bad moon rising

After the party mostly wraps up, the night's hardly over.

The moon might not be full, but there's enough of a moon for their purposes, and Sabrina's located a clearing-- familiar at least to Charlie as somewhere she's taken him before-- for some moon-bathing. A fire doesn't seem quite right, but it's chilly enough that she's set up a charm to make the clearing much more like a late spring, early summer night. Just warm enough to strip down, and just cool enough that pressing up against another warm body feels good, she thinks.

A leather jacket over her dress, and her heels swapped out for something more comfortable, Sabrina lights up the lantern-- this one an orb of light not unlike the moon itself.

"Ready?" she asks, beaming at her people, as they stand at the edge of the woods, the clearing within and a basket at her feet. "Don't worry about the weather. I've got it handled. I mean, where we're going, not all the weather."

That was just a one time thing, she swears.

What had been difficult to pull off to help Rosie-- playing the imperious, bratty possible bride-to-be, bored and not at all willing to commit to the Lord of Darkness just yet-- seems an even taller order when it comes to getting Charlie brought to her without arousing suspicion.

It means letting them take Rosie back, for one. Sabrina makes threat upon threat, compliments the goblin that seems to have had the idea to bring Rosie at all, tries to give him a sense of responsibility in this.

It also means setting aside her actual feelings so that she can tell the goblins that her appetite is whetted and that her pretty songbird had sung to her of a most lovely boy in the dungeon. She tells them that she wants him, that she wants to play. She says, the words sour in her mouth, that perhaps she's getting used to this life.

So they go, and Sabrina sits on her massive bed, waiting with her heart in her throat.

Sabrina finds the book on the kitchen table.
( Spoilers. )

Sabrina leaves a note on her door-- Went to the woods, be back before dark --S-- for anyone to see, and she packs a black candle, matches, a knife, and a few other assorted items into her school bag. Her familiar waits at the front door of the Home, patient and ready.

"I'm fine," she tells someone as she heads out, though she's not, not at all, and it reads on her face.

The train takes her far enough, and they leave a double track of footprints in the snow, human and cat, until she's just deep enough in the woods that it's trees everywhere.

She finds a tree stump quickly enough, and Salem leaps up to watch her warm a bit of old candle wax so the fresh black candle will sit upright. Sabrina doesn't waste tie with ceremony; her movements are brisk and efficient.

Light the candle. Cut your finger. Let the flame eat your blood. Ring the bell times thirteen.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

The candle burns down, and Sabrina begins to talk.

"I don't know if you're here or not. I don't know if you can hear me from here, but I need to you listen." The voice coming out of her thrums low and raw. "I did what you asked. I signed your book, and we both know it's a matter of time before everything in my mortal life falls apart. I did what you wanted and now I'm here, because either you're fucking with me or you're not as powerful as you could be. See, I was willing to rule you out until that dream. Except it wasn't just a dream, they told me I wasn't the first to talk about dreams that feel real, delusions about a place besides this, and I just know."

She wipes at her cheeks, leaving a streak of blood.

"So if this is you, then I compel you. I, Sabrina Spellman, compel you, the Dark Lord whose Book holds my name, to take me or leave me. I could be happy here. I can be happy here. I did what you want, I wrote my name and if you're going to take this back, just do it and I'll go back and keep my end of things." Her voice grows louder and louder. "Listen to me, I fought it but you have my name, and if you're going to leave me here you had better let me go." She presses her hand to her mouth, and sucks in a wet breath, and then she's just standing there, breathing until it's all she can hear in the trees.