Pawsitively Betrayed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Amber took one hand off the earth to pick up her mother’s grimoire and hold it to her chest. “Anyone willing to travel with me, hold on,” she said out loud.

  Hands landed on her back, shoulders, arms. It gave her weakening magic a little espresso kick.

  She pooled all the magic her body held—hers and the gifts from the others—and imagined it as a gift she was giving back to magic. It was equal parts apology, offering, and request.

  White light tore through her vision.

  When it cleared, she was in the neighborhood from 1971. Her mother’s book was in her arms, and her companions—including Kieran and her uncle—stood beside her. They were in a horizontal line, eleven of them standing shoulder to shoulder. The transported Penhallows were all conscious. Some had landed on their feet while others had collided with the dirt road. Confusion overtook them in waves.

  It was Patrice who came to her senses first and whirled toward Amber. Her piercing gaze went from grimoire to Raphael to Kieran and back again. She thrust her hands in Amber’s direction, but nothing happened. She thrust them out again and again, like a mime trying to push open an invisible door. She looked at her hands as if they had purposefully betrayed her.

  “You’re in the memory of a day in 1971, when the ley lines unexpectedly erupted,” Amber said. “Magic calls the shots here. You can’t use it unless magic gives you permission.”

  Patrice scoffed, crossing her arms. “Magic isn’t a physical thing. You just have to be strong enough to use it.”

  A great rumbling shook the earth then, and a moment later, Patrice was airborne. She hit the ground a few feet away, rolling into a patch of unmowed grass. The Penhallows flinched, startled out of their side conversations and schemes.

  Thanks, she silently told magic. A vibration tickled the soles of her feet in response.

  A door slammed in the distance. Damien and Devra came running. They had changed clothes since Amber had last been here, so now they both looked like they’d just stepped off the set of a 1970s sitcom.

  The group parted to let Damien and Devra through. Patrice still lay unconscious in the grass. It said a lot that no one made a move to check on her.

  “Welcome all to the time witch’s prison,” Devra said, standing just inches from Amber.

  Damien, however, had noticed something else. “Kieran? You’re … with her?”

  Amber glanced down the line at him just as his features shifted from his own to a mirror of Damien’s.

  “How …” Devra asked, taking a step back. “How can you do magic here when we can’t?”

  “She healed me,” Kieran said. “She didn’t take my magic away. She returned my magic to its pure form. She can do it for you, too.”

  Devra shook her head as she stepped back several steps, until she was lined up with the Penhallows standing across from Amber’s group. “You can’t trust her. They want us locked up and stripped of our powers. Being a witch in a world with people like her and the WBI is just as bad as being trapped in this time loop.”

  Damien had been watching his sister’s retreat, but then slowly turned back to Kieran, who wore his own face again. His gaze shifted to Amber. “And once you heal me, you let me back out? Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Amber said.

  “Do it,” he said.

  “Damien,” Devra hissed, but he didn’t even look back.

  Amber looked past Damien to address the rest of the Penhallows. “The agreement is this: choose to have your magic healed, and you get to leave; if you choose not to, you stay here in this memory indefinitely. Your magic won’t work here, and you’re confined to this neighborhood. It is a prison, but you can choose to leave it voluntarily. Make your choice and then come see me if you want to be released—both from this place and your curse.”

  Amber turned to her group then. “That house over there is Zelda’s. I say we set up shop in there. I need you all to be my backup in case they try something. At least we’ve got magic on our side and they don’t.”

  For the next few hours—Amber assumed—she healed Penhallow after Penhallow. They were brought in one at a time and Amber, with her mother’s grimoire as her guide, traveled into the minds of these troubled witches and severed their insatiable desire for more power. She assured them that their magic would come back, like a green sprout poking its way out of the soil come spring, but that it might take a while. Each one emerged from the experience in a daze, as if they’d never seen color before. Kieran became their temporary therapist, explaining what it would feel like as the magic returned.

  But of the fourteen Penhallows transported to this place, three had yet to enter Zelda’s house. None of them were a surprise to Amber: Devra, Neil, and Patrice. Even with the extra boost in energy from magic itself, and her companions offering their own magic when she felt weak, as well as supplying her with whatever food and drink they could find, Amber’s energy was fading, and fading fast. If the last three didn’t want to be healed, she had no problem leaving them here to sort out their demons on their own.

  Just as Amber had decided she was ready to pack up and head back to the present, Kieran poked his head into the room Amber had been conducting her work in.

  “Uhh … my brother is here,” Kieran said.

  Amber pursed her lips. She’d been hoping that Neil’s stubbornness would allow her, with a guilt-free conscience, to leave the man here to rot for all of time. “Okay.”

  Kieran ducked back out.

  Scarlett, Simon, and Gary were in the room as well, and clearly recognized Amber’s expression for what it was.

  “If you refuse to help him,” Scarlett said, “no one would blame you.”

  “If he so much as looks at you funny,” Simon said, “I’ll blast him into next Tuesday. Well, not literally, since you’re the time witch. Oh, you know what I mean.”

  “You’re a better person than me for even considering healing that guy,” Gary said.

  Neil stepped into the doorway and Amber’s stomach clenched. Her mind flashed back to the memories she’d watched of her parents’ last day on earth. The way Neil had trapped them in their own house and then had set it on fire. All for the book that now sat on Zelda’s coffee table. He eyed the book, that hungry glint in his eye still there.

  “I suppose I’m the last person you’d want to offer aid to,” Neil said, looking at her now.

  “You’re not wrong,” she said. “I can’t say that if you hadn’t been cursed, that you would have acted differently, but being healed will give you the opportunity to make decisions that are wholly your own now.”

  He smiled a little. “You’re so much like Anna, you know. She would be proud of you.”

  “Don’t speak my mother’s name as if you have the right to use it,” she snapped.

  He winced slightly, and just behind him, Scarlett, Simon, and Gary wore matching grins.

  Neil coughed awkwardly. “Fair enough.”

  Amber gestured to the blue-and-white checkered fabric couch she’d been using for what felt like days on end now. “Lie down and we can get started.”

  Once he was lying down, he folded his hands over his lap. “See you on the other side, I suppose.” He closed his eyes. Amber thought about how easy it would be to end this man here and now. The body would be left in this loop in time and no one would ever find him again. It would be like he’d just disappeared off the planet.

  But she believed what Jack had said about Kieran. It’s like deciding whether or not someone who committed a crime could ever truly be rehabilitated. Some can’t, but others can. If we never give those people a second chance, then they never get an opportunity to make up for their mistakes.

  Consulting her mother’s spell one more time, even though she’d now cast this spell eleven other times, she placed a hand on Neil’s arm, closed her eyes, and entered Neil’s mind.

  As with all the others, there was no light, no sound. There was just a pull.

  She followed the pull as if walkin
g through an invisible maze whose walls you could only find by bumping into them. In every Penhallow, the desire for power was more obsession than anything else. Illogical, all-consuming obsession that was so bone-achingly deep, it made Amber wanted to scream.

  In Neil’s mind, it wasn’t just magic he was obsessed with. It was Annabelle, too. Images of Amber’s mother started to flash in Neil’s mind, like a film projected onto the side of a building. Annabelle laughing, crying, lying beside Neil as she slept. A reel of fights, and kisses, and quiet moments. Hints of a life he could have had with Annabelle Henbane if his obsession with reversing the curse hadn’t consumed him so completely that it had driven him to kill the woman he desperately loved.

  Amber understood on some level, watching these images swirl around her, that Neil had killed Annabelle partly because his obsession with her had gained the same fever-pitch level as his obsession with reversing the curse.

  I killed her because I loved her so much. I couldn’t live without her, the obsession seemed to say. I had to kill her because my love for her interrupted my mission.

  Everything in his mind slammed to a stop.

  The world went black. Amber stilled. This had never happened before. Though she didn’t have a form here, somehow she still felt rooted to the floor. Trapped. Bound. Unable to move.

  “Now you’re my prisoner,” a voice said. A voice that seemed to come from all around her. “You let me out of here fully as I am, and I’ll do the same for you. If you don’t, well, I can just replace Edgar with you. You’ll have me in your head day and night, day and night, until you give me what I want.”

  Amber thrashed out with her magic, but it was as if her arms were bound to her sides.

  Something yanked her back with such force, it zapped the air from her lungs. Light and sound and feeling flooded back into her body and she toppled backward out of her chair, hitting the ground. There were shouts of confusion, and rapid footfalls on the wood floor. Amber’s ears rang.

  As hands grabbed her under the arms and helped her to her feet, she found the couch was empty. All that lay there was a small golden ring—her mother’s wedding ring. Amber recognized it instantly because it was a combination of diamonds and rubies. It hadn’t been a promise ring at all. It had been the ring her father had given her. Neil had even lied about that.

  Once on stable footing, she made her way to the couch and picked up the ring, turning it over in her fingers. Palming the ring, she turned to face the now-full room of startled witches. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Simon said. “He sat up on the couch and said that you were our only way out of here, and now that he’d taken you hostage, no one was getting out unless you agreed to his demands.”

  “And then he just …” Scarlett said, eyes wide, “vanished. And when he did, you fell out of the chair.”

  “Patrice vanished, too,” Kieran said from the doorway.

  “And Devra,” Damien said, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

  Amber opened her palm to stare down at the ring. “I think magic took them … broke them back down to their magical essence. They’re gone.” Slipping the ring into her pocket, she scanned the room full of witches, some friends, and some healed foes. “What do you say we get out of here?”

  But Amber hardly had to lift a magical finger and suddenly they were back in the present. The second Amber’s very large group touched ground, two bursts of warm yellow light flooded into the dark, abandoned neighborhood. Energy leeched out of Amber then and she swayed on her feet as the adrenaline and magic stabilized in her body.

  The lights were cabin lights. Aunt G, Edgar, Jack, Kim, and the others were here.

  “Is Willow okay?” Amber managed to croak out.

  “She’s resting peacefully in the car, little mouse,” said Aunt G’s voice from somewhere far away.

  “Good.” Amber collapsed.

  Chapter 31

  When Amber awoke, it was in a bed that wasn’t her own. Absently, she patted her chest, where something metal rested against her skin. Her searching fingers wrapped around a ring at the end of a chain. Angling her head the best she could, she smiled faintly at her mother’s ring that now hung from her neck. A throb of pain went through her head and she dropped the ring, where it landed back against her skin. Her head was fuzzy and her mouth was dry.

  Wincing, she tried to sit up, only to find something poking painfully in her arm. She squirmed, trying to pull the thing free, but a warm hand landed on top of hers to still her.

  “Easy, little mouse,” a familiar voice said.

  Amber rolled her head toward the sound and found her aunt smiling down at her. “Hey, Aunt G.” She sounded like she’d swallowed a frog.

  Aunt G’s eyes welled up. “You gave me quite the scare, you know. You both did.” Then she jutted her chin toward Amber’s other side.

  Willow lay in the adjoining bed, sleeping peacefully. Amber’s bottom lip shook. “She’s okay?”

  “Yes,” Aunt G said. “Simon and I came up with a detoxifying tincture for her that I snuck in an hour or so ago. Without Patrice around to reactivate the tincture Willow consumed, it will eventually break down and pass out of her body. The detoxifying tincture will just make sure that happens quicker.”

  “Have I been asleep a long time?” Amber asked, unable to take her eyes off her sleeping sister.

  “About twelve hours,” Aunt G said. “Time passes differently in that memory, so though I’m sure you were in there for hours, in the present, it had only been an hour tops before you were back. Between the amount of magic that had been pumped into you, and the number of spells you cast in the memory, you exhausted yourself rather completely.”

  The door to Amber’s hospital room opened. Kim’s gaze jumped from Willow to Amber to Aunt G, and then quickly back to Amber. Her eyes lit up. “Oh my God! You’re finally awake! I can’t believe I missed it.”

  Kim wore a tank top, athletic pants, running shoes, and a bright pink headband. Her long brown hair was up in a messy ponytail, and her face was flush. The running bib was still attached to her tank top with safety pins.

  “How’d you do?” Amber asked, trying again to sit up.

  “Twenty-six minutes flat!” she chirped. “I beat Bianca’s time by thirty-nine seconds.”

  Amber smiled at that.

  Slowly, people started to trickle into her room. Jack, Simon, Bianca, Betty, Bobby, Scarlett, Zelda, Irene, Gary, and several other witches who had helped her that night. None of the Penhallows she’d healed were there, but she wasn’t surprised by that. They all had to process that they were in the world curse-free. Her friends and loved ones crowded around her bed, all expressing how glad they were to see her awake.

  The door swung open yet again but Amber couldn’t see who had walked in. “Is she awake?” came a gruff voice.

  The group parted as Edgar strode toward her. He stood there staring at her for a long moment, his grumpy expression hard to read. Then a small smile inched up his face, and even more shockingly, tears sprang up in his eyes. “He’s gone.”

  Amber choked out a laugh. “Yeah?”

  Edgar quickly closed the distance and gave Amber a tight awkward hug, Amber unable to move without all her muscles screaming in protest. “Thank you, cousin,” he whispered in her ear. “I didn’t think you could do it.”

  She laughed. “Always so optimistic.”

  But he still didn’t let her go. “Thank you,” he said again, but softer this time.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Edgar and Jack were in the middle of telling the group their story—how they’d nearly gotten into a high-speed chase with the police because Jack was driving 90 miles per hour on the highway in an effort to get the grimoires as far away from Edgehill as possible—when the door opened yet again.

  A hush almost immediately swept over the group. Several people backed away, moving closer to the windows and further from the door. Aunt G got to her feet.

  The sinki
ng feeling in Amber’s gut was so acute, even the monitor keeping track of her vital signs reacted.

  “Dad?” Edgar asked softly, his back to Amber now.

  Raphael stopped at the foot of Amber’s bed and smiled weakly at her. “Welcome back.”

  Amber’s gaze flicked between Edgar and Raphael. “Thank you for your help,” she said, keeping her attention focused on the tight jaw of Edgar’s profile even though she addressed Raphael. “I couldn’t have done any of that by myself.”

  Edgar’s fists clenched by his side.

  “Is Neil gone?” Raphael asked his son.

  Edgar nodded.

  “I needed it to be believable,” Raphael said quickly. “I knew Neil would take anything you said or did or thought and use it against us. I asked Amber not to tell you.”

  “To be honest,” Aunt G said, “she had more faith in a Penhallow than she did in her own uncle.”

  Raphael grimaced. “Can’t say I blame any of you for thinking that way. I wouldn’t trust me either.” He took a slight step toward Edgar, who was still wound so tight, Amber was half convinced he was gearing up to deck his father in the face. “The FBI also doesn’t trust me. I’m apparently under suspicion for the murder of Stanley Johnson and possibly kidnapping my niece and taking her across state lines. I’ve been informed by the WBI that a Thea Bishop will be my attorney.”

  Yikes. Amber had managed to forget about that whole mess.

  “I know I have a lot to make up for, son. But I’d like to try. I was angry and bitter when I was your age. I see the same rage in you that I had—for different reasons, I know, but I don’t want that for you. All I’m asking for is the right to earn a second chance.”

  Edgar didn’t say anything for what felt like ages. The tension in the room was nearly claustrophobic. Everyone’s focus was on the two Henbane men staring each other down.