“That fits. The mortals who ate in the tea shop are the first affected,” said Nick. “Then all the mortals in Greendale start believing in and hating witches.”
Sabrina kept reading. “The handmaiden feeds on misfortune, and the prince feeds on strife. At the end, the whispers turned to shouts, and the poison worked fast. On the first day of the end, the memories of their ancestors returned to the mortals. The knowledge of witches returned and terrified them, and with the memory of witches came certain tricks the mortals once used against us, which they have now forgotten.”
“When’s the end?” Prudence demanded.
“This is just a guess,” said Nick. “But I think the end might be nigh.”
“On the second day, hate came to the witches. And on the first moment of the last day, the prince came. The mortals rose and hunted us as they did long ago. Witch-hunters led with steel and fire in their hands, and we died in droves. The prince fed on the war, grew strong, and swallowed the town whole. The prince killed witches and mortals alike.
“The morning after the massacre, when dawn remade the day, the hatred of the remaining mortals passed like a dream. They forgot what they had done. They woke from a dream of hate to find their hands bloody. We knew better, we few witches with the power to resist the demon’s enchantment. We held the hatred in our own hearts at bay, escaped, and remembered. We leave this warning for future witches. There is no way to kill a whisper. There is no magic stronger than hate. When the witch-hunters rise, when the prince comes, run for your lives.”
Sabrina closed the book.
Prudence rose from her chair. “I’ve heard enough! This is serious. We should tell my father.”
“No!” snapped Sabrina.
“I realize you’re allergic to authority, Sabrina—” Prudence began, exasperated.
Sabrina waved off this known fact. “It’s not that. What would Father Blackwood do if he heard the mortals might transform into a witch-hunting mob? He’d kill them!”
“Oh, will somebody dispose of the mortals that might massacre us?” Prudence sneered. “What a pity.”
Sabrina subjected Prudence to an appalled and judgmental stare. Prudence was tempted to slap her.
“It’s not the mortals’ fault! They’ve been poisoned. Oh no, I went with my friend Roz to that place. What if the tea affected her? I can’t let anything happen to Roz!”
Sabrina’s priorities were wild.
“Didn’t you attract bad luck in the first place because you had to help out this friend of yours?” Prudence demanded. “You’ve done plenty for her. She and the other mortals can fend for themselves! My concern is for my own people. You signed the Book, Sabrina. They’re your people too. You owe us your allegiance, not them.”
Sabrina was wearing her spit-in-Satan’s-eye expression.
Nick had been silent for some time. Now he looked up from his own book.
“I don’t mind helping the mortals, if Sabrina wants,” he said mildly.
“Oh, what a surprise,” Prudence sneered. “Nick Scratch, thinking with his—”
“But I think you should both listen to this right now,” continued Nick. “I’m reading about how exactly a prince of hell might be called to the world. If a lesser demon connected to a prince is banished, her going leaves an opening for him. When the membrane between the worlds is weakest, at the point where two elements can be crossed, the prince can step through.”
Prudence pressed her fist to her mouth, smearing lipstick against her knuckles.
Even Sabrina went slightly pale. “So you’re saying that by banishing the bad-luck demon, Prudence and I summoned a prince of hell? The prince might come in a matter of days?”
Not me, Prudence wanted to scream. She’d only wanted to help Sabrina with a little problem and win Zelda’s favor. She’d been trying to smooth the path of her own future.
“We thought the problem was a luck demon, but now a prince of hell may consume Greendale and the enchanted townspeople may rise up and kill us all.” Nick started to grin. “That escalated quickly. You’re the most interesting person I know, Spellman.”
Whenever Sabrina was involved, there was disaster. Prudence should’ve known better than to get mixed up with Sabrina’s schemes. She’d been a fool.
She couldn’t possibly go to her father and tell him she’d done this. Her father wasn’t Zelda Spellman. He wouldn’t shield her. He wouldn’t forgive.
Sabrina’s mouth went flat and determined.
“We have to stop the prince,” she declared. “Before the mortals rise up in hatred. I must call Roz and make sure she’s okay. And—and the book mentioned witch-hunters.” Only then, speaking one name, did Sabrina’s lip tremble. “Harvey.”
“Nobody cares!” Prudence shrieked.
From the shadows of the library came a severe shushing noise. Prudence went quiet. Cassian the librarian could be terrifying, and she had enough problems right now.
“Your mortal is safe,” said Nick. “You asked me to take care of him and I will.”
Sabrina turned to Nick, laying her hand on his bloodstained sleeve.
“Please do,” she said. “Please help him.”
Nick rose, inclining his dark head toward her. “You only have to ask.” He paused. “I’m getting changed first. I can’t be seen this way in public. Not even for you.”
Sabrina glowed up at him as though he was her hero. Prudence wanted to break every arched window in the library. She was surrounded by lunatics bent on their lunatic path. Sabrina wanted to fight a prince of hell. Nick wanted Sabrina to keep looking at him like that, though Prudence didn’t know how much of the look was even for Nick and how much for Sabrina’s precious witch-hunter. Maybe Sabrina didn’t know herself.
Prudence couldn’t throw things, and she couldn’t stop Nick, and she actually had to fall in with Sabrina’s latest mad scheme. Somehow, they had to work out when the end was coming and what to do when it did.
They had to fight a prince of hell. The alternative was telling her father she’d messed up, and Prudence couldn’t do that.
He’d never let her take the Blackwood name if he knew.
The snow was melting, showing bare stones and earth, and the bridge before Harvey seemed less like ice and bone and more like something he could cross. Now that he’d talked to Susie, he thought he could see a path ahead.
Harvey drew in a deep breath and set foot on the bridge. Then he envisioned what lay ahead. Before he even realized, he was stumbling back, being a coward again.
As he stumbled he was grabbed from behind, his arm caught in a tight grip. Harvey almost dropped his flowers.
“There you are, mortal!” Nick snarled. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Where in hell’s name did you go?”
“I went to town,” Harvey answered shortly.
Nick wore an imperious and offended expression. “I told you to stay.”
“Yeah,” said Harvey. “But I’m not your dog.”
There was a short pause. Nick ran a hand through his windblown hair, scowling. “If you keep being like this, Sabrina will worry.”
“Funny thing,” said Harvey. “I’m not Sabrina’s dog either.”
Nick sneered, as though that was an unbelievable statement instead of the simple truth. The turmoil Harvey’d felt in Dr. Cerberus’s twisted like a storm beginning in his chest. That was how witches thought of mortals. Pets if they were lucky. If not, pests to be put down.
“Are you feeling—odd?” asked Nick, scrutinizing him.
No, Harvey told himself. Sabrina wasn’t like that, and he was almost sure Nick wasn’t either.
There was a shadow on Nick’s face that seemed akin to concern, though it was hard to tell with Nick. His hair and his constantly black clothes were disheveled, as though he’d been running around.
Greendale’s crawling with darkness, Susie’s voice said in his mind. He remembered Nick’s face, shocked open by pain and seeming younger than usual, in the shadows after dreaming
of Satan. Susie was right. There was too much danger in their town, and too many people being hurt. They had to band together, not break apart.
Harvey sighed and shook his head.
“Do you want to punch somebody again?”
“Oh, you never know,” Harvey joked, then saw the shadow on Nick’s face deepen. “No, all right? I don’t want to hurt anyone. Chill, Nick.”
He wanted to protect people. He couldn’t do that if he retreated whenever he was afraid.
“I’m always chill,” Nick murmured, leaning back against the post where the bridge began. “I’m noted for it.”
Harvey stared at the bridge, then glanced toward Nick.
“You’re not afraid of anything, are you?”
“I tell myself that every day.”
“Will you come with me somewhere?” Harvey asked.
Maybe Nick could help him be brave.
“Is it to your home, where you should stay and be safe like a good mortal?”
“I’ll go there afterward,” said Harvey. “Come with me now.”
Nick seemed to notice the flowers Harvey was carrying for the first time. “Are you going to make up with Sabrina? She’s not home.”
Harvey shook his head. “I’m not going to see Sabrina.” He looked at the river running below the bridge. The sound of the water running filled his ears like a roar.
“Are they—for me?” Nick made a face.
Harvey’s eyebrows rose. “Dude. Don’t be weird. They’re not for you.”
Nick seemed relieved. “I think it would be weird too! But Prudence says mortals do it all the time.”
“Prudence, huh,” said Harvey. “Another person I have no desire to give flowers to. Look, just don’t be weird for five seconds and come with me. And … if I try to turn around, don’t let me.”
“Am I supposed to stop you with magic? Or violence?” Nick asked. “Either’s fine.” He smirked. Harvey might have smiled back, if he hadn’t been so terrified.
“Try an encouraging nudge,” said Harvey, his voice distant in his own ears, over the roar.
He set his hand on the steel rail of the bridge and gripped it tight. Nick glanced at him warily but didn’t comment. Harvey walked across the bridge and down the path, with Nick dark and silent as a second shadow beside him, until they reached the railings and saw the spire of the church in the distance.
Nick cleared his throat. “I can’t go in there. It’s holy ground.”
“That’s okay,” said Harvey. “I should do this last part by myself.”
He reached out a hand to open the gate. Even now, a step away, he almost lost courage.
Nick and Ambrose were both mad at him for returning Sabrina’s Christmas present. He was mad at himself too. Sabrina’s gift had been magic pencils. Such a small thing, and so sweet.
Only Harvey couldn’t sleep with them in the house. Whenever he thought of magic, he thought of his brother. Sabrina’d brought Tommy back wrong, and said she’d stop Tommy with her own hands. Her small hands with their ferocious grasp, the hands that had taken Harvey’s on their first day of school. The hands Harvey had kissed a hundred times, the little hands he loved.
He couldn’t let her do it. So he did it. He’d never loved himself the way he loved Sabrina. It didn’t matter if he hated himself.
He’d loved five people, his whole life. He could count them on one hand. Every time he imagined reaching out for a magic pencil, trying to draw something beautiful, he thought of what he’d done. He gave the pencils back. He couldn’t cross the bridge.
He was here now. The time to be brave was now.
He opened the gate of the churchyard and went inside. He found his way through the graves to the tombstone for the one who belonged to him. He stood there, reading the words struck deep into the stone. Thomas Kinkle, Beloved Son and Brother. Rest in Peace.
Perhaps he was at peace now.
“Hey, Tom,” Harvey whispered. “You must have wondered why I didn’t come before. I-I’m sorry. I couldn’t. I’m here now.”
He didn’t know what else to do, so he knelt and laid the flowers down on the grave. He remained on his knees. Harvey often had to stoop to talk to people, but never Tommy before. His big brother had been taller than Harvey.
His big brother, the hero of his childhood. He was all the things Harvey wasn’t. Tommy was the type of person who mattered. He never let anybody down. Just being with him made you feel better. He was brave enough to face anything. He was ready to love people and ready to fight for them. He was everything a hero should be.
Harvey covered the name on the stone with his hand, but it was still there. So he stroked the name instead, as he’d stroked Sabrina’s cat, trying to comfort himself.
“I guess … I was having a tough time, Tommy,” he said softly. “Like the poem you told me about, the one Mom’s college friend read at her funeral. You remember.”
He looked at his own hand, touching his brother’s name. Five fingers, for the five people he loved. The hand he drew with, the hand that picked up the gun. These were the only hands he had. He had to use them. He had to live with what he’d done.
“ ‘Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave,’ ” he recited, struggling with the words, with the fragment of a poem he could recall. “ ‘Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind … I know.’ ” He leaned his forehead against the gravestone and whispered: “I know.”
The winter wind, blowing cold on the hot tears running down his face, made him realize he was crying. He put his arm around the grave marker, looping it tight around the stone, as he’d fastened his arm around his brother’s neck a thousand times. He pressed his forehead against the place where Tommy’s name was written and howled, sobs grating in his throat, shaking his whole body so he had to cling to the stone or fall to the ground.
“I’m sorry. Oh God, Tommy, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
He could picture what Tommy would say: Hey, nerd. It’s okay. Tommy always told him everything would be okay, but Tommy was gone now. Harvey was what was left. He had to do something, be something, make his life worth something, or his brother had died in vain. He had to survive this on his own.
He fumbled in his pocket and took out the cross that Tommy had worn around his neck, then scrabbled for a moment in the dirt. He buried the gleaming bit of metal in a shallow grave.
He whispered, “This is yours. I’ll leave it with you.”
Tommy wasn’t here. Harvey knew that, as he knew Tommy hadn’t really been there when Sabrina sent Tommy’s body shambling to Harvey’s door. The last time he’d touched his brother, his real brother, was down in the mines that always terrified Harvey, as though he’d known one day that place would take away the dearest thing he had. He remembered the hell of dust and rocks, and his brother’s hands on him shoving Harvey toward the world outside.
He laid his hot, wet face against the cool stone. “I bet you’re worried about me, huh?” he murmured. “You always were. You can quit worrying now, do you hear? I’ll be okay.”
He knew one more thing, down to his bones. Tommy would’ve thought it was worth the sacrifice, his life for getting Harvey out. Somehow Harvey had to make that true.
He kissed the word beloved, graven into Tommy’s tombstone, as he’d kissed Tommy’s cold forehead while Tommy lay sleeping on his bed. Before Harvey aimed the gun.
Then he rose. “Bye, Tommy,” he said quietly.
He turned and left the graveyard, wiping his face with his sleeve. Nick Scratch was still waiting outside, his back turned, leaning against the churchyard fence. He looked to Harvey when Harvey came out.
“You were crying,” he said in a subdued voice.
“Nothing gets by you, Nick,” said Harvey.
He made for home. Nick fell into step with him.
“You seemed … very upset.”
“You sure you’re the preeminent genius of Invisible Academy?” Harvey asked.
“I think it�
�s time to stop loving your brother,” said Nick, with sudden decision. “It’s not doing you any good, is it? Cut it out.”
Harvey scrubbed at his face roughly with the back of his sleeve. “Not really how love works. You’ll see.”
“I don’t want this!” Nick snapped. “I’m not doing this. Look at you. Love wrecked you. Love is garbage. Why love anybody?”
Harvey shrugged, helpless. “You love someone—to just love them. Sometimes you have to let it wreck you.”
Nick made an exasperated sound in the back of his throat. The bridge was easy to cross from the other side. They followed the path through the trees leading home.
Harvey remembered something. “Here, maybe this will help.”
He took the book out of his jacket. Nick stared as if he didn’t know what books were. That was strange, since Nick definitely knew what books were.
“What?”
He put the book in Nick’s hands, since Nick hadn’t taken it.
“I went to town to buy the flowers,” said Harvey. “So they’d be nice. I passed the library, and I thought of you. It’s a book on the typical development of social bonds in different cultures through history, and it’s more recent than my mom’s books. Do you not want it?”
He reached to take it back.
Nick took a step away. “Hands off, grabby mortal. I’m keeping it.”
“Well, you can’t keep it,” said Harvey. “That’s not how library books work.”
He tried to get it back, but Nick waved a hand and several shadows and tree branches waved in between them. The shadows and crawling sensation of magic opened a pit of horror in his heart, but Harvey swallowed the dread down. Nick’s magic wouldn’t hurt him.
“I was outside your house that night,” Nick said suddenly. “The night when you—dealt with your brother. The Weird Sisters were coming to finish him. I stopped them. I wanted to let Sabrina do things her way. Should I—not have stopped them?”
It hadn’t occurred to Harvey that night could have been worse. At least, at the last, he’d been able to choose.
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