This pause was so long, Amber was nearly driven mad. She broke the silence with, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“I have a very weird theory, though I will admit that Henrietta is the one who first put the possibility in my head,” Thea said. “But I must ask … are you a witch, Amber Blackwood?”
Amber froze. Admitting the truth could go one of two ways. Thea could react the way Kim had, and nearly burst out of her own skin in excitement. Or she could react the way Jack had initially: abject fear.
What damage could this cause Amber’s already “weird” reputation if a woman like Thea Bishop knew her secret? Amber imaged being on trial, a jury box full of her “peers” gaping at her in horror over using her magic on unsuspecting non-witches.
The bell above the door chimed, jarring both women out of their staring contest. Amber had forgotten to lock the door. Had the WBI agents returned, had Molly Hargrove come to clock Amber in the face, or had another of her wares gone rogue, and a customer was here to demand an explanation?
She relaxed when she saw that it was only Chief Brown.
At least she hoped so.
He must have read the wild-eyed look of concern on her face, because the first thing out of his mouth was a loud, confident, “Hinklebert.”
Amber sagged in relief.
The chief strode across the shop with a hand extended. He was in full uniform. “You must be Thea Bishop. We spoke on the phone Saturday. I’m Owen Brown, the police chief. I didn’t realize you were in town already.”
Thea seemed a bit dazed, her theatrical assessment of Amber interrupted before it had reached its conclusion. “Ah, yes. Hello, Chief Brown. I arrived early Sunday afternoon.”
So she’d been wandering the streets of Edgehill for nearly a full day. Goodness knew how many gossip-hounds she’d talked to.
Now that there was another person in the room, Thea didn’t seem as keen to get back to their earlier conversation. But she did offer an over-the-top laugh, and said, “How curious that you should show up when you did, chief. It’s almost as if she conjured you here by magic!”
Amber’s laugh was both too loud and shrill.
The chief’s blond brows bunched up as he eyed Amber curiously. Then he refocused on Thea. “The only magic that brought me over here is the scent of Betty Harris’s cakes from across the street. I should have figured there would still be a line. When I saw the lights on here, I came over to make sure everything was okay since Amber had shut the shop down for a few days after the incident with the toy bear.”
Amber almost chucked the entire cash register at his head.
“Ah, so that’s why you’ve closed up shop,” Thea said, attention swiveling back to Amber. “Was there a problem with one of your toys? And on the heels of my sister’s condition as well?” She pulled her cell phone out of her purse as she spoke. “I think it might be time to call for an inspection of your shop, Miss Blackwood. I worry your products are unsafe.”
Unsafe. The same word used in Molly Hargrove’s article.
Amber shot a panicked look at the chief, who shot a panicked look back. While Thea scrolled through her contacts, the chief started to mime a complicated series of movements. As she watched him in dismay, she decided then and there that if there were ever a chance for them to be on a charades team together, she would pick someone else to be paired with. Anyone else. A potted plant, even!
He seemed to be mimicking a chimpanzee now. Perhaps she should heave the cash register at his head just to put him out of his own misery.
Clearly her mouthing “What?” at him every other second had finally frustrated him beyond measure because he finally shouted, “Memory wipe!”
Thea abruptly stopped her endless swiping and whirled toward the chief. “You know she’s a witch?”
“You know she’s a witch?”
“I speculated but you just confirmed it,” Thea said. “Not only is Miss Blackwood selling dangerous items to people who have no idea what they’re really buying, but the chief of police is complicit in this town-wide deceit?”
Before Amber’s jaw could hit the counter, the shop lights went out, Thea’s eyes rolled back in her head, and the woman slumped to the floor. Chief Brown yelped, followed by a series of curses. He spun to look out the windows of the shop, clearly concerned someone had witnessed the whole thing. The lights being off would help throw things into shadow, but it was still the middle of the day.
“Why on earth did you let that woman carry on like that!” Aunt Gretchen said, standing outside the open Employee Only door. Her chest heaved slightly. “Chief Brown is right. We need to wipe her memory.”
“How much of it?” Amber asked, still behind the counter as if her feet were rooted to the floor.
“From the moment she stepped in here, I’d say,” Aunt G said, hurrying over to crouch by the woman’s prone form.
Amber instantly lost sight of her when she dropped to her knees, finally giving Amber the impetus to get moving. She rushed around the counter to join her aunt.
The chief still stood by the door, lightly wringing his hands. “She’s already suspicious of you. How are you going to explain away her lost chunk of time?”
Amber and Aunt G shared a “beats me” look that did nothing to calm the chief’s nerves. They stood once they were sure Thea was out cold, evidenced by the loud snoring, and was comfortably sprawled out on her back.
Amber began to pace. “Okay, so given that she wants to get an inspection, we can assume that the whole ‘magic is real’ bombshell is probably not going to go over well with her. We can wipe her memory of everything that we just discussed, but, like Owen says, she’ll probably be aware of the gap in time—”
“Do you know if Henrietta has any other family?” Aunt G asked. “Parents, other siblings, nosy cousins …”
Amber cocked her head. “I’m not sure. Why?”
“Just wondering who might come looking for her if she disappears,” Aunt G said.
Amber knew her aunt was a problem solver through and through, and that she would do anything for Amber and Willow, but Amber never would have thought she’d have to worry about her aunt being … murderous.
“Mrs. Blackwood …” the chief said slowly, taking a step toward her aunt with a hand out. Clearly he was just as distressed by the implication of Aunt G’s words as Amber was. “Let’s not do anything rash.”
Aunt G ignored them both, turned toward the snoring body on the floor, and aimed both of her palms toward Thea. She quickly spoke the words of a spell. Amber didn’t recognize the incantation for what it was until the last few words. When the realization hit, her cry of, “Aunt G, no!” was too late.
In the next instant, Thea Bishop—a redheaded sleeping woman—turned into a rust-colored hamster.
“Oh my God!” Amber yelped.
Chief Brown let out a high-pitched scream one would normally hear on a playground populated by small children. “You said the hamster spell was just a joke!”
And then he fainted dead away.
“Oh my God!” Amber yelped again.
The crash of his large body on the floor startled the already quaking hamster, and the tiny furry creature took off like a shot.
“Oh, poo!” Aunt G said, then scurried after the hamster, who had run along the edge of the counter, rounded it, and then disappeared somewhere behind.
“Oh my God, Aunt G!” Amber said, running after her, realizing she sounded like Kim. “What did you do!”
“We needed a solution more permanent than a sleep spell!” Aunt G said, now on her hands and knees behind the counter, searching for the terrified rodent.
“Permanent?” Amber shrieked, on her hands and knees now, too. “Is that what you meant by Thea ‘disappearing’?”
“Good grief, little mouse, no. Ha. My little mouse is looking for a little hamster,” Aunt G said, clearly amused with herself. Amber assumed she was smiling ruefully, but she currently only had a view of her aunt’s backside cl
ad in black stretchy pants covered in cat hair. “A spell like this will last a good twenty-four hours, as opposed to only one or two with a sleep spell that we’d need to keep reinforcing. This one will buy us some more time.”
“Is she going to remember being a hamster?” Amber asked. A small gap in time in Thea’s memory would have been strange, but memories of being a rodent for twenty-hours surely would be harder for Thea to reconcile. And harder for Amber to explain away.
For being a practical woman, this decision was decidedly the least practical one her aunt had ever come up with.
“You know, I’m not sure,” Aunt G said, poking around near the base of the apothecary wall where the supplies for packaging the tea blends were stored—boxes filled with logo stickers, plastic bags, and small containers. “I panicked, truthfully. This Thea woman makes me nervous, and with a Penhallow already in town, it seemed like an additional problem we didn’t need.”
As if turning a human into a hamster wasn’t an “additional problem.”
Amber hadn’t even told her aunt about the WBI’s visit yet.
A small squeak sounded to Amber’s right where her purse was stored. A tiny rust-colored face poked over the lip of her bag. The wealth of whiskers and tiny black nose twitched nervously when one of its beady black eyes locked with Amber’s.
“Hey, Thea,” Amber said softly.
The hamster let out another squeak and dove farther into the purse. Amber quickly snatched the bag out of its hiding place and zipped the top closed. There was a small gap on the right-hand side that Thea could still wriggle out of if she tried hard enough, but this way Amber could at least keep Thea secured until they found a better place to keep her. Amber stood, purse in hand.
Aunt G was on her feet now, too, brushing off her knees. “I’ll head over to a pet shop and see if we can find a cage for her. You stay here and keep Thea occupied.”
Clutching her purse to her chest as if it were made of glass, Amber silently watched her aunt squeeze past her and walk up the stairs.
A groan from the other side of the room reminded Amber that the chief was still here. He pushed himself into a seated position, using the front door as a backrest as he rubbed one of his temples. All at once, he seemed to remember where he was and quickly scrambled to his feet. He swayed a bit as he did so and propped a hand on the door to steady himself.
When he shot her an incredulous look, as if silently demanding that she confirm he hadn’t actually seen what he’d saw, she held up her purse. Even though there was muted chatter from outside, and the faint creaking of Aunt G moving around upstairs—presumably getting her things together for her trip to the pet store—even Chief Brown heard the angry squeaks and rummaging coming from inside her handbag. His eyes widened. “My God.”
Amber imagined Thea was fully aware that she was a human who was now a hamster and was furious. There was no doubt in Amber’s mind that Thea was chewing holes in all Amber’s credit cards and was revenge-peeing on everything else.
“What was she thinking?” the chief hissed and speed-walked over to her, shooting panicked looks over his shoulder as he did. “Is she stuck like that?”
“I don’t know! Aunt G said it’ll last at least a day,” Amber said, then flinched when the furious scratching inside her purse grew more frantic.
“My God,” he muttered again.
Amber swallowed. “Aunt G is going to the store to pick up a cage.”
“A cage? Amber. This … you can’t … I mean—” the chief stammered, only to be cut off by his cell phone ringing. He fished the phone out of his pocket, stared down at the screen, and then cursed. “I have to take this. I’ll call you later. Just … I … my God, I don’t even know what to say.”
With that, he headed for the door. The bell chimed, signaling his departure just as he answered the call.
Thea offered another very angry series of squeaks, followed by what sounded like gnawing. Face screwed up in horror, Amber held her purse out in front of her as if it were about to detonate and headed for the stairs. She passed Aunt G who was on the way down, jangling Amber’s spare car keys as she went.
“Be back soon!” Aunt G shouted at the purse. “I’ll get you some nice fluffy bedding and a few chew toys to keep you busy! This’ll be like a relaxing vacation, just you wait and see.”
Amber blinked at her aunt in shock. Perhaps the stress of everything had finally made the woman snap.
Squeak! said Thea.
Amber had to agree.
Chapter 10
For the next several hours, Amber busied herself in her shop. She had tried working with Aunt Gretchen on the next set of toy orders, but the two had gotten into a snippy fight over the state of Amber’s kitchen. Instead of either one being a levelheaded adult and calling the other out for being upset over something bigger than dirty dishes, Amber had stormed downstairs with the hamster cage, and then decided to deep clean the shop.
Thea was in her cage on the counter now while Amber used a citrus-scented wood polish on her shelves. Amber was growing laughably behind on her toy orders, but she couldn’t stay cooped up with her aunt right now.
For as long as Amber could remember, Aunt Gretchen had been consistently consistent. She had her core rules and convictions and stuck by them no matter what. When Aunt G made a promise, she kept it. When she made a decision, she stuck with it. When she put forth a rule, she expected you always to follow it.
One such rule when Amber and Willow were growing up had been, “No flashy magic.” Magic used to defend yourself or others when things were dire was the one exception. And even then, Aunt G chose spells that would cause the least amount of ripple effect. Amber and Aunt G had gotten into countless fights when Amber was a teenager. Most had been about the death of Amber’s parents and her theory that Penhallows had been behind it. But the others had been about the use of magic itself. Aunt G had held so steadfastly to the rule that magic needed to be suppressed that Amber and Willow would push the issue solely to see their aunt get riled up.
The suppression of magic had been beaten into Amber’s head for so long, that now even using a simple tincture or sleep spell made her anxious.
A scrabbling sound drew her focus across the shop at the cage. Thea was running around, knocking bits of bedding out onto the counter.
No flashy magic.
Aunt G had turned an innocent woman into a rodent. It was such an antithesis to Aunt G’s usual behavior that it scared Amber. Scared her so much, she would rather ignore her piling responsibilities and scrub her shelves than face what might really be going on.
It was cowardly of her, she knew, but the fact that Aunt G wasn’t forcing Amber to talk about any of it spoke volumes, too. Something was very amiss here.
When the ward on the front door dropped, Amber nearly yelped, so lost she’d been in her thoughts. She turned just as the jangle of the bell above the door sounded and in walked Willow.
Amber wiped her hands on a rag as she approached her sister, ready to chastise her for leaving her alone so long with their aunt who was clearly going through something, but Amber came up short when Willow looked at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face splotchy.
“Oh, Will …” Amber said and tossed the rag over her shoulder so she could take her sister’s hands. “What did that awful Connor Declan do?”
Willow shook her head, gaze diverted. She tried to pull her hands from Amber’s grasp, but Amber held firm. “Did you get a new pet?”
When Amber had finished telling Willow about who the hamster was and how she got that way, Willow’s mouth hung open. “What happened to ‘no flashy magic’?”
“Exactly,” Amber said. “We can talk about Aunt G later. What happened with Connor? Do you want me to turn him into a hamster? He can keep Thea company.”
Thea issued a squeak at this—whether she was excited or horrified by the idea, Amber couldn’t tell.
Willow managed a watery laugh, then sniffed. “I’m such an idiot, Amber.”
Frowning, Amber said, “Hang on a second.” She went to her cooking nook to start the hot plate to make them some hot chocolate. Then she moved Thea off the counter and encouraged Willow to hop up onto it. They sat side by side, Thea’s cage on the floor directly in front of them a few feet away. “Okay, lay it on me.”
It took Willow a few long seconds to start talking. “Lunch was actually really nice at first,” she said. “We just talked about old times for a while before I got up the nerve to ask him about us, you know?”
Amber nodded.
“He said he and Molly are just ‘casual,’ whatever that means,” Willow said, sniffing again. “He said they’ve been together a lot working on some big, secret story and that’s why he’s been MIA. But, I mean, even if you’re busy with work, you can at least answer a couple messages. Even if it’s just to say you’re too busy to talk.”
When she fell silent for a while, Amber waited her out. Eventually Amber hopped off the counter long enough to make their hot chocolate—a caramel drizzle for Willow, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper for Amber. She had drained half her mug before Willow started talking again. She just held hers, staring into the mug while the whipped cream on top melted.
“After we ate, we got some ice cream,” Willow said. “We ate it in Balinese Park and talked. He got flirty, and talked about the good old days, and he said I look really pretty today—his usual flirty thing. I … I got so frustrated with him that I used a truth spell on him.”
Growing up, truth spells had been on the “no flashy magic” list. It was the kind of spell that always had a consequence—whether it was ticking off the WBI, inadvertently getting a woman turned into a rodent, or opening a can of worms that was better left closed.
Willow finally took a sip of her hot chocolate, and after wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she said, “I asked him how he truly felt about me.” She let out a long sigh. “He said he’s always been in love with me but was too scared to pursue it because he didn’t want to ruin what we had.”
Pawsitively Betrayed Page 12
