SOMEWHERE AND NOWHERE, there was a place that wasn’t really a place at all, a small golden cage dangled in a well of darkness. Inside that cage sat a witch.
Sabrina was a different kind of witch from Lilith and Cate. She knew those Glindas frowned on her. Every witch used a little magical enhancement to improve her looks. Even when the crone look was really in, most of that was done using magic. Hairy warts don’t just sprout by themselves.
Everyone knew all witches dabbled a little. It was hard to look in the mirror with the kind of power witches had and not think that it might be nice to smooth out the odd wrinkle, or straighten the odd line. Every witch did it. Well, maybe every witch except bloody Lilith.
Sabrina, on the other hand, was almost entirely constructed of artifice – only another witch would really see it, of course. Sabrina didn’t see what was wrong with looking the best you could look. A few little spells to make her dark hair glitter like it was shot with stars, to make her face a balance of delights, to make her body the shape men dreamt of, well, it just saved her spelling herself a smooth path through the rest of the world.
Pretty people got away with more, got an easier ride. That was how it had always been and how it always would be.
Sabrina had been in the golden cage for no time and for forever. There were other cages here, swinging in the dark – Sabrina wasn’t sure who or what they contained, but she was aware of them sometimes. A soft cry. A shadow in her periphery. Someone new had arrived recently, insofar as time meant anything in the endless dark. Someone who had cried out more than usual, someone human.
But Sabrina had other things to worry about than who else was here. Sabrina knew that Lilith simply didn’t know what to do with her. But one thing was for sure, she couldn’t keep her locked up like this.
Every supremely powerful witch needed an evil nemesis. You can’t rewrite rules like that.
So, when the golden cage suddenly shattered/melted/dissolved around Sabrina, she wasn’t at all surprised. And, as she tumbled through the veils between her prison world and the one she knew, she only thought for a single moment about what might have happened to Lilith to make her magic fall apart this way.