Chapter Text
Satan save them from her sister’s sartorial choices.
A hint of fur. An accent of leopard. Those can be quite chic.
Still, Zelda can’t help but smile. Hilda does nothing by halves.
She’s magicked her hair to make it longer than it has been in years. And when, at their niece’s enthusiastic prodding, Hilda twirls and reveals the dress under the coat, there’s enough of that lovely skin that seems to always be sun-kissed despite being perennially hidden beneath cardigans that Zelda’s mouth suddenly goes dry.
The doorbell rings and at least the man is punctual--and not wearing that hideous vampire costume.
It’s odd that Zelda had pictured it that way.
“Just one more bite for the road.” Hilda nibbles again on the cookie she’d pulled from the handkerchief in her pocket earlier.
She’d always been a nervous eater.
Sabrina bumps into Hilda’s shoulder and whispers, “I told you. You don’t need that, Auntie.”
“Right.”
The cookie’s tossed onto the sideboard and forgotten, but Hilda’s gotten crumbs in her lip gloss and Zelda is about to call her over and wipe it off but he leans forward first.
“You’ve got a bit,” he swipes his thumb shyly over the corner of Hilda’s lower lip. “Just right here.”
Hilda blushes and grins.
There is something about him that makes Zelda’s skin crawl. She clenches her fingers around the banister and considers how long it’s been since she’s seen Hilda this happy--much less felt that happy herself.
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Sabrina and Nick--off to a winter formal at the Academy--and Cerberus are already out the door when Hilda calls back, “Night, Zelds. Don’t wait up,” and giggles.
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She isn’t waiting up.
She just can’t find anything to occupy her mind for more than a few minutes at a time. Not watching television or praying or reading to the baby or balancing the books for the mortuary.
She’d even been restless enough to take a bite of the cookie her sister had left lying about as she paced through the foyer nursing a finger or two of whiskey. Hilda’s lips had left a red crescent behind.
On an unrelated note, Zelda thinks it is time to pay a visit to Riverdale and work off some of this frustration she’s feeling since the abrupt dissolution of her “sessions” with Father Blackwood. She’s in the mood for something, someone very different. Voluptuous blondes aren’t that hard to come by. Long blonde hair that she could wrap around her fists. Full lips and wide, laughing eyes, well, those are nothing a little glamour can’t take care of.
The front door opens and slams.
“Sabri-” she starts out of habit, but it isn’t Sabrina who’s come home in a dramatic huff; it’s Hilda who throws her coat at the rack and misses, running off into the kitchen, sobbing.
Hilda can take care of herself. Zelda has seen to that.
But if that man has even attempted something untoward . . . Zelda will end him. Without the benefit of the Cain pit.
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Zelda kneels down beside her sister. Hilda’s face is buried in her hands at the table.
“What happened?”
Zelda brushes the hair back from Hilda’s face when she doesn’t answer.
“He left me sitting there,” she answers finally. “Just didn’t come back.”
Hilda’s face is a mess of runny mascara and smudged lipstick.
“What’s so bloody wrong with me, Zelds?”
She may well have to kill him after all. After she takes Hilda upstairs and shows her all the things that are so very right about her.
Presently, she cups Hilda’s face in her hand and says, “ Nothing . You’re as close to perfect as there is in this world.”
Hilda’s eyes blink in confusion. Zelda imagines hers does the same.
That’s the kind of thing she thought, but never, never said.
The statement hangs between them.
Until there’s the pop of magic and Sabrina’s panicked face.
Her disheveled projection looks at them.
“ Werewolves ?! Are they real?”
Zelda sighs. That’s what had been bothering her about him.
“We’re on our way,” she says, far more calmly than she feels.
Sabrina is gone but Hilda is still sat in her chair.
Zelda squeezes her shoulder.
“Sister, get that hideous coat back on. And gather all the wolfsbane you can find.”
There’s an antique pistol and silver bullets locked in a drawer in the office that Zelda heads off to collect.
“Be glad he skipped out on the check, Hilda,” she calls.
If he puts up a fight, she might get to kill him after all.