signed_sabrina | listen to the wind blow (down comes the night)

"So.." Charlie frowns, coming to sit at the foot of her bed. He's got a feeling that the world is sudenly moving a little bit faster than he is. "It's like a doppelganger situation? This guy just...looks like our Nick?"

There's bits of this that Rosie already can't quite understand--the candles, the picture on the floor, the teacup on the dresser with the dregs of something odd-smelling inside--but when Sabrina beckons her over, she goes without question. What Sabrina says pulls at her heart a little; it sounds desperate, like some kind of bargaining or denial, and who could blame her? To believe something like that, that the boy she'd loved so deeply had been replaced somehow though some Darrow trickery, made the whole thing far easier to bear.

Rosie nearly opens her mouth to murmur some kind of reassurance, a commiseration from one heartbroken girl to another, but she looks at Sabrina just before she does, and the expression on her face stills the words before she can voice them. This isn't denial. This is conviction.

"You know that for sure? Because of..." Rosie looks back at the candles, the picture, the book in her friend's lap. "And you know this...it worked the way it ought to?"

Sabrina is well aware that there may be some convincing needed across the board, though she's hoping she's bought enough trust that it should be minimal convincing. She beckons Rosie over, patting the bed beside her.

"You should sit down," she says. "I just couldn't get over how much this Nick didn't seem like ours. It kept... it kept sitting in my brain. And then I though, what could be wrong? What would be in him that would do this?"

Her voice has gone quiet.

"It seemed like... delusion. At least until I did the spell."

"Worse than that," Sabrina answers, just barely keeping from scooting over into Charlie's lap. "That's Nick's body, and I believe Nick is in there. Someone else is just... riding him."

Here, her voice takes that pained sound again.

The look she gives him is far older than her years, and not quite witch or mortal in its glimmer. She takes her time in searching out her favorite sour strawberry candy, and she makes her way back to the kitchen table to eat several pieces thoughtfully, thoroughly.

"Not all right, I'm afraid," Sabrina says, her fingers trembling a bit. "Did-- did you see Nick, before it happened? Did he seem like himself? That was what I couldn't get over. He just wasn't himself."

She pops two more candies in her mouth and savors them.

"We're going to need to call Sam."

Sabrina sits at the table in the house she shares with Marcus, creating one of the sugariest bowls of cereal ever to exist. She's still pale, her eyes a bit puffy and pink, but she needs sustenance, and she needs help. Hasn't she always suspected this would happen?

"It's as fucked up as it sounds," Sabrina reassures Magnus. "My biological father, Lucifer, appears to have made it to Darrow, where he's now inhabiting my boyfriend."

She takes a bite of sweetened grain and milk, crunching it.

"Believe me, I'm not going anywhere," she says, moving to sit on the bed and curling her legs up as she settles next to her. Rosie looks down at the book for a moment, curious, but turns her gaze back to her friend as she starts to explain.

None of it makes any sense, but she listens anyway, trusting in Sabrina utterly. "He hasn't seemed like himself, you're right, he's been..." Again, her mind shies away from something; she shakes her head. "He hasn't been who we thought he was, before." She looks over at the other girl, confusion and hope mixing strangely in her dark eyes. "But...what did the spell tell you? What's wrong with him?"

Because there has to be something wrong. There'd been an urgency in the message she'd received, something more than just the weary sadness the other girl had felt the last few days, and combined with everything scattered around her room...there was something here. Rosie fights back the urge to keep peppering Sabrina with questions, lapsing into an effortful silence as she waits for the next bit of explanation.

"I saw him," Marcus answers. "And he didn't."

It's true he doesn't know Nick well, their interactions have been limited, but the Nick he had seen during those awful snow filled weeks was not the same young man he had seen after the performance in the park. At the time, he'd allowed himself to write it off as Nick simply being tired, then he'd decided it was whatever foolish urges that had brought Nick to place where he had hurt Sabrina so completely.

Maybe Marcus was the fool, though. For not having probed deeper.

"I'll call Sam," he assures her. He'll get details before he does, simply so Sam knows what they're dealing with, but Marcus trusts Sabrina when she says they need him. "What's going on?"

Sabrina folds her hands neatly on the table in front of her to control the shaking, and says, as calmly as she can, "Lucifer Morningstar." She forces the words out, and takes another breath. "I'm sure, though you and Sam can double check. I knew-- I knew none of this was like Nick, and I kept thinking-- why, what could change a person's core."

She looks down at her clenched hands now.

"I've been feeling like something isn't right. It was why I was arguing with Nick in the first place. I did a spell, and I saw the moment the Acheron Configuration opened and the Dark Lord went into his body."

Her eyes flicker back up to Marcus. "I could get if you thought maybe I just want for things to be different, because of Nick, but I know it's true. I know it."

Sabrina closes the book, skating her fingertips over the cover.

"I know it could sound like I'm making excuses for him. I think that except for a handful of other people in Darrow, anyone would think that, or that I'm so upset I'm imagining things." She's quiet for a few moments, and then she makes herself say it. "It's the Dark Lord. Lucifer Morningstar, my... biological father. If biology applies to the devil."

She curls her fingers into fists.

"You know how things appear here, from wherever you originate? There was a device we used, to try and trap him the first time around, before Nick sealed him into his own body. That device, it showed up here, and broke with Lucifer inside and he went into Nick. It's what I saw with the spell."

If she'd been back home, Rosie would have scoffed, dismissing the idea before it had time to truly settle. That the devil could be here, that he could be inhabiting her friend, Sabrina's boyfriend--someone they both cared about and who'd seemed to care about them up until a few weeks ago--seemed too absurd to even contemplate. But she was more now, had seen more now, than when all she'd had was her unexciting life back in Oxford: from the glittering whirl of Anterwold to the confusion of Darrow; the magical parties and gatherings, the terrifying oddity of all that had happened back in June.

Rather than scoff, all Rosie does is let out a very soft, nearly involuntary "Oh my god." It's not at all correct, given the circumstances, but she says it anyway.

"Y-you told me about that, back when you got all of those memories," she continues, recalling the tearful, shaken confession Sabrina had made to her in the woods, what felt like ages ago now. "When...when you remembered Nick, remembered what had happened to him. It's all happening again? Here?" Rosie looks at her, concerned and frightened--and, more than that, full of a wave of sympathy so strong it nearly chokes her. "So he's been...ever since that happened, Nick's been..."

If Sabrina can be brave enough to say it, she can too. She ought to be. "He's been the devil. The Dark Lord, whatever you want to call him."

He reaches out, stroking her ankle as he listens to her, eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

"...You...Do you know who it is?" he asks. "Who's in there with him?" Based on her face, he's got a bad feeling that she has.

Marcus shakes his head easily. "I trust you."

It hasn't been an easy thing to learn, how to trust people, but in the time he's been in Darrow, Marcus has come a long way. And he does trust Sabrina, but more than that, he believes in her. In her talent and in her knowledge and in her abilities. If she says she did a spell and saw what happened, that's more than enough for Marcus to believe what she's telling him.

"You wouldn't ask for something like this just because you're hurt," he says, reaching out to cover her hand with his. "If that's what you saw..." He exhales slowly. It's a lot to take on, the idea of Lucifer being inside this boy. Marcus is an exorcist, the best his world had to offer, but even he has never faced the devil. Teaming up with Sam is their best bet. None of them can face this alone.

Sam wasn't exactly mobile, still waiting for a fitting that would happen in just under a month, but when he got her text, he knew that he needed to just suck it up and figure it out.

Packing up his kit with whatever he could think of, he slung his bag over his shoulder, texting Lisbeth where he was going, and then he hobbled downstairs to wait for the car he'd called. The driver eyed his crutches and the empty left leg of his jeans skeptically, but said nothing as Sam tossed his bag and crutches into the backseat and climbed in.

Outside of Marcus's cabin, Sam tipped the driver and made his way carefully up the uneven walk, eyeing the shuttered windows with a growing sense of dread. Knocking on the door, he called out, "Sabrina? It's just me."

"I'm sure of it," Sabrina says. Now that she's had time to really think on it, she recognizes some of the cool cruelty in the way Nick-- not Nick, Lucifer had been behaving. With the spell, with her own feelings of disease, she just knows.

Slowly, she admits, "I thought at first it was maybe wishful thinking, which-- how horrible, that I'd rather think the devil is inside of him than that his feelings have changed. I don't know if he'd admit it, or if--" She rubs at her forehead. "But the thing is, my-- he-- he can't comprehend mortals. I'm only half-mortal because it was for prophecy."

She turns her eyes to Rosie, grim and full of trepidation, sorrow. "He has Nick again, and I--"

Sabrina doesn't know how to finish that sentence.

She's trying not to crumple with the weight of it, focusing on his touch to center her. The whole world might as well be spinning out of control.

"I know who it is. What it is," she whispers. "It's him, of course. The Dark Lord. Lucifer Morningstar. He has Nick again."

She's gone white, drained of color.

"I feel like I'm going to be sick."

He believes her so easily, and Sabrina doesn't think she'd expected anything different. The truth of it, however, is enough that she sags slightly in relief, nodding. It's been a selfish fear, but a true one, that she's made this up rather than accept Nick simply doesn't love her anymore.

But that's what the devil does; he lies.

"It's what I saw, and when I think about it, it fits. Some of the things he would say, or just-- he's got a taste for cruelty that he can't stop indulging in, of course. And it makes sense that he would want me far away from him, since I won't just accept his will." She blanches slightly. "I was mortal, though, the first time. I don't know if he remembers, but with my powers back-- I don't know. If the contract still stands, he might be able to, um, try to compel me."

"Hi," Sabrina says, opening the door and releasing Salem out to patrol the grounds. She's vaguely aware that probably it would have been better to make getting here easier for Sam, but it's a passing thought.

"Come in," she adds, moving so he has room to maneuver inside. "Marcus is just out to grab some supplies, but he'll be back soon. And, um, it's probably better I tell it all." Waving at the couch, she says, "You should sit down. This is a sitting down kind of conversation. At least for me."

She flashes a smile that looks more worried than anything, and locks the door behind him.

"We'll just have to make sure he can't," Marcus answers. No matter who or what is inside Nick right now, there is no way in hell he's letting it do anything to hurt Sabrina. He's willing to help, to get Sam involved, to take every possible step he can to save Nick, but when it comes down to it, if there's a choice between saving Nick and saving Sabrina, there's no questions in Marcus's mind what he'll do.

This is why Father Sean tried so hard to keep him from caring for anyone. Now that he does, he can no longer make objective decisions. Marcus's calling, his entire life has been dedicated to saving everyone, regardless of who they are. But he loves Sabrina too much to be objective right now.

"Besides getting in touch with Sam, do you have any idea what we ought to do next?" he asks. He has ideas, but he knows they come from different worlds and what he would do might not be what's best for the situation.

Charlie's stomach feels like it drops away, but that's got to be nothing compared to how that knowledge makes Sabrina feel. He leans, grabbing the waste-paper basket from the side of her desk, putting it where they can get it if they need it.

"Holy shit," he says, softly. "The actual Devil?"

Everything seems to spill out of Sabrina half-formed, thoughts and sentences abandoned partway through, and Rosie tries to piece them together as best as she can. To pull out the important details, the things that might lead them forward to a solution, the ways in which this unbelievable situation might be fixed. But when Sabrina looks at her again, pale and sorrowful, Rosie lays it all aside--if only for the moment. They're sitting close enough that it's no effort at all to put an arm around her, pulling her close and holding her. "He has Nick now," she says, her voice trembling a little. She coughs, once, tries to steady it. "What do we need to do to get him back?"

Of course she says we. Though so much of this is unbelievable, and despite the uncertainty that still swirls in her mind, the one thing Rosie knows without question is that she'll help Sabrina in whatever way she can.

Sabrina nods, because somehow actually saying it has made it more true. She makes herself say the rest of it, even if they both know, because she has to say it. "Also known as my biological father. I don't know what he's capable of here, just that it can't be too long before he starts doing something, anything."

Sabrina hugs her back, arms wrapping around her waist, somewhere between perched and nestling as she thinks it through. "We have to convince him to leave Nick. I don't know if we could force him out. I'm not sure what it would take." She's trying to control her own voice, her own feelings.

If she gives in to the desire to cry, she's not sure she'll be able to stop.

"We tried killing him the first time, but it didn't work. We didn't have the right-- I wouldn't know how to get it." She's biting at her lip now.

"What if he thought there was a better host?"

"I wish Lilith were here, as strange as that sounds. She might have some idea," Sabrina says, small and wistful. "You can banish a demon, but I'm not sure what it would take to banish the devil himself. I used to think it was possible, but..."

She gives a miserable little shrug.

"There are little things that I used when I was resisting his summons back in Greendale, but he just upped the ante until I was ready to listen. My aunts and Ambrose and I, we tried an ambush and to just kill him but..."

Sabrina trails off again, more distant, trying to recall what had been one of the worst moments of her life. "We didn't have the-- the lance of something."

There are a number of holy relics Marcus can think of, although he can't imagine any of them would be easily accessible, even if they weren't stuck in this strange pocket dimension. He has his own weapons, his Bible, Mother Bernadette's crucifix, bottles of holy water, but Sabrina is right. Marcus doesn't know if he can banish the devil.

But then, he's never been one to back down from a challenge before.

"Does he react to holy symbolism?" he asks, knowing their worlds are different. "If I doused him with holy water, would he react?" He needs as much information as possible. They all do.

listen to the wind blow (down comes the night)

Re: the devil you know

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