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Sabrina locks the doors to Leviathan as quickly and carefully as she can manage without fumbling the key. Their hour of sunlight is already fading, and while she currently has all the supplies they'll need for magical defense (subject to an advance on her paycheck), time shouldn't be wasted.

She puts the keys in her coat pocket, giving Charlie a smile before she starts to pull her scarf up again. "I think if we're quick, we'll be fine," she says. All of it is strange and wrong and dangerous, but Sabrina can't help but feel like there's something more. What that could mean to her, about her, she doesn't want to think about.

Taking his hand, she glances up and down the street. It wouldn't be safe for Salem here, so easy to spot against the snow, but she misses his sense of hearing. She thinks she hears something, but the wind chooses that moment to pick up, and she winces, automatically turning into the shelter of Charlie's body for warmth.

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Charlie wraps his arm around her shoulder, keeping her close to him, huddled in against his side, his scarf pulled up so high that only the pinkish tip of his nose is exposed. He hates the growing darkness, hates how careful everyone has to be.

"Come on," he says. "Let's go back to Nick's. It feels safer being higher up, somehow."

The last clear thought before everything starts to happen is how much she loves the way his nose gets pink like that, and she's leaning up to kiss that rosy bit of skin when she sees movement in the corner of her eye. There's cruel, feral laughter around them, and Sabrina pulls away, staring at the group of monsters that's surrounded them.

One of them, a leader of sorts, snorts. "Yeah, it's the boy. Shiny, pretty one, isn't he. Watch the bitch, she's got something to her."

The laughter sends a shiver down Charlie's spine, and he immediately grabs at Sabrina, even as she's pulling away, even as he's realising that she's the more capable of the two of them in a fight. If it comes to a fight.

"Hey," he says, wishing he sounded braver. "Don't...don't call her that."

God, she loves him for trying to defend her too.

"Charlie, let me," she says quietly, and in her desperation, she breaks free from him, her hands starting to glow with a hot, rosy light. "You should all go," she tells them, firmly, knowing that they won't. "I'll kill every last one of you if I have to, but you should go."

The leader just laughs, that high and screeching sound. "Tear her apart, boys--" he begins, and is promptly knocked back by an actual ball of rose-colored fire.

Sabrina's murmuring, ready to go again, when they charge, three grabbing for Charlie, the other three advancing on Sabrina.

A sound that's part panic, part pride bubbles up in his throat when he watches her take out one of the goblins, but he swallows it down, backing away, putting himself behind her, until three of them are grabbing at him with spindly, sharp-nailed hands. He kicks out, frantically, with the heel of one boot. "Sabrina..."

Sabrina turns immediately at his cry, the fire blazing hot on her fingers. "NO," she screams. "No, you can't have him." She pulls back her arm to release the fire, frantically calculating the best spot to hit them--

--and suddenly she's got her back to the wall and her hand is throbbing in pain. She turns her head to see the dagger that pins her there, the blade forced through the flesh of her palm and deep into the wood facade near the door. She screams again, this time in pain and horror, and turns to see them with their hands on her Charlie, her Charlie, no, no.

"CHARLIE!"

Suddenly, there are more hands than he can fight off, grabbing at him -- his clothes, his hair -- and dragging him backwards, away from her. He sees the knife flash in the streetlight, and the next thing, it's Sabrina pinned to the door, blood black in the night. Charlie makes a noise that can only be described as a scream, pulling, thrashing ,fighting, until he feels claws dig into his skin, drawing blood.

"Sabrina!"

She's terrified and angry and in so much pain, and she doesn't know if she has the time to pull the knife from her hand. Struggling only means a sickening moment where her hand is no longer touching the wood under her palm, but there's a brilliantly painful slide until the back of her hand touches the hilt.

One of the goblins not holding Charlie bursts into flame.

But it's not enough, she knows it, and she's crying, screaming as she reaches for the knife in her hand.

One of them bursts into flames, startlingly bright, but the others still have hold of him, and he's fighting, he is, but then something heavy hits him hard, clips his temple, and his legs go out from under him, his vision swimming, the heels of his boots dragging against the floor. He sobs her name.

Sabrina knows then, from the way he calls her name, even as they're dragging him away, that she's not going to be able to save him. Not now. She sags against the wall, and with tears clogging her voice, she calls out to him.

"Please, Charlie, hold on, I swear I'll be there soon, Charlie--"

The last thing he hears the way she says, sobs his name, and then they hit him again, harder this time, and everything goes black.

He's frantic by the time he finds her. His head is still ringing from the blow he took trying to keep hold of Rosie, a nasty bruise blossoming on one cheekbone, and, when he'd got back to Chelsea Cloisters and seen, from the ground, that the apartment was dark and lonely. He'd known that she was planning to head to Leviathan, so he takes off, at a run.

When he sees her, he skids to a halt.

"Oh, babe," he says, quietly. "Sabrina. What...Let me help."

Sabrina doesn't know how long she had wept before she could get herself back under control. She's angry, angry with herself for wasting time, but the combination of injury and terror and loss and the use of magic she had promised herself she wouldn't use had been so much.

She's crying quietly when Nick finds her, one hand on the knife, bracing herself to pull it out, and with two smoking goblin corpses nearby, the story tells itself. Still, she reaches for him with her good hand, sobbing, "Nick, they took him, I couldn't stop it."

"They took Rosie, too," says Nick, grim and pale, as he studies her hand and then reaches for the hilt. He touches her face with his other hand. "This is going to hurt, babe, but you can take it, okay? I know you can."

There's a fresh splash of anger and horror at the news that Rosie's gone too, and she looks at Nick with a nod. It's better for him to do this anyway, she thinks, and she can just-- she reaches to fist her hand in his collar. She keeps her eyes on his, jaw setting, and nods. "Yeah, yeah. Do it."

He takes hold of the hilt of the blade, drags in a breath through his nose and then yanks. The blade blackens and crumbles as soon as it's free, leaving just a hilt in Nick's hand. He drops if and pulls her in against him.

"We need to get off the street," he says. "And then I'll take care of that. I'll....I'll try, anyway."

Sabrina lurches forward to muffle her cry in his chest, and blood drips to the snow.

She feels around for her keys, and then uses her good hand to shove them to Nick. "Inside, we'll figure out how to get where we need to from here. There's first aid here too." It hurts, and she's still hearing Charlie, seeing his face.

She sucks in a breath, holding tightly to the fact that she still has Nick.

Nick opens the door, shoving against it with shoulder and hip when it sticks and then all but yanking Sabrina in after him before he locks it tight again. Once they're inside, he goes behind the counter, searching for the promised first-aid kit. He'll do everything he can but, with his magic the way it still is, they'll probably need bandages too.

"I couldn't stop it," he says, quietly. "When they took Rosie. I tried, but..." He shrugs. "Nothing worked. It was like I was getting the words wrong or something."

"I couldn't either--" Sabrina begins, trying to focus on him while her hand throbs. Nick is such a good distraction most of the time, but this situation is so different.

"Oh," she breathes, the surprise actually distracting her a bit. "I'm sure it's just... you were under a spell when you got here, and you were binding him to you, and maybe it's just going to take a while." She lets out a teary laugh. "I'm having the opposite issue. I think whatever is here is making it easier to access the part of me I had hoped was gone."

"Maybe between us we just about balance out," he says, but it doesn't feel much like a joke. He grabs bandages. "I'm going to...try to heal it, but..." he shrugs. "You might need to boost it." His stomach feels gnawing. Empty. "And then we'll figure out what the heaven we're going to do next."

"Between the two of us, we can do a lot more than balance out," she says, her eyes bright. "I'll see what I can do. This first." Shakily, she reaches out for him again, wanting the touch as he heals her. She sets her jaw. "We'll figure it all out. This first," she repeats.

Nick concentrates, whispering words that he knows ought to work, and they do, after a fashion, leaving a raw, red mark behind but at least closing the sound.

"That's the best I can do," he says, feeling so utterly ashamed of himself.

Sabrina exhales with relief as the wound closes and most of the pain eases. His expression, however, sends a new and awful pain through her, and she wraps her arms around him. "It's enough, it's plenty, and you're going to get better and better," she says, as if there's no questioning it.

She leans up to kiss him. "It will come back," she whispers. "And I need your help now."

"Anything, Sabrina," he says, once the kiss breaks, still close enough that his lips brush against hers. "Anything in the world. You know that."

"I do know that," Sabrina says, warmth and affection and belief bleeding into her voice. "And I know you'd do this regardless. We need to go get them back, and I need you. We'll get Salem, and we go in together, and we do what we can do to bring it down to rubble, we get them back."

Nick nods, the set of his mouth grim as he studies her face. "I don't know how much use I'll be to you, Spellman. If my magic's not reliable." He frowns. "They had no interest in me, those things. They just wanted to go through me to get to Rosie."

"Having you with me is more than enough," she says. "And I've brought you into some dire situations before." She's quiet for a moment. "I know. They didn't want me either. I mean, as soon as I was pinned down, they just took Charlie and left. I mean, they're both mortals, so that could be it. But if that were the only criteria, then I think we'd see a lot more kidnappings, just everywhere."

"There's been a few," says Nick. "People are talking about it. But they really didn't want us. And if Charlie and Rosie were that easy, why didn't they get taken first?"

"I don't know," says Sabrina, though in that place inside of her that just never goes quite away, something begins to take shape. "Do we know for sure any names of people who were taken? Or of anyone who's in our situation?"

She frowns. "I wished I'd paid better attention to any kind of... divination. Why do creatures like that take people? When monsters are taking mortals, in stories at least, they--" She stops short, because she doesn't want to say it.

They kill them, eat them, use them.

Nick goes quiet for a moment, thinking it through.

"I've only ever seen it in books," he says. "We don't....nothing like it's ever happened in Greendale, but...I think I remember something to do with...light. Goodness." He makes a short, frustrated sound. "Hell, I wish I Had access to the Academy's library. I'd been able to find it there."

Sabrina stays quiet too, because it has the ring of truth in it.

"That makes sense," she says. "It's-- think about it. Both of them are so good. They shine. And we've got more ties to the Path of Night than we know what to do with." The corner of her mouth tugs up, and she rubs at her sore hand. "Not because there's anything wrong with us, but we hold darkness. But maybe that's helpful."

Nick leans in and presses a gentle kiss against the reddened palm of her hand.

"Might help us be able to raise a little hell," he says, the corner of his mouth tugging in a smile that doesn't quite touch his eyes.

She's so lucky, even when things look dire.

"I wouldn't know anything about that," she says, a bit loftily, but smiling now. "The perfectly demure and obedient picture of a good little witch."

There's still so much horror and anger and grief, but she can use it, she thinks.

It feels good to laugh, in that moment. Nick shakes his head.

"We both know that's not the case, Spellman," says Nick. "I probably know that better than everyone. Look at all the trouble you've gotten me into since I met you."

The smile turns a bit wry, and she leans in to kiss him once more. "Lucky for me, I think you're pretty into that, Nicholas."

She pulls back, and holds out her hand. "I think we ought to bandage it up anyway, if we're heading out to raise a little hell."

"I think you're probably right," he says, clicking open the box and rummaging until he finds a bandage. He starts to wrap her palm, carefully, taking his time to make sure he gets it right.

"We know that they're not going to be trying to take either of us," he says. "So maybe we'll be able to get in there unnoticed."

She softens slightly as she watches him, and every terrible part of the night she'd remembered everything is worth it, to have him here-- not only to love, but to be at her side in a situation like this.

"I think we have a good chance," she says. "I-- the goblin I burned outside, I don't know if it's the memories of what I can do, or if all of this is giving me a boost, but-- that's something that would be more... prophetically inclined power, if you know what I mean. It makes me wonder if I can somehow still reach the power without turning--"

She can't say it.

Nick finishes methodically bandaging her hand and then he stays on his knees, reaching up to cradle her face with his hands.

"Hey," he says, gently. "Listen to me, okay? Whatever happens here, Spellman, I'm going to be with you. I'm going to be with you, every step of the way. And if you stumble? That's when I'm going to catch you."

Sabrina nods.

She's knows it's true, after all.

"I believe you. And I believe in us. We're going to get them back, and I'm going to make whatever took them regret it." She leans forward, sealing this promise with a kiss, her fear faded away into determination.

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