Pawsitively Betrayed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Heartbroken, Annabelle had ended things with him on the spot.

  But the desire for the spell couldn’t keep him away for long. Soon Neil and his father attacked Annabelle and her own father, Miles, determined to go through them to get the spell if they wouldn’t hand it over willingly. The elder Penhallow ended up dead, and Miles Henbane traveled into Neil’s mind to bury the memories of Annabelle so deep they could never be found.

  Yet they’d resurfaced eventually on their own, like a zombie bursting forth from its grave. And then Neil Penhallow, driven mad by grief, a broken heart, and cursed magic in his veins, had found Amber’s parents despite all their efforts to stay hidden.

  Miles Henbane had told his daughter that erasing Neil’s memories of Annabelle and their time together would have been too complicated to complete under such a time crunch. Miles, in a pinch, had instead buried the memories. The entire Henbane family split off into four directions that night, never to return to their home of Delin Springs.

  Amber followed Agent Barker and Edgar down the stairs.

  The last image of the final memory snippet had been of Miles Henbane pacing behind his wife, muttering to himself in distress, as they presumably prepared to leave their last living child in this remote facility. But what if the muttering hadn’t been distress from the emotionally charged situation, but from the physical strain of casting a complicated spell?

  Had Miles Henbane taken away the memories of his own son, so that even if the WBI found him again, Raphael would be unable to tell them anything? Had Miles permanently wiped Raphael’s mind clean?

  If so, it meant Amber wouldn’t be able to crack her uncle’s memory no matter how hard she tried. Miles was a Henbane; his memory magic would have been much stronger than her own.

  It also meant that the man they were traveling with was part of an organization that had scared her grandparents enough that they were willing to break their own child’s mind to assure the grimoire was kept out of the WBI’s possession. Perhaps Damien and Devra had been right to be leery of Amber’s actions.

  The buzz of the metal door jostled Amber out of her thoughts again. Johnson nodded to each of them in turn as they walked into the small claustrophobic waiting area.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Agent Barker told Johnson. The agent waited at the other end of the waiting area, where he held the front door open. He smiled at Amber as she stepped past him.

  Despite the warmth of the gesture, Amber shivered.

  Chapter 18

  The drive to the hotel where they’d be staying for the next two days was quiet. Agent Barker was clearly aware that something had happened in Room 9, but he was either biding his time before asking for details, or he just didn’t want to do so in front of Silent Agent.

  Amber’s mind was abuzz. Edgar’s leg bounced erratically and he chewed on his cuticles as he stared out the window. She needed to speak to Edgar alone. She also desperately wanted to talk to Willow.

  The hotel was actually a rather seedy-looking roadside motel. It was a sprawling one-story facility, and the buildings were all a garish bright pink with mint green accents. A large sign at the entrance told Amber this was the Mermaid Inn. A busty mermaid adorned the sign’s front.

  “The WBI spares no expense, I see,” Edgar said, with an air of distaste, as the SUV pulled into the mostly full lot. A few semis were parked down the road.

  “It’s best that we not call attention to ourselves,” Agent Barker said. “Places like this get a lot of activity from travelers. No one stays here for long. It’s a great place to go unnoticed.”

  After parking, Agent Barker instructed them to wait in the car with Silent Agent. Within a few minutes, Agent Barker was back with a pair of room keys. “You two can stay together in one room, and Windy and I will take the other.”

  Windy? Amber wanted to ask if that was his first or last name, but decided it was safer not to ask.

  Agent Barker did a sweep of their room while they waited outside, then let them in when he deemed the coast clear. He handed the key to Amber. The wide black keychain was adorned with the same busty mermaid as the sign outside. “You two try to get some rest. I’ll let you know if we’re granted permission to go back. If so, we’ll grab an early dinner together to discuss what you learned.” It wasn’t a question. “I’m sure it was emotionally taxing for you both to see Raphael again after all this time.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he nodded once, then stepped out, closing the door after him.

  “What did you—” Edgar started immediately, but Amber cut him off with a finger to her lips.

  She locked the door’s two locks and latched the security chain in place. The room was a small, dingy thing whose colors were as garish as the ones on the exterior. Amber supposed they were going for a cheerful beach motif of some kind, but it mostly looked like the 1980s had gotten sick on too much candy and had thrown up everywhere.

  Edgar sat on one of the two twin beds covered in mint green comforters, his duffel bag next to him. She tossed her own bag onto the other bed, marched forward, grabbed Edgar by the sleeve of his shirt, and kept moving, dragging him after her. She pulled him into the bathroom. While she flicked on the light, Edgar shut the door. A giant cockroach ran for cover behind the toilet.

  Amber turned on both the shower and the sink, then cast a noise-cancelling spell. Realizing what was happening, Edgar cast a second one to layer over hers. The sound of the water running in the bathroom abruptly disappeared.

  Edgar crossed his arms. She ran through it all quickly, including her theory that the WBI had tried to get information out of Raphael about the grimoire and that their grandparents had been the ones who not only wiped Raphael’s mind, but had checked him into Peaceful Meadows.

  She pulled out her cell phone and called Willow.

  “Hi, Amber!” She’d answered it so quickly, Amber wasn’t sure it had rung. “How—”

  “Is Agent Howe with you?” Amber asked.

  “No, just me and Aunt G.”

  “Put me on speaker.”

  “So bossy,” Willow said, but did as she asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Hi, little mouse.”

  “Tell us everything!” Willow said excitedly. “Have you seen him? Was he—”

  “What made you go searching for Uncle Raph, Will?” Amber asked, cutting off her sister’s cheerfulness at the knees.

  “Uhh …” Willow said. “Well … I’d been having some problems with insomnia because of that really big project at work a month or so ago, you know? So when I couldn’t sleep, I was doing a lot of thinking. I wanted to do something for Edgar since he’s been helping us so much. I thought finding his dad would be nice.”

  Amber glanced over at Edgar, who was still staring off into space with his brows mashed together. He had a cuticle between his teeth again. “Right. I know that part. I mean … how did you find him? Peaceful Meadows is so remote.”

  “Scrying spells, mostly,” Willow said. “I bought a bunch of maps. I started with the world, then went down to the United States, then scaled it down to Washington. I focused my magic through an old picture I had of Uncle Raph and Mom to pinpoint the location after that.”

  “I have a very small box of mementos of our family,” Aunt G added. “I didn’t know what she was up to when she asked if she could have the picture.”

  Amber had to assume the WBI had tried scrying, too. And likely had vessels for their magic that were more powerful than a photograph. “Was that it? Just scrying while channeling your energy through the picture?”

  “Well, no. I found it in a roundabout way, I guess. I was trying sleep and dream spells at the same time,” Willow said. “Meadows kept coming up in my dreams, so I worked that into my scrying, too. I was running out of ideas by then, so I ran with it, figuring my magic was out there in the world sniffing out clues while I slept. I eventually got a definite hit on a spot in the middle of the forest. I fussed around on Google Earth to find the exact location. The on
line listing I found said the place is a residence, so when I called the number, I expected it to be someone’s house. They don’t make it easy to find the place.”

  Amber chewed on the inside of her cheek.

  “What’s with the interrogation?” Willow finally asked.

  Amber relayed it all again, ending with her theory that the WBI might not be trustworthy. “The agents said themselves that they had no idea where Uncle Raph was until Willow started poking around. How did Will find him that quickly when they have more resources than we do?”

  “So … do you think they were lying and they knew where he was all this time,” Aunt G said slowly, “or do you think that hint about meadows was somehow planted in Willow’s head?”

  “I don’t know,” Amber said. “Meadow is a very generic, broad clue. And when you think of meadows, you’d think of a state like Montana before you thought of Washington. But, Will, would you have found the place without that clue?”

  “I mean, maybe eventually,” Willow said. “But it would have taken a lot longer. In my dreams, it wasn’t even the generic idea of meadows—it was almost exclusively the same meadow. Always a field of yellow wildflowers. And there was a little blue house in the distance.”

  Amber blinked rapidly. “Was there a red rocking chair on the porch?”

  “Yes!” Willow said. “How’d you know that? It was same meadow and house every time. I’m not sure why I dreamt of that image so often when the manor is surrounded by pine trees.”

  “You were seeing the framed picture on the wall in the waiting room of Peaceful Meadows,” Amber said.

  “Really?” Willow asked. “Weird. I don’t remember seeing that when I was there. But maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention.”

  It could have been a new addition, Amber supposed. “Someone was helping you find the place. I just wish we knew who. And why.”

  For a couple hours after they’d ended the call, Edgar took a nap. It didn’t look like a particularly comfortable nap, as his brows were still pinched. He also slept with his arms and ankles crossed, as if he were a vampire in a coffin. Amber wondered if he always slept like that.

  She texted with both Kim and Jack while she lay on her bed, semi-watching a Western kept on low volume on the boxy TV sitting on the set of low drawers against the wall. Kim and Jack had been called into the station to give their statements on what had happened on Kids Day, but neither had any idea what was happening beyond that.

  Amber wondered what Agent Barker and Silent were doing in the next room. They shared the wall Amber was currently staring at. She assumed Silent was busy with another sudoku puzzle, but what was Agent Barker doing? And had he found out anything about the anonymous donor who had gotten Raphael into Pleasant Meadows?

  Every day her thoughts grew more scattered, pulled in too many directions at once.

  Her phone rang, startling her out of her staring contest with the wall beyond the screen where men on horseback raced across open plains. It was Betty Harris.

  Amber’s heart slammed into her throat. Betty rarely called her. Had something gone horribly wrong at The Quirky Whisker? She pictured her beloved shop in flames. Her hands shook so badly, she almost didn’t answer the call in time. “Hi, Betty,” she answered urgently, glancing over at her sleeping vampire cousin to make sure she hadn’t woken him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Hi, sugar,” she said. “Your aunt, sister, and cats are just fine. Take a deep breath.”

  Amber did so. “Sorry. Hi. I’m just a little high-strung lately. How are you?”

  “I’m good,” she said, but her tone was guarded now. “Are you alone?”

  That made Amber sit up a little straighter. “Mostly. Why?”

  “Is there a possibility that someone you wouldn’t want to overhear you could be listening?” Betty asked.

  It was a strange question for Betty to ask. Even stranger than her calling Amber in the first place.

  Amber’s gaze snapped up to the wall across from her. She imagined Agent Barker and Silent Agent on the other side, their ears pressed to the thin walls. She supposed that when Agent Barker made a sweep of the room earlier, he could have been layering the room in magical listening-bugs that had already revealed everything Amber and Edgar had discussed, regardless of their use of noise-cancelling spells.

  Even still, Amber quickly closed herself in the bathroom again. She turned on the water and mentally cast yet another spell to encase herself in a bubble of privacy. Swallowing hard, she asked, “What’s going on, Betty?”

  “I need you to know that I’ve never wanted to keep things from you,” she said.

  Amber’s heart rate increased. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know about you,” Betty said, her voice hushed. Amber wondered where the woman was. Given how slammed Purrfectly Scrumptious had been, and now with the festival only a couple days away, Amber couldn’t imagine the woman finding much free time. “About you being a witch, I mean.”

  Amber’s mouth went dry. Could this be a Penhallow pretending to be Betty? She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Betty recently because of how busy she’d been, so they hadn’t established a code word.

  “I hear distrust in that silence,” Betty said, and she lightly clucked her tongue.

  Amber couldn’t figure out what to say.

  “Your favorite cupcake flavor is chocolate, but you’re a new fan of the Oreo Cream Dream.” It wasn’t enough to convince Amber that this wasn’t someone trying to deceive her. How in the world could Betty know her secret? “You’re often up late at night and sit in that window seat of yours with Tom in your lap and Alley at your feet. When you were a kid, you and Willow would come to my shop on your bikes. You on a bright blue one with a white basket and Willow on a green one with the pink basket. On your birthdays, your dad would come in to get your favorite cakes. Chocolate Chocolate Surprise for you, red velvet for Willow, and German chocolate for your mom. When it was his birthday, all three of you would come in to get him cupcakes because he wanted—”

  “A variety,” Amber finished, laughing softly. “He didn’t want to have to choose just one flavor so he got a little of everything.”

  “You girls would argue for half an hour on which ones you thought he’d want that year,” Betty said, then fell silent a moment. Amber frowned, sensing the impending change in tone, even before Betty spoke. “That first year after they died …” She clucked her tongue and Amber could imagine her sadly shaking her head. “I had all your birthdays marked on my calendar, you know. Still do. I remember Gretchen bringing you two in on Willow’s sixteenth birthday. I swear it was like the light had gone out of all of you.”

  As much as Amber was touched by all this, she still couldn’t wrap her mind around what Betty had said earlier.

  “I don’t know if you’d remember this, but back when you girls were really little—when you all first moved here to Edgehill—Bobby and me brought over cupcakes as a welcome gift,” Betty said. “We try to do that for newcomers as much as we can. Plus, your parents had just moved into the new development and we wanted to see it. Shame that area never got finished. I guess the developers found it hard to sell off more houses in that area given what happened to yours …

  “Anyway,” Betty continued, “your parents were having a barbeque that day and invited us to come eat with you. It’s impossible for Bobby to turn down food, so we spent some time out back with you all. Bobby and your dad were manning the grill. You and Willow had been playing in the yard and Willow, who was just getting her walking legs, fell and scraped up her knee pretty bad. Your mom took her inside, leaving you with me. The men weren’t paying any attention.

  “You came over with a little cat toy and said you wanted to show me something. One by one let’s have some fun, two by two let’s turn it blue,” Betty said, speaking the words a bit whimsically.

  Amber’s mouth dropped open. “I showed you that?”

  “Oh yes,” Betty said. “Then you told me I couldn’t
let anyone know you showed me since magic was a secret. I didn’t believe it was magic at first, just a fancy toy your mom had gotten you. But when we came by again a few weeks later, you were playing alone on the porch. You told me that you and Willow had gotten into a fight and that you wanted to be alone, but you said it was okay if I stayed. You were playing with sidewalk chalk. I asked if you had any other tricks you could show me and you made the chalk draw a happy face without touching it.”

  Amber’s face flushed. “Were you scared?”

  “No, not really,” Betty said. “I didn’t know if it was only something you could do, or if it was a family trait. Before we left that day after lunch, you mother pulled me aside and said she saw you show me your trick. She said you didn’t open up to too many people, even back then. I told her I knew you were special and that your secret was safe with me.”

  Amber’s eyes welled up.

  “When you eventually got The Quirky Whisker, I was so happy you’d found a way to keep using your magic,” Betty said. “I could tell you needed to use yours. Willow wasn’t—isn’t—that way. It was a muscle you were always trying to flex even though it was clear your mother especially didn’t want you to use it. I didn’t know why your mother had that rule; it wasn’t my place to ask.”