9

When the news broke along the East Coast about the missing Westbridge High School student named William Samms, it invariably reached the news in Charleston, South Carolina where Captain Chip Samms now served his country as Commander of the Forty-Fifth Battalion out of Fort Marshall. Asking for a temporary leave from his unit, he flew to Massachusetts and once again clashed and re-opened old fights and feuds with his ex-wife. How could she not inform him that their son was missing? She didn't think he'd be missing this long. Could he be hitchhiking to join his father at his old post in North Carolina? Monica didn't think so. It was kind of obvious that William did not want the military life. They then began debating everywhere he might have gone. His Uncle Willie lived in a lakeside cabin eleven miles outside Collinsport, Maine plus he had been fascinated by an old deserted mental hospital near New York City. He could be heading there. Pulling a favor from Captain Frank Crawford at nearby Fort Hawthorne, Captain Samms had seven platoons of men hiking along Highway 28 and Highway 106 looking for the young man as well as scouring the nearby Monponsett River Nature Preserve where he once took William camping as a boy. There were a few deserted cabins and a fading network of nature trails there one could get lost in. Watching the news coverage from the security of her living room, Samantha watched it about so long before she switched back over to a Richard Gere movie.

"Richard Gere?" Salem was curled up on her lap.

"He's cute…"

"Samantha…" Aunt Zelda turned the TV off by the remote and stood over the vegetating teenager. "I'm sorry, but you're not spending your grounding by watching TV. I want you to go down in the basement and straighten it up."

"Well…" She knew the basement. It looked like a cross between a medieval torture chamber and the junk room at the Tower of London. "How bad is it?"

"Bad enough." Zelda looked to Hilda and back again. "I want everything down there straightened, tidied up and organized, and one more thing. You're not allowed to do magic to do it."

"No magic?" Samantha hopped up. "Isn't that against some sort of child labor laws?!"

"She looks just like Sabrina when she says that." Hilda began chuckling.

"Well, I might as well look the part." She zapped her blue t-shirt and blue jeans into an orange prison jumpsuit with a number on it and a lead ball chained to her foot. Coming down behind her, Sabrina watched this spectacle a bit amused. She had done the exact same thing when she was being punished for casting a hex on Libby that made the brunette diva act like a chicken in front of the school.

"Cut the dramatics…" Zelda changed her clothes back. "Get started…"

"Can I keep any money I find?" Samantha headed off for the basement stairs off the kitchen.

"No, and I will be doing a strip search later…"

"Crap and a half…."

"I think there's a bit of Salem in her too." Hilda looked at her sister then noticed Sabrina in the foyer taking her jacket.

"I'm going to go meet Harvey and Valerie at the Slicery." She pulled her long blonde tresses out from under it. "We're going to go see that new horror movie about witches." She grinned. "I get a kick out of all the stuff they get wrong."

"How can you watch those movies?" Zelda looked at her. "Those movies are always insulting and demeaning!"

"One of them is being played by Susan Lucci…" Sabrina added.

"Oh, I love her!" Hilda spoke up as a siren exploded in the house and flashing lights filled the upstairs foyer. Ten mystically conjured SWAT officers stormed the stairs from the linen closet and charged down the steps grabbing Sabrina from behind and placing her under arrest with magic-proof handcuffs. Before she could react, she was pulled up the stairs off her feet and carried away.

"What's going on?" Zelda cried out over the invasion. Screaming for help, Sabrina's cries for help vanished through their mystical nexus in the linen closet as the last officer produced a rolled-up parchment documenting the arrest and handed it to Zelda. Quickly unwrapping it, Zelda scanned the hand-written text on sheepskin paper written in Old English. "Oh no… they're arresting Sabrina for creating an unregistered clone and for causing the mystical obliteration of a mortal!"

"A mortal?" Hilda regained her senses as the house quieted down. "You mean William?"

"What other mortal could they mean?" Zelda raced up the stairs. "Salem, keep an eye on Samantha! We might need her!" She called back down to the cat. His tailing flailing annoyingly, Salem looked around and blinked his eyes.

"But I'm supposed to be napping!"

Upstairs, Zelda closed the door to the linen closet behind her sister slowly getting her bearings back. Sending a spell into the dimensional nexus in it allowed them to follow Sabrina. The Witch's Council always had to overdo things. They always conjured copies of mortal SWAT teams to take captive witches for every magic crime or slight no matter how trivial. They had once been their most respected and carefully selected leaders since the horrible days at Salem, but over the years, the group had become sort of corrupt, instituting both important and mostly ridiculous laws that regulated the witch community regardless of where it existed. Over time, they had been centered in Greece then in Rome and later England, usually wherever the center of civilization rested, but now it generally bounced around whichever witch community was prospering. For the last few years, it had been based in Bouchard Village, a village founded by a powerful wizard named Amadeus Bouchard in the 18th Century in what was then Canadian wilderness north of Toronto. It was to become a bustling home for wizards, witches, sorcerers and magic-friendly folk. Famed mystic Hector Drummond had been born here, and although the town was located on a desolate highway that headed nowhere, regular mortals who ended up here just considered it an eccentric and harmless little village founded by Spiritualists and other New Age practitioners, but instead of landing in the usual stage-like courthouse, Hilda and Zelda found themselves transported into a huge round room that ascended into a vast open coliseum. Dark in color and lighted only by banners of red and scattered court records fluttering around, Sabrina was placed on stage in the center of the room surrounded by over three hundred magic peers studying her, yelling amongst themselves and arguing. Judge Aaron Samuels of the Auxiliary Witch's Council stood at a tall podium three feet over Sabrina flanked by groups of magic-users clad in red robes to his left and in blue robes to his right. They served the role of the jury. Sabrina looked terrified. Her hand and feet were chained to the stand as she looked around the room for her aunts. When she finally found their faces in the midst of the fracas and confusion, she tried calling out to them for advice, but they couldn't hear her. Struggling to pass through the gallery, Hilda and Zelda pushed through the ocean of scared magic-users until they found someone they knew.

"Kelbo!" Hilda poked and prodded the beefy back of a tall large wizard of burly size. "Kelbo! Kelbo!"

"Hey, Hilda… long time no see." Kelbo Russo was a member of one of the top fifty wizard families in the magic community. He was the son of Henry Dominic Russo, and the younger brother of Jerry Russo, who had been a powerful gifted wizard in his own right before surrendering his power to marry a mortal woman. "What brings you here?" He looked out and saw Sabrina. "Oh yeah…"

"Kelbo, what is this place?" Zelda asked over the screaming voices. "Where are we?!"

"Oh…" Kelbo thought back. "The last time court convened an angry warlock whipped up a hurricane and trashed the courthouse." Judge Samuels started pounding his gavel. "We're kind of borrowing this from the Wizengamot."

"The Wizard community…" Hilda looked around. "I knew they couldn't decorate worth a damn." The room was drawing silent. Sabrina looked up terrified. She had faced Judge Samuels before, but this place was much scarier than the last one and much darker.

"Sabrina Spellman…" The short white-haired judge spoke in a small slight voice. "You are being charged for creating an unregistered clone and for causing the mystical obliteration of a mortal youth. How do you plead?"

"It was an accident!" Sabrina cried out. "I swear! We tried to change him back, but we lost him!" The room erupted with screams and warnings. Most of the room was terrified the disappearance of William Samms could lead to all new witch-hunts. Others worried this breakdown could rip apart the peaceful co-habitation truces that high-ranking magic-users had created with the governments of their homelands. Every time something odd happened in England, the British Prime Minster met with the Wizard Prime Minister to get the truth. In the United States, the American Attorney General met up with the Chief Justice of Mystical Affairs. It was pretty much the same for most of the world's countries; mortals and magicians comparing notes on everything from the Tungunska Explosion in Siberia in 1908 to the five missing Avenger fighters off Florida in the Forties. Although the American Government didn't question every human disappearance, the mystical community always stayed aware of what happened around their constituents.

"Lost him?" Samuels looked down on her. "Found him we did, despite you changing his form!" He gestured to the left archway under the gallery where two SWAT officers guided Samantha out for the gallery to see. One minute she was dusting shelves in an armoire, next thing she knew hands reached through it and pulled her through the wall and escorted under guard down a long corridor before all these angry faces. Sabrina twisted herself around as best as she could to see her sister.

"Do you still stand there and deny your crime?" Samuels asked her. "Does anyone wish to stand to defend Sabrina in light of this evidence?" He cast the court's evidence into floating images above the room resembling a floating image from an unseen film projector on empty air. The crowded gallery could watch Sabrina in her bedroom casting a spell and turning herself into a small glowing orb of mystical energy. Seen from the mortal world perspective, she had shot through the neighborhood in orb form following the streets around to William's house and invading through his bedroom window where she entered his mind. Seeming reacting to her presence, he twisted and twitched in his bedroom once and twice then waking up briefly and falling back into a sleep-induced stupor. Whispering filled the room as Hilda and Zelda watched the twisted truth, but the next scene was even worse. From an overhead shot of the school nurse's office, the room watched as Sabrina and Harvey led William reeling from the pangs of his mystical transformation into the room and placed him on the examination table. The evidence showed Sabrina's closing and locking the door behind him just as William's long dark hair turned blonde and spilled across his back. Samantha's head started shaking in denial watching as William's body suddenly shrank to her size in his clothing and even worse, to see him struggle with Sabrina to get to the mirror before she caught him passing out and teleported out of the room with him. It definitely looked like a kidnapping.

"It's not what it looks like!" Sabrina screamed. "I was trying to turn him back!"

"But you didn't!"

"He couldn't change back! He lost his mind in the change!" Sabrina screamed hysterically and looked to Samantha. Faced with the truth, she was started lapsing into shock once more. The room again erupted in screams and terrified accusations. As Kelbo stood eating popcorn and shaking his head, Hilda and Zelda tried screaming the truth, but the other warlocks and wizards were too angry and too terrified. Most of them were still young magicians toward the end of the twelve hundred years of persecutions, the hangings, the drownings, the bonfires… Most of them were innocent victims of a hysteria started unfairly by the Early Christian Church, an organization that once accepted magic-users then had turned against them, destroying anyone similar to them as well, including druids, pagans and soothsayers. Even as Judge Samuels pounded his gavel to silence the room, no one looked to Samantha watching the evidence re-playing itself except Hilda and Zelda. She was shaking and crying at facing the evidence. They were claiming she was the lost William Samms, but it couldn't be true. It just couldn't!

"It's not true!" She was screaming. "It's not true!" Samantha was held back by her guards. "Sabrina and I grew up together in Salem! We used to play in the backyard of our parent's house!"

"You have her memories!" Samuels reported. "That was a mortal girl named Abby Cosgrove."

"We used to sit in an apple tree eating apples and spitting seeds at each other!"

"Sabrina and Abby."

"My father once tanned my hide for spilling expensive cologne! She watched me get spanked!"

"It was Sabrina who got spanked. You recall her reflection from the mirror." Judge Samuels revealed the truth. "You're nothing but a mystical duplicate. None of your memories are original."

Samantha and Sabrina looked at each other once again. Embarrassed and humiliated, Sabrina felt she didn't have any hope left. The evidence was right. She had destroyed William. It might have been an accident, but it was her fault. How could she foresee all those odd circumstances that would spiral against her?

"Your honor…" Zelda called out. "Might I add that the spell to change William back would have completely destroyed his mind! We kept him alive that Samantha could live, and she does live! She was born just as if William was her father and Sabrina her mother!"

"A mystical clone over the life of one mortal boy?!" Ronald Longcape Sr., a powerful warlock countered that claim and the room erupted in screams and several wizards and warriors trying to speak at once. Sabrina was crying, and Samantha was having a mental breakdown as Judge Samuels pounded his gavel over and over. The room was angry. No witch or wizard had ever used magic to kill a mortal in over five hundred years. A few had been changed into animals or statues for being a threat to other mortals, but no one had ever been robbed of their identity. Zelda looked to Hilda trying to think, but when she turned, she saw a young lady pushing through the others she had not seen in years.

"Aunt Hilda?" The young beauty pushed through the gallery. "Aunt Zelda?"

"Tabitha!" Zelda hugged the young witch amidst the mystical fury. "Tabitha, honey, how's your mother?"

"She's fine." Tabitha Stephens-Danvers hugged her mother's cousins. "She still misses dad, though…" She was now a mother herself with two twins herself by a mortal husband. Her hair was just as blonde as Sabrina's, but she always had the bluest eyes for any witch. "Look, I got this from Dr. Bombay's daughter, Troian. I thought you might need it."

Zelda opened the folder Tabitha had given her. It looked like his medical report on Samantha's examination and all the consequences that had caused it. The dream spell, the full moon, William's fracturing mind, Sabrina's involvement in these string of consequences… It was all here!

"This is perfect!" Zelda hugged the young sorceress again. "Are you going to defend Sabrina?"

"I think it would be more powerful coming from you." Tabitha answered as the room calmed once more. Samantha was still crying; Sabrina hung her head unsure what she could say to defend herself.

"Your honor…" Kelbo spoke up. "How about a Reverse Time Spell to before Sabrina's spell? It would be like this never happened."

"A Reverse Time Spell wasted on a mere mortal?" Samuels looked to him. "I think not."

"Your honor…" Zelda stepped to the edge of the gallery next to Kelbo. "I wish to present more evidence to the Witch's Council." She tossed the file up as the papers came flying out of it and then jumped back together in Samuels' hand. Taking it to his podium, he started looking through it.

"Sabrina Angelique Spellman…." He looked up first to the accused. "What say you before we pass sentence?"

"Sentence?" Zelda and Hilda exchanged glances. Sabrina looked back to Samantha crying her eyes out and shaking her head then looked back to Samuels. She lifted her tear-strewn eyes up to face him.

"It was an accident… I swear…." Her head swayed from the emotions and the humiliation. "I tried to turn him back, I really did, but… how could I send him back to such a miserable unhappy existence? His mother was getting ready to get rid of him. She was sending him against his will to live with his father, but in the last day… I've seen him the happiest he's ever been… as Samantha. So many people love her… and as irritating, embarrassing and annoying as she gets… I have to confess. I love her too… She's my sister…." Sabrina lowered her head with tears falling down it. "And if I lose her… I will miss having her in my life…" She broke down crying.

The room drew the most silent it had been since the start. Kelbo blew his nose in his handkerchief and wiped his eyes of a tear trickling down his face. Hilda nearly inaudibly called him a big softie as Samuels read the file. Everything in it basically confirmed everything he already knew.

"Oh…" Samuels looked up. "Well, she'll be missing you too after we…" He reached the last form. "Oh crap…."

"Your honor?" Charlotte Spellcraft of the Witch's Council looked to him.

"Could you read that into the record for me?" He handed the female juror the last certificate and dropped his head in embarrassment.

"Yes, your honor…" Charlotte obliged. "Certificate of Birth, signed by Doctor Amadeus Bombay, MD, DDS, PHD, OB-GYN, OMG and LOL. As a duly recognized physician and witch doctor recognized by the Witch's Council, I recognize Samantha Angelique Spellman was born October 25, 1997… fully mature… co-signed… Judge Aaron Samuels…"

She looked up to him.

"I must really start reading these things before I sign them…" The judge mumbled out-loud. "Sabrina Spellman, all charges dismissed…" Recognizing Samantha as a witch made him responsible for allowing Sabrina innocent of her actions; legally, it meant Sabrina had saved William by allowing him to share her identity. Samuels struck his gavel one last time and the jury started filing out behind the podium. The stunned gallery looked around and started mumbling to each other as they departed. Kelbo tried to get Hilda's phone number, and she reminded him he was married. Rushing to get to Sabrina, Zelda dodged five warlocks, two wizards and a short stocky dwarf to get to the bottom. Once released though, Sabrina rushed to Samantha and tried consoling her.

"Samantha… I'm sorry… I'm so sorry."

"I'm nothing…." Samantha felt lost. "I'm a freak. I'm… nothing…"

"No, that's not true!" Sabrina hugged her. "You're my sister! That's who you are!"

"Sabrina…" Samantha looked up to her and her aunts. One of the guards had the portal ready for their linen closet in the house in Westbridge. "Just turn me back into that boy… I'll leave you alone if that's what you want…"

"One minute…" The guard called.

"No." Sabrina refused. "I can't do that to you! You're my sister." She guided Samantha back through the portal back home. "How can I live without you now after knowing you?"

"But how…" Samantha passed from the linen closet back to the upstairs of the house. "But how can I go on knowing I'm not really who I really am."

"Honey…" Zelda tried to help. "We know who you are."

"That's right, sweetie…" Hilda added, but Samantha wasn't so sure. She tried thinking back harder and harder, but she couldn't recall anything she wasn't sure originally belonged to Sabrina.

"Sabrina…" Samantha spoke. "Could you remove my memories of the last hour?" She looked up. "I don't want to remember this ever happened… How could I possibly live with… this guilt?" Sabrina looked to her and back to her Aunt Zelda. Zelda then looked to Hilda and back to Sabrina and gave her permission by silently nodding her head.

"Okay…" Sabrina touched her sister's forehead. "You will forget one hour." She raised her finger and mystically drew out the memory in the form of sparkling light from her head. Samantha swooned slightly and Sabrina caught her and kept her on her feet. Feeling as if she were fainting, Samantha gasped, caught herself and looked to her and her aunts.

"How do you feel, sweetie…" Hilda asked her. Unsure what was happening, Samantha checked her watch.

"Holy crap, my TV show is on…" She turned around and raced down the stairs. Lightly catching her breath, Sabrina looked up to her aunts emotionally spent.

"Who's removing my memories of this mess?" She asked.

"Sabrina," Zelda hugged her niece. "You came through for her. She needs you." She noticed someone in Sabrina's bedroom door. It was her Quizmaster. Sabrina looked back at him.

"Of course…" Sabrina moaned and rolled her eyes. "You've got to be kidding me!' She spun around defiantly to face him then marched off to face him. "Haven't I been punished enough?"

"Don't take that sass with me young lady…" He warned her. "I'll drop kick you into the Crab Nebula…" He watched her drag her feet past him into her room when Sabrina stopped at her desk, sighed then turned around to face him. Over his shoulder, she saw her aunts glance at her one more time then split up heading through the house in different directions.

"I guess you heard…" Sabrina spoke.

"Pulled up in front of the Witch's Council and spilling your guts… No!" He comedically answered her question.

"So, what are you going to tell me?" Sabrina faced him. "That… I tried a spell I shouldn't have done, that I violated his privacy by exploring his memories, didn't turn him back when I had the chance and broke the heart of his mother by taking her son away from him. How else are you going to make me feel worse? You can't tell me anything worse that the council did."

"Well, if you're going to dwell on the negative…" Albert looked at her. "What I saw was a young lady who tried to help a young man find true love, took responsibility for her actions and then saved him from a very miserable future. Oh, you might have put a young man out of his misery, but you gave him a life that he now loves and is looking forward to. Although, if I was suddenly a young lady, I might be ticked off, but… Spellman, you really came through in the end. Bottom line… not all solutions are that simple."

"You think I did okay?"

"Sabrina, the major rule of witchcraft is that you get out of the universe three-fold what you put into it." Albert told her. "Most people shirk or ignore their responsibilities… you faced yours head on even as they kept getting worse. You did okay."

"You think?"

"Speaking of responsibilities…" Albert passed her on his mystically conjured clipboard. "I've now got to be Quizmaster for your sister, Samantha, to get her ready for her witch's license. " He paused. "Anything I should know about her?"

"She's a hugger…"

"I like her already…"