Chapter Text
Sabrina tilted the dusty leather-bound book in the light, catching a glimpse of a flaking gold embossed title.
"Daph, are we cataloguing 'Love Potions and Spells' under potions or spells?" She called out.
"Is it more potions or spells?" Daphne called back from the next room over.
"Gee, why didn't I think of that?" Sabrina snarkily muttered to herself. Already Daphne's chosen organization system for their family's vast collection of magic books was breaking down. Sabrina wasn't the one who was going to deal with the fallout when a specific book was needed and couldn’t be found, so she was only dropping hints that the system wasn't working rather than insisting they should change it. Daphne had not caught a single hint so far.
Opening the book to the first page, Sabrina hoped that at least this one had a table of contents. It was so annoying when they didn't. Rather than anything she'd seen so far like maps, glossaries, and tables of contents when she got lucky, a warning covered the front page. She skimmed it.
Love magic should only be used temporarily to spark romance. Best used under the circumstances of prodding along a reluctant pair, love magic plants possibility. Once the seeds of love have taken, all magic must be ceased. Failure to do so can result in irreversible damage.
There was a familiarity to that warning that she couldn't quite place. She continued flipping through the pages. More spells than potions. She added it to the spells pile.
Sabrina twisted her ring around her finger, fidgeting her way through class. English was particularly dull this year. Her teacher wore all grey— a slightly blueish shade for his shirt, and a slightly greenish shade for his pants. The carpeting was the industrial kind, splotty shades of black and grey that would blur and move like tv static if she stared at it unblinkingly until her eyes watered, which she did often when trying to not fall asleep. A classroom so unremarkable, it was remarkable. It was the second-to-last week before summer, and the days were crawling by as her teacher tried to cram in the last book of the curriculum.
Her teacher read aloud from Romeo and Juliet.
"O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate-stone…”
Sabrina grew distracted already, her mind drifting off to another set of Shakespearean fairies. Who could blame her? While Romeo and Juliet were technically Everafters, they died within their text and so did pretty much anyone else interesting. She hadn’t read A Midsummer Night’s Dream again since her family’s trip to New York City to heal Puck’s wings. She had avoided anything fairy-related ever since, at risk of making him feel too important.
Now that she thought about it, it was kind of absurd for Granny to hand a Shakespeare script to an eleven-year-old and just assume she had the reading comprehension for that. Sabrina tried to recount the plot. There was a wedding, and people were doing a play, and Titania and Oberon were arguing, so Oberon told Puck to give a love potion to—
Well, hang on now.
When was the last time she thought about love potions?
It was while she was helping to organize the Grimm library. She’d looked at a book about love potions.
Must be the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. She’d gotten a 4 on her AP Psychology exam and felt pretty proud of herself.
Sabrina let herself into her house after school, blissfully closing her eyes as the AC washed over her when the door opened. It sounded like a zoo inside with her family scattered all throughout the house yelling to one another and working on their own tasks, but she was mostly immune to it by now. She took off her shoes and dropped her backpack in the mudroom, moving into the kitchen to grab a drink and stick her head inside the freezer.
The landline was ringing. The Grimms had to be the only house left in the state of New York that still had a landline, but with a revolving cast of magic detectives and more than a handful of kidnappings under their belt, it was best to have a centralized phone that any free member could pick up. Sabrina looked around, hoping someone else was hearing the phone and on their way to pick it up, but no such luck. Daphne’s ultra-loud tween girl music blaring from the upstairs landing probably was drowning it out.
Sabrina sighed and picked up the phone, hoping it was just a friendly check-in and not a new case. The Grimm family ‘spring cleaning’ was shaping up to be ‘summer cleaning’ too, and the house was a wreck. If they needed to find anything specific for a case, it was likely going to be a nightmare.
“Grimm family.” She said into the phone, cradling it on her shoulder so she could pop open a can of soda.
“Veronica?” The person on the other side of the line guessed.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. Her and Daphne sounded exactly like their mother over the phone, which had caused a few problems before. “Close, I guess. Sabrina.”
“Oh, Sabrina!” The voice was that of a semi-squeaky pubescent boy and Sabrina had a hard time placing who she could possibly know who was a teenage boy that both knew her mother and was excited to hear from her. “This is Mustardseed, I was hoping to catch Veronica, but maybe you can help too.”
Sabrina sipped her drink and took a seat in front of the pad of paper that was kept by the phone for notes. ‘Was kept’ was the soft way of saying it, though. After the dozenth or so time of it having vanished to be used on some other project right when he needed it, her dad had slightly lost his mind and hot glued it to the counter. Sabrina maybe wouldn’t have done it herself, but she did understand.
“I can try. I can also pass on a message.” She tested the pen, which was miraculously still by the notebook.
“Well, I’m sure you know we’ve been trying to improve the political system of Faerie, add a bit more democracy, representation, uh… justice system…”
Sabrina knew why Mustardseed had suddenly started to feel awkward and decided to let him suffer in it a bit longer. “Mmhmm.”
“…We’re worried about the carceral system in particular. There’s a lot of ethical questions when it comes to prison sentencing for immortals. Concerns have been raised about humane sentence times versus the likelihood of the victims still… um… being around…”
She let it hang while she took notes.
“Which, I’m sorry again about what happened last time.” Mustardseed continued.
“It’s fine. Attempts on my life happen all the time.” She said placidly.
“Uh, right, so um,” Mustardseed stumbled over himself. Sabrina hadn’t been back in Faerie since she was a kid, though it wasn’t anything personal. It was kind of a long trip, and there’d been no reason to. Her family had also gotten busy with post-war rebuilding efforts. It probably came across as a purposeful avoidance to the royal family, though. “You’re… familiar with Moth.”
“In a few ways.”
“She’s technically our longest held prisoner, given she’s the first person we gave any kind of due process to. She’s been relegated to a basement cell, and a few others have joined her, but her mental stability seems to be getting worse and we’re thinking we want to explore some other options.”
“As someone who’s been locked in a basement, I can’t say I’d recommend it.” Sabrina said. Moth probably wasn’t handcuffed to a radiator, and she was probably receiving meals, but she had been in there much longer than Sabrina, so maybe it was a draw.
“You’ve been— sorry, that’s intrusive,” Mustardseed was so unusually polite considering how he grew up. “That’s really the crux of the problem. We don’t have a lot of resources, but what we do have seems to not be working.”
Sabrina hummed. “Mom’s a big fan of restorative justice, so that’s probably the type of solution you can expect from her. I’ll tell her what you guys are dealing with. It’s been busy lately, so it might take some time,” She paused to think. Of all her many grudges against people, Moth didn’t rank all that high. She’d at least had the decency to hate Sabrina on a personal basis at a time when Sabrina was mostly dealing with people who just hated her because they hated her family. Sure, Moth’s read on the whole situation with Puck wasn’t perfect, but Sabrina does respect a vengeful woman.
“…Maybe let her get a bit of sunlight, or something.” She tacked on.
“I’m honestly at a loss for how to describe her state right now. She’s very aggressive these days, but she doesn’t seem as coherent anymore.”
Sabrina stopped in the middle of the spiral she was doodling. “Sounds like it’s been getting to her.”
“It’s been difficult. I shouldn’t take up more of your mind with this than you’ve already suffered, though, so I’ll let you go. Please call us back when you get a chance.”
“Sure. Bye.” Sabrina’s mind already felt a million miles away. When Mustardseed bid her goodbye and hung up, she hardly heard it. Setting the phone back on the cradle, she stared blankly at the notes in front of her for a minute before impulsively ripping the page out and stuffing it in her pocket.