Never get caught crying in school. It shows weakness.
This is especially true in a school for witches. Yet on the night ghosts came to destroy my town, there I was in the Academy of Unseen Arts, sitting on the balcony that overlooked the statue of Satan and fighting back tears.
I couldn’t let myself fall apart. I had a plan. My family and I intended to protect the mortals of Greendale. We had a place to keep them safe.
Except the mortal I loved best wouldn’t come. And I didn’t blame him.
I’d loved Harvey ever since he and I and our best friends Roz and Susie met on our first day of mortal school. He was the tallest, sweetest boy in class, and I was the smallest, bossiest girl.
But my whole life, I’d kept a secret from him. I’d never told him that I was a witch. My family were all witches. And one day I was expected to sign my soul away to Satan and leave Harvey forever.
When is the best time to tell the boy you love that you’re a witch?
The best time is definitely not after you’ve brought his brother back from the dead as a soulless husk. Harvey had laid Tommy to rest himself. He’d broken up with me. Now he wouldn’t even let me protect him.
I’d thought I could bring Tommy back to life for Harvey. I’d meant my love and my magic to be a gift. Maybe I’d thought it was a good way to show Harvey how wonderful magic could be. See? No mortal could do this. See how a witch loves you.
I’d shown Harvey all right.
I’d shown him a witch’s love is disaster. A witch’s love is ruin.
I was scared of what might happen to Harvey. I was scared he’d never forgive me. And I was scared of what I might have to do to protect the town that was my home. I sat on the stone balcony and hugged my knees, curled up in a tight ball to stop myself from shaking. I couldn’t let myself tremble or falter.
I was here on a mission.
Just then, the red lanterns in the hall fell on the dark hair of the boy running up the steps to the balcony. He saw me on the floor and dropped the book under his arm.
The book was bound in human skin, with a single eyeball set in the cover. The eyeball rolled mournfully up at Nick from the dust, but Nick ignored it. “Sabrina! What are you doing here?”
I swallowed. Nick’s dark gaze flickered, tracking the movement. He had a striking face, but it was frequently difficult to read. He’d once offered to be my shoulder to cry on. I wasn’t sure how he would react if I actually took him up on that.
“I was looking for you.”
“On the floor?” Nick asked. “Did you think someone dropped me and I’d rolled away under the furnishings?”
Quietly, I said: “I’m having a hard time.”
I didn’t know how to tell Nick about heartbreak. Nick Scratch was the one friend I’d made in the Academy of Unseen Arts. He’d also asked me out practically as soon as we met. When I said I had a boyfriend, he’d suggested I could have two boyfriends.
That was obviously out of the question, and Nick was clearly a playboy. If he thought a girl could have two boyfriends, who knew how many girlfriends he had? Maybe Nick had twenty girlfriends. Maybe he had a hundred.
He’d taken rejection with an easy grace that made me like him. I figured Nick Scratch wasn’t the type to break his heart over a girl. He might be a playboy, but he was a playboy interested in the same spells and books I was fascinated by, and he listened when I had problems, offered advice, and risked getting into trouble for me.
So he was my new, oddly flirty, unsettlingly handsome friend. But I hadn’t known him that long, and I didn’t know if I could trust him. Now I sat on the edge of the balcony, hugging my knees and feeling desperate. I didn’t know if it was safe to be desperate around Nick.
I heard Nick walk toward me. His steps rang on the stone, echoing up to the shadowed ceiling of our school. The whole Academy was made of pentagram shapes, stretching on in the shadows. Sounds were different here, with strange depths to them. Light was different here, catching red in the students’ eyes. I was different here.
“What’s this about, Sabrina?” Nick murmured.
“I need help,” I whispered. “I don’t know who to ask.”
When I looked up, Nick was kneeling beside me. We sat in the scarlet-drenched light on the edge of the stone balcony together. Nick’s gaze was intent, as though I were a riddle he was trying to work out.
“Ask me,” said Nick Scratch. “See what I do.”
Sabrina told him death was coming, but someone else came instead.
The insistent knocking on the frosted glass of Harvey’s front door made him flinch, but he wouldn’t be a coward anymore. He had to stay in this house and protect his passed-out dad, who couldn’t stop drinking because the wrong son died.
Harvey wanted desperately to be brave, like his brother would’ve been. He walked to the door, the pulse at his throat hammering harder than the fist against the glass, and opened it wide.
“Hey, Harvey,” said the dark stranger on his doorstep. After a barely perceptible pause, he said: “Right?”
It didn’t sound like a question. He sounded sure. Even though Harvey’d never laid eyes on this boy before.
“Yeah,” Harvey faltered. “Who’re you?”
The boy was moving even before he answered, striding into Harvey’s house without invitation. Harvey’d never been as self-assured in his whole life as this boy was in two steps.
“I’m Nick Scratch,” the boy tossed over his shoulder. “Sabrina sent me. I’m a friend of hers, and your backup for the night. I’ll need you to show me every window and door in this house, so I can seal and bind them for you.”
All Harvey could do was follow Nick’s lead through Harvey’s own home, demanding: “What kind of friend?”
But Harvey already knew.
In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge was visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come. Nick Scratch was the Prospect of Sabrina’s Boyfriend Upgrade Yet to Come.
Harvey’d always known Sabrina could do better than him.
Sabrina was so smart and beautiful, and sometimes so strange. All their lives, she’d seemed off in her own little world where Harvey couldn’t reach her. He’d had a lurking fear someone might show up who was worthy of her. Someone clever and good-looking and sophisticated and cool. Someone who could connect with her on a level Harvey wasn’t able to. Here he was, and he had magic powers.
A guy like Nick had been Harvey’s worst nightmare for years. Now Harvey had far worse nightmares.
Harvey still wasn’t thrilled about Nick.
But Nick hadn’t come to mock Harvey. Nick said he’d come to help with this mysterious danger threatening their town.
Harvey wanted to believe that he wasn’t afraid and he didn’t need magic to save him. Once the sun sank into the black and the wind through the leaves sounded like whispering ghosts, he’d begun to doubt.
Maybe Harvey was just as useless and helpless as Sabrina believed.
“What’s happening, exactly?”
“The spirits of thirteen dead witches are trying to kill everyone in town,” Nick announced, as though that was a normal and reasonable thing to say. “Sealed doors and banishing spells might hold them off for a while.”