Pawsitively Swindled

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “Oh!” She tucked her lips under her teeth. She was at a loss again. What was she supposed to ask this man? She had so many questions about magic, it was overwhelming. She picked up the glass of lemonade and slowly sipped it, no longer sure what to do with her hands.

  She desperately wanted to ask what he knew about her parents, the coveted time-travel spell, and the Penhallow curse, but that would be getting ahead of herself. It would be just like her to meet someone new and bypass all the getting-to-know-you small talk and veer straight into the Land of Too Much Information.

  Besides, just because he wasn’t a Penhallow—at least she hoped not—it didn’t mean that he didn’t associate with them. She knew nothing about him.

  Next to his arm was a small stack of what looked like flyers. “Join us and Mayor Sable on Monday night for the Marbleglen Public Safety Meeting!” they read. “We’ll stop the Marbleglen Bandit ourselves!”

  “Marbleglen Bandit?” Amber asked, realizing too late that she’d said that out loud.

  “Yep,” Simon said. “Despite being the safest town in Oregon, we’ve got a vandal on our hands.”

  Amber hadn’t heard anything about it. Perhaps this was the “rough couple of months” Mayor Deidrick had alluded to. Bianca Pace and her band of Floral Frenemies certainly hadn’t brought it up. Kim would find this endlessly satisfying.

  “About a month ago, a crime spree—that’s what they called it on the news, anyway—swept through the town. And yet, a month later, do you think there’s been a single arrest made? Nope. Chief Jameson is an incompetent buffoon,” Simon said. “It’s also a terribly kept secret among locals that the whole police department is rotten to the core. Bribery, fraud, theft. The mayor before Sable just looked the other way; he was too busy working on his golf game. Mayor Sable is doing what she can, but the chief and his minions are too set in their ways now. There’s a relatively new guy—Juan Reyes—who seems okay, but he’s vastly outnumbered.” Simon pursed his lips, shaking his head. “A bunch of us are fed up, so I created a group where we can talk about this stuff openly. It’s really grown over the last few weeks. There’s a town hall tomorrow and I’ll be leading a Q&A with Mayor Sable.”

  “What kind of crime spree was it?” Amber asked.

  “Over the course of one night, several cars were vandalized in an apartment complex parking lot; graffiti was sprayed over a beloved mural in the center of town; the doors on all the coops were opened overnight on a chicken farm—several of the birds are still missing; and someone destroyed a farmer’s entire supply of peppermint oil.”

  “Would one person be able to do all that in one night?” Amber asked. “That sounds like a bunch of bandits.”

  “That’s one theory,” Simon said. “Marbleglen High graduates have a senior prank every year. A lot of people are speculating that a bunch of them went on a bender and took the prank too far. It was one night of destruction, and then nothing. But even if that’s the case, the chief and his squad of goons haven’t done anything to crack down on it. What would stop the bandits from trying to do something like this again? It cost victims a lot of money to repair the damages and they’ve gotten no relief from Jameson.”

  Unsure of what else to say, Amber said, “I hope something comes out of your talk with the mayor.”

  “Thanks,” he said slowly, head cocked to the side and one elbow propped on the table. “I know you didn’t come all the way over here to talk about Marbleglen politics. It’s my passion lately, so once you get me going, I can’t shut up.” He laughed. “What did you want to talk about? You can ask me anything you want. I’m always happy to talk to other witches. They’re few and far between here.”

  Amber had so many questions that now her brain had shut down completely. She idly sipped her lemonade. Would it be strange if she just bolted out of here without another word?

  “You’re Annabelle Henbane’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  Amber almost choked. She set down the glass and coughed, rubbing at her watering eyes. “How did you know that?”

  “Your mother grew up in Delin Springs,” he said, which was neither a question nor an answer.

  Amber nodded.

  “I grew up in a hybrid town in western Louisiana. Your mother and I were similar in age; I figure she would be about my age now had she not passed away. With Delin Springs in southeast Texas, we heard about the goings-on there quite often since it was less than an hour away. The rumors about your mother being a prodigy with time spells was like hearing a fourteen-year-old just graduated Harvard with a degree in quantum physics. It wasn’t—still isn’t—anything most of us were capable of, so a lot of us from that area started to see her as an almost mythical creature.

  “A lot of my family has been in law enforcement in one way or another, and my late wife was an officer too. I suppose that’s why I’m getting involved in the public safety issues here now. Anyway, when I was a kid and a major crime happened that involved magic, I usually heard about it from a chatty aunt or uncle. Word spread fast that a man in Delin Springs had been murdered, and that another had been driven mad—both because of magic. Then people realized that the entire Henbane clan of four had packed up and left that same night.” Simon eyed her for a moment, then added, “It took a few days for authorities to piece it together that the murdered man in the woods who no one in Delin Springs recognized was actually a Penhallow.”

  Amber swallowed.

  “I’d always wondered what happened to Annabelle,” Simon said. “I had a bit of a crush on her, to be honest. I never met her, but so many of us were taken with the idea of her. This powerful witch who had such a bright future of magical innovation ahead of her, and then she just … vanished.

  “My late wife, because of her job, found out that Annabelle had become a Blackwood and had two children—but she only learned that after Annabelle died. No one realized it was them until the investigation started. Your parents did an exceptional job of staying hidden.”

  Amber mulled that over for a moment. “So law enforcement from witch towns investigated the fire?”

  “Oh yeah. My wife was actually called out there,” he said. “Between the claims of blue fire, neighbors not calling the fire in until it was too late, and the fact that there was a thick magical signature outside the house, there was no doubt it had been a Penhallow who had killed them. But the day your parents died, the Penhallows dropped off the map. It’s still considered an open case as far as I know.”

  Amber found herself grateful that people from the magic community—a community her parents had turned their backs on—had cared enough to investigate their deaths. Yet, Amber was also upset none of those people had ever talked to her, Willow, or Aunt Gretchen. Amber had felt so alone in her conviction that Penhallows had been behind the fire.

  “Was it true that they raised you to be magic-free?” he asked. “Is that why you don’t know much about Magic Cache? Most kids learn it in elementary school.”

  “Yes,” she admitted, cheeks hot. “Guess you could say I’m a late bloomer.”

  Simon laughed. It was a nice, easy sound. “Any idea why they chose Edgehill of all places? Most witches believe the place is cursed. Did they choose a place no one would think to look for them?”

  Amber’s brows scrunched together. “Cursed?”

  Simon shrugged and waved his hand dismissively. “I’m sure a lot of it is myth. Stories parents tell their kids to freak them out. It was a popular story when I was kid, anyway. I’d heard it enough times growing up that when my wife and I were looking to relocate, we didn’t even consider it as a possibility. Even choosing Marbleglen felt risky since Edgehill is right next door, but my wife loved flowers on a nearly obsessive level, so it was sort of inevitable that we’d end up in a place like this.”

  Amber merely stared at him. She hadn’t the first clue what he was talking about.

  Simon kept talking, though she couldn’t be sure whether it was because he was clueless to her confusion or barreling ri
ght past it so as to not embarrass her by acknowledging it. “My wife and I loved Magic Cache. It was actually how we met; we were in our twenties, on break for college, and were both out caching. When we realized we were after the same one, we made a bet on who would find it first. She did, of course. She was always a master at locator spells and tracking in general. It’s what made her such a great detective.

  “Anyway, after we were married, we kept planning to go on a cross-country caching trip, but life kept getting in the way. Then our daughter was born. Then my wife got sick and … well. It never happened. A few years ago, I decided to go on the trip in her honor. It was a bittersweet experience. When I got back, I decided to add a few Marbleglen caches in some of her favorite places. She loved rabbits and she used to take our dog on a walk every morning through Sorrel Garden.

  “I almost, almost went into Edgehill to hide one, but as silly as it is, I was scared to hit one of those supposed magic veins and blow myself to smithereens.” He chuckled.

  “Okay, I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Amber finally said. “Curse? Myth? Magic veins?”

  Slowly, the good humor drained from his face. “You really don’t know the story?”

  She shook her head.

  “Wow,” he said, sitting up a little straighter. “So the story goes that over a hundred years ago, there were magic towns all over the world. Edgehill was one of them, much like your mother’s Delin Springs. But one day, something happened. Magic went haywire, causing witches across the globe to get sick—some dropped dead, others went mad. The council, before it disbanded around the same time, claimed they had no idea what it was, but they would look into it. Nothing ever came from the supposed investigation, so theories have been floating around for years.

  “But whatever this thing was, it resulted in magic veins—pockets of intense power that could go off like a bomb if triggered—popping up in a handful of towns across the globe. Apparently, for a while, the magic under the ground in Edgehill erupted like a volcano. It’s believed that the magic that came out caused magic sickness, and it caused all the witches in Edgehill to eventually flee the town. A few years after the witches left, their familiars—the cats—all made their way back to the town and have been waiting for their witches to return for generations. It’s a nice story, regardless of whether it’s true—the cat part, I mean. You have to admit it’s pretty strange that there are so many cats there …”

  Amber blinked in rapid succession. Could Tom and Alley be descendants of cat familiars?

  She’d never heard anything like this. She wondered if her parents had known the story. Had something supernatural lured them to Edgehill without them knowing why?

  “I always thought your parents had chosen it specifically for its history,” Simon said. “Perhaps I just liked the idea that even if Annabelle had turned her back on magic, she’d found comfort in being in a place that had once been home to witches—maybe a way to feel closer to Delin Springs even if she felt like she could never go back. I could relate to that idea since I’d grown up in a hybrid town. Making the transition to a place that’s more or less magic-free can be really difficult.”

  There was that phrase again. “What’s a hybrid town?”

  Simon took a sip of his lemonade. “Just like it sounds, I guess. A witch town means you can use your magic freely. You get used to things—and people—appearing and disappearing at any given time. Sometimes animals talk. Pranks in high school get out of control really fast when magic is a factor. But witch towns are also like prisons. You can only be your true self when you’re there. It can start to feel like you have a split personality.

  “In hybrid towns, there are non-witches living alongside witches. They’re the kind of places people go when magic skips a generation and you have non-witch parents with a witch child. Or witch parents with a non-witch child. It can be great to be out in the open with your abilities with non-witches, but being a non-witch in a town where there are magic-wielding criminals? They can be very dangerous places.”

  “Is that why you left yours?” Amber asked.

  “Partly,” he said. “Our daughter didn’t inherit any of our powers. My wife was offered a very cushy detective post in the hybrid town of Wendel, Washington, so that’s where we went. But it was very hard on Bianca. Imagine the horrors and insecurities of middle school, and then add on the fact that you didn’t get a lick of magic from your parents. She lasted all of a week in high school before she couldn’t take it anymore and we eventually settled in Marbleglen.”

  “So you had to do what my parents did,” she said. “Go from a place where using magic was natural to a place where you had to hide it.”

  Simon nodded. “It was a difficult transition at first, but after living in Wendel, my wife and I both thought it would be nice to have a slower, less dangerous life. Marbleglen is the polar opposite of Wendel. We both fell in love with it. And Bianca thrived here. Now she even heads the Floral Frenzy Festival Committee.”

  Amber almost choked on her lemonade again. “Your daughter is Bianca Pace?”

  Simon grinned. “Yes. You’ve met her?”

  Have I ever. “Just briefly.”

  “Huh,” he said, smiling. “Small world.”

  “Are there any other witches in Marbleglen?” she asked, still reeling from the revelation that snooty, uppity Bianca Pace had a witch for a father.

  Simon shook his head. “Not that I know of. Another reason I put caches in town was in hopes it would put me in contact with a few other witches. I don’t necessarily miss the hectic life in Wendel, but there’s just something about being around other witches. You can let your guard down in a way you can’t with non-witches. I was instantly comfortable around you, for example. Witches just give off a good energy, I think.” He studied her for a long moment. “What made you stay in Edgehill after your parents passed away?”

  Amber chewed on her bottom lip, debating on whether she should mention Edgar and deciding against it. “Willow, my sister, left; I stayed. It can be lonely being the only witch for miles, but Edgehill is my home. It always will be. Cursed or not.”

  Simon picked up his glass and held it out to her. “Well, now you have me.”

  Smiling, she grabbed her glass and gently clicked it against his before taking a sip.

  “If only you didn’t have to mangle my grandfather’s prized woodworking piece in order for us to find each other,” he said, but he was still smiling warmly at her.

  Just then, the front door opened, startling them both. Amber couldn’t see the door from where she sat.

  “Dad?” came a voice from the living room. “You here? I brought one of Pete’s old suits for you for the dinner.”

  Amber’s eyes widened, recognizing the voice instantly. Her gaze flicked to the other end of the kitchen where a door promised her a quick escape. The world outside the sheer white curtains boasted a clear blue sky and a decided lack of Bianca Pace.

  “We’re in here!” he called over his shoulder, not getting up.

  “We?” Bianca asked. “We who? Since when do you—”

  Bianca came up short in the doorway when she spotted Amber sitting at the table with her father. The hanger for a zipped-up garment bag hung from her hand. Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

  Simon quickly stood, whirling on his daughter. “What on earth has gotten into you? Amber is a guest. My guest, and you’re in my home.” He took the bag from her and hung it from the knob on one of the cabinets behind him.

  Despite being in her early thirties, like Amber, the poised woman rolled her eyes as if she were a teenager. “Relax, Dad. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just surprised to see a member of the Here and Meow Committee cozying up to my father, of all people.”

  If Simon was surprised that Amber had a seat on the committee of his daughter’s rival festival, he didn’t show it. Was he going to tell Bianca that Amber was a witch? Even if Bianca was well-versed in the witch world, Amber
couldn’t imagine Bianca not using that knowledge to her advantage somehow.

  Some small part of Amber felt pity for Bianca. Her ever-present snotty personality was likely based, at least a little, on the fact that she felt insecure about not being a witch herself.

  “Amber came to see me because she was playing Magic Cache and the spell glitched,” Simon said. “She brought Papa’s wooden rabbit back to me because the cloak on it malfunctioned.”

  Welp, I guess that’s out in the open now.

  Bianca’s gaze slowly turned back to Amber and a small smile inched its way onto her beautiful face. “Amber Blackwood is a witch? Wow.” She gave Amber an up-and-down scan. “So much makes sense now.”

  Amber swallowed, her mouth suddenly parched. She downed the rest of her lemonade and then quickly got to her feet. Scanning the table, she pulled out a small notepad buried under a pile of wreath supplies and the golfer pencil that rested against the small red guestbook, and quickly wrote down her phone number. “It was really great meeting you, Simon. That’s my cell,” she said, tapping a finger against the pad of paper. “Maybe we can meet up again sometime, if that’s okay?”

  He smiled and held out his hand. Amber shook it; his fingers were rough and strong. He was a man who clearly worked a lot with his hands. He patted the back of her hand with his. “Any time. We witches have to stick together, right?”

  She nodded, face flushed. “Good luck with the meeting with Mayor Sable tomorrow.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “We’ll need it. But, hopefully, the next step will be getting rid of useless Chief Jameson. Marbleglen will be much better off once he’s gone.”

  Amber only managed to laugh awkwardly, as she was distracted by the way Bianca’s lip was curled in Amber’s direction. She needed to get out of here.

  “Bye, Bianca,” she said, and scurried past her.

  When Amber was tucked safely back in her car, it wasn’t her cousin who she called right away. It was Kim.