Chapter Text
Night descended over Greendale, and in droves with skin pale and eyes pitch-black, the demons came out to play. Harvey’s eyes traced the pages of his comic, committing the harsh, recalcitrant lines to mind. He liked the crudeness of it, the unfinished sketch-like quality. Hazy nightmare visions, cross-hatched into darkness and staring at him as if they might come alive at any point. The penciled black cat even reminded him a bit of Salem, a demonic little creature with comically wide eyes that somehow managed to convey sentiments no cat should be capable of.
He’d never asked Sabrina whether Salem was a regular cat, or magic like its owner. Probably the latter. Everything about Sabrina was magic, as it turned out. Except for Harvey, and look where that had gotten him.
Outside, an owl hooted. He could hear his father puttering around downstairs, the muted sounds of some sitcom playing in the background. A cupboard slammed, followed by hoarse curses. Ever since Tommy his father had been withdrawn, more so than usual. Louder, too, as if he wanted to make up for the silence that Tommy’s absence had left. Harvey too missed the obscure rock bands his brother used to play, missed having to bang on the walls of his room begging him to turn it down. Now the room behind the headboard of his bed was silent as a grave.
Most nights but especially on bad days, when their father had come home angrily rambling about some employee, Tommy would enter his room and ask Harvey what he was reading. Harvey would explain, and Tommy would shake his head, chastising him for living in his head with the ghosts and demons from his comics. And though Tommy’s puzzlement was a fond kind, it had been so easy for him to be the son their father expected them to be. Harvey had never managed that. He was starting to think he never would.
Easier to live in the fantasy world, where the nightmares were pencil and ink and couldn’t hurt you. It was the only escape from reality Harvey could think of right now. Before the tornado, before Tommy, before that 31st of October he’d never forget—before all that—his escape had been Sabrina. Now there was just the pictures, and the etching of a cat instead of a real life copy twisting around his ankles.
He flipped the comic to a drawing of an owl. It covered the entirety of the page, its feathers black and fading into the night sky that formed the backdrop. Its eyes were a shocking violent red. Harvey blinked.
The owl blinked back.
In less than a second, Harvey was on the other side of his room, back to the wall and panting out short breaths. He felt faint. The comic lay on his bed, face down so only the cover was visible.
Had he imagined that?
The laugh track from his dad’s sitcom drifted up from downstairs. Harvey felt a chill run down his spine. Magic was real, and his comics were moving. Great. Nails digging into his palms, he took a step forward. Man up. An echo of his dad’s voice, urging him to stand up to one of the older boys on the lacrosse team.
Carefully and with damp palms he prodded at the comic book. It shifted a couple of inches on the bed. Nothing. No demons, no owls with shiny blinking eyes. He turned it over to look at the drawing, which was as immobile as one would expect. Had he imagined all that?
His breath had just slowed down when a ticking sound started to his right, low and rhythmically at first but then gaining in volume, a quick staccato. A glance to the window revealed an owl, a real one, sitting on his ledge and battering away at the glass with its beak. Its eyes weren’t red but yellow, nearly luminescent in the dark night. It drew back momentarily, hooted, and returned to its drumming.
“What do you want?” Harvey asked, and immediately felt stupid for talking to an animal, even one behaving as strangely as this owl. But then it blinked and cocked its head, as if beckoning him closer.
It was probably nothing good. If the past few months had taught Harvey anything it was that odd happenings usually spelled disaster, and owls trying to communicate with him surely fell under that category.
He approached the window anyway.
“Hello?” he tried, prying the window open. He shivered at the chill draft making its way into his room and through the thin material of his jersey.
The owl opened its beak. “Harvey? Oh god, Harvey.”
The goose bumps that broke out over the skin of arms and legs had nothing to with the cold and everything with the human voice coming from the feathered animal.
“Sabrina?”
“Harvey,” Sabrina’s voice spoke, high and frantic. “Please, I need help.”
“Where—” He sucked in a breath. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the woods, in a house. I’m stuck here, Harvey, I don’t know what happened.” The words tripped over each other as they fell from the beak of the owl. Yet the cadence was undeniably Sabrina’s.
“How do I find you?”
Harvey thought he could detect a hint of panic in the owl’s round eyes, but it might as well have been his own alarm spilling over, altering his perception. “Follow the owl. I cast a spell that should lead it back to me. But you have to be careful, Harvey.”
He was already grabbing his sweater from off the floor, shrugging it on before pausing in the doorway of his room to listen to the sounds from downstairs. With some luck, his father would fall asleep in front the TV soon. Harvey could be back without his dad even having noticed he’d left.
Or whatever had got to Sabrina could kill him before he even got the chance to save her, a treacherous voice whispered in his head. He should find help. Head out to the Spellman home and get her aunts or cousin to come along, people who could do magic and were used to fighting evil—but that would take ages, and there was no one else he could call. Not Roz or Susie, who he felt had only really put up with him because he’d been Sabrina’s boyfriend, and though they’d remained exceedingly polite in her absence, they had never been his friends. He definitely couldn’t call his own friends. And the day of the tornado, that Nick guy had told Harvey he could call him any time if something was up, but then he’d left without leaving a phone number. As if Harvey was supposed to say his name three times in the mirror and he’d appear.
“Forget it,” he said out loud, half to himself and half to the owl, which was hopping around impatiently. “I’m coming, ‘Brina.”
He’d never actually climbed out of his window before, mostly because he was afraid his dad would catch him before he’d even made his way down. It seemed easier in movies. Even as careful as he was, he twisted his ankle jumping from the roof and ripped his jacket on a pipe. But then he was on the ground and Sabrina’s owl swooped out in front of him, leading the way in the darkness.
He had to pay attention not to lose sight of it, especially when they abandoned the road and turned towards the woods. He’d only visited the Greendale forest during daylight. It had always felt magical, even before he’d known magic was real. Something about the way the light filtered through the thick blanket of branches and leaves, the way the colors were just a little too green, a little too bold. Harvey had grown up in Greendale, a town boy through and through, but he’d always felt like a stranger between these trees.
Yet if it felt like a magic dream during the day, it was a nightmare in the dark. Branches became arms ending in long claws, the sound of the wind a drawn-out keening. He slipped a few times on the slick leaves and moss that covered the forest ground because he was afraid of losing the owl to the shadows. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking already, and to make matters worse he had no idea how far away Sabrina was being kept. The owl had infuriatingly refused to speak since they’d left Harvey’s house.
He was close to giving up hope when the dense thicket cleared a little. The owl broke through the trees and landed on a fallen branch, and Harvey looked up to a house set in the middle of a clearing.
Sure as he was that he had not a single magic bone in his body, he thought he could still tell the house was enchanted by the feeling of wrongness that crept upon him at the sight. This house was not supposed to be here. It was not supposed to exist at all.
He looked towards the branch where the owl had landed, but it had gone.
“Sabrina? Sabrina, are you there?” His voice echoed without reply. “Sabrina!”
He would have to enter. He’d known that before he’d followed the owl here, but the knowledge still filled him with dread. Before he could give himself time to second-guess himself or chicken out, he stepped up to the door and tried the brass doorknob. The door swung open easily. He took a few strides into the darkened hallway. Too easy, almost.
The door swung shut behind him.
He whirled around, groping for the latch, but his hands only met wallpaper. Whatever door he’d entered through, it was gone.
He groaned, scanning the hallway. The faint glow of a light overhead illuminated just enough to see that there were doors on both sides, all of them closed. Wallpaper peeled from the walls, covered in a yellowing paisley design, while the walls themselves seemed to lean in towards each other, creating an oppressing atmosphere.
“Sabrina!” he called out, not really expecting an answer. “It’s me, Harvey.”
“Harvey?” Sabrina came stumbling through one of the doors on his left, platinum hair in disarray and eyes wide. “What are you doing here?” she asked. Her forest green sweater was torn and there were dark streaks across her bare arms. He took a few steps towards her.
“You called. The owl you sent, you… You called.” Her eyebrows drew together, and he knew she hadn’t.
“You need to get out of here,” she said, determination overtaking her worry.
Harvey chanced a glance over his shoulder. “I would, but the door’s gone.”
Sabrina shook her head. “You shouldn’t be here, they shouldn’t even have let you in. I don’t understand…” She trailed off, looking around her.
“What’s going on, ‘Brina?” Something was wrong. The owl that had Sabrina’s voice but hadn’t been sent by Sabrina, even though it had led Harvey straight to her. This strange, defiant house. Sabrina, disheveled, who seemed to be looking for something.
“I’ll explain later.” She whispered something under her breath, and a tiny blue sphere shot from the tips of her fingers, drifting through the wall.
“You could explain now,” he said, feeling the long night catch up to him. His twisted ankle felt sore, clamoring for him to let it rest.
Sabrina’s answer was drowned out by a low, scraping sound. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, like someone—or something—was scratching at the walls. He grabbed Sabrina’s arm, pulling her closer.
The sound only grew louder, and then from the darkness Harvey could see a shape moving towards them. He wanted to warn Sabrina, but he was rooted to the spot, mouth sewn shut by his fear. The figure came hurtling closer, and then all of a sudden the sound stopped, and the blue sphere reappeared, casting light on their adversary.
“What are you doing here?”
Nick Scratch echoed Harvey’s thoughts so perfectly that for a second Harvey believed he was the one who had spoken.
“Doesn’t matter,” Sabrina said before Harvey could answer. “We need to get him out of here.”
Nick barely even spared a glance for Harvey before turning his attention back to Sabrina. “If we’d found a way to get out, we’d have done that hours ago. That’s the point.”
“I know it’s the point,” Sabrina said, sounding the way she did when she was just settling into a long argument, and for a moment Harvey missed her so much he could barely breathe.
“Then keep him out of the way.”
“He’ll get hurt!”
“He is right here.” Sabrina and Nick looked up as if they’d only just remembered Harvey was present. “Could someone please explain to me where we are?”
“We’re in a test,” Nick said. He brushed a lock of his hair back, to no avail as it flopped back over his forehead almost immediately. Like Sabrina, he looked as if he’d been dragged through hell and back. His dark shirt was creased and showed strips of skin where it had been torn, and he had an ugly gash down his cheek. “Part of the Academy exams. We get paired up and have to go through a series of trials.”
“What’s the survival rate for these exams?” Harvey had been complaining about studying for a chemistry test just yesterday. He felt a little better about that now. Chemistry didn’t usually involve a night locked in a murder house—at least not literally.
“The Academy wouldn’t let people die, Harvey,” Sabrina said.
Nick hummed, though it wasn’t so much a hum of agreement as wonder. He smiled sharply. “Not recently, anyway.” He hissed as Sabrina kicked his ankle.
“You said something about an owl.” Sabrina turned to Harvey.
“It told me you were in trouble. That’s why I came—”
A loud crash startled all of them, the sound of something toppling over onto the floor right above their heads.
“What was that?” Harvey asked, and was immediately shushed by both Sabrina and Nick. They stood in silence as the house creaked and groaned around them.
“We should go check it out,” Nick said eventually, with a casualness that seemed foreign to Harvey at the moment. Sabrina nodded. “I suggest the mortal sticks close by in the meantime.”
The mortal has a name, Harvey wanted to say, but he didn't want to argue with Nick when he'd been civil enough to offer to protect Harvey. More than that, though, he knew any combativeness would translate as jealousy to the others. He hadn't forgotten the way Nick had talked about Sabrina, with a reverence that Harvey was sure not many were shown. Who knew what had happened between them these past few months while they were studying… well, whatever you studied at a magic school.
Sabrina pulled Harvey closer, her hands curled around his upper arms while she chanted in what he presumed to be Latin. Quiet and melodic. She'd done this before too. He remembered the warmth that spread through him, like the slow slide of a hot tea on a cold winter night, from his toes to the crown of his head.
“It's a protection spell,” Nick said. “They're not foolproof but they usually do the trick.”
Sabrina had only just finished her spell when a second crash sounded, followed by a flickering of the light above their heads. It hummed ominously, then died. They were cast in a sweeping dark so black Harvey might as well have closed his eyes for all he could see. Sabrina's warm hands on his arms were gone. Something brushed past Harvey’s cheek in the darkness.
“Don't move,” Sabrina’s voice whispered in his ear, as a small purple flame flared to life in her palm. It was just enough to light their little corner of the hallway, and just enough to see Nick was missing.
Sabrina cursed quietly. “They keep doing that. Like they don't want us to team up.” She twisted her hands so the flame danced out in front of them, drifting forward until it stopped to hover a few feet away. “We should go up. Whatever's up there, we'll need to beat it before they'll let us leave.”
There was little for Harvey to contribute except to follow Sabrina through one of the doors and up a narrow set of stairs. They crept silently, like children sneaking past their parents. Sabrina didn't speak. Neither did Harvey.
The second floor was just as dim and uninviting as the first. Harvey nearly had a heart attack when he saw a figure move in the corner of his vision, but it turned out to be a tree swaying in the wind behind a dusty window.
“Can’t we get out that way?” Harvey asked.
“There’s some kind of spell on the windows,” Sabrina explained. “We’ve tried to undo it, but it seems to trigger something else each time. Better not to take the risk.”
How long had they been at this? The skin underneath Sabrina’s eyes was smudged with purple, her shoulders slumped forward.
“Come on.” She tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him towards a door, and put her palm against the wood. “Remember last winter when we went camping, and there was that wild dog that tried to attack us, and you talked it down?” Her skin brushed his, unconsciously. He nodded. “I kept telling you to run, but you insisted on talking and talking, until it stopped barking and let you take it to the shelter.”
“They put it down,” Harvey said. He’d gone back to the shelter the next week, only to be told that there was nothing they could have done for the dog.
Sabrina frowned at him. “You never told me.” Her fingers grazed his skin again, deliberately this time, and she took his hand in hers. Palms brushing, she said, “That was brave of you, but I need you to listen to me this time. What’s in this house, it’s not dogs, so if I tell you to run, you run, okay? Find Nick, find an exit, and go.”
“You said it was just a test.”
He’d never seen Sabrina look so serious before this year. When he’d been crushing on her, before they’d gotten together, it had been her smile he’d noticed first. Now it seemed every time she smiled her expression was tinged with worry. “Tell me you understand,” she said.
“I understand.”
She squeezed his hand. “Stay behind me.” Then she let go of his grip, and opened the door.
At first Harvey thought the room was enchanted. It seemed larger than any room in this house could be based on the outside walls, but then he looked closer, and he realized it only appeared as wide as it did because every single surface was covered in mirrors. Walls, floor and ceiling—none of the original paneling or wallpaper was visible, only an innumerable amount of mirrors in all sizes, some of them plain and some with beautifully decorated gilded frames.
It was a mesmerizing sight. Harvey stepped into the room and watched a million other Harveys appear, all observing each other. He could hear the soft tread of Sabrina’s hesitant footfall behind him as she too appeared in the mirrors. Her reflection spun around, the smudged red lipstick and green sweater singular startling spots of color in the otherwise achromatic gloom.
I miss you, he wanted to say. I don’t care about the magic, the rules, any of it. I just want you.
But he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
Sabrina’s purple flame reappeared, spinning slow circles around the room, creating a myriad of similar drifting flames. Harvey had been scared just a minute ago, scared of magic and its potential. He was no longer afraid now. This was what magic was supposed to be.
Of course it couldn’t last. There was a scraping noise behind them as the door swung closed, and something skimmed Harvey’s shoulder. He turned. Nothing but him and Sabrina, multiplied into eternity. A force tugged at his clothes and brushed his hair. The touch returned, then again, again. He called Sabrina’s name and felt a shove against his back, propelling him forward.
“Harvey?” Sabrina rushed to his side.
“Something’s touching me,” he said, just before Sabrina was whisked away and hurled into a mirrored wall.
He didn’t have time to respond. What felt like a clawed hand dug into his arm and hauled him against a cold, hard body. A different set of nails brushed down his throat. He struggled against the grasp, but it was like fighting a marble statue. Something hot trickled down his neck into his sweater.
Blood. It had drawn blood.
“Harvey, watch out.” Sabrina yelling, charging at him. He ducked just in time and they crashed together, dislodging the invisible hold and spilling onto the floor.
He lifted his head. He’d been mistaken—the creature wasn’t invisible at all, though it might have been better if it were. It was a woman, or it had been at some point. Now it was barely more than a skeleton covered in paper-white, translucent skin, most of which was covered in a Victorian nightgown. The garment hung loosely around the gaunt frame, more tatters than actual dress. Yet more frightening was its face—limp curtains of white stringy hair that revealed two black eyes, a shriveled hook of a nose, and a gaping dark pit where its mouth should have been. The two rows of sharp teeth reminded Harvey of a circular saw.
The face twisted, and he realized with muted horror that the thing was attempting to smile.
Behind the creature Sabrina was raising herself. He could see his own pale reflection, and then he realized what he should have noticed earlier. The mirrors only showed two figures; Harvey and Sabrina.
Sabrina raised her arms. The being was still focused on Harvey, approaching with a slow limp. The dark underground of Greendale had claimed Tommy, and now it had found him.
But it hadn’t come for Harvey. As soon as Sabrina's Latin chants filled the room, white smoke curled from the creature's skin, as if her words were turning it to ashes before their eyes. Harvey had been forgotten.
While enough to slow it down, it wasn’t enough to stop it entirely. It grabbed Sabrina by the hair, pulling her head back and covering her throat with a long-fingered hand. Her chants died in her throat as she was lifted off the floor, feet kicking into the air a few inches away from the ground.
Harvey had to do something. Not just stand there and watch as this monster squeezed the life out of Sabrina. But he had no weapons here, nothing to defend her, or himself. Except.
He inched closer to the wall. Sabrina's eyes tracked his movements, and he let his gaze convey his intentions. Hoped she could read him as well as she always had.
Most of the mirrors were attached to the wall, but some of them simply rested on the floor. He selected one that looked hefty enough, with a wide dark wooden frame. It was heavier than he had expected, but it would do. Then he approached the creature, and without giving any of them time to reconsider, smashed its head with the hard edge of the frame.
Sabrina fell to the floor with a dull thud. The creature shrieked and spun around, black eyes blazing, teeth gleaming white around the cavernous mouth. Harvey backed away, but it was on him before he could do more than a few steps. Its face was uncomfortably close. It smelled like sulfur. Like death. Dimly he heard Sabrina start chanting again, but his senses were oddly muted, grey fog creeping in at the edges of his vision and limiting his attention to just that wide, dark tunnel of a mouth.
A series of crashes sounded. Harvey managed to tear his eyes away to see Sabrina kicking the mirrors one by one, cracks appearing like spider webs across their reflections.
“The mirrors, Harvey!”
He ducked behind the creature and smashed a few of them himself.
Whatever they were doing, it was working. Sabrina chanted, and Harvey rammed his elbow and feet into as many mirrors as he could, until smoke filled his nose and made his eyes tear up.
One last shriek, as across the entire space mirrors cracked and exploded, leaving shards and ashes to scatter through the air like rain. Harvey reached for Sabrina just as she reached for him, and together they ducked from the hail.
They huddled together until it was clear the danger had passed. After all that, the silence felt almost unnatural. Sabrina was the first to rise as they inspected the battlefield. Not a single mirror was left whole and many of them had fallen from the walls. Harvey could see shards clinging to Sabrina’s clothes.
The creature was gone.
“What was that?” Harvey asked, grateful his voice didn't tremble as much as he had expected.
Sabrina picked up a piece of white lace from beneath the glass rubble. “I think that was a vampire. I've only read about them, so I’m not sure. Nick would know, but…” She smiled, wan but real. “The spell worked.”
“That thing could have killed us, ‘Brina. What kind of school is this?”
She shrugged. “They're unorthodox.”
No kidding, he thought. He picked a piece of mirror from her hair. “You’re good at this, aren’t you?” Sabrina was a witch. He’d known it, but a part of him hadn’t believed it until just now.
“I’m alright,” she said, but he could tell she was pleased.
They inspected each other for cuts and grazes and lifted most of the shards from their hair and clothes. Some of them had cut skin, but it wasn’t as bad as the ravage would indicate.
“It’s the protection spell,” Sabrina said.
“Upside to having a guardian angel,” Harvey replied before he’d realized that wasn’t something he could say anymore.
Sabrina only smiled, and pulled one more shard from between the folds of his sweater. “I guess you’re just lucky.”