“Make up with Sabrina,” Auntie Z. told him this morning, when he wouldn’t come down to breakfast. “You’re older and you should know better.”
“And yet,” said Ambrose, “I never do. Sabrina can stop being such a total raving witch.”
He stayed in his room, sprawled on his bed under his draped curtains and chiaroscuro drawings, and indulged in a sulk.
What Sabrina doesn’t consider is the fact they weren’t Ambrose’s first family. Or even his second. First was the family he was born into, the father who died so young that Ambrose will never have a chance to stop being childish, wanting his father’s approval or fearing his disapproval. His father’s disappointment in Ambrose is an eternal fact graven in stone, a sentence passed that cannot be erased, and all Ambrose has ever done is live up to that.
Hilda cared for him when his father was gone. With sweet Hilda came stern Zelda, the two so inextricably linked they never seem far apart, sleeping in twin beds even with an ocean between them. Auntie Hilda wrapped Ambrose up in love, spoiled him, never said no to him.
But Ambrose always wanted more, and more. It’s how he got less.
That was how his second family came to pass. He went searching for a father figure and found a leader, found brothers-in-arms, and it was no real surprise when his co-conspirators led him into actual crime. He didn’t question their ideals, or the fiery end result. When it all went wrong he thought of blazing defiance, and a martyr’s death.
His nature has always been explosive.
He never considered imprisonment that would last this long. If he were a mortal, he would have died in this house already. Sometimes he thinks his sentence was genius: that they knew the one punishment Ambrose could not bear was dreariness. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creep before him, within the walls of the house, within the confines of these grounds. He will be held corralled in this small space until his soul dwindles within him, and all his fire goes out.
Edward Spellman was always going places, and Ambrose was always staying right where he was. Sabrina’s father never thought much of him, or he would’ve tried to help Ambrose. So Ambrose never thought much about Edward, other than the interest anyone would take in a man with that meteoric a rise and fall. Becoming High Priest, changing the laws of the witching world, marrying a mortal, living and dying on an epic scale Ambrose couldn’t achieve. If Edward had survived, Ambrose imagines he wouldn’t have wanted his daughter to associate with Ambrose much.
Ambrose never planned to have anything to do with her. Sabrina was a baby who arrived in the Spellman residence and took up too much of Auntie Hilda’s attention. She woke up screaming at all hours of the night, and he could not leave the house or escape from her. But he was bored, so he’d play with her, partly to amuse her, and partly to amuse himself. Sabrina had a solemn face—she still does—but he could always get her to smile for him.
I’m nothing but a toy to you, Sabrina said. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s smart, and maybe now she’s realized what both their fathers knew: that all Ambrose will ever be is a disappointment.
She was sweet, but Ambrose doesn’t find babies that interesting. It wasn’t then that she got him. It was later. Sabrina as a little girl in a smock dress and buckled shoes. Even then, she wore a perpetual tiny frown, already feeling responsible for the world. When they were done playing, she would conscientiously tidy away her toys into their correct places, while Ambrose left the toys scattered across the floor until somebody tripped over them.
He’d do magic for her, because it made her laugh and look at him as if he was a marvel, and Ambrose is susceptible to flattery.
Once he made her rocking horse take off on a wild gallop around the room, and Sabrina fell and smacked her little face right into the wall.
Sabrina burst into tears, and Ambrose went from a lounge to an alarmed crouch, about to call out for Auntie Hilda or Auntie Z., when Sabrina came running into his arms. She was crying as though her little heart would break, tears and snot on his dressing gown, small hands locked determinedly about his neck. Even as he patted her back and rocked her, he was looking around for the person she should have run to, someone who would never have hurt her in the first place. Someone she could depend on.
“Sabrina, Sabrina,” he said helplessly into her golden hair. “You’re making a mistake. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
He was setting up a fun spell in the attic a few days later, and he heard Auntie Hilda cry out: “Sabrina!” He found himself halfway down the stairs, heart hammering in his ears and spell ingredients abandoned far behind him, before he could even think. It was an unfamiliar feeling, being afraid and angry at the thought that anything might dare touch a hair on her golden head.
He found himself calling her cousin as if that would give him a better claim on her, a right to be part of her life when he wasn’t supposed to be. He stopped spending so much time on the roof, and the birds found somewhere else to fly.
Auntie Hilda suggested they send Sabrina to the mortal school in Greendale—because Sabrina was half mortal, because her mother, Diana, would have wanted that for her. Ambrose thinks Sabrina’s mother must have been remarkable, not because Edward loved her, but because Hilda loved her enough to respect Diana’s wishes for her daughter just as much as Edward’s. Auntie Z. was against it: What could Sabrina learn in a mundane school? They didn’t even teach Latin, and unless you learned Latin at age five, you were never going to be truly fluent.
Ambrose surprised his aunts and himself by entering the battle on Auntie Hilda’s side and emerging victorious. He didn’t want Sabrina to be trapped in this house too.
When Sabrina went to school, he missed her more than he’d expected. He spent a long day in the attic on her first day of school, listening for the sound of those buckle shoes running up the curving lane, past the burial ground and the twisted tree and their yellow sign, up the steps of their house and back to him.
When she got home, Sabrina sat with him and poured out her stories about her friends, brand-new but already beloved: Harvey, Roz, Susie, and Harvey again.
Harvey, Harvey, always Harvey. Sabrina is a girl with a lot of decision, and she believes her decisions are right. Ambrose always aspired to and could never reach the certainty Sabrina was born with. She’s her father’s daughter, as he couldn’t manage to be his father’s son. She’s one of life’s fixers, in a broken world. She looks on tempests and is never shaken.
Ambrose is a tempest, confined to a teapot. He isn’t ever going to be able to change Sabrina’s mind or her heart when she has that mind or heart set on something.
If she set her mind on helping him, he almost believes she could do it, but she’s always worried about her friends. She’s never known Ambrose as anything but a prisoner in his own home. Worrying about him never seems to occur to her, and sometimes he hates her for that.
But is he worth her concern?
He fought for her to leave the house and go to school, and then he was jealous of her for escaping when he couldn’t. If he were a better man, he wouldn’t resent her. If he were as wise and magical and experienced as he pretends for her, he wouldn’t make the mistakes he does. She’s starting to catch on to what he knew all along. Ambrose can’t be trusted.
He never would have cared about the details of a mortal life if he hadn’t been trapped here. He shows off for her, but it might be for his own vanity.
This is his third family, and third time’s supposed to be the charm. Witches, especially Ambrose, believe in charm. But sometimes charm is empty. Sometimes charm is not enough. Surely a family should be something better than broken pieces almost forced together, trying to form a whole.
Ambrose used to think he should have a real family. He knows Sabrina should.
Long ago Ambrose got used to hearing a pair of sneakers, shuffling in the dust beside the decided tap of Sabrina’s buckled shoes. Harvey walked Sabrina home for years before they were sweethearts, the faithful suitor. Occasionally these days Sabri
na even lets Harvey come inside and say hello to her aunts or to Ambrose.
Once Sabrina and Harvey were talking to Auntie Hilda in the kitchen, and Ambrose was looking out the windows as he often does. He saw another boy waiting for Harvey outside: a few years older than Harvey, with brown curling hair a shade away from Harvey’s. Tommy, the big brother Harvey talked so often and worshipfully about.
Honestly, Ambrose only gave him a second look because he was cute: football player shoulders, big blue eyes, a cross shining against his flannel shirt. More Ambrose’s type than Harvey, though they both had the same air of being too well-behaved to bother with. But then the door of the Spellman house opened, and Harvey came out.
Tommy’s eyes lit up, and he reached out as if it was easy, and Harvey leaned against him as if it was natural. The two brothers walked away down the road together, with Harvey tucked under the protective curve of Tommy’s arm. Harvey touched his brother in the same way Tommy wore his cross, with almost absentminded faith in something that would always be there and always be bigger than himself. The ideal big brother, someone you could rely on, someone who gave without grudging. Someone solid and dependable, not wild and wildly vacillating.
Ambrose couldn’t shake the thought: That’s the kind of person Sabrina deserves to have by her side. That’s probably the kind of person Sabrina wants on her side.
Ambrose could never be that.
Now he tosses restlessly on his bed with the darkness closing in, only a roof between him and the sky, so close but so far from freedom.
She was born for great things, born to fly. She was always going to be gone like his father, like his familiar, like his friends, like the birds. He was always going to let her down. Why not now, rather than later?
He’s been listening for her step for years: along the curving lane, past the tree and the burial ground. He knows the sound by heart. He hears her step now, running too fast, almost stumbling. Through the night, and back to him.
Sabrina, in trouble.
It wouldn’t matter if it were the whole coven, or the hounds of hell, or Satan himself after her.
Ambrose never really thought he could feel responsible for anybody.
I tore down the path, past the cemetery with its heap of fresh earth. Dust rose in puffs beneath my heels, as if the earth was panting with me. Like a river to the ocean, I went home.
The rusalka’s voice shrieked through my blood as she realized she didn’t have as firm a grip on me as she’d believed. What are you doing? Stop!
Nothing could have made me stop. I was running for my life.
I could see my front door. I was almost at my porch steps, with its toad statues standing guard.
A ribbon of cold shot down my arm. For a moment it seemed like a silver vein had sprung right out of my wrist. The jet of silver water leaped for the porch steps and, fast as a tidal wave, a great gleaming silver spiderweb barred my way. I didn’t stop running. I couldn’t let myself stop. If I did, I was lost.
Behind the silver veil, my front door slammed open with shattering force. Blurred as if there was a mirror between us, I glimpsed a swirl of red velvet robes, and I heard the roar of a spell. A jagged tear slashed through the spiderweb as though it had been cut with a knife.
I didn’t check my stride. I burst through the remnants of silver threads and spells, flew up my porch steps, and found safe landing in my cousin’s arms. I was too tall now, we were horribly the same height, but I flung a desperate arm around his neck, grabbed his red velvet dressing gown in my fist, and put my head down on his shoulder.
“Please, Ambrose,” I sobbed. “Please help me, please know me. I’m Sabrina.”
“I know that,” Ambrose said into my hair, his voice shockingly calm. “I’ve spent years listening for your step coming down the road to our house. What is that thing?”
His arm locked around my waist, possessive and protective, holding me close. I swallowed a last sob against the velvet and turned in the circle of his arm. “It’s a river demon. I met it the day I went to find the forget-me-not for our spell, and she pretended to be a wishing-well spirit, and I made a wish.”
“She’s possessing you?” he demanded.
“Not yet. I cast a spell, to make sure she couldn’t drown me, but she—she did this to me, and she’s killing mortals—she’ll kill more—”
“No, she won’t.” Ambrose’s jaw was set.
The fluttering, hanging shreds of the spiderweb had come alive, tiny silver threads joining back up, forming a silvery mass that would take a new shape. My cousin and I stood together on our porch, facing down whatever the creature might become.
A voice rang through our open door.
“Ambrose, must you embrace random floozies on our porch?” Aunt Zelda asked with some annoyance.
My aunt strolled out, an impeccable vision in teal wool, elaborate lace, and high heels, apparently too focused on floozies to notice the spells and spiderwebs and tears.
“Yes, I must!” declared Ambrose. “It is my right! But as it happens, this particular floozy is Sabrina.”
Aunt Zelda squinted at me. Her eyes traveled from my face to my hairband.
“So it is. Forgive me, darling. What ghastly thing has happened to you?”
Ambrose answered for me. “She went into the woods to find spell ingredients for me, stumbled upon what she thought was a wishing-well spirit, made a wish, and got spanked by the Monkey’s Paw.”
Aunt Zelda made a disapproving noise. “So this is your fault.”
“Yes,” said Ambrose.
“No,” I said, at the same time. “It’s all my fault. But—watch out!” The river spirit seethed and took on a twisted new form, half silver panther, half engulfing storm, leaping for us.
“How dare you? This is Spellman ground!” Aunt Zelda snapped out a spell.
The rusalka shuddered, shredding from the bottom up, its ragged tentacles writhing. I screamed. Pain cut me off at the knees, but Ambrose’s arm was an iron bar. He was holding me up. He wouldn’t let me fall.
She said my words. She’s bound to me, said the spirit. Give her to me, or kill her with your spells.
All my life, I’d told myself magic could fix anything.
Ambrose made a face. “Magic won’t work. We can’t banish it without banishing Sabrina with it, unless it’s defeated first. Hey, river demon! I challenge you to a game of Scrabble.”
His voice was light and playful, but I could feel the tensed strength of the arm holding me, and hear the furious hammer of his heart.
“Better hope the demon doesn’t notice you cheat to get the triple word score,” I muttered, and Ambrose laughed, and I truly understood for the first time how my cousin lived his life, with laughter a shield against pain and fear.
“How do we fight without magic?” Aunt Zelda demanded.
“How do witch-hunters fight magic?” Ambrose asked. “With their blades and guns.”
Through the fading agony I heard Aunt Zelda say the very alarming words: “Tell me if this hurts, darling.”
She produced her glittering cigarette holder from the lapel of her woolen jacket, then viciously stabbed the river demon with its tiny pointed pitchfork ends. I heard the rusalka scream like the sound of water whipped by a gale.
“No!” I called out between my teeth. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“My thanks to our merciless Dark Lord.” Aunt Zelda nodded. “Ambrose, do you happen to have a sword?”
“Gosh,” remarked Ambrose. “I think I left my sword in the pocket of my other dressing gown.”
It seemed unlikely that Aunt Zelda could vanquish a river demon with her cigarette holder, though if anyone could, it would be her. I looked around for a weapon and saw Ambrose and Aunt Zelda scan our surroundings as well. I didn’t know if there was time for one of us to run inside and seize anything, but we had to try. I unclenched my fingers from where they were twisted in Ambrose’s dressing gown.
“Let go of me,” I whispered.
&nbs
p; “I’m not planning to do that, Sabrina,” Ambrose replied steadily.
The rusalka was gathering itself for another leap: not to attack my aunt or my cousin this time, I thought. The shimmering mercury of her body was forming another shape, a tall girl with long hair. She was coming for me, to take possession.
Aunt Zelda stepped out in front of me. Ambrose turned, setting his shoulder against mine, making his body a shield for mine.
The spirit collapsed into a puddle of silver, dwindling down to reveal Aunt Hilda, her hair and dress streaked with grave dirt. She lowered the shovel she was holding.
“Lucky you killed me earlier, Zelda,” she said breathlessly. “I always wish that you wouldn’t leave the shovel you bury me with lying around, but I suppose that came in handy too. Sabrina, my love! What did that creature do to your pretty face?”
“Quick, we have to stop it,” I said.
I threaded my fingers through Ambrose’s and pulled him down the porch steps, past our small guardian toad statues to circle the quicksilver pool and stand with Aunt Hilda. She held my hand too. Aunt Hilda reached out her muddy hand for Aunt Zelda’s, and Aunt Zelda clasped it and Ambrose’s free hand.
“You didn’t make a real bargain with me, demon,” I said. “And I didn’t make one with you. I didn’t say ‘all things alter,’ because I never wanted to alter everything about myself. I love myself too much for that.”
“Love …” The pool became a wisp of a girl, almost a wraith. She was laughing. “If you love yourself so much, let me make a new bargain with you. Pick yourself out, and I’ll let you keep yourself. Pick the wrong one, and I’ll keep you instead.”
My aunts and Ambrose began to protest. I shouted them down. “Deal.”
Silver water sketched images against the sky, more beautiful than Harvey’s drawings. One showed a witch queen on a throne, one showed a girl in her lover’s embrace. One showed a little girl, with her mom and her dad holding both her hands. One showed a girl with her aunts and her cousin, laughing and carefree, another a girl with her friends whispering secrets.
Season of the Witch Page 16
