Pawsitively Betrayed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “Don’t keep Miss Amber waiting,” Kim singsonged. “Move your keisters! Chop chop!”

  The children moved faster.

  “A really, really quick demo,” Amber whispered to Jack, who stifled a laugh.

  Once most of the group had assembled in front of her, she had the youngest kids sit on the bench that faced the toy cats, and the older children and a smattering of parents lined up behind them. Kim, wild hair and all, stood to Amber’s right, likely shooting death glares at the children to keep them in line, and Jack stood to her left. A cluster of parents remained at the food trucks or standing in huddles. Amber imagined they were all delighted to have their kids focused on something else for a while.

  “Hi, everyone. I’m Amber Blackwood,” she said. “How many of you are from Edgehill?”

  Only a couple of kids raised their hands.

  “Welcome to all of you who have never been here before,” she said. “As you know, Edgehill loves its cats. What I do here is make toys. But these aren’t just any toys. These cats can move and meow and play with you like real cats.”

  A pair of little boys sitting on the bench opposite her turned to each other and rolled their eyes.

  Amber laughed. “Oh, so you two don’t believe me?” She took a seat on the bench to be eye level with them. “Want me to prove it to you?” she asked, her attention darting between the little boys.

  They both nodded.

  “Okay, each of you pick out one of the cats,” Amber said.

  Twin looks of determination passed over their faces. The dark-skinned boy with the missing front tooth picked a black-and-white housecat, and the light-skinned boy picked a puma. Once they’d selected the toys they wanted, Amber asked Kim and Jack to help her clear the area so the remaining toys were out of the way. They did as asked, then stepped back.

  “Place your toys on the table in front of you,” Amber told them. “Now, pick a name. A name that matches their coloring works best.”

  The kids sitting on the bench on either side of the boys leaned forward. One girl in particular looked rather miffed that she hadn’t been selected to pick one. The parents and older children stood on tiptoe to get a better view.

  “Milkshake,” the dark-skinned boy said. The “s” whistled through his missing tooth. “Like an Oreo milkshake.”

  “Fred,” said the other boy.

  Amber tried not to laugh. “Both of those are perfect.” Looking up to address more of the crowd, she said, “The toys are all programmed for voice command. Once a name is chosen, I can update the programming to respond to that name. Currently, they know how to walk, sit, run, roar, and sleep.” Returning her attention to the boys, she instructed them both on how to get the cats to respond.

  As they debated on which command to start with, Amber mentally cast the activation spells on each cat and, with her hands below the table, gave a flick of her wrist toward each one.

  “Milkshake, walk,” the dark-skinned boy said.

  Instantly, the black-and-white cat’s plastic rigidity melted away and it started to move. The boy gasped, as well as a few of the watching children and adults.

  The light-skinned boy had been watching the cat in awe, then seemed to remember it was his turn and focused on his puma. “Fred, roar.”

  The rigidity of the mountain lion vanished at the command, then it stood, and with its four paws flat on the table, the cat tipped its head back and let loose a roar that was loud enough that the kids in the immediate vicinity jumped.

  The pair of boys grinned at each other, then both commanded that their toys should run. The animated cats darted from one side of the long picnic table—where their unmoving counterparts resided—and then back again. Kids whirled on their bench seats to call for their parents, begging them for one of the toys.

  Shouts of “Miss Amber! Miss Amber, can I try too?” rose up to match the enthusiasm and volume of the requests to buy one of their own. Though Amber knew it wasn’t a safe time to have any of these toys leave her care, she was filled with overwhelming pride not only in her craft abilities, but in her magical ones. The awe on the kids’ faces was the reason she decided to use her magic in this way—she wanted children filled with wonder at what beautiful things magic could do.

  A hand landed on her left shoulder, where Jack had been standing. He gave her a gentle squeeze, but then his grip tightened slightly. When she looked up at him, his gaze wasn’t on her, but rather on the toys on his side of the table. All ten of them were moving.

  What the …

  Then Kim yelped to her right. The eight toys on that end were moving, too. It was slow at first, like they’d all been dozing and were waking from a deep sleep.

  The crowd had quieted again, as they’d all noticed the movement, too. While they looked excited about this apparent finale of Amber’s show, Amber was filled with dread. She disentangled herself from the bench seat so she had a higher vantage point and scanned the crowd. Any time she left her home, she used Willow’s clarity spell in hopes it was strong enough to pick out a Penhallow wearing a glamour, but the spell wasn’t showing her anything.

  She hoped that Simon and/or Aunt G came up with a Penhallow-specific tincture soon. It would be the only way to spot a Penhallow glamour.

  The shouts of glee from the onlookers grew as the animals all started to roam the table. Tiny tigers roared, and housecats curled into balls to sleep, and lions ran along the surface of the table, their manes flapping about their faces as if they were made of hair instead of plastic.

  Amber’s gaze kept scanning the crowd, both directly in front of her and out in the grassy area beyond. And then her attention snagged on a woman standing on her own near a young sapling. Her attention was squared on Amber. A small, slow smile crossed her face. She had jet-black hair, which was a common Penhallow trait, but it was a common enough trait in people in general that it wasn’t enough to definitively peg her as a cursed witch.

  A scream yanked Amber’s focus away from the black-haired woman and back down at the rogue toys on the table. Amber’s stomach bottomed out. The toys had formed a single line, shoulder to shoulder, and faced the onlooking children. All the toys hunched low to the table, and the hackles were up on their backs. Black, white, beige, spotted, and striped tails were hoisted in the air. It was a predatory stance if Amber had ever seen one.

  She quickly mentally cast a deactivation spell and discreetly swiped a hand through the air. No reaction from the cats. She tried to direct the spell at just one of them. Nothing.

  Oh crap.

  Then, in unison, the cats spoke in a woman’s voice. The voice didn’t sound like Amber’s per se, but it was close enough that it even gave Amber pause. “Get out of Edgehill while you can. Saturday is your last day to get to safety. I will tear this place apart to get what I want. But first, I will tear you apart.”

  The cats leapt.

  They landed on children’s hair, their clothes, their arms. They scratched and bit and snarled. Amber had been bitten by a rogue toy once herself and knew firsthand how much it could hurt, even if it never drew blood. Getting shot by a paintball couldn’t kill you, but it sure as heck could leave a bruise.

  Chaos erupted.

  Kids and parents screamed. Toys were knocked off shirts and pants and fingers. Some were stomped underfoot. The toys chased terrified screaming kids. Parents scooped up their children and bolted for safety.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Amber and Kim said in unison.

  “We have to smash them!” Amber said. “I tried to, you know, dismantle them and it didn’t work.”

  “On it!” Jack said and took off.

  Amber and Kim ran after him, but they soon realized they needed to split up to cover more ground. Amber bolted for a little boy who was in the fetal position by one of the pop tents. He had a cheetah running around him at a lightning pace, nipping at him any time he tried to get away. On her mad dash toward him, Amber had found a rock that she’d snatched up on the move.


  “You okay, kid?” she called out.

  He poked his head up a little to look at her, but then the cheetah leapt up to nip him on the elbow and he curled up again. Amber watched in dismay as the toy started running laps around the little boy again, moving at a speed that would make its real life counterparts proud. With the rock held firmly in her hand, Amber watched for a few more seconds.

  “Okay, kid, when I tell you to, I need you to kick out a leg.”

  “I’m scared!”

  “I know, but I need you to be brave for me, okay?”

  “’Kay …”

  Amber watched the cheetah circle and circle and … “Now!”

  The boy’s leg shot out. The toy saw it and tried to leap, but one of its paws hit the boy’s shoe and sent the cheetah flipping end over end and skidding across the grass. Amber slammed down hard on the toy with the rock and it shattered into several—blissfully unmoving—pieces.

  As she got the shaking boy to his feet, a man rounded the edge of the tent. “Arthur! Arthur, where are you?”

  “Dad!” the boy called out, then burst into tears.

  “Sorry about all this!” Amber shouted, then was on the move again before the man could tell her what he thought of her and her toys.

  Kids Day was a calamity indeed.

  Amber plucked a growling ocelot off the back of a little girl’s shirt, and pulled two vicious, snarling calico cats of the ends of a little girl’s pair of pigtails. The girl looked like she’d considered jumping in the murky water of the pond in an attempt to drown the plastic demons hanging from her hair.

  The task at hand kept Amber focused to almost tunnel-like effect. It wasn’t until the majority of the screaming had died down that Amber let herself slow. She stood near a food truck, her chest heaving, as she scanned the park. It was mostly deserted now, the grass littered with bits of broken plastic. Amber tried to pretend that the pieces were something innocuous, like the bits of streamers knocked loose from a piñata.

  Then she pictured a piñata donkey coming to life as it chased screaming children, smoke billowing from its papier-mâché nostrils. She shook the image loose.

  She turned in a slow circle and found an equally exhausted-looking Kim and Jack heading her way from the left. The rock slipped from her hand. She was glad her joints still worked and that her hand hadn’t fused to the rock from holding it so tightly.

  Movement from her other side pulled her attention to another approaching figure. Though this too was a familiar face, he didn’t look particularly happy to see her in this moment.

  “Hi, chief,” she said when he got closer.

  “Amber,” he said, then eyed Kim and Jack, who had slowed their approach. “I’m going to need you to come down to the station, uh, Hinklebert.”

  Amber pursed her lips. “I didn’t do this, chief. I swear it. There’s a …” She lowered her voice, her gaze shifting left and right. “There’s a Penhallow—at least one, maybe more—in Edgehill. They did this, not me. I saw a woman in the crowd. Maybe she—”

  He held up a hand to quiet her panicked rambling. “We can discuss this on the way.”

  “Are the parents pressing charges?” Kim blurted. “Isn’t that what happens on TV?”

  Amber eyed her friend and noted the messy bun now had a few branches and leaves stuck in it.

  “Yes and no,” the chief said.

  Amber rubbed her forehead, a sudden headache taking hold. She didn’t even know what “pressing charges” meant. She should have looked into hiring a lawyer. She needed help, but the list of people in town aside from her family who she trusted were all standing in this park with her now.

  “I will file a police report—which is why I would like Amber to come down to the station with me,” the chief said. “I’ll then turn those reports over to the district attorney. A lawyer will be assigned to the case. That lawyer is the only one who can decide if charges will be pressed. The parents can cry foul until the cows come home, but if the prosecuting lawyer doesn’t think there’s a case here, it would be dropped.”

  “So another lawyer will be coming here to look into my products?”

  “Another?” Jack asked. “Who was the first one?”

  “Thea Bishop,” Kim said matter-of-factly. “Gretchen turned her into a hamster.”

  Amber shot Kim a dangerous look.

  “Wait, what?” Jack asked.

  “She’s so cute!” Kim said.

  Amber groaned, deciding to focus on the chief instead of Jack and Kim’s lively conversation. “Can I call someone first?”

  “You’re not under arrest, Amber,” he said. “I just need to file a report.” He eyed Jack and Kim. “Since you two were here during the incident, I’ll need to talk to you both, too. I would like a chance to speak to Amber privately, so if you could meet me later today at the station at your earliest convenience, I’d appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” Jack said.

  “It’s a good thing I know you two aren’t actually having an affair, otherwise I would think it’s mighty fishy you want her all to yourself,” Kim said.

  Amber might have considered homicide had one of the people in attendance not been a cop. After apologizing to Jack for … all of it … she went back to the picnic area to get her purse, which she found underneath a table. It was zipped closed, so the contents hadn’t spilled out all over the ground. Yet, when she opened it to fish out her phone, she found the decapitated head of a plastic bobcat staring up at her. A string had been tied around one of its ears and attached to that ear was a note.

  Give up the book before the festival and maybe Edgehill and Henrietta will be spared.

  Amber frantically scanned the park, turning in a circle as she did. She didn’t necessarily expect the black-haired woman to be lurking nearby, but not seeing anyone somehow made Amber even more paranoid. After dialing the number, she pressed the phone to her ear, slung the bag over her shoulder, and walked back toward the chief, Jack, and Kim.

  He answered on the second ring. “Alan Peterson.”

  “Hi, Alan,” she said, unable to keep the quaver from her voice. “I need your help.”

  Chapter 16

  “What’s wrong?” Alan asked. His straightforward problem-solving tone grounded her.

  It also made her want to cry because she wanted to blurt out every little magical detail of her current predicament and couldn’t. She liked Alan a lot, but even now, she didn’t know how much she trusted him, not to mention how he’d react if he learned magic was real.

  “Are you in the area, by any chance?” Amber asked. She could see the huddle of Jack, Kim, and the chief up ahead. Kim was currently giving the very bewildered chief a demonstration of smashing something with a rock.

  “Uhh … I’m actually at Ann Marie’s right now,” he said.

  Amber grinned despite everything. “Things are going well, are they?”

  He coughed awkwardly. The sound of a door sliding closed echoed through the phone. “Yeah. Thanks again for putting in a good word for me. She’s … pretty incredible.”

  Amber never failed to be amused by how much his feelings for Ann Marie stripped that no-nonsense air he wore ninety percent of the time. “Glad to hear it,” she said, slowing her pace a little. “So … without getting into too much detail, I think someone is targeting me. My products have been sabotaged on three separate occasions now. I was thinking you could just … keep tabs on me? See if someone has been following me, or if anyone is doing anything shifty near my shop?”

  “Sabotage how?” he asked.

  Amber did her best to explain.

  “You think Henrietta was poisoned?” he asked. “There’s a short list of chemicals that could cause a coma …”

  She wasn’t sure if he was subtly questioning her assessment of the situation or if he was thinking out loud.

  “I’ll look into it,” he said. “I’m sticking around through the end of the Here and Meow. Ann Marie is busy with festival tasks for the rest of the w
eek, so I have some free time. Can’t say I’ll always be available in the evenings though, if you know what I mean.”

  “Gross,” she said, chuckling. “I’ll take any time you can spare. I’m just at a loss about what to do now. My shop is shut down because of this, and yet this person still won’t leave me alone. I don’t know what they want or why they’re out to get me.”

  Lies upon lies. The decapitated head of the plastic bobcat in her purse told her everything she needed to know about the Penhallows’ motives.

  “Thanks, Alan. I really appreciate it.”

  “No sweat,” he said.

  After she said goodbye to Jack and Kim, Amber followed the chief to his cruiser.

  Give up the book before the festival and maybe Edgehill and Henrietta will be spared, the note said. Why had the Penhallows done this to Henrietta?

  I’m so sorry, Hen.

  Thoughts of Henrietta led Amber back to Molly. How much did Molly’s wild theories about Amber’s supposed Edgehill-revenge plans actually line up with the Penhallows’ plans?

  She hated how scattered and distracted she felt. Her lack of decent sleep over the last few weeks wasn’t helping, either. It felt like it was all unraveling and she didn’t know how to stop it. This was likely how the ever-changing premonitions made Aunt G feel. So many options, possibilities, theories—and yet no clear solution.

  The festival started in three days. How was she supposed to figure this all out by then?

  “Amber.”

  She startled and glanced over at the chief. Somehow they were already in his car and on the move. She’d been on autopilot while her thoughts ran amok.

  “There’s a reason I wanted to talk to you alone,” he said. “I wasn’t sure how much Jack and Kim have been told.”

  A pit formed in Amber’s stomach. “What happened?”

  “I got a very strange phone call earlier today from an Agent Howe,” he said.

  Amber groaned.

  “She claims she’s with the WBI and that sometimes they confer with non-witch law enforcement when their cases overlap with ours,” he said in a casual enough tone, but when he briefly made eye contact with her, she could see the whites of his eyes. “The Witch Bureau of Investigation, Amber? You people have whole government bodies?”