark, shifts to Lilith. “And you haven’t won against me once, Madame Satan,” Sabrina adds. “What makes you think you could do it now?”

A hum is building around them, potentially problematic: the hordes of Hell have always responded to a little flash and ruthlessness, both of which Sabrina has in spades. They start to echo her name one by one, Sabrina filling the hall, reverberating, Sabrina Morningstar.

Lucifer is murderous.

“After everything I’ve done for you —” he splutters, and he means all of them, Sabrina and Lilith, every king and pauper of this infernal kingdom. “In spite of everything I will do to you —”

Sabrina ignores him, stepping in front of the throne in her golden gown, horns wreathed in ivy. “If there can only be one queen, it’s going to be me,” she promises. “And if it’s a battle you want, Lilith, then it’s —"

There’s a crack of lightning and the floor splits beneath her feet, an incandescent blaze momentarily blinding them all. When it clears, Sabrina is gone. Poppy petals litter the stone where she once was, but she’s there no more, and the chanting trails off in confusion.

“Well,” Lilith remarks. “That’s convenient.”

The ground sucks her in and spits her back out again.

Sabrina feels it like the sudden dip of a rollercoaster, or one of those spinning rides that plasters you to its walls with just a flimsy fabric seatbelt to keep you from splattering. She careens forward and is thrown back, landing hard on her hands and knees on warm tile, her dress in reams of gold around her.

She pushes herself up, fingers spread against the floor. She closes her eyes to get her bearings, and then she looks up.

At herself.

Not quite herself, but the other — a teenybopper in a plaid romper with a crisp white collar, hair all curls. Had that really been her, just a few months ago? Sabrina feels ancient.

Behind Sabrina Spellman stands Ambrose and Harvey, equally wide-eyed and achingly good to see. As she turns, she finds Roz and Nick, whose presence she swallows like a lump in her throat, then Hilda and Zelda. They loom above her in chiaroscuro, expressions made strange and uneasy in candlelight. It reminds Sabrina of her time in the Circles. Having her heart torn out. On the floor in the circle of them, she feels like a sacrifice, a demon bound in place.

“Hi,” Sabrina Spellman tries, and waves.

“Your timing really sucks,” Sabrina Morningstar tells her, accepting the hand that hauls her to her feet. Petals fall from her skirts as she shakes them out. “We probably only have five minutes before he —”

Not even that long. A swirling column of flame heralds the arrival of the Dark Lord mere moments before he stands before them in a cloak of raven feathers, chest bare beneath golden plate, a vein in his jaw pulsing. “Daughter,” Lucifer says, and then sees the other Sabrina behind her. “Daughter,” again, with curiosity, his eyebrows going up, “I see there’s been much more going on than I possibly could have guessed. Well.” His smile is cold but not without its patronizing fondness. “I suppose rebellion is in the blood.”

“If you like that, then you’ll love this.” Sabrina doesn’t know how it happens, exactly. She and Sabrina Spellman have the same thought at the same time without having to say a word or trade a glance — they throw out a hand and know it will be caught, their voices blending into one as they chant, “Tergente fuoco quod evoco. Te exigo. I banish thee, Lucifer Morningstar!”

The spell punches him backwards, but before he can hit the wall, he’s consumed by a burst of dark shadow and the smell of sulfur. Gone.

When Sabrina looks over, she can’t help grinning, because it had felt exciting, a thrum of shocking energy up her arm and out through her chest. “Quick thinking.”

“Thanks.” Sabrina Spellman smiles back. “You too.”

“Oh, this is weird,” Ambrose says. They both laugh. “Arghh.”

It’s so bizarrely normal that Sabrina giggles again, both of them do, and she gives in to the part of herself that is simply — at home. She’s home. The warmth of the word finds her in her bones, home, and she drags Ambrose into her arms even if he’s afraid of her. “I missed you guys,” she murmurs, and something in her voice must sound right, because when she stretches out hands for Hilda and Zelda, they come to her to be pulled in. And there’s Auntie Z’s perfume, Hilda smelling of sugar, the silk of Ambrose’s shirt. Home.

“Mind the horns!” Ambrose laughs, a wild sound. “Going to put someone’s eye out!”

Zelda, fittingly, is the first to extricate herself once she’s hit her limit of open familial affection. “This is all well and good, but with the Dark Lord hot on our trail, I think we ought to be somewhere that’s else.”

To the Academy they go.

Sabrina Morningstar is something else.

Sabrina watches her as she moves around Zelda’s office, hands clasped behind her back, in her glimmering gown like a demented Disney princess. She studies everything like she’s seeing it for the very first time, smiling as she picks up offering plates etched with the phases of the moon and small statues of the three-headed goddess. She doesn’t look like a mortal or a witch, but something painted onto the wall of an underground cavern, a fae thing in a dark forest.

Is this what Sabrina looks like to other people?

“I would have liked to have seen my bedroom,” Sabrina Morningstar says wistfully. “Your bedroom, I mean.” She smiles. “So what am I doing here?”

They explain the business with the Eldritch Dark as succinctly as they can — the tear in the universe that must be mended, and how it was their split that started the trouble. The whole time, Sabrina watches herself react, this other her that tilts her head like an inquisitive bird, asks the right questions with a mind geared towards battle strategy, and impresses Auntie Z with her knowledge of Hecate.

“This is why I wanted you in summer classes, Sabrina!” Zelda says severely over her shoulder, while that other Sabrina continues to hold court with the skill of someone who has been doing exactly that for months.

The word uncanny comes to mind. Roz was right — this is totally weird.

“Guys?” Sabrina says, interrupting her other self serving platitudes like you can’t fight a war without an army — trust me, I know. “Can we have a minute?”

Left alone, Sabrina faces Sabrina across the office, each a mirror of possibility for the other. They’re both who they could have been, if.

“You know, I’ve been seeing your reflection for weeks,” Sabrina tells her. “Really wigged me out the first couple of times.”

“Me too,” Sabrina says. “I made my ladies cover all my mirrors.” Off her look, “What?”

“Nothing. Just — your ladies. It’s kinda funny.”

She hides a smile and raises her eyebrows. “You say that because you’ve never met them. Kore is deadly serious.”

Sabrina laughs. “With a name like that, she’d have to be.”

Her own dark eyes sparkle. “I checked in on you guys sometimes. At the beach, the ice cream shop — It looked —” Sheepishly, “Fun.”

Sabrina tilts her head. “I guess fun isn’t really on Hell’s tourism brochure, huh? Hard to have a good time when ye abandon all hope before you enter.”

“You’re telling me,” Sabrina says. “I mean, it’s plenty fun if you’re into flaying people alive and letting spiders crawl into their eye sockets.” This earns a wince. “Exactly. And you have to be on guard all the time. I felt like I was sleeping with both eyes open. Lilith is gunning for me and every minute I’m up here is a minute I’m losing to her. She’s probably down there securing her position, drumming up support, poisoning the horde against me, and it’s just so — it’s exhausting.”

The weight of that exhaustion exits on a sigh. “I’m sorry,” Sabrina says, and means it. She thinks of Sabrina Morningstar pulling her family in for a hug as soon as she could, wanting to touch everything in the office. “I’m sorry you’ve been so alone.”

Her shoulders round. “Everyone has your back,” she says, with that same yearning as before. “Even Nick and Harvey are teaming up.”

With a mischievous smirk, she says, “We have, like, no time for gossip, but remind me to update you on that later.”

She laughs, nodding. “Sure thing.” She sits on the edge of Zelda’s desk, hands spread to span its width, as though it’s just another throne to claim. “Look. I don’t want to leave you guys high and dry, but my kingdom is sliding out of my grasp. And you have so much support here already. What do you need me for?”

That stings. This is a Sabrina who set aside family for a quest but never saw the price she paid for it.

Sabrina leans forward. “You felt it, didn’t you? The way we beat our father back like it was nothing. It felt like having twice the power I have on my own, and what I’ve got isn’t something to scoff at. Think of what we could do.”

“I have been,” she admits. “We could defeat Lucifer once and for all.”

“We could kick the Eldritch Dark back to wherever it came from. You and me. Together.”

Hesitation colors her expression, with an undercurrent of dread. “But after that,” she says carefully. “We’d have to meld, wouldn’t we? To correct the timeline. Either way, I lose everything I built.” With emphasis, “Everything you wanted me to have.”

Sabrina answers that with a shrug. “Help us and maybe we could work something out. I’m open to making deals.” She holds out a hand. “I won’t let you lose your throne.”

Sabrina Morningstar reaches towards her but pauses before they can make contact. “Do you swear it?”

“I swear,” Sabrina says, and tucks her other hand beneath her leg, the one with fingers crossed.

They shake on it.

Harvey doesn’t know what he’s still doing here.

The kind of preparations they can make at the Academy aren’t the kind he can help with. Sabrina’s Aunt Zelda is barking orders about weird herbs and anointing athames while Miz Spellman weaves protection charms with the help of some Academy kids. Prudence and Agatha sit side-by-side sharpening swords while Roz practices defensive maneuvers in front of them and they occasionally call out corrections. Nick —

Harvey is trying really hard not to look at Nick, because he can’t without feeling like he’s lost control of himself on a cellular level, or maybe like a comet hurtling towards Earth, vibrating uncontrollably once it hits the atmosphere but burning up before impact.

Sabrina is in rapt conversation with herself and her cousin Ambrose. She’s busy, too busy for Harvey to pull her aside for any kind of conversation, even if he knew what he was going to say. He has too many questions and no one to ask, because none of it’s as important as raising your horned doppelgänger from Hell to wage war against an unknowable nothingness and maybe the devil, too. Things like —

Are they getting back together? Is it way too fast, the way asking out Roz was too fast and ruined everything? Can it be too fast if you’ve been in love with someone for almost as long as you’ve been alive, even if you haven’t let yourself think about it for months and months? Do the rules change if there are three of you instead of two, or are there any rules at all? What if — what if there are other things you never let yourself think about and now they bubble up every time you see him?

Those things don’t matter right now. Harvey should go get Theo. And guns. And maybe some axes, too. He should do something useful instead of loitering where he’s not needed.

He waves to get Sabrina’s attention — inadvertently getting both of theirs, and Nick’s too — and gestures towards the door to indicate leaving before making little pew pew finger-guns to explain why. Both Sabrinas stifle the same laugh in the same way at the same time, as though his vision’s gone double, and it’s — it’s trippy.

Sabrina — his Sabrina — nods and then turns to confer with Nick, who draws such a chilly look from Queen Sabrina that he takes half a step back in surprise. It’s a look Harvey remembers from, jeez, months ago: hard and heartbroken and a little combative. It’s a strange reminder, but not so strange as Sabrina-with-horns stepping towards Harvey with obvious conversational intent.

Sabrina Morningstar has ditched her crown, but she’s still wearing a voluminous skirt that opens in front to reveal a pair of gold slim-fit trousers, with a bodice patterned like dragon scales and gold leaf laid over her collarbones and shoulders. She looks beautiful and terrifying, but that’s kind of Sabrina’s deal; it’s not unexpected even if so much else about her is. Still, there must be some trepidation in him, because she raises ringed hands to say, “It’s just me, I swear.”

Harvey doesn’t know what that means when the me and her are the same but different. “You could never be anyone else,” he says honestly.

For some reason that makes her smile. “I missed you,” she says. “Down there. I mean, I thought about you guys all the time. Wondered what you were doing, how you were.”

“You weren’t too busy, ah…” Harvey wonders what the Queen of Hell does. Ms. Lilith made it seem like a lot of bureaucracy and some creepy stuff with Nick. He decides on, “Doing infernal paperwork?”

She grins. “I had some time to think between treaties. Being away from everything…made it really clear what’s important.” She glances at Sabrina and Nick, still talking. “I hope she gets that, too, and doesn’t just make the same mistake all over again.”

Harvey frowns. “A lot’s changed since you guys split.”

She tilts her head thoughtfully. “I can see that.”

He wonders if she can, because if she could, she’d see how different Nick is from when she left him. Not worn out and empty anymore, but at ease and confident again, without that brittle charm Harvey always found so off-putting. She might not be able to see how Sabrina has grown, taken ownership and taken charge, since she is Sabrina and everything, but with Nick, how could she miss it?

“Something I said bothered you,” Sabrina-sort-of says, searching his face. “I’m sorry. I’m different, too — I’ve become a fearsome thing.”

“Nah.” Harvey smiles. “You always were.”

She smiles too, and she is herself then, just Sabrina with a slightly more elaborate hair accessory. Sabrina calls her back over to see a spell Ambrose discovered that might be useful, while Nick makes himself scarce. Harvey turns to finally head out but instead finds Prudence leaning against the double doors with her arms crossed and eyebrows raised. It makes Harvey’s pulse spike involuntarily, like he’s about to be dragged in front of the cops for questioning.

“How do you do that?” she asks.

“Huh?” Harvey says. “Do what?”

Her eyebrows climb, if possible, even higher. “See, that’s exactly what I mean. You can barely string a sentence together, and yet look at the trail of broken hearts you’ve left in your wake.”

Harvey knows she’s probably just going to call him dumb again, but he truly can’t help a, “What?”

“I understand a semi-mortal upbringing warped Sabrina’s sensibilities,” Prudence continues, undaunted, “and Nicky is so desperate for attention he’d fuck a chimera if it promised him a kiss first.”

“Hey,” Harvey interrupts, heated now, “Don’t talk about them like —”

She isn’t done. “But he’s also been holding a hopeless torch for you since winter solstice at least. You bewitched Rosalind when she’s otherwise a credit to her kind. And Her Royal Highness is still after you, even though she had half-naked princes of Hell batting their eyelashes at her.”

That’s a lot, but the thing that keeps ringing in Harvey’s head is, “Since winter?”

Prudence waves that off. “So what is it? I refuse to accept it’s just your body.” Her eyes travel over him in a way that makes Harvey, even fully dressed, flush. “As surprisingly satisfactory as it is. Many people have bodies, and most of them know better what to do with theirs.”

Torn between embarrassment and insult, Harvey says, “Prudence, it’s not, like, cool to — everyone is on their own journey when it comes to —”

“Oh, calm down with the aw, shucks, farm boy.”

Is that why Nick calls him that?

“I’m only asking. How do you do it? How do mortals — do that?”

It hits Harvey that she’s actually asking. There’s something in her, under the armor of attitude and carelessness, that really doesn’t get it, but wants to. So he does his best to answer.

“I don’t really think I’m doing anything,” he admits. “I just try to listen and understand where people are coming from, and do things for them if they need it and maybe can’t do it themselves. I’m trying to be good to people. Do right by them.”

Like visiting Roz in the hospital to read to her; talking to Nick when he seemed down; following Sabrina anywhere, even to Hell.

“Is that what love is?” Prudence asks.

“It’s a way of showing it,” Harvey says. “There are lots of ways.” He thinks of Nick kneeling next to the bath, scrubbing away the spots of blood Harvey had missed. “But I’m not — I’m not really doing a great job? Like, I don’t think Nick is super happy with me right now and I don’t know what’s up with Sabrina and Roz is upset and —”

Prudence holds up a hand. “You have exceeded the information I care to know. Go, run your little errands. Try not to die later.”

Thus dismissed, Harvey goes.

It’s like he said to Nick — he has no idea what he’s doing.

“Add malevolent horses to the list of things about Greendale I’m not going to miss when I blow this town for college.”

Theo had been mucking stalls and mending fences all day, which was an exhausting endeavor even with Robin’s superspeed. All he wants to do is curl up in bed and listen to records with his boyfriend, but he has to Do Battle, a generally unfair but unfortunately typical part of Theo’s life. And now Robin has that plaintive look he gets whenever Theo mentions blazing out of Greendale faster than you can say see ya, Satan.

“Hey, it’s a year away.” Theo turns off the kitchen sink and sidles up to Robin, still soapy and not entirely clean, dirt on his cheeks and overalls. “Who knows what could happen in a year?” He grins. “We could all die today!”

With a reluctant laugh, Robin takes him by the face, always very gentle, and kisses Theo’s dirt-smudged nose. How did he get so sweet? He has no right to be. “What will you miss?”

“Hm…” Theo pretends to think about it as he angles in for a kiss, Robin’s arms winding around his neck. “Milkshakes at Dr. Cerberus’. My dad. Driving out to look at the stars in Harv’s truck.” He backs Robin against the counter. “Spending all night in your bower.” Robin spins them and hoists Theo up onto the counter, catching his mouth in a kiss Theo feels down to the tips of his fingers. He nudges his nose against Robin’s and murmurs, “I won’t have to miss you, because wherever I am, you’ll be.”

He overtakes Robin’s smile with another kiss, knocking his hat off so Theo can curl his hands in Robin’s hair, arching closer, hooking a leg around his hips —

Before hearing the telltale honk that means Harvey’s idling outside.

“Nooo.” Theo drops his head onto Robin’s shoulder. “These are our last moments of normalcy!”

“Babe,” Robin says. “I hate to break it to you, but we’ve never had any moments of normalcy.”

Theo considers this. “You know what, babe? Facts.”

They go out to meet Harvey. Theo brings a rifle. Better safe than tentacle chow.

He knows something is up instantly.

Theo and Robin sit together on one side of the cab, Robin’s arm slung around his shoulders. Harvey hassles them about seatbelts, as usual, even though they’re literally on their way to get pummeled by an ungodly monstrosity from beyond space and time. He has his hands at ten and two as usual, he’s watching the road as usual, he’s ready to do a soccer mom arm save if need be, as usual, but there’s something off about him. It’s the tense set of his shoulders, the twitchy sideways glances, how he taps his fingers against the wheel out of tune with the radio.

Plus, there’s the hickey.

“Harvey,” Theo says, an expression on his face that could only be described as a rictus of elated schadenfreude, because it’s too maniacal to be joy and too terrifying to be affection. “Harv. Harv, what’s that on your neck?”

If Harvey was tense before, now his whole body goes on lockdown; it’s a wonder he doesn’t crash the truck. “Nothing,” he says, in simultaneously the most and least casual way possible.

“Robin, you’re an expert, would you say that hickey on Harvey’s neck is definitely a hickey or almost definitely a —”

Robin jostles him, trying not to smile. “Be nice.”

Theo shan’t. “Harvey. Tell Theo what you did.”

A flush is creeping slowly up the back of Harvey’s neck, making its way to his ears and up over his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. “Well. Um. Nick and Sabrina and I —”

That’s all Theo needs to know. He crows in delight, and a little bit of envy. Not of the people involved, but the sheer daring. “I can’t believe Harvey Kinkle had a threesome!”

“I did not!” Harvey exclaims. “We just kissed!”

“All three of you just kissed?”

Harvey shoots him a slightly huffy look, which Theo answers with a grin. “Yes.”

“Dude, that’s still insane for you, I’m so proud.” When Harvey’s discomfort doesn’t give way to a shy, sheepish pleasure at hearing the word proud, Theo starts to feel a prickle of protectiveness. “Did it not go well? Did Nick respect your boundaries? Because if he didn’t —”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Harvey says hastily. “Nick’s great. It’s not Nick. It’s —"

He falters, and Theo thinks maybe it is Nick, but not in the way he initially assumed.

“Oh, Harv.” Theo lets himself be genuine for once, feeling that chest-clutch love he felt when Harvey told him he was a natural at tying ties; wanting to give that same thing back to Harvey right now, when it matters. “Is it… Are you feeling some kind of way about hooking up with a guy? Because you don’t have to decide on a label now. Or ever! That’s totally up to you. You just have to do whatever makes you comfortable in your own time. You don’t have to know if you’re bi or pan or — or whatever.”

Robin squeezes him, so Theo knows he did okay.

“Thanks.” Harvey’s smile is small, but real. And fleeting. “But I, um. I know.”

It’s the way he says it, not an absent acknowledgment, but with the weight of something that’s been on his mind.

“Wait.” Theo hasn’t spent a lot of time pontificating about Harvey’s sexual identity, because why would he, but he never really twigged him as anything other than straight, even though he got a lot of homophobic shit for being shy and friendly with girls. If anything, Theo didn’t think Harvey could fall for someone he hadn’t known his whole life, which made it a narrow pool; even narrower because Theo was decidedly not open for business. “You mean you know?”

Another furtive glance. “Yeah?” He shrugs. “It’s just not something I could think about much. You know my dad. What was I supposed to do?”

It’s so matter of fact that Theo tastes bile. He hates Harvey’s dad. “Dude, I hate your dad.”

This time, Harvey’s smile is surprisingly wry. Since Tommy, he hasn’t really given in to any shit-talking of his father like he used to. “Doesn’t matter. Knowing doesn’t make it easier.”

“Not right now, maybe,” Theo says. “But long term, yeah. It does. I promise.”

Harvey shrugs. “Yeah, well. I don’t know. It’s not just that.” He eases onto a turn, probably glad of the excuse to watch the road. “I mean, what am I going to do, date Sabrina’s boyfriend? That’s — that’s crazy.”

“Roz did.”

Harvey frowns at him. “Don’t.”

“It’s not a judgment, it’s a thing that happened. And it wouldn’t just be Nick, right? It’s both of them.”

Which is its own thing, Theo realizes.

“Yeah,” Harvey mutters, and looks all the way away, out the window on his side. “It’s different for them, though, they’re — special. Not mortal.” His hands clench around the steering wheel. “What do we do, go to the movies and fight about who gets to sit in the middle? Squeeze into one side of the booth at Dr. Cee’s?”

“You know Sabrina is always going to sit in the middle,” Theo says. “But yeah, basically.”

“Sounds nice,” Robin offers.

Harvey shakes his head. “You think people in Greendale are gonna be okay with that?”

“Harv, who you talking to here?”

Harvey does get a little sheepish then. “Sorry. I just… I don’t know. It’s not important.”

Theo hates when Harvey does that, dismisses himself like that, and he’s gearing up to get into it when Robin, unexpectedly, speaks.

“Would you rather be alone because you’re afraid or be happy even if other people think it’s weird?” Robin pauses. “Plus, it’s not that weird. Non-supernatural people have threesomes all the time, and date and stuff.”

Theo curls his hand around Robin’s knee and smiles at him. “Exactly. Someone’s always going to be an asshole, and honestly, fuck them. You’re the best, Harv. You deserve to be happy. However it looks.”

Harvey doesn’t say anything, but he’s thinking about it; he has the furrow between his brows.

“One more thing,” Theo adds.

“Oh no.”

“When I told you I was gay and we talked about guys, I said Nick was hot — sorry, babe —”

“It’s cool,” Robin says. “He is hot.”

“And you got all weird about it. But that was because you think Nick is hot!”

Harvey, spluttering, “Nick is objectively hot!”

“Says his actual boyfriend!”

Caught off guard by that, Harvey grins, though he tries to hide it by ducking his head. It’s wide and crinkling, the same smile Harvey used to reserve for seeing Sabrina in the halls at school, and it makes Theo’s worry evaporate with a snap.

Glad to be on firmer ground, Theo mocks him all the way to the war.

“To think, Lilith, that it’s come to this.”

The Dark Lord paces outside the bars of her prison like a panther, as though he’s the one under lock and key. He’s distracted, frazzled almost. Lilith is coolly removed, thinking only of those who rallied behind her, the advantageous absence of their little queen. The adrenaline of triumph hasn’t worn off yet, and she knows she’ll be wearing the crown soon enough. She doesn’t feel her prison at all.

Sure, she’s stuck in the Ninth Circle and Caliban has been reduced to a puddle of clay, but she’s gotten out of worse spots before.

Lucifer stops, his cloak making a whispered hiss along the hard-packed dirt floor. His eyes are a clouded green and his face half in shadow, all scowls and frown lines. “Did you know there were two of them?”

“No,” Lilith says. “But honestly, nothing that girl does surprises me anymore.”

With a faintly amused exhalation, he resumes pacing. This will be his downfall, she thinks: exerting more energy to quell his uncontrollable daughter than to salvage the kingdom crumbling at his feet. She comes closer, fingers curling around the bars, and angles her face between them. “Lucifer Morningstar,” she purrs. “You think it’s over, but it’s only just begun. I’m going to take everything you wrested from the world and hoarded for yourself. I’m going to reign in Hell so long they’ll forget there ever was a fallen angel, and the only name they’ll ever know is Lilith.”

He stops and smiles, comes close, close enough to kiss through iron. “Such arrogance,” he says. “I might have loved you if you’d ever exhibited any mettle before.”

He thinks this is still something that can hurt her.

“I must put family affairs in order,” he says. “Subdue what you’ve started and punish all those who stood against me. And then —” His finger under her chin. “I will make such an example of you that no creature in this realm or any other will dare cross me again. I don’t care if I rule over an empty kingdom. I will see the ungrateful pay for what they’ve done.”

“Always pride before the fall,” Lilith remarks. “A king of nothing isn’t much of a king at all.”

“I will bring you to your knees,” Lucifer promises.

Lilith has already been there. She can only go up. “You can certainly try."

The wind, the water, the earth, the sky.

Sabrina leads everyone she loves onto the beach at dusk, cleared of crowds thanks to Ambrose’s crafty spellwork, alight with the setting sun. Incarnadine, a word she learned from Ms. Wardwell in tenth grade. The sea burns blue, and above it is a riot of orange and yellow and pink, the sky’s violent goodnight. Sabrina spent half the summer lounging on her pastel beach towel here, chasing her friends into the surf, listening to Harvey play his guitar and trying not to get a sunburn.

Today will be different. Sabrina has a way of bringing the monsters with her wherever she goes.

“Are you sure about this, ‘Brina?” Theo asks, rifle in hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I trust in our fearless leader and everything, but this looks, uh. Kinda beachy. Not so much a playground for evil.”

Sabrina Morningstar answers. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

Theo can be heard muttering, does she creep anybody else out, but Sabrina looks to Sabrina and knows she feels it too — the stillness here, the slight whistle of wind that disturbs nothing it touches. There are no waves. The water only laps halfheartedly against the earth and then gives up. It had been hidden all summer by crowds of families thrilled with the temperate weather and mild surf, but with no one around it’s undeniably spooky.

“Get ready, guys!” Sabrina faces Sabrina and takes her hands. Preparing for a showdown is tough when you have no idea what you’re preparing for, but they have charms to keep from inhaling fogs or anything else noxious; healing balms in pocket; calming draughts collected in small vials. There are swords and bullets and blades of all kinds. There’s Sabrina, and Sabrina.

“We call on you to show yourself,” Sabrina Morningstar begins.

“We call on you to reveal,” Sabrina continues.

It loops and repeats into a murmured chant, we call on you to show yourself, and is she crazy or is it starting to sound like an echo? We call on you to reveal. The ground hums, not quite a quake but something much smaller, show yourself, the sand shifting and rolling under their feet, reveal, everyone stepping back and looking around. The wind whips up. The sea sloshes like a glass someone’s tipping. Show yourself. Reveal.

Simple spells are often the best. Sabrina and Sabrina each pull out a length of wine-dark muslin, torn down the center, and their prepared needle with golden floss. Sabrina pierces the fabric, show yourself, and Sabrina takes the needle, reveal, over and over from one side to the other. It’s a messy stitch but it gets the job done, pulling both sides of the fabric tighter and closer together. The sky is darkening rapidly above them, but it’s not the coming of the night; it’s storm clouds gathering in bruising black and purple over a now-churning sea, waves rising and bursting onto the rollicking ground, sand shifting to keep them off balance.

Sabrina Morningstar holds her gaze steady. “We call on you to show yourself.”

“We call on you to reveal,” Sabrina answers. The ground swells beneath them, sending them tumbling in different directions and ripping the thread so each half of the muslin goes with the girl holding it.

“Oh, fuck me,” Nick says, and when Sabrina looks up, she can see why.

The sky has split, too. A rip in the world; a ragged tear through which something is spilling out, a waterfall of tendrils that could be tentacles. It’s strangely beautiful, actually, green and black, delicate and undulating, unfurling like a plant, ivy made flesh. And behind it something peering, looking down at them without care or comprehension, pulsing as it tries to heft itself through.

Then the creatures come out of the sea.

They creep on webbed hands or slapping tails, dragging themselves out of the water, their many jaws snapping, blinking into the air. Big wide mouths with long, thin teeth and small wild eyes, gelatinous blobs that slurp and roll, things with endless spindly arms like skittering spiders.

“The ocean is so fucked,” Theo says, sets his sights, and shoots.

That seems to be what they need to get into gear. They charge towards the monsters in one fearless sweep while Sabrina scrambles over to Sabrina on the still-rocking ground, sand slipping from under her feet as fast as she can move.

Everything happens at once.

Seaweed slithers up onto the shore and plasters itself to whoever’s nearest, wrapping around Prudence’s legs and sending her stumbling to the ground. Ambrose slashes it apart with decisive strokes of his iron wand and pulls her to her feet; they race off together.

Pesta digs her hands into all that wet green mulch, cackling, and it scampers away from her across the surf. Gryla’s mischievous Lads taunt a sea serpent so relentlessly that it bites dizzily at its own scales. A wave hits Robin and sizzles, turning his skin a mottled green, and Theo drags him back towards the boardwalk, away from the fray. Sabrina remembers Not-Roz’s so-called holy water.

A creature with strangely segmented limbs like overlong fingers gets Roz in its grip, clutching at her arms and waist as it scuttles backwards toward the water. Harvey and Prudence jump towards her, but Agatha gets there first, plunging her athame into the monster with such force that her hand disappears in its flesh to the wrist. She strikes again and again, a pummeling stab that leaves it half-crushed and Roz released. She surges into Agatha, who seems numbly surprised to find herself held so tightly in the middle of the melee.

Sabrina Morningstar grabs Sabrina’s wrist, and she twists to take hold of her in return; they anchor each other while everything shakes apart. “Try again?” she shouts over the growing thunder, the shrill shrieks and whines and growls. Sabrina nods. They move closer and it feels —

A little odd.

She jerks away, looking down at their hands in surprise. It had almost felt like pulling away from something sticky, the way plastic gets soft in the sun. She meets Sabrina’s eyes. She’d felt it too.

Lightning hits the ground in a bolt next to them and they roll away from each other fast to avoid being struck. The Eldritch Dark snakes another tendril out into their world, and with it a thick black goo that splatters onto the surface of the sea like oil. “Fast,” Sabrina says and Sabrina nods, fumbling again with the needle to try and draw the fabric closed.

One of the creatures is gunning for them, lumbering across the beach with an odd lopsided gait, its legs like tree roots and mouth an open tear, making a low unending moan somewhere deep inside. It picks up speed, clumsily gaining ground, and then leaps; Sabrina lifts a hand to dispatch it with a spell when its side suddenly explodes, spewing brackish blood and bark-like tissue.

Harvey stands a few feet off, gun raised. He half-smiles and salutes; Sabrina grins. “I got you, ‘Brina,” he calls. She knows he does, and she’s not the only one: his attention drawn elsewhere, Harvey dashes down the beach to rescue Nick from his own parley with a perilous beast.

“I’m perfectly capable of handling this on my own, mortal,” Nick snaps, pinned to the ground.

“You look it,” Harvey agrees, taking aim.

Sabrina’s relief is short-lived. When she turns back, she finds Sabrina Morningstar her mirror in resolve, though she doesn’t look happy. “It’s not working,” she says, fabric crumpled in her hands. “It’s not going to work.”

“What are you talking about? Of course it will. We just have to —”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t want us together. You must have noticed. There’s a reason for that.”

“We’re too powerful together,” Sabrina says.

Sabrina agrees, and says, heavy with implication, “Yeah. Together.”

“No,” Sabrina says, purposefully not catching on. “If we only —” But, looking at herself, she knows it isn’t enough, each on their own. They were never meant to be separate.

She slides her hands into Sabrina Morningstar’s, and this time doesn’t flinch when the skin starts to cling. “I’m sorry about your kingdom. I know I promised to —”

“You crossed your fingers,” she says, almost teasing. “I know. It’s what I would have done, too.”

She smiles. She pulls herself closer, this girl who chose power and let it warp her into something else, horned and horrifying in her beautiful gown. The Sabrina who followed a path designed for her from birth, that she had rejected but wanted anyway, a path that made her into someone who would have terrified the little half-mortal witch who only wanted to be her mother’s daughter.

Show yourself, she thinks. Reveal.

Sabrina hadn’t excised this part of herself when she sent it off to Hell. Every glimpse of the crown only made her jealous for adventure, excitement, a new foe to face; and down in Hell she’d been watching her friends and family above, wishing for what she already had. They were both her. There was no pretending half of her didn’t exist.

Sabrina hugs her, their foreheads pressed together, and thinks, I’m sorry I thought you were a monster. I’m sorry you were alone and felt lonely and desperate. I’m sorry we made stupid decisions and did crazy things to make up for them. I’m sorry you were scared that you were evil. I forgive you; I hope you forgive me.

Sabrina has her eyes closed, so she doesn’t see it happen, but she feels it; she remembers Hell and summer in Greendale, two lives downloaded into her head at once. Not one Sabrina or the other, but — both, somehow.

When she opens her eyes, her cheeks are wet. She’s alone, but when she touches her chest, palm flat to her sternum, she feels — herself, there.

She looks up to find Nick and Harvey standing by uncertainly, Nick with a gnarly scrape down his cheek and Harvey half-blistered with seawater. “Spellman?” Nick says, and it feels like reassurance, reasserting who she is.

Sabrina smirks. “That’s my name,” she says. “Don’t wear it out.”

She rises, standing on the sand with hands at her sides, and faces the sky. She feels capable of anything now, and she’s had just about enough of this.

But before she can make a move, the churning waves begin to swirl. They spin faster and faster, forming a shadowed whirlpool, a stomach-sinking pit. Nick and Harvey fall into place behind her, one on either side as they watch a crown of dark hair emerge from the watery black hole, then a face, then shoulders — and finally her father rises like a wicked king of the sea, the Devil come up from the deep. Just like she planned.

“Daughter,” Lucifer intones. “We have much to discuss.”

“Kinda busy, actually,” Sabrina says. “Try again later?”

His lip curls, and a wave delivers him gently ashore. “I couldn’t care less about whatever is besetting your insipid Earth this week. Hell is on the precipice of being consumed by itself and it’s all because your antics have left a notch through which a duplicitous snake has slithered —”

“You’d know something about that, wouldn’t you?” Her eyes flick past him to the monster still struggling to push its way in, pouring out its poison like dark rain. One spell could shove him back into it, as long as it’s quick and powerful — but she must telegraph too much, because Lucifer is suddenly close enough to claim both her wrists in a bruising grip. She hears Harvey and Nick gasping for air behind her, caught in Lucifer’s strangle.

“I didn’t think you were stupid, daughter,” he says.

“Actually,” Sabrina says, “I think First Lady of Pandemonium, Maiden of Shadows, is better in public.” And she shoves with everything she has inside her, all the magic she’d collected from a thousand years in stone, everything Sabrina Morningstar had cultivated down below. It jettisons Lucifer out over the sea, almost close enough, so close —

Until he reappears in front of her without a hair out of place, unruffled and smirking. “All this time, all these intrigues, and you still refuse to learn one simple thing: it is impossible to defeat me. I cannot be locked away, thrown away, banished, or forgotten. I was once the pride of Heaven and there is nothing that you could do to —”

Sabrina stops listening. He’s right; even with double the power, she can’t get him to the Eldritch Dark. And he’ll never let her go, that much is clear. The portal to Hell stands open in the water, glimmering red in a night-dark sea. The boys she loves are fighting for breath. She has to save herself and everyone else with impossible odds and no hint of a plan.

Sabrina doesn’t know what she’s going to do until she does it. She never knows what she’s going to do until she does it.

She thinks of the Acheron Configuration, an imperfect puzzle, and how the human body is the best prison; how Edward Spellman discovered the secret because of Diana, and what that might mean. She thinks of Hecate’s nine keys and a weapon that could destroy the Dark Lord.

Sabrina sees herself running through the halls of Baxter High, stomach roiling, the first time Lucifer threatened her. She feels the weight of the gasoline cannister in her hands. She hears the music of the Mephisto waltz. She can smell the brimstone, feel claws curling over her shoulders. Remembers the residue being drawn from Nick to her, blood to blood, like to like.

A better prison. A stronger one. Flesh and bone.

Sabrina doesn’t waver. “Carne teneantur tenere tenebrasque.” She sweeps her right hand in a wide circle. “Palatium, carcere —”

Nick catches on first, fighting to get the words out. “Sabrina, no!”

She pushes her hands forward and then jerks them back, pulling the Dark Lord to her in one swift movement and binding him there, trapping him within herself.

She misses the moment of impact, but when she blinks back from the darkness, she’s been caught by Harvey and Nick. They’re frantic, panicked, someone’s hand on her chin, voices blending but indistinguishable. Her head tilts back and she sees, upside down, her horrified aunts and Ambrose, Theo and Robin and Roz, even Prudence looking worried and wary. All of them stopped in the middle of their worst fight yet just to see what Sabrina has done now.

She smiles. “I’m good, guys,” she says. “I did it.”

He made her. What better prison than one he made himself?

“You’re good?!” Zelda squawks, as Hilda says, “Sabrina, I don’t know what you think you’re —”

Ambrose has to drop into a crouch right where he’s standing, arms around his head, muttering to himself, “I don’t know what I did to deserve this, surely seventy years was punishment enough —”

Nick is stricken, Harvey speechless. Sabrina hefts herself out of their arms, staggers slightly, and stands tall.

“I’m good,” she repeats, smothering the punch-drunk slur of a bar fight that she can hear in herself. “Now let’s get this mess cleaned up.”

The bodies of beasts lay slaughtered on the sand and more keep coming, dredged up from the deep by the call of the Eldritch Dark. A thing that wedged itself into her world mindlessly, hardly responsible for itself, acting purely on instinct. It only saw an opportunity. An open door.

This time Sabrina knows exactly what to do. It’s something Prudence said, actually, that didn’t click until she had access to everything she learned in Hell. They’ve been looking at this all wrong. It isn’t a tear at all.

“We have to rescind its invitation,” Sabrina says. “We have to shut it out.”

She ignores questions and queries and several exclamations of Sabrina can we talk about what you just did. There’s no time — the monsters continue to straggle up the shore, the ocean blackened by the Eldritch Dark’s ooze, thunder rattling as rain falls. It’s now or never. She pulls her aunts to the water’s edge, where the spray stings and the foam burns. She looks at them seriously and says, “Blackwood opened a door — we have to close it.”

“Sabrina, what —” Zelda starts, but Sabrina cuts her off.

“It’s said,” she wills her aunt to understand, “that when you call on the Triple Goddess, she comes to you.”

Zelda does. She takes Sabrina’s hand on one side and Hilda’s on the other, back to back and looking in different directions, able to see everything at once. Like every statuette of Hecate in Zelda’s office. Three in one; one in all. Sabrina watches her friends catch on, dropping their weapons and forming their little groups of three — Prudence and Roz and Agatha; Ambrose and Nick and Harvey; Marie and Gryla and Pesta; Theo and Robin and poor Melvin — like a daisy chain across the beach.

Sabrina has earned enough keys to lock any number of doors.

“Hecate,” Sabrina calls, and feels Hilda steadfast at her left and Zelda resolute at her right, qualities of theirs she’s taken and made her own. “She who sees all.” Ambrose’s bright passionate humor. Nick’s vulnerability. Harvey’s goodness. “Guardian of portals. Keeper of keys.” Roz’s compassion. Prudence’s faith. Theo’s independence. “She who can unlock the gate between realms.” She hadn’t been wrong when she said it had already lost, because there is so much here it hasn’t been able to wrap its tentacles around, to smother and drag into the darkness. “We beseech thee to close it.”

Not a void at all.

The Dark Lord does not return. Neither does Sabrina. Lilith languishes in her cell just long enough to realize that they won’t be back, and then she stages a breakout. It’s easier said than done with the court in chaos, but hardly impossible. Hardly out of her grasp. She still has friends in low places.

She finds the throne empty, as though it has been waiting for her.

Lilith finally sits.

“I could do it,” Sabrina says, itching with self-confidence and curiosity, her head tilting as she leans close to the statues. “I don’t see why I couldn’t.”

Ambrose snorts. “Of course. What’s one more terrifying feat?”

She grins over her shoulder at him.

They stand scattered in front of the Blackwood statues: Prudence with hands on cocked hips, expression sour to guard against optimism; Ambrose and Agatha beside her; Zelda and Marie just behind them, with Roz lurking slightly farther off. “I still feel so bad,” Roz says. “I didn’t mean to get the twins too —”

“Hush,” Prudence says. “Don’t downplay the most interesting thing you’ve ever done.” She and Agatha exchange a look, and smirk. “One of the most, anyway.”

“I think if I just…” Sabrina lifts her hands thoughtfully, poised like a saint, or a pariah, as they used to celebrate in days past. From what Prudence can see, she is still a petite troublemaker with a cutesy haircut in a trim little outfit; still brimming with more confidence than any one person should rightly have, shoulders thrown back so far she ought to snap in two.

“Do it or don’t, Sabrina,” Prudence says. She refuses to accept this as something that can be done until she sees it with her own eyes.

Though she has seen Sabrina do quite a bit lately.

Maybe this is what’s changed: there’s a certain serenity of countenance to Sabrina now, a relaxed ease. She rubs her hands together like she’s warming them up before laying one on Judith and one on Judas. It’s been several days since Prudence watched her push a monster back into the ether, but counting on Sabrina Spellman has cost her before, so.

Sabrina closes her eyes and frowns, a small crease of concentration etched between her brows. Her palms are limned with light, just visible around her fingers with their cheerful red nails. Prudence’s heart races, and she accepts it when Agatha takes her hand; when Ambrose wraps his arm around her, fingers light on her hip. She takes hold of his wrist. Holds tight.

The stone begins to melt, dripping off the twins in great heavy globs and leaving streaks of living flesh behind it. Judith takes the first gasp, eyes wild and throat working; her freed hand flexes around the handle of her sword. It’s only when Judas stumbles free that comprehension clears in her eyes. Her only lifelong constant. They wrap each other up in an embrace. Then they turn to Prudence.

She hadn’t intended to crowd them but she’s moving forward anyway, bringing them to her. She cups the back of Judas’ head, her cheek pressed to Judith’s. “I thought you were condemned,” she whispers fiercely, her voice strangely garbled even to herself. She thought them condemned to a life frozen beside their father, paying the price for Prudence not protecting them. “I’m so glad you’re —"

She allows the words to be lost in Judith’s hair. Marie has joined the throng too, so there’s laughter in it now, that bright sense of celebration she brings with her. The twins are able to laugh when she tells them it’s been too long. She takes one under each arm and walks off with promises of hot baths and good homemade meals, swearing to tell them everything that’s happened since their entombment. Zelda follows with a faint smile and a certain yearning, Prudence thinks.

Satisfied, Sabrina turns to her with a smile that dims slightly upon reception, though she still says, “I hope that maybe now we’re even.”

Prudence arches a brow. “I’ll update the scoreboard, Spellman.”

The wattage returns. “Cool.”

Ambrose tugs Sabrina over and ruffles her hair. “You stress me out,” he says pleasantly, and Sabrina puts her head on his shoulder. They start to walk off after Zelda, Marie, and the twins, but before Prudence can catch Ambrose, Roz swoops in on her other side.

“I just want you to know,” she says, as painfully earnest as a girl can be, “that I’m really glad we became friends this summer and I think if —”

“This isn’t mortal summer camp, you don’t have to promise to write me after school starts,” Prudence says dryly, then is impotently furious because the reference means she’s been absorbing more of Roz’s stories than she thought. Now begrudging because of this, she adds, “I’m not going anywhere. Are you?”

Roz grins. “No, Prudence,” she says, and takes her hand to squeeze it.

Prudence allows it. Whatever makes the mortal happy.

Over her shoulder, Agatha purrs, “What to do with the one who remains?”

Blackwood. Prudence surveys him coolly, thinking there is no love lost, but there is a debt to be paid. She’s not sure yet if she wants it paid in stone. “Something emotionally unsound, I imagine.”

Agatha grins. Prudence isn’t the only one with debts to collect. “Sounds good to me,” she says, taking Roz by the hand to pull her away. Prudence allows herself to be carried by their momentum — briefly, until she sees something that makes her stop.

Ambrose hadn’t left after all, but waits in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame. Allowing her to take her time, but there when she’s done. “Are you happy, Prudence?” he wonders, something indulgent in it, in knowing the answer but asking for it anyway.

Prudence strides towards him in a few wide steps, pushes him back against the casing, and kisses him. Her hands curl in a tangled knot of silk shirt and mingled necklaces, beads catching on her rings, all of it a mess but Ambrose’s beating heart underneath, his grin against her mouth. “You’re dear to me,” she says brusquely, and it almost sears her tongue to speak it. His grin fades, giving way to something more serious, almost solemn.

Prudence cannot say the other thing; she was never taught.

She hates that she fears what he might say, or not say.

“An honor.” Ambrose loosens one of her clenched hands so he can kiss it, as he’s wont to do. It knocks Prudence off guard every time. “To me, too, you know — you must know.”

It’s how he says it, without defenses, a shade of the boy who once wrote poems, not just spells. Her nails land gently on his cheek, but she lets the points sink in until he smiles slyly, eyes heated. “Of course I know,” Prudence says, tugging him forward by all those necklaces, into the dark of the hallway and towards her family, their distant laughter, and whatever else awaits.

Left alone in the grand hall, unseen by anyone, the statue of Faustus Blackwood moves. It’s only the smallest convulsion of its littlest finger, the most minute flutter.

Then another. And another.

Roz lets herself into the Academy library when the celebrations start winding down, the twins getting drowsy with no stamina for long hours of wakefulness. She wants to give Prudence a little time with her family, and if she’s honest, she can’t quite resist the peculiarity of the books here. Once she’d wanted to read every book she could find before she couldn’t see the letters anymore, and back then she hadn’t even known that books like this existed — centuries-old hand-painted constellations with names Roz has never seen, histories of mermaids in the Unholy Lands, rituals to turn lead into gold.

When she was little, Roz had a secret love of stories set at faraway magical institutions, things she had to read in secret at school because her parents didn’t approve and Sabrina could never get into them, for reasons Roz didn’t know until recently. It seems profoundly special that Roz can walk into a magical library almost whenever she wants now.

That’s where she is when Agatha finds her, pouring over a book about unicorns from the fifteenth century. Turns out the real ones are a lot scarier. Agatha slips into the room silently, or maybe even teleports, because she simply goes from not being there to being there — a missing member of the Addams family, her face sarcastic and somber. “Looking to enroll?”

Roz jumps, hand on her chest, and smiles. “Sure. You wanna break the news to my parents, or should I?”

Agatha sits on the edge of the table, her thigh just over the corner of Roz’s book; the toe of her boot resting on the seat of Roz’s chair. “What would Mommy and Daddy make of me?”

The question makes Roz’s throat go unexpectedly dry, but she laughs, keeps smiling. “Don’t feel bad, but my parents never like anyone I like. They’re kind of particular.”

“I’m familiar with those who put witches on stakes.”

That’s taking it a bit far. “Well, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, I’m not sure that they would —” Agatha only shakes her head, so Roz reroutes. “Hey, um. We didn’t really get a minute after the whole, you know, big battle.” She taps Agatha’s knee, warm through stockings. “I wanted to thank you. You saved me.”

“You saved me,” Agatha says, offhand as ever, but then does something anomalous: she shifts her weight and looks away, throat clearing. It feels off without Roz really understanding why, until it occurs to her that Agatha is never not composed, always cool and clever. Sometimes completely untethered, but rarely just…mildly discomfited. Rarely something as mundane as that.

“Of course,” Roz says, sitting up and slipping her hand into Agatha’s, something that’s become so comfortable she doesn’t have to think twice about doing it anymore. “You’re my friend. That’s what friends —”

In the space of a quick breath, Agatha leans down to kiss her.

The kiss is firm and brief, a lipstick kiss. Agatha’s black lipstick on Roz’s bare mouth. The transfer of an imprint Roz registers even though her brain is whirring, making a sound like the old cassettes she would listen to and rewind at the Baxter High library, a gentle shushing.

Agatha pulls back, lips curving. Slightly smudged at the corner. “Thanks, Rosalind.” She slips off the desk, striding towards the door. “I owe you one.”

Roz is stuck right where she is, heart beating like a hummingbird, fingertips against her mouth.

She thinks it’s beautiful that there’s always another thing she didn’t know.

The winding arc of the road leads Harvey to the Spellman house like it has a million times before, a Norman Bates kind of house against a summer sky so clear it’s almost white, surrounded by scrubby trees and sunflowers. This time Nick is on the porch, sitting at the top of the steps with his back against one of the posts, reading a leatherbound book propped against his knee. He’s waiting for Harvey. He knows because of the impatient way Nick slides his gaze towards the road once and then again, so obvious he might as well be checking his watch. It gives Harvey the opposite of pins and needles, if that’s a thing: a warm buzzing he can feel in his palms as he turns the wheel and navigates onto the gravel, puts the truck in park.

He’d been kind of hoping for this when Sabrina called and told him to come over. He’d sort of wished.

When Harvey climbs out, Nick lets the book fall closed. He gets to his feet and drifts down a couple steps as Harvey takes a couple closer, until the toes of his sneakers bump up against the base of the bottom step. He wants to put his hands in his pockets but doesn’t, instead letting them fall open at his sides, unprotected. Nick is just a little taller than him like this and Harvey likes that — looking up.

Since winter, Prudence had said.

“Let’s go on a date,” Harvey blurts and, when Nick’s lips part in surprise, takes him by the face and kisses him.

It had gone a lot smoother in his head.

“Mortal,” Nick says against his mouth, and nudges him back gently with his nose, eyebrows raised and smiling faintly, not without a touch of his old condescension. “That’s some hello.”

Sheepishly, Harvey ducks his head and puts his hands in his pockets, then remembers and takes them out. Nick gives him a curious look. “Um, hi,” he says. “Also.”

“Hi,” Nick says, and laughs.

Harvey spares a thought to the fact that Nick looks good, because he’s letting himself think those things now. Nick is wearing shorts and a black polo tight around the arms, preppy but somehow indecent, all of it fitting so close to the musculature of his body. The scrape on his cheek is mostly healed, but it’s left behind a thin whitish-silver spiderweb, noticeable only when it catches the light. Harvey wants to touch it; brings his fingertips up but then settles for knuckles against the skin. “Looks a lot better.”

For a minute he’d thought, shit. He fucked it up already. He waited too long and the window had closed; Nick wouldn’t want to kiss him anymore, even though Harvey had only just allowed the possibility of kissing Nick into his life. But when Harvey touches him, Nick swallows, a visible working of the throat, and he realizes that the signs of it are just different in Nick. The feeling’s the same.

“Yours too,” Nick says, hesitating before he reaches out to touch Harvey’s temple, which had been burned by a spray of seawater.

Harvey smiles. “Is she —”

“Inside with Ambrose. Should be out in a minute.”

They sit. A little awkward, a step between them but close enough that Harvey’s elbow rests against Nick’s calf, the kind of skin to skin that he’d never have thought twice about before. “So, um. We should talk.”

“Should we?” Nick leans back and tips his face into the sun, which he must be doing on purpose, honestly. “We’re not very good at it.”

“No, I —” Harvey is over being a coward. “I want to. I know I was kind of all over the place, but it was just happening really —”

“Fast, I know,” Nick says, a note of tension in it.

“Yeah.” But it wasn’t just that it was fast, it was everything. The fog, the doubles, his dad. Knowing that he was responsible for hurting Roz like a car with cut breaks careening off a bridge, seeing the water coming with no way to stop it. Acknowledging the little ache inside him that had been hurting for Sabrina for months, a bruise he stopped pressing but never let heal. And Tommy, still. Grief was a film over everything he touched and Harvey didn’t know when he’d get to touch things for real again; being with Nick and Sabrina had felt like that, too good to be true, and the thought of having it and losing it like he always did was just too much to handle.

He doesn’t know how to tell Nick all of that. He’s still coming to grips with some of it himself.

“I’m scared of you,” is what comes out, and it hits Nick so immediately, his mouth a miserable twist, that Harvey rushes to explain, “Not you, I mean — have you ever felt like your whole life you couldn’t have something, and you decided it was fine because you had other stuff, but then you hit this point where you can’t pretend you don’t want it anymore? And it’s scary, ‘cause —” He has to wet his lips, mouth suddenly dry. “Because you want it so much, and it’s scary to want anything that much, if it’s also something that can hurt you.”

Nick doesn’t say anything for a minute, but the silence isn’t awkward, more constricted; like he has to find a way to get the words out. “Little mortal,” he says, finally, different from how mortal usually sounds from him. Harvey has to reorder the nicknames in his head to make room for it.

“And I don’t want to mess it up,” Harvey adds. “I really don’t.”

Nick cards a hand through Harvey’s hair, then holds it there, cupped around the back of his head. “Of the three of us, I’m definitely going to be the one who messes it up,” spoken almost idly, with no attachment.

“Hey,” he says, with a gentle kind of sternness. “Don’t. You helped put it together.”

Nick looks at him for a long moment, then says, “Let’s go on a date.”

Harvey starts to smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Nick draws him up with that hand in his hair, and smiles too, a moment before their lips meet. “I’d like that.”

“Cousin,” Ambrose announces, peering out the window. “Your boyfriends are kissing.”

“Aww,” Sabrina coos teasingly. She’s rifling through a box on the floor of the sitting room, setting aside stored-up charms and bundles of flaking herbs until she finds what she’s looking for. “I knew they’d get there in the end.”

“You are remarkably chill about it.” Ambrose sits back on the window seat, cup of tea in hand. “But you are remarkably chill about many things lately that are much more pathological than going out with two very cute boys.”

Sabrina flashes him a slightly unimpressed look laced with amusement. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

Ambrose laughs. “I am, aren’t I? I could be laughing or crying right now, I really have no idea.”

She flicks what looks like a Lydian coin at him. It was at the bottom of the box. “I’ve got it on lock, Ambrose. No monsters. No evil dads lurking around the corner. You can relax. Take it easy.”

“You know you saying that is incredibly suspicious.”

Sabrina shakes her head, chuckling. She’s felt her family looking at her sideways over the last week, trying to catch her doing something especially Satanic; waiting for red eyes to flash or hooves to form, perhaps expecting her to spew beetles or need to be chained. But the one thing Sabrina isn’t worried about is Lucifer. Her body thrums with his celestial power, but he is locked far away, in a box inside a box in her head, everything he says too muffled for her to hear. No trouble at all.

“I mean, there are some loose ends to tie up.” She sits back, scooping Salem up as he passes and pulling him into her lap. “I probably have to disperse that cult in Midvale.”

“If by ‘probably’ what you mean is ‘absolutely.’”

“And there is one more thing.” Sabrina rises gracefully, cat in arms, and stands for a moment in the center of the room. “I want to take my kingdom back.”

Ambrose’s teacup clinks so hard against the saucer she wouldn’t be surprised if he’s broken it. “I’m sorry?”

“Lilith took over in my absence and I want it back,” Sabrina says simply. “It’s mine by right.” She made a promise to herself and, crossed fingers or not, she intends to keep it. “And the horde was totally on my side.”

“Sabrina.” She feels a little bad because Ambrose is already massaging his temples, and he really hasn’t gone very long without a shenanigans-induced migraine. “Are you seriously telling me that you still want to be the Queen of Hell now that everything’s finally sorted?”

She shrugs, making her way to the doorway and pausing there to set Salem down, fingers alighting on a little painting of Hecate with her dogs. “Did you know Hecate is called the mistress of Heaven and Hell? Has a nice ring to it.”

Sabrina leaves him there to go outside to Harvey and Nick, excitement dancing up her spine; stopping to look at her reflection in the glass of the door and fluff her hair, even though she knows they don’t care, just because it feels nice to do. She lets Salem rush out ahead of her, then whistles so Scylla will come ambling behind.

Nick and Harvey are somewhat taken aback by Scylla’s presence. It is an imposing one: large and shadow-dark with her sharp ears and missing eyes, she looks like something to be feared. But she’s proven herself. Sabrina pats her head.

“Oh, yeah, I have a dog now,” Sabrina says, smiling. “She came up to find me after everything. Something to be said for loyalty, I guess.”

Nick has immediately taken Scylla’s big head in his hands, ruffling her ears and bumping his nose against hers. She licks him. “Cool,” he says brightly.

Harvey smiles at him without Nick noticing, soft and pleased; Salem curling protectively around his hip. Then he turns that smile on Sabrina and her breath catches, because she hasn’t had that in so long. Harvey’s open affection. “Getting kind of crowded in your house,” he teases.

“More the merrier.” Sabrina comes down to plop herself right between them. “Kind of a theme lately.”

Nick snorts. Scylla runs out into the yard to get a stick, which she brings back for him to throw. “In more ways than one.”

The edge of bitterness doesn’t escape her. Nick doesn’t want to meet her eyes, so she cups his face, her thumb against his new scar. Underneath the attitude is pain, and fear. She doesn’t want him to feel that around her. “He’s gone,” she says firmly. “He isn’t calling the shots in here. I buried him. There is nothing he can do to us now.”

There’s a saying about buried things.

“I want to believe you, Spellman.”

“Then believe me. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

He nods after a moment, but he’s holding something back, keeping himself protected. Her hand falls. She turns to Harvey and his encouragement allows her to keep going. “You know, he doesn’t scare me, at the end of the day. Not anymore. He’s just arrogant and self-absorbed. It’s the Eldritch Dark that really…”

She hasn’t said this to anyone, not even Ambrose.

“It wasn’t anything except craving. Power and wanting more of it. Totally amoral, nothing behind it, just this big want.” Her fingers tighten on Nick’s knee, in Harvey’s sleeve. She forces herself to sound casual, light like she’s trying to be funny, because it’s the only way she’ll be able to say it. “And what if I’m like that, you know?” A breath; a moment for composure. “I know what I did. I’m not that oblivious. I know it was crazy. I did it because I had to, but also —”

All that celestial power. What could she do with it?

“What if I just wanted it?” Sabrina says, voice small. “What if I never stop dragging everyone into this — this void in me that wants and wants?”

Harvey nudges in to kiss her cheek. It’s such a simple thing but it sweeps over her like a wave; she’s always been afraid of Harvey finding out that she’s a monster but here he is, hearing the worst and kissing her cheek. “I think that’s kind of what’s exciting for you, ‘Brina,” he says, gentle and sweet. “Not scary.”

Sabrina blinks in surprise. The thump of her heartbeat, the tingling palms; that drumming thought, what if what if what if. How could he know?

“The Eldritch terrors,” Nick starts on her other side, in his professor voice, leaning close. “They’re absence, right? That’s what Ambrose said. Nothing good in them, no love or passion. And you’re all those things, Spellman. If love is a candle,” he smiles a little, “then you light it for other people.”

Tears spring to her eyes and Sabrina kisses Nick, hard and sudden; kisses Harvey, hand clutching his sleeve as though holding him close means he can’t go away again. They keep her there between them, this little bubble where everything is soft, and safe.

She knows she should probably feel some way about this, about being with both of them. The Sabrina she used to be probably would; the little girl in the red coat. That’s not her anymore.

“That reminds me,” she says after a moment, shaky but better. “There’s this spell I thought we could do.”

“’Brina…” Harvey trades a look with Nick over her head, half a wince.

Sabrina turns from one to the other. “Are you going to start doing that now? I don’t love it.”

They laugh. She digs in her pocket for what she’d taken out of the box: three strands of waxed twine in three different colors. “Aunt Hilda told me about it.” She knots the twine at one end, then hands the white to Harvey and the black to Nick, reserving the red strand for herself. “We just have to braid them. It should cancel out any aftereffects of the candle spell and bind us together. If that’s what you want.”

A little shiver bursts in her chest. Is she anxious or excited?

Harvey is the one who says, brave as always, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I want.”

Together they make a braid — a slow and steady weaving, each one tucking their twine in and pulling it tight, until they’re left with a strong cord that Sabrina loops around her wrist for Harvey to tie. She puts her head on his shoulder, Nick warm at her back. Their hands tangle in her lap; holding each other’s, holding hers. In the grass, Salem and Scylla wage war.

“You know,” Sabrina says, content. “All in all, it was a pretty good summer.”