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Sarah Fier spends a lot of time dancing around the massive Goode mansion, her feet quick as she steps around the creakiest floorboards, the coldest tiles. She knows the entire house by heart after so many years flitting through the shadows. She won’t be lost in here.
The humans throughout the house have long since left her alone. Mrs. Goode, who spends her evenings staring blankly at a television, has stopped jumping when Sarah flickers through the walls. The boys are grown now, long since turned into men worthy of the Goode name, but Sarah can still vividly recall standing over Nick’s crib when he was a baby, rocking it slowly, humming a lullaby she used to sing to Henry.
“He’ll laugh with the moon,” she’d sang quietly, with the first rays of sunlight poking through the windows, “he’ll cry at the sun, if he’s a boy, he’ll carry a gun—“
She’d only gotten that far when the elder Goodes had stormed in. The pieces she recalls from afterward are hazy— being yanked up by her hair, stumbling under the sudden shift of her chains as Mr. Goode rages at her. She often felt wise beyond her years, but that moment sent her straight back to being a scared seventeen year old, screaming as Solomon stabbed her.
She had curled up in the closet that Goode dropped her in for a few days, only leaving when she was sure they had forgotten her punishment. She chased after Nick and Will, praying to whatever could hear her that they’d be the ones to break the curse, they’d be the ones to remember Sarah holding their arms to help them learn to walk, who’d recall her smile when they grew too old for imaginary friends.
They didn’t, of course. In no time at all Sarah had been yanked to Camp Nightwing by some unseen force, watching Ruby’s mother-- Mary, her name was, she remembered her from the morgue when Ruby had died the first time-- go at Thomas Slater with a knife.
(“Tommy,” he’d corrected her softly, the next day when he arrived in the Void with Cindy Berman’s blood soaking his shirt. “My name is Tommy.”
She’d apologized quietly and then gone to see the survivors.
At the very least, she thought while standing over Nick Goode’s hospital bed, he’d manage to save one.)
She likes the Void better than anywhere else she goes, though. It’s… cozy, in an odd way. All worn door handles, comfortable couches still falling apart. A room for every killer that manages to stick around.
Nick Goode waited sixteen more years to choose another sacrifice. Throughout that time, Sarah had prepared with the other monsters of Shadyside. She’d taught Billy his multiplication tables for the fourth time (and what does that mean, that he keeps forgetting, that he’s woken up more than once asking for his mother like he has no idea what’s wrong?) and shown Ruby how to wrap her cuts when Sarah was out and Tommy didn’t have time to do it. She, Harry, Pastor Miller, and Isaac had created some semblance of a plan for the next person picked, praying it wasn’t a child but knowing it probably would be.
Of course, she never registered that she was only Ruby’s age, that Tommy is six months older than her. Sarah Fier had lived too long to consider letting herself ever be a child again-- even if she could never bring herself to use Pastor Miller’s first name like an adult from Union traditionally would.
He had been a big help over the centuries. He wasn’t oblivious to her and Hannah like Sarah had thought; after maybe a hundred years or so, when she stopped into the Void to see him, she’d been dreaming and woke up screaming bloody murder for Hannah. It had been one of the worst types of dreams, when Hannah had swung instead of her, when she hadn’t been able to starve off the fates of Hannah and Lizzie and Issac and Abi for a little while longer.
She had half a mind to run away when Pastor Miller woke her up, but he’d smiled with clear understanding. “You were the only one Hannah ever wanted,” he’d said in a rare moment of seriousness, “And I would give you her hand without a second thought. You saved her life, yes, but before that you were caring, and stalwart, and interested in everything that girl said.”
When Sarah-- touched-- had reminded him of his wife, he’d laughed for the first time in all his years. “My wife was more of a witch than you ever were, Sarah Fier. You think it mattered to me what she wanted with my Hannah?”
Sarah had grinned, just a little. When this was over, she promised herself-- when, not if-- she’d get to marry herself to Hannah with the permission of at least one of their parents.
She held onto that thought when Ryan Torres stumbled into the void, screaming when he saw Tommy.
“Welcome to the void,” Sarah had said, and maybe she should have waited-- what with being the creature that had haunted every Shadyside kid’s nightmares since birth-- but Ryan seemed to take it relatively in stride.
“Sarah Fier?”
“Hi.”
“That wasn’t you who had-- who took me,” he said, logicing it all out. “It was-- it--”
“The Devil,” Sarah confirmed. “Here, we made a packet explaining.”
(They had-- Billy had drawn on the cover and Cyrus had carefully dictated the rules of the Void to a very, very bored Tommy, who technically owed him after stealing the last piece of bread Sarah had baked. The Last Piece of Sarah’s Good Bread was taken incredibly seriously in the Void.)
Ryan took it, pushing hair and blood out of his eyes so he could scan it quickly. “Nick fucking Goode?”
“Yep,” says Tommy. “Trust me, I know.”
“That scrawny little bitch?” Ryan continues, grinning as he launches into dramatics. “At least when I thought it was you, er-- Miss Witch Girl? Madame Fier?”
“Sarah,” she’d replied, wryly amused.
“When I thought it was you, Sarah, you had the benefit of having ripped your fucking hand off to make a deal with Satan himself--”
“That was Solomon Goode, actually. He stabbed my hand off when I rejected his advances.”
“Oh! Shit!” Ryan pauses, looks her over. “Wasn’t he, like, at least thirty?”
“That’s not even factoring in that I’m a lesbian.”
Ryan’s face splits into an even wider smile. “Whoa, cool! Damn, Heather would’a--”
It’s then that his smile drops, and the shock finally catches up. His knees buckle and Tommy catches him.
It’d been a bit since they had someone cope with humor; the last one was probably Harry, who’d made a joke about the place not being as bad as his ma’s house before he seemed to finally realize he’d never be going home again and proceeding to lock himself in his room for a year or so real time. While Sarah’s never glad that the murders catch up with her foundlings, she’s happy it’s at least happening fast-- hopefully Ryan will be back on his feet soon enough.
Until then, Tommy half-carries him to his room, closes the door softly after Billy gives the new kid an extra blanket (Tommy and Ruby basically raising the ten year old had been good for him, though Sarah still tried to help out when she had a single minute of time).
He clunks his head against the door, and Sarah puts a hand on his arm.
“It’ll be a while ‘til the next one,” she reassures him, and then Samantha Fraser bleeds on her bones and it all goes to shit.