Pawsitively Betrayed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “I don’t know what Kieran’s plan is,” Amber said after a moment. “No one knows how he got out either. He either magicked his way out or someone else did. It could have been someone who knew his magic has been healed. It could have been someone who broke him out because it was healed. It could be a fellow Penhallow … or it could be someone else entirely.”

  “And it could be someone who is connected to what’s happening with your shop,” Jack said, “or it could be a coincidence.”

  “Exactly,” Amber said. “And until I know, I’ll feel better keeping the shop closed. It’s the one thing I can control right now. We’re working on a way to figure out who’s a Penhallow and who isn’t. I’m just trapped here until then.”

  “I’m really sorry this is happening,” Jack said. “Especially on the eve of the Here and Meow.”

  Amber sighed.

  “Tell you what … I’ve got dinner covered,” he said. “Text me what you guys want and I’ll drop it off tonight. And don’t protest. If you do, I’ll bring you ten olive, pineapple, and anchovy pizzas. Don’t make me waste food, Amber.”

  She laughed. “Fine. And thank you.”

  “Of course,” he said, quickly followed by a grunt. “Ugh, I gotta go. Larry is waving me down. I think the Dungeons & Dragons group is back. Those nerds eat a lot of scones.”

  Amber was still smiling softy to herself as she hung up, then let out a startled yelp when the mental alarm in her head went off. Someone was trying to get into the shop without permission. Quickly glancing up, she rapidly scrolled through a list of things she could use as a weapon. But she immediately relaxed when she saw the wild-eyed brunette at her door.

  “It’s okay!” Amber called out, hoping her aunt and sister could hear her. “It’s just Kim!”

  With a quick incantation, Amber dropped the spell on the front door and went to pull it open, only to hesitate with her fingers on the deadbolt. If the Penhallows were doing their best to work past Amber’s defenses and wear her down, showing up wearing Kim’s face was a good way to do it.

  Amber opened the door, but only a crack, and peered out at her friend. The scent of food—most likely sandwiches—hit Amber’s nose and her stomach rumbled. Kim held up a large white paper bag with the words “Catty Melt” stamped on the front.

  A glamour changed the way someone looked, not the way they thought. So even if this were a Penhallow who looked like Kim, they wouldn’t have the same memories as Kim.

  “What did you get me?” Amber asked in a way that she hoped was casual and not accusatory.

  Kim’s brow creased. “A turkey on rye with no mustard. The usual. Why?”

  Amber let her in. Once the door was locked behind her friend, Amber filled Kim in on what she’d missed since this morning.

  “Holy mackerel,” Kim said. “I’ve been trying to keep out of your hair since that voicemail you left yesterday, but then I heard the shop was closed down! That’s why I came over with sympathy sandwiches. I just didn’t think things could have gotten this bad this fast.”

  “The worst part of all this,” Amber said, “is that I don’t know how Henrietta is doing. I just wish I knew if her tea had been tampered with the same way the toys had been, or if what happened to her really was my fault.”

  “I don’t believe for a second that it was anything you did,” Kim said. “But it’s giving me the worst flashbacks of what happened to Melanie. If Whitney and Susie weren’t already in jail, I would say it was them.” Then Kim gasped. “What if it’s not a Penhallow at all, but a copycat!”

  Amber doubted that was the case.

  Kim placed the large bag of sandwiches on the counter and pulled out one wrapped in brown paper. It was held closed with a strip of masking tape, and Amber’s name was written on it in black marker. Kim pointed the sandwich at Amber like it was a fencing foil. “This is not just a sympathy sandwich, but a bribery sandwich.”

  Cocking a brow, Amber said, “Oh?”

  “I’m friends with Terri over at Edgehill General. I was there this morning talking to her about Henrietta. I bring the nurses doughnuts and coffee once a week, so they all love me. Anyway, she said we could go in to see Henrietta this afternoon! I know she’s in a coma and all, but Terri said it helps coma patients sometimes to hear familiar voices, you know?”

  Amber did know, but she wondered if it was protocol to let non-family members in so soon. After all, not even Henrietta’s sister had been in to see her yet. At least Amber didn’t think so.

  “I was also thinking … that if this Thea person is as much of a hardnose as she sounds, this may be your only chance to see Henrietta before Thea gets here. Be proud of me! I bribed nurses instead of bugging you yesterday when you clearly needed to be with your family. I showed incredible restraint,” Kim said.

  Amber laughed. “I’m quite proud.”

  Kim grinned. “Also … maybe … oh, I don’t know, you could try to figure out what happened to Hen like you did with Melanie?”

  Amber chewed on her bottom lip. As much as she wanted to go, if only to see Henrietta and to see for herself that she was alive, the idea of walking into a place full of unfamiliar faces made Amber uneasy.

  “I’ll be your bodyguard,” Kim said, waving the wrapped sandwich around as if she were going to stab unseen assailants with it. “No one will talk to you if you don’t want them to. I’m the festival director of the Here-and-flippin’-Meow. I can handle anything.”

  Smiling, Amber said, “Okay, but on one condition: let’s see if Willow has made any progress yet.”

  “I got them sympathy-slash-bribery sandwiches, too. Well, I got Willow two of them since she eats like a linebacker,” Kim said, depositing Amber’s sandwich back in the bag and then following Amber up the stairs.

  Willow was sitting cross-legged on Amber’s bed, a pen caught between her teeth as she stared down at the yellow legal pad on the comforter.

  Stopping at the foot of the bed, Amber asked Willow, “How’s it going?”

  Willow flinched. “Oh! Hi. Hi, Kim. I didn’t hear you guys come in.” She sniffed the air suddenly. “Are those Catty Melt sandwiches?”

  “Yes, and you can have one after you tell me about the spell.”

  “Oh, right,” Willow said, then climbed off the bed with her legal pad. “I think I’ve got one working for at least a basic glamour. Let’s test it out. That’s the spell there,” she said, pointing to a circled piece of scribbled text at the bottom of the page. “I’ll glamour myself. You read the spell, and then we’ll see if it works.”

  Shrugging, Amber read over the spell a few times to get comfortable with the words. Her own magic felt a bit reluctant every time she read it. As always, her intention was the most important part of casting a spell. I want to detect glamours so I can protect my family from the Penhallows.

  Her magic remained sluggish.

  Okay, so that wasn’t quite right. Often, one’s intention was far more selfish than one wanted to believe.

  I want to detect glamours so I’m not caught by surprise.

  Her magic thrummed.

  Amber looked up when Kim gasped. Standing before Amber wasn’t Willow, but the redheaded Sienna Tate. It was the persona Amber herself had taken on last month when she had been trying to ferret out who had killed the police chief of Marbleglen.

  “That is so cool!” Kim said.

  Amber ignored her, if only to help keep herself focused. With her intention true and alive in her mind, she mentally uttered the spell. The glamour didn’t peel off Willow so much as turn it translucent. Aura came to mind. Or even the way ghosts were often represented on TV. There was a see-through version of Sienna that lay on top of Willow’s natural form.

  “What do you two see?” Amber asked Kim and Aunt G.

  “Pretty redheaded girl,” Aunt G said.

  “Anything else?” Amber asked.

  Aunt G and Kim shared a look, then shrugged.

  “This is a really good start, Will,” Amber told her sis
ter.

  “Cool. I’ll keep working on it,” Willow said, both Sienna’s translucent mouth and Willow’s own solid one talking at once. “I don’t know how long this one will last. I’m guessing the more times it has to reveal someone’s true face to you, the quicker it’ll wear off.”

  Full of apprehension, Amber followed Kim back down the stairs.

  Edgehill General was located on the east side of town, where a large portion of the town’s population lived—including Kim. The town’s biggest grocery store, the closest thing Edgehill had to a mall, and Edgehill High were all also on this side of town.

  Amber had brought her grimoire with her, and on the drive to the hospital, she worked on crafting a spell she could use on Henrietta. It would be similar to the one she used on Melanie in the morgue. While Amber had had no idea how a memory reveal spell might work on a person after they’d passed, she also had no idea how it would work on someone in a coma.

  She had initially tried to explain her plan to Kim, but Kim was so enthralled by it all that they almost got into several accidents each time she slammed on the brakes whenever a detail was especially exciting. So Amber decided to keep the rest of it to herself. Otherwise, they might arrive at the hospital as patients, rather than visitors.

  The hospital looked more like a high school than a sprawling complex found in large cities. A large, peaked awning sat above the entrance of the one-story building, the façade made up of brick and tan stucco. The sliding glass doors were flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows on either side.

  Amber had written the spell she needed on a scrap of paper she’d stuffed into her pocket, but had decided to keep her grimoire in her purse. Leaving it behind in Kim’s car felt dangerous, but so did carrying it with her. This Penhallow threat had turned Amber into a skittish rabbit and she didn’t like it one bit. All of her progress over the last few months felt like it was unraveling, like a moth-eaten sweater. As Amber walked with Kim along the shade-dappled sidewalk, she tried to relax her racing heart.

  This hospital isn’t swarming with Penhallows, she assured herself. What business would any of them have here? Of course, if Henrietta’s current state had been the result of the Penhallows, then perhaps one of them was loitering at the hospital, like a murderer who revisits the scene of a crime.

  The door to the hospital whispered open, letting out a wave of too-cold air. Kim marched over the threshold with no hesitation and headed down the threadbare navy blue carpet that lined the walkway. A few photographs lined one side of the hall in random intervals—mostly benign landscapes in old-fashioned, faux-silver frames. The only décor on the other side was a sad-looking Ficus tree in a wicker pot, a few pieces of loose fake Spanish moss littering the ground at its base.

  Straight ahead sat a U-shaped nurse’s station where two women were busy with work, their heads bowed. They each had a head of short, curly brown hair and were wearing green scrubs. Amber and Kim were a few feet from the station when one of the women looked up and grinned.

  “Well, hey there, Kimmy!” the middle-aged woman said, waving enthusiastically. She quickly let herself out of the back of the U and hurried around the desk so she could give Kim a hug. The woman was just barely five feet tall and was a bit portly. Once she broke the embrace, she said, “Two visits in one day? I hope you didn’t bring any more doughnuts.” She patted her stomach. “I’m going to have to start walking ten miles a day instead of five if you keep this up!”

  Kim laughed. “No more doughnuts until next week, I promise.”

  The woman smiled; it lit up the room.

  “Terri, you know Amber, right?” Kim asked.

  Amber held out a hand when Terri turned her bright smile toward her. “Nice to meet you.”

  Terri shook it, then patted the back of Amber’s hand. “You as well, sweets. And, for the record, I don’t believe a word about what they say about you.”

  Uh …

  Kim offered a short, hysterical laugh that caused Amber, Terri, and the other nurse at the station to all flinch. “Can we still see Henrietta? We both don’t have much of a lunch break left …”

  “Oh!” Terri said and tapped herself on the nose twice with a pointer finger. “You bet. Follow me.”

  They headed down another hallway straight back from the nurse’s station, then took a quick right into another hallway. This one was lined with closed doors, reminding Amber of a quiet hotel lobby more than a hospital. But then Amber remembered that the noisier surgery and emergency section of the hospital had a separate entrance. And if the surgery needed was extensive or the emergency was truly dire, patients often had to be transported to a bigger city nearby.

  Terri stopped halfway down the hall and knocked on a door to her left. She smiled sheepishly over her shoulder at Kim and Amber. “I know she can’t give me permission to enter, but I like giving her the chance anyway. She’s been here two full days now.” Terri waited a moment, heard nothing, and then opened the door.

  It was a tiny room with a single bed. A boxy TV was mounted on the wall across from it, the screen off. A set of heavy curtains on the wall opposite the door were pulled open to reveal a small courtyard. Beyond the window, an older man sat on a stone bench in a bathrobe.

  Henrietta lay unconscious in the small bed. She was neatly tucked under the cream-colored blanket, her arms lying by her sides. A monitor on a stand stood by the bed, the screen awash with blinking lights and pulsing lines. A few wires snaked from one hand and arm, and into the monitor displaying Henrietta’s vital signs.

  The woman’s signature wild mop of curly red hair was splayed out across the white pillowcase. The vibrant red made Henrietta’s pale skin look even paler. Though the beeping screen beside her prone form implied Henrietta was still alive, her ghostly pallor and stillness spoke to something much worse.

  Oh, Henrietta …

  “I’ll leave you two here to have a private chat, hm?” Terri said. “Just talk to her as you would normally. It truly does help brain function.”

  With that, Terri ducked out of the room and softly closed the door behind her.

  “Okay!” Kim said in her best “we’re on a clandestine mission!” voice, and immediately began creeping around the room.

  After a few long seconds of watching Kim move around the room like she was in a spy movie, Amber said, “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for cameras!” Kim said. “We need to make sure we’re not being watched.”

  Amber rolled her eyes, but she did a quick search, too. After they decided they weren’t under surveillance, Amber dropped her purse onto the lone chair in the room and took the scribbled spell out of her pocket.

  She studied it a moment, double-checked her intention, and then approached Henrietta’s bedside. Blowing out a breath, she grabbed hold of Henrietta’s hand, this one without anything attached to her pale skin. Unlike Melanie’s hand, which had been cold and stiff, Henrietta’s hand was warm. This bolstered Amber’s hope more than the rhythmic beeping of the monitor on the other side of the bed.

  Closing her eyes, Amber spoke the words of the spell, willing Henrietta to find a way to let Amber know what her last memory had been. Amber knew Henrietta had been on the phone with Thea when she’d collapsed, but if Henrietta hadn’t been met with foul play in the way Melanie had been, it was very likely that Henrietta’s last memory would reveal nothing.

  A time spell was too risky at the moment, especially when Amber didn’t have a solid time when this phone call had taken place, or how soon after that second cup of tea Henrietta had started to feel somewhat off. Not to mention the fact that Henrietta was currently lost, in a way, in her own mind. What happened just before she fell ill could feel like it had happened years ago, while something that happened when she was ten could feel like yesterday.

  Amber imagined Henrietta trapped in her body, slipping below the surface of her own memories like they were dark, turbulent waves trying to carry her under. She envisioned Henrietta’s hand above the surface, grasp
ing for someone or something to pull her to safety.

  Usually, when Amber used her time or memory magic, a bright burst of light tore through her vision. This time, it was a muted flash, like the last dying pulse of a flashlight before the batteries went dead.

  Amber’s mind filled with a familiar view of Russian Blue Avenue, not the inside of Henrietta’s house, as Amber had expected. Henrietta walked down the sidewalk with a purchase from The Quirky Whisker, given the brief glances of the bag Amber could make out in her peripheral vision. She soon made a left around the side of the building toward the parking lot. Amber realized then that there was no sound in this memory. Or, rather, the sound was as muted as the light had been earlier. A low hum of voices, like a TV kept at a low volume, was all she could hear despite the sidewalks being packed with people. Which spoke to this potentially being a recent memory, as Edgehill was busiest during the Here and Meow, summer, and the winter holidays. People’s attire implied spring more than summer, but Amber couldn’t be sure of that.

  Henrietta had just reached her car when a slight uptick in sound made her turn. Molly Hargrove stood a few feet away, her face contorted. She pointed a finger at Henrietta and shouted something. Henrietta said something back, then hurried to unlock the door. Molly reached her before Henrietta could get the car door open and yanked Henrietta back by the elbow. The two women shouted at each other. Amber tried to read Molly’s lips, but the argument was too frantic, and over too soon, for Amber to grasp much of anything beyond the fact that it had been an emotional exchange.

  Henrietta eventually got herself into her car, tossed her bag into the passenger seat, and then took off out of the parking lot, leaving Molly standing there alone, her chest heaving.

  The muted flash of white signified the end of the memory, and Amber was kicked back out into the present, disoriented. She quickly let go of Henrietta’s hand and placed her own on her forehead. The room spun.

  The monitor beside the bed gave a shrill whine and then the beeps sped up at an alarming rate. Henrietta’s forehead creased slightly. Was she waking up?