Pawsitively Betrayed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “That …” Kim said, “is Henrietta’s sister?”

  The hamster squeaked, then started running around her cage at an alarming speed, sending pieces of her bedding out of the cage’s slats and onto the seat.

  Amber winced. “Yes. She’s supposed to turn back into a human around noon, but I didn’t trust my cats or my aunt around her, so I brought her with us.”

  “Holy smokes,” Kim muttered. It took her a while to finally sit properly in her seat. “What are you going to do when she turns back?”

  “I really don’t know. I can’t let her tell everyone in town—and possibly beyond—that I’m a witch,” Amber said. “Can you imagine what parents like Sally Long would do if they found out the toys they’ve been buying for their kids all these years are magic-powered? She was livid when she thought it was a normal toy that had exploded. If she finds out that it was otherworldly, she’ll go postal. It won’t just be my business in danger if that rumor catches fire.”

  Kim pursed her lips, then shot a quick look over her shoulder at the hamster who was now munching on a carrot-shaped piece of wood. Amber couldn’t be sure, but the hamster seemed to be glaring at Amber while she gnawed away. “What if you guys keep her as a hamster until all this nonsense with the Penhallows is sorted out, or until Henrietta wakes up—whichever happens first. Would she get stuck like that?”

  Amber shrugged, surprised Kim was even suggesting this. “I don’t know.”

  “I’d be happy to pet sit tonight to help you get some sleep,” Kim said. “I’m sure Jack would help, too. We can rotate who has her until you figure out what to do … and so Tom and Alley don’t eat her.”

  Squeak!

  “I’m sorry to dump all this on you,” Amber said after a moment. “This is almost too much for me to handle. But I can’t tell you how much it helps to talk about this stuff with someone who isn’t my family. Well, I can talk to the chief about it, but he literally fainted when Thea turned into a hamster.”

  Kim cackled. “Lightweight.”

  Amber grinned at her.

  They got back to The Quirky Whisker just before noon. Amber and Kim were both rather terrified that they wouldn’t get the hamster to Aunt G in time and that Thea would snap back into her human form while still in the cage. Thea was currently covered by the bedding so completely that the only evidence of her presence was the movement of the shavings as she rooted around underneath them.

  Once the door was unlocked, Kim hauled tail up the steps while Amber locked up and reset the alarm. A shriek from upstairs sent Amber tearing off across the shop and into her studio apartment.

  Kim had Tom, who was wriggling in Kim’s grasp as if all his bones had turned liquid, clutched in her arms. Alley sat primly in a chair, her eyes wide and fixed on the hamster cage on the dining room table.

  Aunt G and Willow stood on either side of the cage, and Aunt G was already well into the incantation of the spell that would add at least another twenty-four hours to Thea’s hamster sentence. Thea was flat on her back, her four feet in the air. She wasn’t moving.

  “Oh my God,” Amber yelped, squatting by the cage. “What happened to her?”

  Willow had a paintbrush’s handle poked between the slats of the cage and was gently jostling the bedding near Thea’s unmoving body. “I don’t know, but I’m too scared to open the cage yet.”

  “What are we going to tell Henrietta?” Kim asked. “Ow! Tom! Stop biting me!”

  Aunt G finished her spell and slowly lowered her hands to her sides. There was no sound in the room as they all stared at Thea. Well, no sound other than Kim and Tom’s battle of wills.

  Amber sat in a chair opposite Alley and leaned so close to the cage that the tip of her nose practically poked between the slats. “Thea?” she whispered, heart in her throat. Had all this excitement and spell-use been too much for the hamster’s little heart? Even if Thea’s consciousness was still alive in the rodent, she couldn’t have weighed more than two ounces. Amber couldn’t imagine that a hamster’s nervous system was resilient enough to handle all this.

  Thea’s little feet were still pointing to the roof of her cage, her mouth was slightly open—revealing her large yellow teeth—and her rounded ears lay flat against the bedding. A full minute went by with no movement from inside the cage. As Amber stared at the stiff-looking rodent body, she wondered how Aunt G was going to cope with the reality that she’d just murdered someone.

  And then one beady little black eye opened—the one pointed in Amber’s direction. The other eye remained closed. When Thea’s gaze met Amber’s, she quickly shut her eye again.

  Amber sat up and gasped. “She’s faking!”

  The hamster suddenly wriggled and got herself upright, then darted to the side of the cage where Amber was crouched and used those large teeth to start chewing on the bars.

  Aunt G, Willow, and Kim heaved out a collective breath of relief.

  Amber put her face to the cage again so she could be level with Thea’s tiny face. “I don’t like this any more than you do, but you have to understand why we had to do something drastic, don’t you? This is the worst time for you to be here. You don’t know what trouble your investigation could cause.”

  Thea chewed even harder on the bars, grunting and squeaking as she did. She clearly didn’t care about Amber’s reasons. Amber couldn’t say she blamed her.

  “That wasn’t very nice, Thea!” Kim snapped, still doing her best to keep Tom in her arms. “We could let the cats have you as a snack, you know!”

  Thea dove under the bedding.

  While Aunt G, Willow, and Kim discussed the best place to keep Thea for the night, Amber found her attention pulled toward her window. The noise from Russian Blue Avenue was a steady hum during Here and Meow week, so she was used to that, but the sound was more intense than usual. She took a squirming Tom from Kim and then walked over to the window to peer outside.

  Amber could clearly see the line outside Purrfectly Scrumptious, snaking even farther down the sidewalk now that Betty had her Best of Edgehill sticker affixed to her shopfront window. But there seemed to be activity on Amber’s side now, too.

  People in the Purrfectly Scrumptious line were focused more on what was happening outside The Quirky Whisker. Amber couldn’t angle her neck just right to see what was happening below her. People aimed their phones toward the shop, while others got out of the line in front of the bakery and ran across the street.

  The mental alarm bell triggered by uninvited shop guests went off. All three Blackwood women winced in unison.

  Without saying anything to her family or Kim, Amber deposited Tom on the window bench seat, hurried across the apartment, grabbed the hamster cage’s handle, and then nearly flew down the stairs, terrified of what she might find waiting for her at her shop’s door.

  Chapter 12

  Peering out the Employee Only door, Amber half expected to find the windows smashed and her store looted. She hadn’t heard the shatter of glass to accompany the mental alarm, but that didn’t stop her from assuming the worst.

  The shop itself looked fine, though. It was quiet and dark: the shop’s usual, now. The swarm of people outside it, however, was new. They weren’t huddled against the windows with their faces cupped to the glass. There were no pounding fists or contorted faces. And, blessedly, no pitchforks.

  Their focus wasn’t on the shop itself, but on the figure whose back was pressed against the glass door. The person had several people standing in front of him, shielding the person from the mob holding up their cameras and phones.

  Then the person turned and faced Amber, a wild look in his eye. The recessed doorway of the shop, plus him being crowded into a small space, cast him into shadow despite it being the middle of afternoon with the sun high in the sky. Something like recognition tickled her memory.

  Someone behind her screamed. Then someone else did. But it wasn’t a scream of terror.

  It was more of a squeal, really.

  “Is tha
t John Huntley?” Willow and Kim yelped in unison.

  And then the semi-shadowed face peering in at her solidified in Amber’s mind. It was John Huntley. Heartthrob and county music phenom. Here. At her shop.

  And about to be torn apart by rabid fans.

  Amber quickly deposited Thea on the counter—even as a hamster, she seemed to have recognized him and had gone silent—and then rushed to the front door, fumbling with the lock. The spell on the door dropped just as she reached it and Amber silently thanked Aunt G for her help. Once the door was open, John Huntley and three men who must have been bodyguards flooded inside. A swell of excited shouts and screams poured in after them. Amber just barely got the door closed again before two wild-eyed teenage girls flung themselves at the door. One cursed at Amber as she locked the door again, while the other burst into tears.

  The alarm spell went up a second later. Amber winced when the cursing girl shoved hard on the locked door and the metal alarm buzzed in Amber’s brain.

  She turned to face her new guests.

  All three bodyguards looked like they’d been purchased from a catalogue and shared the same model number. They were about six feet tall, had dark, short-cropped hair, brown eyes, bulky physiques, and wore all black. They looked more like a cross between Secret Service and special ops agents than the bodyguards of a celebrity, but when one was as famous as John Huntley, maybe this was the level of protection one needed.

  One bodyguard moved toward the door; Amber scurried out of his way. He turned to face the door, his stance wide and his hands clasped in front of him. He didn’t appear remotely fazed by the pair of emotional teenage girls whaling on the door. One still sobbed while the angry one had switched tack and was attempting to negotiate now. Amber figured the guard wore a flat expression and stared past the pleading girls, never breaking his expression, much like the guards outside Buckingham Palace.

  John Huntley stood in the middle of the room, glancing around appreciatively at the shop. Somehow he was even more handsome in person. He wore faded well-loved jeans, a black T-shirt with a breast pocket, and red Converse sneakers. He had a blue baseball cap on, which Amber guessed had been used to help shield his identity. Often celebrities were much shorter in person than they appeared on TV, she’d heard, but John was a good six feet.

  When Amber realized she’d been staring at him open-mouthed for what felt like hours, she glanced across the shop to find Kim, Willow, and Aunt G all huddled together by the Employee Only door. They, too, stared at John with their mouths agape.

  A moment later, she realized that the door behind the trio was open. And a moment after that, a commotion sounded to her right. She looked over just as she spotted Tom on top of the hamster cage. The cage tipped, and feline and hamster alike gave a shriek. While the cage pitched forward, Tom jumped the other way, doing what he could to save himself from crashing to the floor. The cage hit the counter and the door popped open, sending the hamster on a death drop toward the hardwood floor.

  John moved before anyone could react and managed to get to the counter in two strides of his long legs, dropped to his knees, and caught Thea in his large hands just before she hit the ground. He closed his fingers around her and slowly stood, his attention focused on the rodent. As he stood, he slowly opened his hands and brought them close to his face. “You okay? You almost took quite the spill, little one.” He had the faintest hint of a southern drawl.

  Amber watched as Thea nuzzled her little face against one of John’s thumbs. Then, quick as a snake, she ran across his forearm, jumped onto his shirt, and then dove into his front pocket. After some wiggling, she righted herself and poked her head out, gazing up at John. Her nose gave a little twitch.

  He petted her head with the tip of his finger and Thea gently closed her eyes.

  John laughed, then turned to Amber. “I promise I’m not trying to steal your pet, but she’s mighty cute.”

  Thea squeaked.

  Amber cautiously approached the man, gaze affixed on his pocket. “I … uhh …” Her face was so hot, her skin would surely burst into flames. “I’m really sorry about her. That rescue was very impressive. We’ve had a real problem getting the cats acclimated to having her here.” She tentatively reached for Thea, only for the hamster to snap her teeth at Amber’s approaching hand. Then she ducked back into his pocket.

  Great.

  A soft mew sounded and Amber glanced down to find Alley rubbing her face against one of John’s pant legs. This was getting ridiculous. What, did this man give off pheromones that affected all living creatures, regardless of species?

  “It’s no problem,” he said. “I love animals. I had hamsters when I was a kid. It’s kind of comforting having her around. I don’t mind her riding around with me while I’m here.”

  As if by magic that she didn’t possess, Kim was by Amber’s side. She held a hand out to John. “Hello! I am Kimberly Jones, the director of the Here and Meow. I’ve been talking to your people all week.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, not fazed by the fact that Kim had said all of that so fast, it had sounded like one long word, and shook her hand.

  Kim gazed at him longingly, the handshake lasting much longer than was polite. John seemed unfazed by this, too. Amber wanted to pull her friend’s hand loose before she embarrassed herself.

  “Why are you here?” came Willow’s voice. Then she awkwardly coughed, taking a few steps forward. “I mean … I thought you weren’t due to arrive for two more days—on Thursday.”

  John’s attention shifted to Willow, and he froze for a moment. Then a slow smile inched onto his face. “Hi.”

  Willow took a few more steps forward. “Hi.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Now it was Kim who awkwardly cleared her throat, mostly because John was still shaking Kim’s hand while he was homed in on Willow. He quickly let Kim’s hand go. “It might sound strange, but I’ve been wanting to come to the Here and Meow for years. An interview I had scheduled for today got cancelled, so I thought I’d pop in early to see the town. I was hoping this little place was small enough that no one would recognize me. But …” He shrugged.

  Willow was standing in front of him now, somehow edging out Amber and Kim without Amber understanding how it happened. “You thought no one would recognize you?”

  John’s smile, even though it was meant for Willow and Willow only, made Amber a little weak in the knees. Kim gave Amber’s forearm a squeeze, as if she needed the extra support too. Thea chirped once from his pocket. “Wishful thinking, I guess. If only I had a magic spell that could disguise my face for a while.”

  The series of high-pitched, semi-hysterical laughs that erupted out of all the women in the room—and the squeaks of one woman-turned-hamster—was apparently such an alarming sound that all three bodyguards moved toward a visibly confused John Huntley.

  The outburst of noise also seemed to have broken the non-magical spell that had overcome John and Willow. John turned toward Amber, lightly rubbing his neck. “So the reason for my visit is that my sister follows Letty Ortiz on Instagram. Crystal wants to be a designer too,” he said. “Anyway, the other day, Crystal sent me a link for one of Letty’s menswear lines and clicking that led me down a wormhole to Sydney Sadler’s account. Do you know Sydney?”

  Amber in fact did know Sydney. She was a young prodigy who had participated in a junior fashion show a few months ago—a show that had caught the attention of Olaf Benson, the host of a long-running reality design show. The show had been interrupted during Sydney’s fashion debut by Kieran Penhallow—wearing Olaf’s face—throwing bursts of cursed magic at innocent bystanders.

  Sydney Sadler was also the daughter of Whitney and Derrick Sadler. After Whitney had found out about an affair between Derrick and Amber’s good friend Melanie Cole, Whitney had embarked on a twisted path that resulted in Melanie’s death.

  Amber still felt sick when she thought about Sydney getting caught in the middle of her parents’ mes
sy lives. There was no small amount of guilt, too, at the fact that the biggest day of Sydney’s young life had been completely derailed because of Amber’s kooky magical past.

  “Yes, I know Sydney,” Amber said.

  “Well, in one of her videos, she had a gorgeous peacock toy walking around on the table behind her. Enough people asked her about it that she told everyone about you and The Quirky Whisker,” he said. “Her comment section was flooded with people saying they wanted one of their own. When I saw all the interest, the fact that you don’t have a website, and that you’re located in Edgehill, I figured my best chance of getting one of your creations would be to get one in person before the festival rush. I was surprised to find the place closed.”

  Amber was both deeply touched that Sydney would still give Amber and her shop an honorable mention despite the role she had played in her mother’s arrest, and angry with the Penhallows all over again that her shop had to be shuttered. Sydney had given her free publicity so effective that even someone like John Huntley had seen it, and Amber wasn’t able to put it to use.

  “We’ve had a few … uh … issues with inventory lately,” Amber said, hoping he wouldn’t ask too many more questions.

  “Dang,” he said. “Sold out already?”

  “Sort of!” Willow quickly chimed in. “All the toys in here are currently claimed, but Amber’s been working hard to replenish her stock for the festival. She’s making some exclusive ones. Maybe she can save one for you.”

  “I bet if you asked really nicely,” Kim said, “she’d even make you a custom design!”

  John perked up at this.

  Amber wanted to stomp on Willow’s and Kim’s toes. She couldn’t promise a toy to John-freaking-Huntley until this mess with the Penhallows was sorted out. The last thing she needed was for a Penhallow to sabotage one of her wares and then be responsible for horribly maiming America’s heartthrob. But she plastered on a smile anyway. “Is there an animal you prefer?”