The room was silent, except for the Wicked Witch cackling, and only Sabrina and Fatima could hear the ghost. The first one in the material to speak was Lilith. The lizard puffed up and then deflated with a hiss.

“That was amazing,” Caleb breathed, eyes wide.

Sabrina picked her finger up from the table and offered it to Lilith. She flicked her tongue, then scampered from Caleb’s lap to the coffee table.

“No!” Charity cried out, trying to get to the lizard in time. She didn’t.

Lilith took the finger and threw back it’s head, swallowing it down.

“We could have reattached it!” Charity fretted, looking the lizard over but not touching it.

“I’ll have another one in an hour,” Sabrina reassured her. She pulled herself up from the couch with her cane, pushing Charity back to her chair and helping her sit down. She showed off the stump of the finger where the ghost of it shone. Sabrina poked Charity with the tip. It was solid. “I’m fine, see?”

“Can I see?” John asked, holding out his hand. Sabrina put her hand in his. He held it, and poked her finger with his own. “Oh, wow. It’s… real.”

Grace picked her knife up off the table with a sigh. It was almost spotless. The residue of phantasmal blood there had begun to evaporate. “You always were a fan of dramatics.”

“I was getting tired of having to explain.” Sabrina huffed. “I always said I died. This is the result.”

Fatima backed her up. “I did as well.” Though she added, “I’m not going to cut my finger off, so you’ll have to take my word for it.”

“But the paramedics said…” Charity started.

Sabrina cut her off. “They were wrong, and that wasn’t even the first time. Or the last.”

John wiggled Sabrina’s pinky. “I feel like Saint Thomas…”

“I think I’m ready to see the room,” Sabrina said, looking up at the ceiling. “No more putting it off.”

Fatima put her drink down on the coffee table half finished and stood up. “Should I come?”

Sabrina thought about it, bobbing her head back and forth. “Yeah. Shame to pull Amy away from the chickens, but it might be time to do apprenticing.”

As she said that, a streak of red blue and green mist swirled through the window and towards Fatima’s chest. “We’re ready whenever you are. Lead the way.”

More stairs, just what Sabrina needed. She took the first two of four flights up to the third floor without complaint. The way to the top was behind a closet door in the hallway and Sabrina stopped, her hand on the door. She leaned her head against it. It wasn’t the pain that made her hesitant, it was what she might find. What those words might mean.

She felt Fatima’s hand on her shoulder. She squeezed. They hadn’t known each other long, but Fatima had a kind heart that would make for a great sin-eater once she got passed the first steps. Which meant that Sabrina needed to help her get over them. She was the apprentice, and she needed a good example.

Sabrina stood up and breathed in, then pulled open the door. She headed up the stairs. As she got to the landing and turned, she was somehow still surprised to see everything different than it had been when she was here.

At the top of the landing was nothing but a little hallway, with a wardrobe and an old sewing machine. Sabrina had sewn the set of three Suicide Shirts on that. Thinking of the mementos made Sabrina feel naked. Wearing one wasn’t just part of the witch aesthetic that had become her uniform these last twenty years, the silken blouse made from the casket lining of a dead gay poet was also bullet proof, which always came in handy.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen Caleb’s room. She had. But memories are powerful, and there were heavy memories in this room.

The light filtered in the window through Lilith’s enclosure, which took up most of the back wall, save for a bookshelf that was two feet wide. There was a large bed against the left wall, dominating the center of the room. It was parallel to the wall, but Caleb slept on it perpendicular. That left a lot of space for blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. Sabrina was a little surprised to see those.

“Isn’t that Joy’s old band?” Fatima whispered, pointing to the STAR RIDERS poster in the corner, which was one of the many posters and flyers tacked onto the wall. If their fellow dead girl was on there, she looked different than she did now.

“I think so.” She looked over the wall, recognizing a few. The whole time she looked over the bed there was the sense of dread prickling up her neck. Grandmother writhed with impatience in the hollow where Sabrina’s soul belonged. Once again she was stalling.

Fatima had already turned around to the other wall, and stood with one arm across her chest, holding her elbow. She had her hand up near her lips, and was examining it.

Sabrina tossed her cane down on the bed and turned to sit on it. At last she looked at the accusation. Smears of red, each letter about a foot high, were over a bureau dresser.

DARYL KILLED ME.

“It almost looks like finger painting,” she mused. Some large, vengeful child might have been the culprit.

Fatima nibbled on her thumbnail. “Do you know who it might have been?”

Sabrina let out a wry bark. “Fates, I lost track before I was old enough to legally drink.” She fell back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, where there were glow in the dark stars. Sabrina had put those stars up herself. This had just been a nothing but an unused attic before she came along. “Even sticking to human looking things, I don’t even know which things do or don’t leave a ghost.”

Sabrina closed one eye and reached up for one of the stars, closing her fist. It remained, as ever, out of reach. Beyond her grasp.

“Is it always like that?” Fatima asked. “Will I be…” she gestured to the wall. “Like that?”

Sabrina shrugged, fist still clenched in front of a ceiling star. She turned her hand over and looked at the empty palm. Flesh was already starting to return to the phantom finger.

“No.” She let her hand fall down to her own face and rubbed it. “I’ve just been a busy little bee.”

“When bees sting, they die.” Sabrina laughed at that, and Fatima winced. “Sorry. Not the time.”

“Nah, it’s fine.”

Fatima looked around the room. There were a few bits of clothing on the floor, things that had missed the hamper, but it was neat and well kept. Neat. Especially for a teenage boy.

“I had expected there to be a ghost here to greet us.” Was that disappointment?

“Me too,” Sabrina admitted. “I think I saw it earlier. It could be hiding in its anchor, or just not in at the moment. It won’t have gone far if the anchor is in this house.”

“You saw it?” Fatima looked around, “you forgot to mention that.”

Sabrina held out a hand from the bed, and Fatima helped her sit up. “It was just a shadow. I think it might be shy.”

Fatima looked over her shoulder at the wall.

“Could be afraid of round two,” Sabrina joked.

Fatima couldn’t keep from a slight chuckle. Sabrina considered that a win.

She looked around, feeling the metaphysical tug. Grandmother was standing back in the hallway, pointing at the wardrobe.

“Did she find something?” Fatima asked, as Sabrina went to see.

“Maybe.” She tried the handle, but it was locked. “I’ll have to ask Charity or Caleb for the key.” She muttered. Then turned to Fatima. “You don’t happen to have a skeleton key on you?”

Fatima reached into the breast pocket of her blazer, an uncharacteristic smirk on her lips. “You told me to always keep a fresh one, just in case.”

Sabrina was impressed by her student, and took the key. “Do as I say, not as I do. You’ll get into a whole lot less trouble that way.”

The ‘skeleton key’ was nothing more than an ordinary Yale blank Sabrina had shoplifted from a Home Depot. She’d roughly carved teeth into it with a file. One side of the bow had a sloppy engraving of a pentacle, the other had an equally casual skeuomorphic lock with a slash through the symbol. It wasn’t quite as obvious, but the key had also been sitting in a bath of salt water and ethically sourced blood after Sabrina had carved it. You can never tell with ethical sourcing claims, but Sabrina was able to be certain in this case it was true, since it had been her blood.

She slid the key into the lock. The fact that it wasn’t a pin-and-tumbler lock didn’t seem to matter matter. She turned the key and… met resistance.

Fatima waited without saying anything. When Sabrina jiggled the key again, they looked at each other.

“You said this was fresh.”

“It… is. I got it from your jar last week,” Fatima assured her, and fumbled in her pocket for her actual car keys, where there was a second skeleton key, similar to the first. “Here, I made sure to have two.”

Sabrina handed her the first one then repeated the process with the second. It slid into the lock, but wouldn’t turn.

“You told me those would unlock anything,” Fatima said. “I even used one on the card reader at the WINH.”

Sabrina quirked an eyebrow and Fatima looked away, her cheeks reddening.

“I left my badge at Yael’s…”

“Nice.” Sabrina grinned. “But that means we’ve got a problem. Something is warding the wardrobe.”

“Should I go ask for the key?” Fatima asked, grateful to not have to go into more detail.

Sabrina shook her head, and pulled a bobby pin out of her hair. She held it in her lips, pulling her hair back into a ponytail with a hair tie. “I’ve got plan B. Or I guess C,” she muttered around the pin, lowering herself down on one knee with only mild discomfort. She bent the pin and, using the skeleton key itself for tension, she worked at picking the lock. Within a few moments the latch turned over with a satisfying click. “Jackpot.”

Fatima offered a hand to help her up and Sabrina finally opened the door.

It was just a bunch of old clothes.

Some of them were from Nathaniel and Grace Cunningham, the Grace Sabrina’s sister had been named after. Nathaniel’s dress uniform from the First World War. Grace’s beautiful white wedding gown. Sabrina had dreamed about being able to wear that dress one day, though then as now there was little chance she’d ever be walking down the aisle. There were other things from other eras, all completely forgotten. This is where formalwear went to die.

Sabrina ignored all of that and knelt down on the lip of the wardrobe. She took her phone from the clip at her pocket and double tapped for the flashlight, but she didn’t need it. She still remembered where the old latch was, hidden so flush with the back wall that the seem blended into the back wall. She pressed it, and there was a click.

The wardrobe was only designed to look like a typical wardrobe. It wasn’t like a dresser or armoire, even if it had the appearance of one. It was built into the wall, and when the button was pressed it unlocked the back panel, which slid aside.

“Where are you going?” she heard Fatima say from outside.

Sabrina left the cane behind and crawled into the cubbyhole that lead into the crawl space. It felt a lot roomier in here when she was fourteen and a foot shorter. Back before puberty had gotten bad. In the end she didn’t have much issue with her height. But tight spaces would be a lot easier without it. She fumbled around but with minimal struggle she manage to get in and sat upright. Getting out would be another challenge.

With a snap of her finger she produced a spectral flame and began to light several candles up on a high shelf.

“Why didn’t you do that trick instead of cutting off a finger?” Fatima asked, kneeling down in the wardrobe.

“Grace was right about my flair for the dramatic. Besides, they’ve seen me do parlor tricks before,” Sabrina said, looking around in the candlelight. “Something is missing.”

“Missing?”

“A book.”

“What kind of book?”

“A grimoire.” There was a section of the shelf with no candles. It was the perfect size for a book. “Well, okay, it was a diary. But it was a handmade book.”

“’Grimoire’?” Fatima teased. She pointed up at the ceiling of the space. “Does that light not work?”

“I mean…” Sabrina pulled the little string and the bare bulb switched on. “Sure, but the candles were always cooler.”

“Flair for the dramatic, I suppose?”

“Damn right.”

“What’s this?” Fatima asked, passing in a little bottle.

The bottle was small enough to hold in a palm, and had a lantern knot around the neck of it, the end a short loop for hanging. Inside were a number of bits of esoterica. Rusted penny nails, a dried flower pushed through the small opening, a red liquid that Sabrina knew was wine, dried cloves, and three small buttons.

“This,” she said, holding it up to the light, “is a witch bottle.”

“Is it yours?”

The Wicked Witch squirmed in Sabrina’s chest. She didn’t remember it.

“No.” She said, looping the string around her pinky, which had neared the end of it’s reformation. “At least, I don’t think I left one there, and neither does Grandmother. But that means I’m not sure what we’re dealing with.”

“A ghost couldn’t do this, could it?” Fatima asked. She shifted around, and bumped her head on the top of the crawlspace entryway. She winced and let out a soft hiss. “Teri ma ki-! Can we have this conversation outside?”

Sabrina nodded, started putting out candles, and made a shooing motion . It took some doing, but the two of them managed to get out of the cubby. Sabrina closed the secret hatch, then when she got back to her feet she closed the wardrobe door. She tried the skeleton key again, and this time it turned in the latch, and she locked the door behind her.

“No,” Sabrina said, tapping the key on the lock. “A ghost couldn’t make a witch bottle, and it couldn’t steal my cringey teenage diary, either. Something else is going on here.”

Fatima went back to the bedroom, and looked at the wall. She took a pen out of her pocket and touched a corner of one of the letters. “The blood is still fresh, even after several hours.”

“There’s still something supernatural going on, then.”

Did a slow turn around the room, then looked back out to Sabrina. “Do you think Caleb might actually have something to do with this?”

Sabrina bit her lip, and thought about it. “I don’t know.”

“It’s possible he found the secret room.” It was half a statement, half a question.

“Nah,” Sabrina said, shaking her head. “I learned about that from Grace Cunningham herself. Uh, the original, not sis. She was one of the first ghosts I helped pass on, so I doubt she was around to tell Caleb.”

Sabrina went back into the room as well, sitting on the bed again.

“How well do you know him?” Fatima asked, leaning against the bureau.

“He’s only, what, fourteen or fifteen?” Sabrina said, trying to figure out the math. “I’d already left to live on the streets by then. Or at least, in Elizabeth’s house.”

Fatima gave an incredulous look, gesturing at the room, and towards the downstairs. “You left all this to go live in a haunted house?”

Sabrina shrugged. “I like the Cunninghams. I do. They were good to me when others weren’t. I see Caleb and Grace, and Asher and Aliza, as my siblings” She was reaching for the stars again. Her pinky’s flesh and bone had faded back in, save for the very tip, and the witch bottle hung from her fingers. “But I’m still the outsider. I’m family, but I’m like an aunt. Welcomed, but not the core.”

Sabrina closed her hand around nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” Fatima said, a little hitch in her voice.

Sabrina looked up, and gave her a put upon smile. “Eh, I’m fine. I’ve never been alone.” She gestured to the Wicked Witch, her ‘Grandmother’. Her constant companion, who was always around but at the same time wasn’t companionship. Not the kind of companionship a kid needs.

“I’m starting to appreciate Amy in the same way,” Fatima mused. The dinosaur had trouble making itself known in confined spaces, but the apparition of a massive head formed and it nudged against Fatima, pushing her sideways. She laughed, and pet the creature, which gave a soft warble before fading away. “She’s not a dog, but sometimes I think she acts the way she thinks that I think a pet should act.”

“Our companions are like that sometimes.”

“What are our next steps?” Fatima asked.

Sabrina dangled the witch bottle, with its various charms and trinkets. “John and Charity don’t drink. I’m thinking the liquid in here might be communion wine.”

“Do you suspect the priest?”

“Nah, Episcopals aren’t as bad as Catholics, and Andrews even helped me with a teacher who was a little too friendly when I started showing.” Sabrina said, reaching for her cane. It wasn’t there.

“You keep talking about horrible things as if they were the weather,” Fatima noted, a sad smile on her face.

Sabrina looked under the covers, even though she hadn’t lifted them. “That’s the trauma, bay-bee. Trans experience for ya.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Quatsch…” Sabrina lay back on the bed with her arm over her head and laughed. “I think the ghost stole my cane.”

Fatima went on alert, and looked around the room. “How did it get passed us?”

“Maybe it was under the bed?” Sabrina said rolling off it and getting on the floor.

No ghost under the bed. Just a bunch of Caleb’s junk. Sabrina knew better than to search under the bed of a teenage boy, she’d been one. But she pushed forward, because using a magic broom as a walking stick in civilian clothes would ruin the aesthetic.

Thankfully, she saw the cane. Way in the back. She stretched, and reached for it, but something else was caught on the handle. “Was zur Hölle?” Grandmother stirred within her as the phantom realized what it was.

“Is that German?”

“Yeah,” Sabrina said, digging around. “The Wicked Witch was German. You pick it up after a while. Maybe you’ll start speaking like a T Rex in a few years.”

Fatima laughed, “Yael says ‘rawr means I love you in dinosaur’.”

“Already getting started, I see.” Sabrina went still.

“Did you find it?”

“I found something alright.”

“Did you find a clue?” Fatima asked, watching Sabrina’s legs as she dug around.” Under your brother’s bed of all places?”

“No, Asher moved to the UK five years ago.” Sabrina called from under the bed. She drew back, but bumped her head on the frame. “Scheiße.”

“I’m starting to think you do these things on purpose,” Fatima chided, though she didn’t seem too impatient. Dinosaur bones don’t go anywhere after all.

“That’s because I am. I didn’t discover anything under my brother’s bed,” Sabrina said, crawling back out with the cane and handed Fatima a small mesh laundry bag. “But I think I might have three sisters instead of two.”

“This definitely complicates things…” Fatima said, holding up a short black skirt with sharp pleats. Also in the bag was a long sleeve red shirt, so short it was almost a crop top. In the bag with them was a pair of long black thigh highs. She looked at the top again, and held it up so Sabrina could see the white cross or sword icon on the front. “What does this mean? It looks different from the ones on the walls.”

Sabrina was lifting herself up from the floor now that she had her cane. “No idea, here, lay it out on the bed.”

Fatima did so, and Sabrina took out her phone to take a picture of the outfit.

“Maybe the zoomers know what this is.” Sabrina said, shooting off a text.

“Do you think there’s a connection?” Fatima asked, looking over at the wall. “You said that was your dead name. Your sibling is… at the very least crossdressing.”

“You think it’s a transphobic ghost?” Sabrina asked, sitting back down on the bed. She had the cane strap looped around her wrist this time. “Believe it or not, it wouldn’t be the first time. You’re right, though, it could just be crossdressing.”

“I will say that Caleb does seem like a… what do you call it, ‘egg’?”

Sabrina smirked, and gave a sidelong glance.

Fatima smiled, “Yael has been teaching me your ways.”

“Impressive,” Sabrina said. It was good that Fatima cared to listen. “I’m going to agree. Cishets don’t tend to have hair like that. Guys, at least.”

“I wouldn’t know, naani would throw a fit if I had ever dyed m—” Fatima was interrupted by her pocket buzzing, and she pulled out her phone.

“So what’s the word?”

“’The zoomers’ are arguing about the outfit. Hobie says ‘best girl’, though Joy disagrees. Josette says that she thinks that you would look ‘fantastic’ as Saber Alter.” She bit the inside of her cheek and then her thumbs danced over the screen with her reply. She put the phone on silent and back into her pocket. “Frank says the chat is supposed to be for important business.”

“Guess that gives weight to the cosplay theory,” Sabrina said, looking over at the outfit. “But I don’t think we can rule out transphobic ghost just yet.”

Fatima started putting the clothes back in the bag. “Will you confront…” she thought about it, “is ‘him’ right in this situation?”

Sabrina shrugged. “It could be. We don’t know enough yet. It could just be cosplay, but the clothes were hidden. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but…”

Sabrina went quiet, and thought about it. She had been in this exact same spot before. Literally this exact same spot, right here. In this house, in this bedroom. Grandmother swirled inside, trying to comfort her. There was the possibility Caleb would be going through something familiar. The fear of rejection. That uncertainty. Yeah, John and Charity are progressive, the fence says trans rights to support a daughter that wasn’t even their own, but that was different from actually being directly, personally accepted. Caleb hadn’t even been born yet when Sabrina came out. She’d always been the big sister.

It would be wonderful is Caleb was her sister. Nothing is more liberating than self-acceptance, than shaping yourself into something you want to be. But at the same time, it wasn’t the easiest path to walk. Sabrina’s chest tightened. That’s the trauma, bay-bee. Trans experience for ya. Her own words were mocking her.

The phantom within tried to reassure her. Du kannst helfen. All Grandmother could do was offer hollow platitudes.

Could Sabrina help? She couldn’t be there every day. She couldn’t be there to stop harassment. She couldn’t be there to stop a ‘friendly’ teacher. She couldn’t stop a boyfriend pushing things when she said no. Statistics came to mind. Even the ones that weren’t lies repeated to scare weren’t appealing. Faces of mortal friends who didn’t make it. Ghosts she’d helped pass on after they took their own lives or had them taken from them because of who they were. What could Sabrina do to help that?

The years of absence were a brick to the chest. It lodged there and sunk in, a pain. Caleb might as well have been an only child, until Grace moved back to help with John’s carpentry business. Asher and Aliza had been gone, Caleb had no one to protect her. To look after her. She didn’t even have a phantom protector, just parents in their fifties. How could she—

Sabrina slapped Fatima’s hand away before she even realized it. The woman pulled back. She said something and her voice was gentle, concerned. Sabrina panted hard, the beat of her heart drowning everything out. This panic was wrong. Her breathing came through her nose, harsh. She looked back up at those bloody words. She imagined Caleb’s name there instead.

“Sorry!” Sabrina said, voice tight. She got up from the bed and headed for the stairs. She had to get out. She could feel the Wicked Witch’s anxiety, that roiling presence where her soul should have been, but she needed to get out. She set her jaw and headed down to the main floor and instead of going down to the family room she went to the door and left. It slammed behind her but she didn’t care.

She didn’t stop, and took the stairs down. Across the lawn, under the oak. She leaned against it and tried to steady her breathing. Something about this was wrong. Something was taking hold of her emotions, heightening them, twisting them.

The sound of villainous laughter filled the air and light dimmed.

Grandmother became more insistent. The phantom’s image appeared in front of Sabrina with the urgency of fire. The witch stood ready to do violence, tongues of flame dancing along her green skin. She wasn’t looking at Sabrina.

She was looking at the figure in the twisted burlap mask and the peaked straw cap. Black robes trailed off into mist. The laughter was raspy and deep. The figure’s hands were at its sides and ink in water shadows coalesced into two harvest sickles. The curved blades were red as a harvest moon and dripping with spectral blood.

Sabrina reached for her broom as the demon clicked the backs of the sickles together, causing sparks to flash. Sabrina was alone.

The Scarecrow rushed forward to strike.