Pawsitively Betrayed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “I love cats, obviously,” he said with a chuckle. “But do you ever make fantasy creatures?”

  “She made a dragon once!” Kim offered.

  Ah, yes, the dragon who set her curtains on fire. That malfunction had entirely been her own though.

  “How about you surprise me,” John said. “Favorite color is blue, if you want to work that in somehow.”

  Amber hesitated. “We’ve got a ton of orders already lined up so I might not—”

  She winced when Kim elbowed her in the side.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Amber amended.

  “Excellent,” he said, then fished a protesting Thea out of his pocket and handed her over to Amber. Kim righted the cage on the counter, and after Amber was bitten four times, she managed to get Thea back inside the cage with the latch secured. When they were finished, and Kim and Aunt G scoured the shop for the cats, John said, “Where’s your back door? Does it lead out into an alley?”

  The teenage pair was still at the front door, alternating between taking pictures with their phones and attempting to negotiate with the bodyguard.

  Amber wrinkled her nose. “There’s actually no back door. One way in and out.”

  One of the girls pounded her fist against the glass and Amber’s eye twitched when the mental alarm bell went off.

  A slam made Amber whirl around; she found Aunt G and Kim heaving, their backs pressed to the now-closed Employees Only door. They’d presumably gotten Amber’s looney cats back upstairs.

  “I was thinking …” Aunt G said. “Willow … you’re so good at … glamorous makeup. I bet you could alter Mr. Huntley’s appearance enough that no one would recognize him.”

  Now Aunt G was encouraging glamour spells to be used on celebrities? Amber was about to protest, but Willow brightened.

  “Great idea! Would you … uh … like to come upstairs, John?” Willow’s face went crimson. “All my makeup supplies are up there.”

  “She’s really good!” Kim added. “Missed her calling as a makeup artist on movies.”

  John’s gaze flicked between all the women present, then he arched a brow at the nearest bodyguard, silently asking his opinion on this very strange development.

  The man considered it a moment, then said, “Take Troy with you. Todd and I will stay down here.”

  “Tad, if I get kidnapped,” John said, “you’ll have to be the one to inform my mother. She likes you best.” John didn’t seem all that concerned for his safety as he followed Willow.

  “Can you keep an eye on the hamster?” Amber asked Tad. “I promise she’s not much trouble.”

  Tad nodded once but didn’t seem remotely comfortable with any of this.

  Amber headed up the stairs next, but before she was even three steps up, someone grabbed her by the elbow. With the door closed, Amber huddled near it with Kim and Aunt G. Amber heard muffled conversation from upstairs.

  “What is it, Aunt G?” Amber asked, leery of the calculating look in the woman’s eye.

  “It’s all well and good to glamour John, but if a man of his height and build leaves here, won’t his fans just assume it’s him in a disguise?” Aunt G asked.

  “You’re saying we need a diversion!” Kim whispered excitedly.

  “I don’t know if—” Amber started, only to be cut off by Aunt G.

  “Exactly,” she said. “We need to come up with something that will distract the group outside to give Willow enough time to get John out.”

  Amber eyed her aunt warily.

  When her aunt noticed, she turned to Amber, hands on hips. “What is it, little mouse? I would have thought you’d be all over this idea.”

  “Yes, but you wouldn’t normally even suggest it.” Amber crossed her arms. “What’s going on with you?”

  Her aunt rolled her eyes as if their roles had just been reversed and now Aunt Gretchen was the annoyed teenager dealing with her rigid guardian. “Nothing is going on with me.”

  Amber narrowed her eyes further.

  “Time is of the essence, little mouse!” Aunt G hissed.

  “Then explain what’s going on,” Amber said. “I’m not going to be blindsided by bad news again. The last time you started acting weird—granted, not turning-women-into-hamsters weird—you’d just found out Kieran was on his way to Edgehill.” Her stomach flipped. “Is that it? Did you get more bad news from a premonition tincture?”

  When Aunt G defiantly kept her lips pursed, Amber’s stomach sank further.

  “Oh, Aunt G,” Amber said softly. “What did you see?”

  “Not now, okay? We have to deal with this issue first,” Aunt G said. “I promise I’ll talk to you girls about it tonight. We need to be able to discuss this openly without others around to possibly overhear.”

  “Fine,” Amber said, then shot a look up the stairs to make sure the coast was clear. “Okay, I have an idea. Can you keep Tad and Todd distracted, Aunt G?”

  “I thought Tad was upstairs,” Kim said.

  “No, that was Troy,” said Aunt G.

  “Are you sure?” Amber asked.

  “Well, no …” Aunt G said. “But leave it to me. Feeble old lady in need of assistance coming right up.”

  Amber fought a laugh, then opened the Employee Only door and cautiously peered out. One of the guards was at the door—Todd, Amber guessed—while Tad stood near the hamster cage. Once Amber, Kim, and Aunt G had entered the shop again, Amber closed the door to make sure Tom didn’t make another attempt at rodenticide.

  “Your hamster is … strange,” Tad said in greeting.

  Amber didn’t want details. “Thank you for looking after her.”

  Aunt G approached Tad and said, “Excuse me, young man by the door?”

  Todd, eyebrow raised, turned around. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Can I ask you two a question? It’s a bit of a delicate situation,” Aunt G said, her voice wavering slightly. She hobbled toward the counter and put a hand on the worn wood. Then she stumbled so dramatically that Tad had to grab her by the elbow to keep her from slipping to the floor. “Sorry, dears, my knees just aren’t what they used to be.”

  Reluctantly, Todd moved closer to Aunt G and Tad.

  Aunt G’s forehead was creased as she leaned a little more heavily on the counter. Amber knew her aunt had to be mentally uttering a spell at that moment, even if on the outside she appeared to be working through a pain flare-up. Amber felt when the magic was hurled at the two men. Voice now strong and posture straight, Aunt G said, “Tell me about your favorite hobby and spare me no detail.”

  All at once, the gruff men started rambling. Todd, it turned out, was an avid fisherman and started down a sure-to-be-riveting path about the various types of lures he liked best and why. Tad, however, was a horror movie buff and started in on why The Exorcist was the most perfect film ever created.

  Amber looked at her aunt in dismay, feeling terrible about leaving her here with these two men talking over each other, but Aunt G, her eyes lightly glazed over already, discreetly waved a hand in her direction. Go, the gesture said. Leave me here to suffocate under the weight of sheer boredom.

  Amber and Kim then faced the front door and the awaiting mass of John Huntley fans.

  “His fans are called Hunters, you know,” Kim said ominously. She held up her large purse with both hands. “I’ll use this as a shield to get us out.”

  Amber dropped the ward on the front door, unlocked it, and with Kim crowded in behind her, quickly shoved her way out into the throng.

  “Back it up!” Kim yelled in a voice Amber hadn’t known she possessed. “Move aside. John will be out eventually, but you need to let us out!”

  “Why is he here?”

  “How do you know him, Amber?”

  Kim shoved her way past Amber, and as promised, shielded Amber so she could quickly lock the door and reset the spell.

  “He’ll be out in the next ten minutes,” Amber said. Several in the group squealed. “Just wait here and you’
ll get to see him. Kim and I have to go run a few errands for the Here and Meow. Hold tight, okay?”

  As Amber and Kim made their way through the crowd, several strangers patted her arms and back as if Amber had just promised them a sack of cash each. She hoped the possibility of John Huntley coming out the front door would make the eager fans stay put.

  As she and Kim rounded the corner of the building toward the parking lot, Amber was relieved both to find it empty and that no one had immediately followed them outside.

  “Let’s get into the back of the minivan,” Amber said. “I have an idea.”

  “Ooh, this is so exciting,” Kim said.

  After rolling the door shut and sealing them inside, Amber said, “I think one of us should be glamoured to look like John so that we can keep the crowd occupied while real John and Willow sneak away.”

  Kim’s eyes widened. Then she rattled off an impressive series of stats about John. “Oh my God, Amber! I’m a walking, talking John Huntley encyclopedia. You have to glamour me to look like that hunk! 1. It will help me live out my dream of being a celebrity, and 2. I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like to be six feet tall.”

  “Are you going to be able to keep it together when you get swarmed by all those Hunters, though?” Amber asked. “You sort of … break down when under pressure.”

  “I turn into Galazilla one time …” Kim laughed. “I can handle it. I’ll swagger a little. I’ll schmooze for pictures. Give diplomatic answers about not being allowed to discuss details of the next season. It’s like a dream come true for me, honest.”

  Amber still wasn’t fully convinced, but Amber pretending to being John Huntley would be a million times worse. She knew his height, eye color, and that he was a talented actor and singer. That was the extent of it. “Okay, I’ll be Sienna again. I can be, I don’t know, your publicist or something. We’ll walk out of the parking lot as if there’s a side door.”

  Kim beamed.

  Amber sent Willow a text that said, Operation Diversion is underway. I’ll text you when the coast is clear.

  Amber was quite adept at turning herself into Sienna Tate, so that didn’t take long. And even though Amber had never used a John Huntley glamour before, it didn’t take much effort to recall the details of his perfectly sculpted face.

  Kim yelped when her glamour took hold, warming her skin to near scalding for a moment. Amber knew the feeling all too well. She’d done such a good job of transforming Kim that Amber’s face flushed a little when that disarming John Huntley smile made an appearance.

  “Don’t look at me like that!” Kim said. “It’s creeping me out. Oh wow, I have an incredibly sexy voice now.” She started to sing one of John’s recent hit singles, but quickly stopped. Clearly John’s singing talent hadn’t come with the glamour. “Oh, no.”

  Wincing, Amber said, “If anyone asks you to sing, say you have a sore throat.”

  Amber and Kim peered out the minivan’s windshield. A few people milled near the open space made by Amber’s building and the one beside it, but no one currently looked their way.

  “Okay, go,” Amber hissed and they piled out of the van, hunching low, then headed for Russian Blue Avenue.

  Kim walked with swagger, as promised, but it was borderline too much swagger. It was closer to a sashay. “Who wants to meet John Huntley?” she called out, arms wide, with all the bravado of a circus ringmaster.

  A shout of “Was that John?” sounded just seconds before several people hurried to the mouth of the parking lot.

  “It is I,” Kim said, arms still outstretched as if she were a divine entity here on earth to bless the masses. “I am John.”

  Oh, good grief.

  Amber quickly texted Willow to let her know the distraction had begun. In the short time her gaze was off Kim, she had been surrounded by adoring Hunters hurling questions at her. One woman squeezed Kim’s bicep, then giggled. The pair of teenage girls who had the prime spot at the door, thinking John was coming out the front, shrieked. One of them burst into tears again.

  “Ech!” Amber said loudly, trying to get closer to Kim. “One question at a time, lasses!”

  Ah, her panic-induced Scottish accent had returned.

  No matter how much Amber tried to calm down the Hunters, and no matter how often Kim assured them that she would get a picture with everyone, Kim was being grabbed at and prodded and had cameras shoved in her face. Even with Kim’s back to her, Amber could tell Kim was starting to freak out.

  “Ech, keep it together, Johnny boy!” Amber called out, still two body lengths away from Kim, unable to get close enough to grab her.

  Amber worried more than anything that the aggressively excited Hunters would push and poke at Kim so hard that the glamour would be shaken loose. As Amber tried to figure out what to do, she saw Willow and an unfamiliar man quickly cross the street and then head down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. All the tourists crowding the sidewalks on both sides were so preoccupied by the commotion that no one seemed to have noticed it but Amber.

  Kim let loose a roar that startled everyone so much, the group jumped away from her in unison. And then Kim just … took off. She sprinted down the sidewalk away from Willow and the real John, her arms flailing as if she were warding off a swarm of bees.

  “Oi!” Amber called after her.

  It took only a moment, but then several Hunters took off running after her, cheering as they went. Though she was in shoes not suitable for running, Kim was hauling some serious tail. Amber knew Kim had been training for the 5K, but this was Olympic track-and-field speeds.

  Soon the crowd dispersed, and from what Amber could glean from conversations around her, several Hunters were going to fetch their cars so they could chase John Huntley down by vehicle.

  Ugh.

  Amber whirled to head back into The Quirky Whisker to get her car keys—the ones for the minivan were in Kim’s pocket—when she almost slammed headlong into someone.

  Not just any someone.

  It was Molly Hargrove.

  Chapter 13

  “Oh, my giddy aunt!” Amber yelped. “I’m right sorry.”

  When Amber tried to sidestep her, Molly mirrored her efforts.

  “Your name is Sienna, right?” Molly asked. “Sienna Tate?”

  Amber blinked at her. “Aye, that’s me. Do I know ye? I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “I’m a reporter at The Marbleglen Herald,” Molly said. “Could I ask you a few questions?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, lass,” she said, trying to sidestep her again. “But I really must be getting on after my—”

  “It’ll only take a few minutes,” Molly said.

  Sighing, Amber said, “I’m not sure what ye would like ta talk to me about. I’m not even from this area.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you about,” Molly said.

  Amber glanced behind her, in the direction that Kim had sprinted. “Okay, but can we talk while I search for my, uhh … client?”

  Molly narrowed her eyes at Amber, then nodded. “I’ll drive so you can keep an eye out.”

  Molly’s car—a little white four-door—was parked on the street several buildings down from The Quirky Whisker. Once inside Molly’s car, while she watched for pedestrians and oncoming traffic, Amber checked her phone, hoping to have a message from Kim. But nothing had come in yet from her or Willow.

  As Molly pulled out onto Russian Blue Avenue, she said, “So, Sienna, how do you know Amber Blackwood?”

  Amber swallowed. “That’s tha owner of tha shop we were just outside of.”

  “Right. But how do you know her personally?” Molly asked. “And don’t bother lying to me. Just last month you were seen driving a car Amber had been renting. Not only were you seen driving it, but you were using it to spy on residents of Marbleglen.”

  Amber had been doing surveillance on Randy Tillman, but he hadn’t been a resident of Marbleglen. He’d been visiting because of his role in a land d
evelopment deal. Amber decided not to correct her though, as that was the easiest way to implicate herself. Instead, she said nothing while she scanned the streets for any sign of Kim—either as John or as herself.

  “I’ve done what research I can on you and came up with nothing,” Molly said. “You’re like a ghost. Is Sienna even your real name?”

  Amber squirmed in her seat. Molly was direct and unflinching. She was either made for this job, or the job had trained her to become comfortable with asking strangers probing questions.

  Amber knew Connor and Molly were working on a “big” story about her. Likely whatever opinions Molly had about Amber were in line with the wild theories Connor had recently divulged to Willow. What better way to find out about the article than from Molly herself? Especially since she’d already declared that the bridge with Amber had been burned.

  Flashing back to all the conversations she’d had with Alan Peterson, Amber did her best to channel him. Not only was Alan Peterson not his name, but the way he carried himself was even more unflinching than Molly.

  Dropping the accent and taking on one slightly deeper than her own, Amber said, “No, Sienna isn’t my real name. I’m a private investigator.”

  “I knew it!” Molly said, hitting the heel of her palm on her steering wheel once for emphasis. “Hired by whom?”

  Amber chucked in a way that she hoped was more amused bewilderment than amused cartoony villain. “You know I’m not going to tell you that.” Then she went out on a limb and said, “But I can tell you that I’ve been hired to keep an eye on Amber Blackwood.”

  Molly nodded as if this made perfect sense. “I’ve been keeping tabs on her myself. I know you can’t give up too much without jeopardizing your investigation, but if you’d be willing to float some information my way, I would compensate you for it.”

  “What’s your interest in her?” Amber asked.

  Molly was silent for long enough that Amber wondered if she wasn’t going to answer at all. She continued to scan the streets while she waited. She didn’t see a line of people running down the sidewalk, so she assumed Kim had either ducked into a building or had run down another street. Amber discreetly turned her phone over to check the screen. No new messages.