The Council of Everafter

by TheWorldDoesn'tStop

Two years have passed since the fall of the barrier. The Everafters of Ferryport Landing are spread across the globe, and those who remain struggle to keep their existence secret. Elsewhere, a new evil stirs. "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one." -CS Lewis. T for future chapters.

2. Fire to Ashes

"All right, that's everything for today. Good work, class!" Snow White said, clapping hands. "Our next meeting is Thursday, right?"

"Right," Sabrina confirmed, getting off the ground with difficulty. They'd been practicing gymnastics tricks today, with the goal of eventually being able to use them in hand-to-hand combat, and despite the thick mats that Snow had laid down all around her studio, Sabrina's muscles felt like water and she knew she would barely be able to move tomorrow.

"Puck and Sabrina, Relda told me you're meeting friends at Sacred Grounds. So I'm only driving you three home, right?" Snow gestured to Daphne, Red, and Pinnocchio, the only other members of the private combat and defense "class" that Snow taught about twice a week.

"Yeah, we can walk there," Puck said, chugging his water and then squirting some on his head. He shook like a dog, smirking when Sabrina was hit by drops and flinched away. Across the room, Red and Pinocchio worked together to put away the mats. They'd arrived back home with Tobias about a week earlier and had jumped into the classes with gusto. Sabrina was originally surprised when they'd agreed to join in, but it was nice to have more people in the class besides Puck and her sister.

"Can you take our backpacks?" Sabrina asked.

"Sure, just give them to Daphne. I'm staying at your house because the Founders are meeting later tonight," Snow said to Sabrina, slipping into her coat. "So just text me if you want to be picked up later."

"I think Puck was going to fly us, but I will," Sabrina said.

"Okay, just be careful with that," Snow warned as Puck came to join them. "There are a lot of humans around now. If you fly home don't let anyone see you."

"I know," Puck said with a groan. "I get this lecture every time I want to fly somewhere."

"It's the way life is now," Snow sighed, and led the way out of the Bad Apples Defense Studio that she'd opened in the past year. She was still the mayor of town, which meant that the studio was only open for odd hours during the week, but she went out of her way to make sure the Grimms and the other Council members had access to it for training.

"See you later," Sabrina said to the group, waving as Snow fumbled with the key to the studio door. She and Puck set out down Main Street towards the coffeehouse. At 4:00 PM in early November, the air was crisp and chilly, but they were warm enough from practice that neither one wore their coats.

"Who are you meeting today?" Puck asked as they passed the library.

"Rachel, Maddie, and Arianna," Sabrina replied. "What about you?"

"Jake and Brian. Not sure who else is coming."

Sacred Grounds had somehow become the designated after-practice hangout location for nearly everyone in their grade. They reached the coffeehouse and stepped inside, already knowing it would be packed with kids on the cross country, track, and football teams before they looked up from their phones. Sabrina went left and Puck went right, forgetting all about each other as they met up with their respective friends.

"Hey, Sabrina," said Rachel as Sabrina slid into their booth. "Arianna's in line if you want something."

"I texted her and asked her to get me tea. How was cross country practice?"

"Not bad. Except Maddie got lost in the woods," Rachel said with a shrug.

"She what?" Sabrina cried.

I mean, it was fine, I found my way out," Maddie said as she and Arianna returned with muffins and Sabrina's drink. "But I saw something so weird out there."

Sabrina's heart leapt into her throat. So weird could mean anything at all in Ferryport Landing. "What was it?"

"An abandoned campsite. Well, a fire pit that was full of ash and charcoal. And some bones that were probably from chicken legs," Maddie said, pushing her muffin across the table at Sabrina as an offering. Sabrina had become a lot closer with Maddie since the beginning of the school year. Although she was still a little obsessed with Puck, she was also a good friend and Sabrina liked having her around more than she thought she would.

Sabrina broke off a piece. "This was behind the high school?"

"Well, between the high school and middle school. So not too far from your house, actually," Maddie explained. Enjoying having everyone's attention, she added, "It was really creepy. I am never stopping to tie my shoes without telling anyone ever again. Also, it was a little embarrassing. Apparently the Captains went back out to look for me."

Rachel shrugged. "My old town had a marked cross country course. It's not your fault they haven't made one here."

"Yeah, why is that?" Maddie asked. "This town is so new and missing so many random things that sometimes I feel like it just appeared out of thin air. I mean, the high school is new, the middle school is new, even the park is new. We don't have a real football or soccer field, and when we run meets against other teams, they've never even heard of us."

Sabrina grimaced as she was accosted with a vivid mental image of Daphne and the coven literally conjuring the middle school out of thin air. She remembered that day, it had been their last day in Ferryport Landing before moving to the city.

Arianna was nodding. "I feel like I don't know anything about what this place used to look like. I don't think I even know anyone our age who's lived here for more than like, two years. Do you guys?"

Maddie and Rachel shook their heads. Sabrina took a hasty gulp of tea to avoid responding and then choked and spluttered when it burned her mouth.

"Wait, didn't Puck live here with your grandmother before he moved with your uncle to Philly?" Maddie asked.

Sabrina reached over and took another piece of Maddie's muffin to avoid responding as she tried frantically to remember Puck's cover story.

"Yes, but not for long," she said after taking as much time as possible to chew.

"Wait, is Puck your cousin or your brother?" Rachel asked.

Sabrina's eyes widened in horror. "Puck is not my brother. We aren't cousins, either. My uncle adopted him."

"But you live in the same house?"

"Yes, it's my grandmother's house," Sabrina said tiredly. She'd been over this with several people in the past two months.

"So it's Puck and your uncle, your grandmother, and you and Daphne and your parents?" Rachel asked.

"And also these two kids that my grandmother started fostering last week. And my little brother, and also my grandmother's…brother," she finished awkwardly, and fought the urge to cringe. They'd been calling Tobias Granny's brother to simplify things, but in reality it made their whole household dynamic seem much weirder. She realized that lying about why there were so many people in the Grimm household only made them sound stranger than telling the truth would, but of course they couldn't tell the truth.

"Do you all have your own rooms?" Arianna asked. "Your house doesn't look that big from the outside."

"Yeah, we do," Sabrina replied, trying to sound nonchalant. "It's, uh, bigger than it looks."

If only they knew.

"Your grandma must really love kids, huh?" Rachel joked. Sensing Sabrina was uncomfortable, she pulled out her laptop and opened it. "I'm going to look for information on Ferryport Landing's old cross country teams."

As her friends searched, Sabrina found herself both awed and impressed at Morgan and Mordred's ability to wipe things from the internet, although made a mental note to bring up local suspicions at the next Council meeting. Someone, maybe Goldilocks, was going to have to be much more careful about these sorts of things. Goldi wasn't exactly athletically inclined, so it didn't shock Sabrina that she'd neglected the high school sports when she was building the town.

While they searched, Sabrina kept thinking about the campsite in the woods. The more she thought about it, the more uneasy she felt—no human would do something like that. Finally, around five, Sabrina checked her phone and declared that her mom was telling her and Puck to come home for dinner. She said goodbye to her friends and went over to where Puck was hanging out with a bunch of guys.

"We have to go home," Sabrina said.

Puck frowned. "Really? It's only five."

"Hey, Sabrina," said Josh, a boy on the soccer team who had never talked to her before, as Puck began to pack up. "How's it going?"

Sabrina gave him a wary smile. "Good."

"You've known Puck for a while, right?" Josh asked. The entire table had fallen silent and was now watching them. "Has he always been this smelly?"

Sabrina let out a genuine laugh. "Honestly, he used to smell worse."

"I came from karate!" Puck yelled as the boys roared with laughter.

Sabrina was still smiling as she and Puck left Sacred Grounds.

"I hate you," said Puck, crossing his arms as they walked toward the edge of the town center.

"I know," Sabrina said happily. "Oh, we can't go straight home. We have to investigate something."

"What?" Puck asked, forgetting to be mad at her. "Did the Council finally give us a job?"

"No, and we're not going to tell them about this. At least not yet," Sabrina said, and then explained quickly about what Maddie had found in the woods. "I think we should go check out the scene. See if there are any clues."

"Because if we told them, they'd delegate it to someone else," Puck said. "A 'real adult,' or so they say."

"Exactly. It's not like we haven't been training!"

So far, Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck's jobs in the Council seemed next-to nonexistent. Sabrina was starting to think the only reason they'd been included was that so the adults could use the Grimm household as a meeting place without having to sneak around them. Robin Hood had given them a few simple tasks, enough to keep the three of them busy, but Sabrina was starting to wonder if the real goal of the tasks was to keep them out of the way. They did spend a lot of time out of the house, after all, taking private defense lessons with Snow White and training in the police department under Hamstead, and they had yet to get an actual case to handle.

They left the the town center and traipsed through the woods for a while. Once they decided they were far enough away from the businesses and human houses, Puck grabbed her and they flew beneath the tree line towards the school.

Flying beneath the canopy was something he'd never been good at due to his wingspan, but now, with all the humans around, it was necessary. It was even harder with a passenger, because Puck couldn't just hold Sabrina's hand and let her dangle like he used to, even though it would have been fun to watch her hit the tree trunks. He had to actually hold onto her, and Puck found it much more difficult to make the sharp turns necessary to avoid the tree trunks with the extra weight.

But it was still faster than walking, and they managed to pass the school and locate the site Maddie had been talking about before the sun set completely, and before Puck could slam them headfirst into an oak.

Puck went over to investigate the fire pit. He dropped to his knees and began to sift through the gray and black heaps of ash, picking up pieces of charcoal and crumbling them between his fingers. There was nothing usual in the fire pit. He turned around and saw Sabrina searching the ground using the flashlight on her phone.

Just as he was trying to think of the right taunt to use, she gasped and bent down to pick something up.

"What on earth?" she muttered, and then held the thing out. "Puck, look."

He turned on his phone light as well and saw in her hand another piece of torn fabric.

"It's squishy," said Sabrina. "Like a piece of a blanket or something."

"It's not bloody like that other one," Puck added, taking it from her. "But it's also torn."

"Do you still have the other piece?" Sabrina asked.

"No, I lost it," Puck said sullenly. "I couldn't really tell the color underneath all the blood. I don't know, it might be a coincidence, but isn't it weird that this site is pretty close to where we found the other piece?"

"Yeah, it is kinda funny," Sabrina agreed, and then realized how dark it was. "You know, but if it is from the same person, or thing, and we just found another piece nearby two months later…."

They drew closer together and looked around at the silent forest.

"We should go home," Sabrina said, taking the piece of fabric back from Puck and zipping it in her jacket pocket.

"What are you, scared?" Puck replied, mentally giving himself a five out of ten for the taunt.

Sabrina bristled. "No! We can stay out here longer and keep looking for clues, if you want."

As she said it, she swung her phone around in a circle to illuminate the empty woods surrounding them.

"I am kind of hungry, though," Puck admitted, glancing at the sky. "And it's dark enough to fly above the forest."

"The adults are probably wondering where we are," Sabrina added.

Sabrina swung the light around again, the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

"I guess we should go," Puck agreed. "But it's not because I'm scared."

"I'm not scared either!"

"Good, so we agree. Neither one of us is scared," said Puck. "Do you have the clue?"

"In my pocket."

They took off again, relieved that they were leaving and relieved that they could fly above the treetops again.

---

Sabrina opened her eyes and froze.

Something was wrong…something was different about her room. Slowly, she sat up in bed, hugging the covers to her chest as she looked around, trying to figure out what was off.

And then it hit her groggy brain like a ton of bricks. Her room was pink. Gone were her pretty sky-blue walls. Instead, the walls and ceiling were a nauseating, Pepto-Bismol shade of pink. Her comforter and the rugs on the ground, once white, were now the color of cotton candy.

"Puck!" she yelled, knowing full well he would hear her through the wall they shared. Growling, she threw her covers aside and launched herself out of bed, only to discover that her pajamas had been turned pink as well.

"You have got to be kidding me," Sabrina hissed, sliding open her closet door, already knowing what she would find.

Every article of clothing she owned was Barbie pink.

"Puck!" she screeched, and her door flew open.

"You called?" her irritating housemate asked, unable to mask his smirk.

"How did you even do this?" In two steps, she closed the distance between them and shoved him hard.

"What?" he asked, openly laughing now. "I heard pink is the new black. All the little girls are wearing it. Just trying to help develop your fashion sense, Grimm."

"I'll kill you, Fairy Boy," Sabrina vowed, pushing him aside and marching directly across the hall, into the room Red and Daphne shared. Daphne was braiding her hair in the mirror and looked up when Sabrina entered.

"What's with all the yelling?"

"Come here," Sabrina snapped. "Bring the Cinderella-fairy-godmother-wand thing."

Daphne knew better than to ask questions. She grabbed the wand from the drawer in her bedside table and followed Sabrina across the hall. When they re-entered Sabrina's room, Daphne let out an audible snort.

"Wow Sabrina, this is really, really, pretty," Daphne said sarcastically. She noticed Puck, who'd set up camp in the bay window, and sighed. "Oh, boy. Okay."

She waved the wand in a wide arc and the pink dye melted away and seemed to evaporate into thin air, leaving the original colors of Sabrina's belongings intact.

"Thank you," Sabrina sighed as her sister left. "Puck, get out of my room. And don't come in here in the middle of the night!"

Puck's wings popped out and he leapt off the window seat, landing gracefully in the doorway. "Oh, I was never in here."

Sabrina's temper boiled over. Puck had been pranking her regularly for the past two months. His antics had ranged from flooding her locker and drenching all of her textbooks to cracking the seat of her chair at the dining room table so that when she sat down on it, it broke and she fell. He'd put glue in her shampoo on the morning of picture day and had replaced the ham on her sandwich with baloney, which Sabrina hated, earlier this past week.

Her fist shot out and would have connected with his temple, but he caught it with lightning speed and twisted her wrist. Then they were fighting in the hallway, punching and ducking with the expertise of two people who had been training under Snow White for the past few weeks. They were more than an even match for each other, equally vicious on the offense and too fast on the defense to be hit, and so their silent fight carried on until Sabrina's knee finally connected with Puck's side and he let out an audible grunt.

Daphne stuck her head into the hallway. "Ugh, you guys! Stop fighting and get ready for school! We're going to be late!"

The two teenagers glared at each other. Rolling her eyes, Daphne emerged from the hallway with one braid done and grabbed Puck's arm. She pulled him all the way to his doorway, which she threw him through and slammed.

"Go brush your teeth," Daphne ordered Sabrina, pointing down the hall toward the bathroom.

"But—"

"Go!"

Sabrina huffed and did as she was told, still seething. Part of the problem with having everyone in the house at the same time was that she wasn't sure which adult to go to when Puck was making her mad. Her parents didn't really have any control over him, and while Granny could order him around, he seemed to take what Uncle Jake said to heart better, but Uncle Jake wasn't very good at discipline.

She slammed the bathroom door behind her, inspected her toothbrush and toothpaste for anything that looked abnormal, and then brushed her teeth. This was how she had to live now—analyzing every move she made, inspecting every object before she touched it. She was going insane.

Sabrina knew she had to find a way to get him back. She was fourteen, after all. She should be just as capable as he was at making his life miserable.

Uncle Jake rapped his knuckles on the door. "Can I come brush my teeth?"

"Yup!" Sabrina yelled, struck with inspiration.

He came in and grabbed the toothpaste.

"Uncle Jake," began Sabrina.

"'Sup?"

"What—uh, is there anything that really freaks Puck out?" Sabrina asked around her toothbrush. "You know, like spiders? Or the dark?"

Uncle Jake thought as he brushed. "Well, loves spiders, and the dark, but he's not a huge fan of pineapples."

Sabrina paused, unsure she had heard correctly. "Pineapple? The fruit?"

"Yeah, one time in Costa Rica it was all we had to eat for breakfast and he refused to. He went hungry that morning."

Sabrina blinked. "Puck went hungry?"

Uncle Jake nodded. "I was as surprised as you are."

"Okay, is there anything else? Something that's maybe not a fruit? Does he still not understand indoor plumbing?" Sabrina finished brushing and rinsed off her toothbrush.

There was another knock on the door.

"Can we come brush Basil's teeth?" Veronica asked.

"It's open!" Jake replied. To Sabrina, he added, "No, he's fine with toilets now. He doesn't like really perfume-y soaps. Like, he'll clean himself now but I have to buy him the unscented stuff. Wait, why do you ask?"

"BASIL!" yelled Basil, and karate-kicked the door open, effectively ending Sabrina and Jake's conversation. The four-year-old ran into the room, climbed onto the toilet lid and began to balance on one foot while Veronica squeezed in at the sink.

"Thanks, Uncle Jake. You've been a real help," Sabrina said, patting him on the shoulder and turning to say good morning to her mom and brother before he could ask her anything else.

Later that day, Sabrina sat next to Rachel in Western Civilization, doodling on the front of her notebook while Mr. Terazzi droned on and on about the Roman empire. There had been many times in Sabrina's K-12 career that she had absently doodled on paper—now was not one of them. Currently, she was stressfully doodling, with her eyes were glued on the back of Puck's head.

Puck sat in the front of the room, back straight, paying rapt attention to the teacher. Sabrina could tell that a whole slew of comments were on the tip of his tongue, no doubt about what life was really like in the Roman empire, and as her pink pen traced endless spirals, she tried desperately to think of what she could yell to draw attention away from him when the inevitable happened.

It was a relief when the bell rang and everyone began to pack their bags, barely listening to Mr. Terazzi remind them of their homework due Wednesday.

"Hey, Sabrina," Rachel said, waving her hand to get her friend's attention. "I'm having some friends over Saturday night. Do you wanna come?"

Sabrina drew her eyes away from Puck, who had approached the teacher, with some difficulty. "Yeah, that sounds great. I'll ask my mom!"

"Okay!" Rachel grinned, and as they stood up, leaned closer to whisper in Sabrina's ear. "Who have you been staring at this entire period?"

"No one," Sabrina said, forcing a laugh. "Just the board."

"Oh, please, you weren't copying anything down." Rachel narrowed her eyes and scanned the room. "Is it Josh?"

They both looked at the sandy-haired boy who was gathering his things alongside three other members of the soccer team.

"No," Sabrina said, reddening because of course, there was no way to actually explain why she'd been watching Puck so intently.

"I heard he likes you, you know," Rachel said in a low, conspirational voice, tapping a finger against her bottom lip.

"Really?" Sabrina asked, watching Josh leave the classroom, unsure what to do with that information. "Who told you that?"

Before Rachel could answer, Puck bounced over to join them as they left the room.

"Can you believe what Mr. Terazzi said about Emperor Nero? People didn't like him because he played the lyre while Rome burned and because of that they think he started the fire? Of course it wasn't him! It was—"

Sabrina cleared her throat pointedly and Puck finally looked past her and noticed Rachel.

"It was Mr. Terazzi himself?" Puck continued at a weak attempt of a joke as they left the classroom and joined the throng of students in the hallway.

"Are you really passionate about the Roman Empire, Puck?" Rachel asked, a smile curving across her face.

"Oh, yeah. It's way better than…all of the other empires," Puck guessed, and Sabrina almost didn't have enough willpower to stop herself from rolling her eyes.

Rachel, thankfully, giggled. "See you at lunch, Sabrina. Bye, Puck."

"Bye, Rache," Sabrina replied as her friend turned to go into her next class, and then elbowed Puck in the ribs.

"What?" Puck hissed. "I saved it."

Scowling, Sabrina lowered her voice. "What were you talking to Mr. Terazzi about after class?"

Puck turned red and Sabrina feared she would have to use the sandwich baggie of Forgetful Dust she'd been carrying around all school year.

"I, uh, asked him how he knew so much about Rome."

"And?"

"He told me I should be reading my textbook."

Sabrina laughed. They turned the corner into the science hallway and she muttered under her breath, "So who did start the fire? Please tell me it wasn't you."

"Of course it wasn't me, I hadn't been to Rome before Jake and I went. But it was a fairy. One of Oberon's brothers and a few accomplices, we think."

"Why?" Sabrina asked, interested in something Puck had to say for the first time in a long time.

Puck looked uncomfortable and dropped his voice to a whisper as they sat down at their lab bench in their Earth Science classroom. The teacher had assigned seats alphabetically at the beginning of the school year, which mean that Goodfellow and Grimm were lab partners.

"There were a couple of us—them—who believed that the human civilization of Rome was getting too powerful. They were afraid humans would take over the world and Faerie would have to go into hiding. So they started a fire, knowing that the human civilization wasn't advanced enough to fight it. Rightfully so, as it turns out, but it was pretty messed up."

"Tons of people died," Sabrina said, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. "That wasn't right."

Puck was uncharacteristically solemn. "I know. It was awful. Mother and Father were so angry, but it took them a while to figure out who was responsible. They tried to help the Romans rebuild, but it was too late. Oberon's brothers manipulated the barbarians and helped them attack Rome. That's the true reason that Rome fell, Faerie meddling, although the stuff about the lead pipes and government and whatever certainly didn't do them any favors."

Sabrina's stomach clenched. "What happened to them? The ones who started the fire and killed all those people."

"Good morning, class!" Mrs. Raleigh said from the front of the room, clasping her hands and waiting for silence.

"Father banished them. I haven't seen them since the fall of Rome."

"Really?" Sabrina pressed. "As humans spread all around the globe, they didn't do anything?"

"Well, yeah, they were banished to the Far North, which is in the Arctic circle," Puck repeated in a voice that suggested Sabrina was too stupid to understand what he was saying. "I mean, they're banished and their powers are weakened as long as Faerie remains strong. Until Faerie falls, I guess."

"Do you think there's a chance they're working with the Hand?"

Puck's eyebrows scrunched and he shook his head, lowering his voice again so that Sabrina could barely hear him. "Probably not. They didn't really care for any beings that weren't Fae."

"Bench five, your attention!" Mrs. Raleigh said. Sabrina and Puck jumped and sat up. Mrs. Raleigh eyed them for another moment and then turned to the board to begin the lesson.

Sabrina looked at Puck, belated adrenaline churning in her veins.

"Are you sure?" she mouthed, unconvinced.

Puck's narrowed eyes slid sideways, and he whispered, "The truth is that only a small amount of the remaining Fae live in New York. We're everywhere, on every continent. I don't know anything about their relationships with each other."

"Does the Council know about this?"

The Council of Everafter had hosted just two meetings after the primary one. Everyone initially invited had agreed to join the cause, so Robin Hood was more free with what he spoke about. He had a couple of spies set up around the globe who were sending in reports of Everafter disturbances. Morgan and Mordred had been tasked with the duty of following up on those disturbances to see if they were caused by the Ferryport Landing Everafters. She knew that there had been problems in Asia and Russia, possibly north enough to be in the Arctic circle, and wondered for the first time if the Ferryport Everafters were their only problem. What repercussions had the fall of the barrier caused elsewhere?

"I have no idea," Puck said sourly. "It's never crossed my mind before, and it's not like they want our help with this."

Most information, like Veronica had warned, was still on a strict need-to-know basis, and as Sabrina, Puck, and Daphne had quickly learned, there was a lot of information they didn't need to know. Sabrina and Puck had heard voices in Mirror's old room and gone in to investigate several times, only to be shooed away by the founding members of the Council in the middle of a Founders meeting, surrounded by many maps and documents.

"Are Morgan and Mordred only investigating disturbances if they're caused by Ferryport Landing people?" Sabrina asked.

"Miss Grimm! Mr. Goodfellow! Do you want detention?" Mrs. Raleigh barked, and Sabrina and Puck jumped and then shrank in their seats as everyone in the room turned to look at them. Sabrina pulled her notebook toward her and didn't look at Puck again while the teacher lectured, although for the second time today, she was too distracted by her thoughts to focus on school.

Mrs. Raleigh was passing out lab directions. When she handed Sabrina the set for their lab bench, she gave Sabrina and Puck a dirty look again. Sabrina drew back, alarmed, and placed the piece of paper between them.

As she scanned the materials section, she muttered, "Do we know her status?"

"Human," Puck muttered. "The only teachers who aren't are a physics teacher and one of the orchestra teachers."

"Today we are calculating density!" Mrs. Raleigh said, returning to her desk at the front of the room. "All of the materials are on the left side of the room. Your final report is due Monday."

After a quick glance at the sheet of paper, Puck declared, "I'll go get the fire."

"Puck, we don't need fire for this! Can you even read?"

Puck deflated in his seat. "Science labs without fire are boring."

Sabrina shook her head in disbelief as she went to get the supplies. The first week of school, they'd burned Cheetos in lab, and it had arguably been the greatest day of Puck's whole life. Every single lab after that he'd insisted on using the Bunsen burner and flint, actually pulling them out and lighting the burner a few times before Mrs. Raleigh or Sabrina noticed and stopped him.

Perhaps that was why Mrs. Raleigh didn't like them, Sabrina thought suddenly, dumping a bunch of things onto the lab bench.

They got to work. About four seconds after they began the experiment, Puck lost focus and pulled out his phone underneath the table.

Sabrina rolled her eyes and snapped, "Help me, Gasbag."

"You know, if you keep rolling your eyes as much as you do, they're going to get stuck like that, Snotface," Puck said nonchalantly.

"You're the reason I roll my eyes, like, 90% of the time," Sabrina said. "If you don't help me do this lab I'm going to tell your chimps where you hide your chocolate."

Puck pointed an accusing finger at Sabrina. "How do you know where that is?"

"Not telling," Sabrina replied, deadpan.

"Daphne told you," Puck said, narrowing his eyes. "Or maybe Jake."

"Not telling," Sabrina repeated, holding out a graduated cylinder. "Now go put 100 milliliters of water in this before I strangle you."

"I'd like to see you try," he said, but when she didn't relent, he let out a low growl and snatched the cylinder from her before stalking off to the sink.

Sabrina spent the rest of the day oscillating between thinking about how to convince the adults to let her do more in the Council and how to get Puck back for this morning's prank. By the time they got home, she'd figured out the solution to one of her problems. Abandoning Puck in the living room to watch cartoons, she sidled into the kitchen and started going through the cabinets. No one else was home, and although Sabrina wondered where they all were, she was glad no one was around to ask what she was doing.

Armed with vanilla extract and maple syrup, Sabrina snuck upstairs. In Daphne and Red's room, she located a bottle of Red's bubblegum-scented perfume. Then she shut herself in the bathroom and pulled Puck's combination shampoo and body wash out of the shower. It was almost empty and, like Uncle Jake had said, unscented, and she quickly unscrewed the cap and got to work mixing in the other products she'd brought. Then she raided the cabinets and added some of Uncle Jake's hair gel, a few drops of Veronica's tea tree oil, and some of the scented hand soap. She capped it, shook it, and smelled it, wrinkling her nose. It certainly had a smell now, and one that, like Sabrina had hoped, was not pleasant. It was sweet to the point of pungent.

She was looking around for something else to add when there was a loud knock on the door.

"I'm in here!" Sabrina yelled.

"I have an idea!" Puck yelled back. "What are you doing in there?"

"What kind of question is that?" Sabrina quickly put his shampoo back where it had come from and shoved everything else into the cabinet underneath the sink. Then she threw the door open.

"Aren't you going to wash your hands?" Puck asked.

Sabrina blinked, trying to figure out if he was kidding, and then retreated to the sink.

"What's your idea?" she repeated as she scrubbed.

He waited impatiently, tapping his foot against the ground, and then led the way down the hallway, stopping outside Mirror's room.

"We go in there and look through all of the documents they've gathered," Puck said.

"Why?"

"We should figure out if they know about that site we found the other day. We've gotta figure out what to do about that piece of fabric," Puck reasoned, stopping outside Mirror's door. "But first we have to figure out how to get into the room."

"Step aside, Stinkpot," said Sabrina, pulling a bobby pin out of her hair. She went to work on the lock while Puck watched in interest.

Sabrina's heart leapt as there was a click and the knob twisted in her hand. Puck punched the air, and then, downstairs, they heard the front door open.

"Hello?" Granny yelled. "Is anyone home yet?"

Sabrina and Puck shared a panicked look, and then Puck pushed Sabrina into the room and shut and locked the door behind him.

Once they were inside, a vile wave of nausea rose in Sabrina's stomach. She hadn't been in this room since the war, she hadn't even let herself think about the contents of the room since the war, and now it was all coming back to her. From watching her parents lie unconscious in bed to sneaking in in the middle of the night to have deep conversations with Mirror, to the time she'd spent in the Hall of Wonders, there were a lot of bad memories here.

"Gasbag," Puck said, snapping his fingers in her face. "Come on, we don't have much time."

Sabrina blinked and then waved him off, trying to see the room as it now was. There was a long conference-style table in the middle with several manila folders strewn across the top. On the far side, there was a large gray filing cabinet that Sabrina figured was locked, and the walls were covered in whiteboards, which were covered in writing. Sabrina thought it ironic that the room that once housed the most powerful mirror in the world was now covered in opaque surfaces.

Puck began to flip through the manila folders while Sabrina walked around the room, skimming the writing on the boards. Most of it was tiny and cramped and hard to make sense of, but a list written in blue marker caught her eye.

STATUS OF EVERAFTERS TRAPPED IN CASTLE DURING WAR

Shere Khan—?

Beast & Natalie Beast—NYC; Mordred confirmed

Ice Queen—NYC; ? no confirmation

Jack Pumpkinhead—NYC; Mordred confirmed

Humpty Dumpty—Maine; Morgan confirmed

Baloo—NYC; Mordred confirmed

Mowgli—South Africa; Morgan confirmed

Glass Cat—NYC; ? no confirmation

The Patchwork Girl—?

Sabrina stopped reading partway down the list and did a double take.

"All of these folders have the same things in them," Puck said, disgruntled. "They're all just blueprints of the town."

"Hey," Sabrina said, waving him over. "What are the odds the fabric we found came from a quilt?"

"I don't know," Puck replied, walking over to join her. "Why?"

"They haven't been able to find the Patchwork Girl of Oz," Sabrina said, pointing to her name on the list. "She was a part of the Scarlet Hand."

A/N.

Happy New Year! I hope everyone else who's currently snowed in by this Bomb Cyclone is staying safe and warm. Thank you all for reading this chapter and for all the kind reviews on Chapter 1!

This chapter is what I imagine Puck and Sabrina's relationship would be like at this time—pranking each other and fighting half the time, and relying on each other the other half.

For those of you who read Tales from the Tundra, I'm using a similar structure of Faerie in this story. So the Everafter community in the Far North (Russian tundra) that I created exists in this story too. We'll get into it more later.

If you enjoyed this chapter (or didn't!) please leave a review!

Guest review (Guest 12/30/17): I'm so happy that you liked the beginning of the plot! Thanks for following TFT and I hope you like the rest of this story too! :)