“No! You should keep up your strength,” Harvey urged. “I want you to have the whole thing.”
“Truly?” asked Elspeth.
Harvey nodded with conviction.
Elspeth clutched the bowl and whispered: “Is this what love feels like?”
Harvey patted her on the back. “Nope. That’s the snake intestines talking.”
He went to make coffee. Elspeth began to eat, kicking her feet happily under her blanket. Better her than me , I thought, though since my dark baptism I was more able to swallow witch’s cooking. Not that I got much of a chance these days. The Academy of Unseen Arts students ate like a pack of starving hyenas. It made me hate Father Blackwood even more, to think he hadn’t been feeding them properly. Nick had lived at the Academy. I should have invited him for dinner every day.
“Here you go, ’Brina.” Harvey set coffee down by my elbow.
I leaned against his shoulder, then he drew away and sat in the chair beside mine. He unslung the gun he often carried these days from his shoulder and propped it between us. I took a deep draft of coffee.
Salem, the goblin cat who’d got the cream but demanded more cream, came up onto the table and was disappointed to see I was drinking my coffee black as the path of night. Harvey petted him. “Hey, kitty cat.”
“Fool mortal ,” said Salem. “Ingrate. You should have shared the snake intestines with me. More ear skritches, I say, more. ”
Harvey didn’t understand Salem. Sometimes I felt that was best. He smiled as Salem tipped his head imperiously into Harvey’s hand and gave Salem more ear skritches. “Who’s a sweet kitty?”
“Not Salem.” I grinned, then yawned against the rim of my cup.
“Must get lashardia,” murmured Aunt Hilda. “I’ll make you some soothing tea for tonight, Sabrina.”
“Lashardia?” Harvey asked.
“Corpse plant,” Aunt Hilda told him in her sunny way. “Feasts on flesh and blood. I grow it on graves. Once Sabrina drinks lashardia tea, she’ll rest in peace all night. Mind yourself around lashardia fruit, though, Harvey love. The seeds are deadly poison!”
“Oh,” Harvey said quietly, as Aunt Hilda whisked out. “Is she gone?”
When I nodded, Harvey scrambled up and drank water right from the tap. Then he ducked his head underneath, emerging with drops sparkling like rain in his untidy hair.
“Snake intestines, wow. Uh, could I have some cereal? Just to get the taste … out of my mouth.”
“Do you not like snake intestines?” Elspeth sounded amazed.
Harvey acquired cereal. The Academy students were suspicious of mortal food that came in packets. Nobody else was eating Ambrose’s cereal, and my cousin wasn’t here to eat it. He’d gone with Prudence to track down Father Blackwood and make the former head of our coven pay for his crimes.
Ambrose had been magically confined to our house for years. I was used to seeing my cousin every day, whenever I wanted. I missed him a lot.
He wasn’t the only one I missed. At least I knew Ambrose was out in the world somewhere. Not suffering in hell, in who knew what terrible ways.
I reached for my coffee cup with trembling hands, and missed. Harvey put down his spoon and reached for me, linking our fingers together. I let myself cling.
“Oh no, Sabrina,” remarked Elspeth. “Are you being sad because Nick is in hell?”
The Academy students didn’t know exactly why Nick was in hell, but they’d absorbed that he was. Most of them were tactfully not mentioning the issue, but Elspeth wasn’t a tactful person.
“You’re not helping, Elspeth,” Harvey warned.
“Nothing will help, will it?” Elspeth asked. “Nick’s gone! Poor Sabrina. Here you are with only one boyfriend left. And he’s mortal, so—no offense, mortal, I’m sure you’re doing your best—but you must miss the warlock sex. Nick Scratch was balefire in bed.”
Harvey and I dropped each other’s hands with extreme swiftness.
“Good for him,” Harvey said distantly.
I took a fortifying sip of coffee. I’d gone to mortal school, which meant mortal peers and mortal sex ed until I was sixteen, and I was still growing accustomed to the ways of witches.
I didn’t miss the warlock sex because I’d never had it, or any other kind of sex. Nick always made it clear going further was my choice, because he was the best. We hadn’t been dating that long and he was very experienced, which was intimidating. And we kept getting interrupted by murder trials and werewolves.
I’d believed we would have more time.
With determination, I ignored this and addressed the other issue Elspeth had raised.
“I only have one boyfriend.”
Elspeth nodded. “Right, because you lost the other one to hell.”
“I only have one boyfriend, Nick Scratch , who is currently in hell,” I clarified.
Elspeth frowned. “What do you mean, currently? Nobody comes back from hell.”
I exchanged a glance with Harvey, then trained my gaze on my coffee cup.
“Sabrina and I aren’t dating,” Harvey put in hurriedly. “We’re just friends.”
Without looking up, I nodded. I heard Elspeth push her empty bowl away.
“Weren’t you in love with this mortal, Sabrina? Everybody was talking about it. Have I got it wrong? Were you in love with the other mortal, um, Theo?”
She sounded genuinely puzzled. Now I had to contemplate a universe in which I’d dated another of my best friends.
“Er, no. I wasn’t dating Theo. I was … I was dating Harvey. But not anymore.”
I had been in love with Harvey. But not anymore.
“We broke up,” said Harvey. “Amicably.”
Sure. If you wanted to describe me raising his brother from the dead, resulting in Harvey finding out about the world of magic and laying his brother to rest, then dumping me, as “amicable.”
“But why?” I started to daydream about transforming Elspeth’s head into a turnip. “Didn’t Nick suggest you could have two boyfriends, Sabrina? I heard from the Weird Sisters he was planning on it.”
“He most certainly was not,” snapped Harvey. He gave Elspeth a disappointed look and took a huge, horrified bite of cereal.
“He may have suggested something like that,” I admitted. Harvey choked on his cereal and began to cough violently. “But I said—” Well, I hadn’t said no, because I was so stunned. “But that’s not the way it worked out!”
Elspeth regarded me with sympathy. “Bad luck, Sabrina.”
I drained my coffee and glared at the bottom of the cup. Harvey had abandoned his cereal and was running his hands through his hair.
“Thanks, Nick,” Harvey muttered to the floor. “Thanks for making everything super awkward, from hell . However witches and sometimes people in the big city do things, and whatever freaky jokes Nick may have made before we met—because that dude hates me—I hope you understand the situation, Elspeth. Sabrina and I are good friends! Everything is very simple! There’s no need to make things weird. I hear Sabrina’s aunt Hilda coming back, so we need to shut up about embarrassing stuff.”
I too could hear Aunt Hilda singing softly. She entered the kitchen, her arms filled with fruit and blossoms that were either bloodred or lavender with dark hearts.