8

"Sabrina…" Josh looked over to his blonde infatuation. "Your mom's here."

"My mom?" Sabrina wondered a bit confused and turned round to recognize Angelique Bouchard sitting in their college coffeehouse. The blonde sorceress was an old friend of her aunts and the mother of William Collins, a one-time boyfriend. A light giggle and a knowing grin, she placed her coffeepot aside and hurried over to the woman which her father called her godmother. They shared a loving embrace and bond of love.

"So, you're my mother this time?" The Wiccan beauty mused.

"Sabrina, darling…" Angelique shined over the girl. "I can't go into details, but I need help. I'm powerless against this sorceress who has abducted William. You must help me stop her and the other children she has abducted."

"Well," Sabrina looked round to be sure they were not being eavesdropped upon. "How powerful is she?"

"Powerful…" Angelique answered. "But she's still mortal. I was thinking, even with your partial immortality, maybe you could be able to distract her for me to hurt her and save my son."

"What about Aunt Samantha?"

"I lost contact with her after Darren passed away." Angelique recalled another immortal witch who had been her friend. "Sabrina, your aunts are too far away for me right now. You're my last chance. She's going after one last child and I have no way to follow her!"

"Sabrina…" Josh came up behind her. "Is there a problem?"

"Uh…" The entrancingly attractive young Wiccan mugged a bit for a boss and boyfriend. "I kind of have a family emergency. Can I leave early?"

"Of course…" He leaned over and kissed her. "I hope it's nothing bad."

"You could say…" Sabrina looked from Josh to Angelique. "That my stepbrother is in a bit of trouble." She tossed off her apron and hastened with a turn of heel for the door. Leaving Josh with the thought she had a stepbrother, she motioned Angelique ahead of her and up on to Main Street.

"What are you up against?" Sabrina looked to the wily witch.

"Her real name is Guinevere Alexandra De Constantine Von Altebar…" Angelique walked with her side by side down the sidewalk looking for an inconspicuous spot. "But her modern identity is that of a woman claiming to be Cheryl Harridge. Her mastery of sorcery is incredible! She's been collecting the modern day reincarnations of her children…" Angelique stopped to prepare Sabrina. "Placing their souls within her womb to restore to life."

"She never heard of adoption?"

"Sabrina, sweetheart…" Angelique looked over the busy Westbridge Street. "Don't make light of this. This woman has dragged me to hell and back. Now, I don't clam to understand the mystical powers of your family, but your ancestors were Atlantean, far older than hers or mine. You will have the edge. You can fight her far easier by yourself than I ever could."

"I can't locate a person I never met…." Sabrina tugged Angelique into a short alley. "But I can take you to a person you know. You're the one I'm following." A bold wave of her arm and erupting pockets of finite reality burst into smoke around them, exchanged their location with another point in space, this time a grand hall with a high ceiling and collegiate decorations. The school colors hung from banners around them, and the walls were adorned in testaments to its illustrious history. Sabrina recognized it.

"This is the commons of my school. She came after someone I know?" She looked around grateful it was empty. "Who is she after?" She looked to her mentor. Angelique started to answer but held back. Her voice drew silent at the sound of approaching voices coming closer. She pulled another bottle of spirit gases from her skirt pocket and braced expecting her rival to appear. The voices were coming closer from the archway accompanied by the sound of footsteps.

"Harvey, darling…" Cheryl walked arm and arm with the young man who had been her youngest son. "I can't believe how handsome you grew up to be."

"So, you're my real mother." He believed her story of being accidentally switched at birth. "Do I have brothers and sisters?"

"Yes, sweetheart, two brothers and five sisters…" Cheryl beamed lovingly over him. "In fact, your sister, Maddie, works a few miles from here. She's a candy counter girl at the Tipton Hotel…." She realized the college building wasn't quite empty.

"Harvey??" Sabrina stood watching from the quad. "Get away from her!"

"Sabrina?" The hockey athlete recognized his former girlfriend and looked back to the woman claiming to be his mother. "Is this a magic thing?" He had flashbacked on other weird incidents in his life with her.

"I'm getting so sick of sending you off, Angelique." Harridge felt one of the souls inside her reaching out from her and tried to quell it. "And, oh, look!" Cheryl shined almost to the point of laughter. "And this time you brought a friend! She's a bit young for magic, Angelique. You sure scraped the bottom of the barrel, didn't you?" She looked to Harvey. "Harvey, sweetheart, rid me of them."

"I love you, mom." Harvey was now overwhelmed by his past life. His demeanor became more surly and upset as he stood his ground and conjured a beam of momentum knocking Angelique and Sabrina off their feet.

"How'd he do that?!" Sabrina had been tossed over the sofa.

"It's her!!" Angelique groaned from the stress her spine was taking. "She has him under her power!" The conjuror of Collinwood looked up from the floor.

"Sorry, Harvey…" Sabrina waved her arm and wiped him temporarily from existence. Cheryl reacted at that feat. Just who was she dealing with? Removed from the college and snapped from his trance, Harvey winked out from the commons room and fell to his feet somewhere else in the world. What did Sabrina do to him this time?! He'd been zapped into dreams and other worlds, turned into a knight and forced into disposable fairy tale realities, but what did she do to him now? Better yet, where had she sent him? He looked up into basement rafters and realized he was in the ground floor of someone's house. There were four guys sitting around him in a circle looking down upon him.

"Hyde!" Michael Kelso stood flaunting a piece of rolled up weed. "This is your best stuff yet!!"

"Where did you send him?" In the present of Westbridge College, Cheryl faced off against Sabrina.

"The past, the future…" Sabrina rose to her feet, quirkily amused a bit. "I'm not sure." She cockily tilted her head. "Do you really want to mess with me?" There was a grinding noise over her head. A wood ceiling tile came loose and cracked itself over her head, laying the inexperienced Wiccan out cold.

"Do you really want to mess with me?" Cheryl mimicked her and looked over toward Angelique. "I gave you every chance to go home." Her head turning in discomfort, she groaned and winced from the one soul within her trying to fight her. Angelique tried to summon the ghosts of the ancestors again, but Cheryl shattered that spell before it hit the floor. "It looks like you give me no choice. I'm going to have to… William, what the hell's wrong with you?!" She spoke to the soul of her eldest adult son within her.

"William!" Angelique called for her son. "Fight her! Return to me!!" A piece of bric-a-brac flew across the room and nearly hit the beautiful blonde sorceress. With her attention diverted, she could not divest the mental precision of her spells.

"William!" Cheryl bent over holding her abdomen. "I can't fight this woman and you! What's wrong with you?!"

"Didn't you know?" Angelique summoned up globes of mystical energy crackling around her hands. "My son traveled back in time from the future and gave his life for me! He became his own reincarnation!" She hurled the mystical balls of force at Cheryl trying to knock her over. The French sorceress reeled back and forth from the bombardments and crashed backward into the trophy case behind her. She tumbled backward toward the floor, hissed through her gritted teeth and invoked a few secret protection spells. Angelique looked over Sabrina groaning in pain, and once she was sure she was okay, crossed over to Harridge on the floor. Breathing heavily, the physical activity itself wearing her out, she crossed the width of the hall and grabbed the French sorceress by her hair to look squarely into her eyes.

"I will continue fighting you until you give me my son back and give up all those other children." She gasped with her breath racing between her words. "I'm so sorry your children were taken from you, but nothing gives you the right to break the hearts of other mothers as your heart was broken." Angelique started pleading with the heart of a mother who loved her son. "I want my son back!"

"Thank you for that last piece of info, Angelique." Cheryl backed up from the wily witch. "I was wondering why my son's soul was folded. I'll tell you something in return." She grinned connivingly. "The men who killed me… One of them was the grandson of a certain Norse thunder-god…" She waved Angelique away from her and flung her across the hall with a spell. The sworn protector of Collinwood hit the wall and knocked loose the decorations behind her.

"I would have spared you for returning my son to me!!" She screeched with the scream of a banshee. "But you can now die with all the rest of them!!" She turned round once and faced the stricken witch once again. "Peel back the ages of time. Feel your true age as you should be… You and your little protégé! Wither away and become as you should be!!" She started accelerating the timestream around Angelique.

"Mrs. Collins!!" Sabrina lifted her head and watched Angelique growing older and older, her beautiful face becoming gaunt and peeling back against the bones of her head. Her frame was deteriorating, her hair wasting away. As the ages of time wasted her away, Sabrina felt herself getting stronger, she felt herself becoming the mature more powerful Wiccan she was going to be. A Wiccan with an innate immortality, a witch more powerful than a human sorceress… as time matured her into full adulthood, her mystical powers increased and she could hold her ground. So this was what it was like to be almost a god... she reached forward to catch the mystical energy pouring around her fingers, and called out one name with tears streaming from her face.

"For Harvey!!"

"Why aren't you dying?!" Cheryl began sliding backward. She folded over in pain as one of the souls within her started pulling from her and with him, all the others. The university hall around her started morphing and changing. The seating area became a French parlor. The ceiling pressed upward as borders and decorations became balustrades and railing. The shattered trophy case turned into the sides of a grand fireplace. She had been here before as the East fought against western invaders, her pagan forefathers were slowly being forgotten for other beliefs and the art of science pushed mankind to explore the world beyond the sea. Her children were alive once more and standing by her, but this time, they were pulling away from her. They wanted their own lives, their own futures… they wanted to live. She reached out to them as they developed into adults before her then vanished from view. There was a flash as the past and present caught up with each other and corrected itself.

"If you want another daughter…" Sabrina now stood with the pose and demeanor of a middle-aged woman at the pinnacle of her mystical power. "Take me!!" Cheryl's eyes widened to see her racing toward her. She turned to retreat and felt Sabrina pushing her over on to the floor. There was a scream as campus security guards rushed the commons area and held off from the spectral lights flying off and darting from the area. The portraits of people on campus reacted to the spectacle. Photos of past alumni closed their eyes looked away. Torrents of hurricane force winds were pouring from the inside of the room blowing away security guards, students and staff. Crawling from the room, Sabrina winced from what she had done. There was a powerful pain ebbing away at her life force. She reached to her chest to relieve the pain then down to her abdomen. So that's where they were… She had absorbed the children!

"Go away home!" She screamed in pain. "Go away home!!" She felt her body being ripped apart as Harridge grabbed and screamed for the fleeing orbs of light. Pushing Sabrina's head away, her other hand grasping at the orbs swelling to human size, the demented sorceress once more tried to grab them but something was holding her back. She looked back to Angelique clutching at her neck. Her aged arms were tightening around her throat. Her chest fighting for yet another breath, Harridge started to gesture at her, but found her arm fading away.

"What did you do?!" Her voice was screaming at Sabrina. "What did you do?!" Angelique had reached for the timeless sorceress but fell through her while clutching at empty space. Her essence fading, her children freed and vanishing from her, Harridge screamed with hostility from the spirit world, her last essence in the flickering room folding over Sabrina collapsing to the floor. Angelique opened her eyes to yet another person.

"Mom?" William Collins started crying upon the withered and barely living remains of his mother. Her aged eyes tried looking up at him, her shaking withered arms groaning to reach to him. Her raspy voice gasped once as he lifted her up into his arms. He lifted her up tiredly as Sabrina reached to touch him. When her fingers grazed his shoulder, the room burst with another explosion of light.

Angelique gasped and snapped back into consciousness from the brink of illusion. She was standing in the middle of the Old House parlor. She recognized her husband's portrait by Sam Evans over the mantel, the Queen Anne clock given him by his father and inhaled ever scent and nuance of the room. Her fingers lifted up a gold-framed mirror from the table and looked at her face. She was young again! Well, young for a three hundred year old witch who looked to be in her late forties… She turned round looking for her Barnabas, hastening her step around to the dining room beyond the parlor and through the back way to the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open; someone was stopped behind it rummaging for food. When she came up upon it beaming, her son stood up straight behind her.

"We're out of Swiss cheese." He said, but reacted confused when his mother instead pulled him close and hugged him. She was crying a bit too. He was back to her! She had him back! She loved him so much.

"William, darling..." Confused as she was, Angelique loved her son more than herself. "You're back! You're back!"

"I still won't talk to Amanda." He reiterated his previous point then noticed someone else. There was another person in the Old house kitchen.

"Hi, Collinwood." Sabrina stood near the back stairs leaning back against the broom closet leading to the mud porch. She looked great! More incredible than ever... She was wearing a long black dress like a witch's flying suit with a red scarf around her neck and denim jacket. They shared a memory between them and reflected on a romance that just didn't work.

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting your mom."

"Oh…" William stepped backward just a foot or two from his mother and eyed Sabrina over to admire her figure. "I was thinking about you this morning. I had a crazy dream last night you and my mom were wrestling with this strange woman at my college."

"Well," Sabrina mugged and looked secretly to Angelique. "That's different than the dreams you had of me flying around in a red cape and big "S" across my augmented chest."

"Yeah…" William laughed with his old girlfriend and turned away to the stairs. He stopped a bit confused, reacted a bit spooked and looked back to her. "Wait, I never told you about those dreams..." She had creeped him out again. A bit wary of her, he turned up the back stairs and raced to his room above the kitchen. Angelique began musing happily to have him back. She was home, and with her son!

"He still thinks he's Batman, doesn't he?" Sabrina recalled her time with the young heir.

"Sabrina, " Angelique looked upon her. "What happened?"

"I don't know." The young sorceress dipped into the cookie jar for homemade cookie. "I zapped everyone home and the next thing I knew it was the next day. I lost twelve hours fixing everything."

"And Harridge?" Angelique feared. "Will she be back?"

"I don't know…" Sabrina confessed to her mentor. "But for a moment…. I was one with her. I barely remember a single thing I did."

On the edge of the estate, Quentin Collins parked the Collins family van outside the tree-shaded driveway of Rose Cottage and wandered in the back way into the kitchen mired in deep thought. Maggie looked up to him leaning over the newspaper with a cup of coffee. He gave her a kiss to the top of her head and pulled open the refrigerator.

"How's Amanda?" Quentin looked into the icebox for an after-morning snack.

"She looked at these ads…" Maggie held up the Collinsport Courier. "She's got her choices down to a white '85 Volkswagen convertible, a used 1990 blue Ford Tempo with an advanced sound system and a classic '89 Porsche needing a paint job."

"I remember being happy with a horse-drawn buggy as a boy." Quentin made a veiled reference to his youth in the 1870s. Upstairs and above the dining room, the red-haired maiden in question scoured her closet for her sweater. She had not seen her favorite angora sweater in two weeks. If it showed up in Sara's closet or on Lizzie's back, she was tossing someone off a balcony. She was so sick and tired of them running her life and invading her closet. Pulling out her black jacket, she welcomed it back by sliding her arms into it and pulling her long red locks out from inside it. She wished she had her cousin Sara's legs and Lizzie's boobs. Her lips gasped as she turned away, picked up a barrette to pin her hair back and turned to the mirror, but in addition to her reflection, she saw another face looking out at her. She looked behind her, then back upon the strange woman looking at her from beyond her reflection.

"Hello, Amanda…" Cheryl Harridge looked out of the mirror at the troubled young girl. "How would you like to have any boy you wanted? I can help you make it so." An evil grin passed over her lips.

END