Pawsitively Swindled

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “Yes and no. That’s why I was hoping you were still here,” Bianca said, then motioned for Amber to follow her so they were out of earshot of the people who were coming or going. They walked past the line of cars and stood near the darkening meadow that lined either side of Sweetbay Court. “When Dad called you, his lawyer was at the house too. I got to chat with him. Nice guy, but the case stacked against my dad is … extensive.

  “So, like Molly said, by the time Jameson kicked everyone out, Dad said there were six attendees left at the dinner party, including himself and Chief Jameson. The police have collected four signed statements, all of them saying that Dad and Jameson were in a back bedroom talking. Talking turned to shouting. Things were smashed. And then there was a gunshot. They all came running in from the dining room and found Jameson on the floor with a single shot to the chest. Dad was passed out next to him.”

  Amber slowly shook her head, dismayed. “That sounds … bad.”

  “Worse still,” Bianca said, “a blood test shows Dad had above the legal limit of alcohol in his system.”

  “Even though you said he’s not a heavy drinker?”

  “Right,” Bianca said. “The lawyer says the prosecution will say Dad’s missing memory is from Dad being blackout drunk. If he really had been roofied, that should have come up either in a blood or urine test since he was arrested so quickly. But all the tests show was that he was wasted. He and his lawyer are trying to get another company to run the blood sample they supposedly took from Dad to see if they can find any traces of other substances in it, but …” Bianca sighed. “It’s not looking good. I don’t know what to do. I feel like everyone is working against him.”

  Amber heaved out a breath. She wanted to hold out hope that Simon hadn’t done what he was accused of doing, but the evidence did make him sound horribly guilty. If he was being framed, the person or people behind it were doing a bang-up job. “So if his memory is missing from that night, does he not remember who was there?”

  “Nope,” Bianca said. “He remembers four people were there other than him and Jameson. The number of them has stuck with him, but no faces. I have the list at home of the people who signed eyewitness statements. I didn’t recognize two of the names, but Daniels and Mayor Sable were there.”

  Amber had known that, yet it still made her uneasy to know that one of them—if not both—had potentially murdered one person and then made an innocent man take the fall for it.

  Bianca groaned. “I can’t keep thinking about this. I’m going to go get covered in glue. Hopefully that request for your visit will get approved soon. See you around.”

  Amber watched Bianca stride away.

  When her phone buzzed in her pocket again, she figured it was a reminder notification that she still hadn’t read Bianca’s latest text. But when she looked at the screen, the most recent message was from Connor.

  Hi, Amber. Thank you for your message! I’m out of town for a few weeks, but would be happy to chat when I get back.

  It was both oddly dismissive and too formal at the same time, like a text version of an automatically sent “out of office” email.

  Which meant that Amber would have to deal with Molly Hargrove on her own.

  After getting back to Edgehill, Amber picked up Chinese for herself. Doing so during work hours was always uncomfortable, as she had to walk through The Quirky Whisker with her food, but she was both starving and could no longer stand without her ankle throbbing painfully, so cooking for herself was out of the question.

  Upon seeing Amber’s guilt-stricken face when she walked in, Daisy said, “Don’t you dare come back downstairs.”

  Lily said, “We have the evening covered. Go lie down!”

  She thanked them sheepishly and slowly made her way up to her apartment. As she sat at her dining room table, eating directly out of the extra-large Styrofoam container of wonton soup in a manner that likely would horrify the refined Bianca Pace, she considered calling Jack. She didn’t know what to say to him. Maybe she just wanted him to kiss her again.

  But then something dropped into her lap, dispelling all thoughts of Jack Terrence. It was a wonder that she hadn’t spilled her soup all over herself. Confused, she looked down, half expecting to see Tom Cat there, but instead the slight weight in her lap had come from something small and round bulging slightly from the pocket of her hoodie.

  Putting down her soup and utensils, she tentatively reached a hand inside her pocket, her hand closing around something disc-shaped and the size of her palm. She pulled out a mustard-yellow stone that had been carved to resemble a rose. It lay flat in Amber’s palm. Where had it come from and how had it gotten here?

  A faint trace of magic was coming off the rose. Now that the initial shock of the rose’s arrival had given way to curiosity, Amber’s senses trained by Edgar’s lessons in Magic Cache were kicking in. She was on her feet a second later and crossed the length of her studio apartment so she could peer outside. She scanned the darkening street of Russian Blue Avenue. Shoppers still cruised the street, wandering both into her shop below and Purrfectly Scrumptious across the way. There was actually a line out the door of the bakery—ever since Betty had won the Best of Edgehill designation, business had ticked up significantly. Amber hoped Betty had finally hired help.

  Her gaze swept Russian Blue again. People would be milling about for the next few hours, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary. No strange faces peered up at her from the street. No shapes of hunched bodies were behind shrubs or trees. It didn’t mean there wasn’t a witch out there, though.

  The rock in her hand grew warm and she quickly shifted her attention from the street outside her window to the mustard-colored stone. The rose looked the same, the whorls of the petals etched with impressive detail. It reminded Amber a bit of Simon’s wooden rabbit she’d found in Sorrel Garden.

  Amber turned the stone over and gasped softy. A message was slowly unfurling on the flat base of it.

  Hello, A. Blackwood. Would love to chat. Sorrel Lot D tomorrow noon? Z. Rockrose.

  “Rockrose,” Amber muttered out loud.

  It was a literal rock rose. A rose made of rock. Was it like a witchy calling card?

  Z. Rockrose was not only still alive, but wanted to meet. Z’s Talk-Up Doll currently sat on top of a bookshelf, where Amber’s endlessly curious cats couldn’t reach it.

  A little voice in the back of her head said, How do you know this is actually Z. Rockrose and not a Penhallow?

  The guestbook was supposed to be returned to the last owner. So unless a Penhallow had been there to intercept the guestbook, Amber figured it was probably likely that Z. Rockrose was who he or she claimed to be.

  Amber quickly texted Edgar. Z. Rockrose found me! You free tomorrow at noon?

  Whoa! Yes! I’ll pick you up.

  The next day, Amber stayed in bed until almost ten in the morning, even though she’d been up since five, wasting away the hours with a game on her phone when sleep proved elusive. She’d wanted to keep her foot elevated so she could meet Z. Rockrose that afternoon with less of a limp. Still, she was glad when Edgar arrived at 11:30 to pick her up.

  The bags under his eyes were pronounced, but he seemed to be in good spirits. “I’m going to miss that doll. Think Z will let me have it?”

  “He or she hasn’t seen it in forty-nine years. I’m guessing Z wants it.”

  “Bah.”

  They kept the conversation light as they drove to the garden, but once they’d climbed out of Edgar’s truck and had walked under the metal welcome sign, they fell silent. There weren’t many people here, possibly because it was a Monday afternoon.

  Not far from the topiary bunnies where Amber had found Simon’s cache, an older woman stood on the path, hands in the pockets of her black pants as she gazed out at the sea of edible plants before her. Amber had no way of knowing what Z. Rockrose looked like, and it wasn’t strange to see an elderly person enjoying the beauty of a garden, but something told Amber th
ey’d found Z. Chalk it up to her newly trained magic senses.

  At almost the same time that Amber had noticed her, the woman turned to see who approached. She was at least sixty, if Amber’s math was right, and smiled warmly at them, waving.

  The woman wore a wide-brimmed brown hat, a blue and purple floral shirt, black pants, and sensible black shoes. Her skin was a warm brown and her crow’s feet and laugh lines showed signs of her age. She was about five-four. Amber guessed she was Native American.

  They closed the distance and then stopped a foot apart.

  “You must be A. Blackwood,” the woman said, her voice rich and pleasant, as she held out her hand for Amber to shake. As Amber did so, she said, “Amber, is it?”

  Amber blinked, letting the woman’s hand go. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, your family is rather famous. Not many Blackwoods rumored to be in this area other than the Blackwoods.” The woman clasped her hands in front of herself and then eyed Edgar. “And who might you be?”

  “Edgar Henbane, ma’am,” he said.

  The woman beamed. “You must be Annabelle’s nephew, then! How lovely to meet you. I’m Zelda Rockrose.” Then her gaze shifted to the Talk-Up Doll Amber held.

  “I suppose this is yours,” Amber said, handing the doll over.

  Zelda’s smile was wide and she took the doll from Amber as if it were a precious gem. “Goodness me. It’s in the same shape it was in when I placed it in that box. Incredible.” She pulled the doll’s head from her body.

  “Oops! I lost my head for a moment!”

  Zelda let out a long, hearty laugh, as did Edgar. “Oh, how I loved this doll. My mother hated it.”

  Amber smiled. “I think I’m going to have to agree with your mom on this one.”

  Zelda laughed again. Then her smile slowly faded and she looked at Amber and Edgar in turn. “I have to ask … what made you go looking for the impossible-to-find cache? Are you Magic Cache enthusiasts, or …?”

  “I’m really into caching, ma’am,” Edgar said. “I’ve been trying to get Amber into it for a while. The hunt for dead zones has always been a fun challenge to me, so I thought she might like it, too. We just didn’t realize how challenging. It really put Amber through the ringer trying to find that thing.”

  Though Zelda cocked her head like a curious bird, her floppy hat held firm. “So the rumors must be true then. The late Annabelle Henbane passed her memory and time magic affinity onto her daughter. Did Willow inherit it, too?”

  Something like a warning flared in Amber’s gut, igniting her magic, and she hurled a truth spell at Zelda before she’d decided she was going do to it. “Are you a Penhallow in disguise, Zelda Rockrose?”

  Zelda’s eyes flared wide in surprise before she said, “No. I’m Zelda Rockrose. I’ve always been fascinated by the story of your parents. The moment that guestbook was returned to me, I hopped on a plane. I came here from Colorado.”

  Amber knew the last two statements weren’t triggered by the truth spell; Zelda had offered them as a means to ease Amber’s mind a bit more.

  “Why would you think I was a Penhallow?” There was no mistaking Zelda’s defensive tone. “If I were a Penhallow, I would be more fearful of you than you are of me. A wild rumor has been circulating about a Blackwood severing a Penhallow from his magic and effectively making him fully human, breaking his tie to the curse. When your name popped up in my guestbook—a guestbook for a cache literally lost to time—I knew I had to try to meet you.”

  Her brows arched. How had anyone heard about Kieran?

  “My daughter is in law enforcement,” Zelda said, clearly sensing Amber’s confusion. “Penhallow is a name that’s been set to flag any and all alerts when it comes up. So when Kieran Penhallow was arrested and ended up in the system—the non-witch system—let’s just say the whole witch community lost its collective mind. And, naturally, witch detectives and civilians alike started to hunt down the rumors. Kieran, I hear, is a chatty inmate, so your name joined the rumor mill fairly quickly. You just might become as infamous as your mother.”

  It wasn’t something Amber wanted, that was all she knew. And from what little she’d learned of her mother, Annabelle Blackwood hadn’t wanted infamy either. Mother and daughter both wanted quiet, content lives where their loved ones were safe.

  “Can I ask you something?” Amber asked.

  “Of course.” Zelda’s smile was wide, as if Amber and just offered her the moon. Oh gosh, was Zelda … starstruck? This was all too weird.

  “What happened in that neighborhood?” Amber asked. “Why is there so much magic under the ground?”

  A little of the color drained from Zelda’s face. “You … felt the magic there?”

  “Yeah,” Amber said. “The veins are what gave me the juice to reveal the neighborhood from the 70s—and I needed to do that to locate the fountain where the cache was hidden.”

  “It gave her so much juice that even I saw the memory she revealed,” Edgar said.

  “Remarkable,” Zelda breathed. “And you both feel okay now? You don’t feel … sick or anything?”

  Amber’s forehead scrunched up. “No. I mean, that magic tossed me around like a ragdoll, so I’m sore, but not sick.”

  “Totally fine,” Edgar said.

  “Remarkable,” she said again, then looked around them. “Let’s go take a seat over there. My knee’s been acting up lately.”

  Shrugging, Amber and Edgar followed Zelda a few feet down the path, and then they walked along a narrow cobblestone walkway that veered off the main path and toward a pair of benches flanked by apple trees that wouldn’t start bearing fruit until the fall. The trees were currently covered in pretty white blooms and gave off a sweet, light aroma.

  Zelda sighed when she sat down. “Much better.”

  Amber sat beside her; Edgar stood next to Amber, his arms crossed.

  Turning slightly, Zelda smiled at Amber. And then a quick spell left her lips.

  Amber’s whole body tensed up, waiting for a blow. Edgar raised both hands as if ready to throw up a shield to deflect any blast of magic Zelda might throw at them. But one didn’t come. Instead, the sound around Amber—the slight breeze, the buzz of bees in the apple blossoms above, the general sound of the world around her that she took for granted—dampened. “What the …” Her voice sounded tinny. Though nothing around her looked any different, she couldn’t shake the feeling that now she sat in a snow globe.

  “Noise-canceling spell,” Edgar said, gazing around above them as if he could see the dome of magic encasing them now.

  “No one will be able to hear us,” Zelda said.

  A bright, vivid image flashed through Amber’s mind—Zelda’s kind face sloughing off to reveal a Penhallow beneath, a knife materializing out of nowhere and sliding between Amber’s ribs, a cry of pain that only Edgar would be able to hear.

  But nothing of the sort happened. Amber really and truly needed to get more sleep.

  “So,” Zelda said, even more at ease now. “The neighborhood. Where do I begin …” She tapped her chin. “Since you brought up the Penhallows, let’s start there. Do you know the story of how they were cursed?”

  Amber felt like a child in grade school, repeating some oft-told piece of history—in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. “A Penhallow who had already been stripped of his power killed a councilmember,” Amber said. “When that councilmember died, his magic was pulled into the Penhallow’s body, which created a warped version of magic. Over time, their magic got more and more twisted until the whole clan was cursed.”

  Zelda clucked her tongue in a way that reminded Amber of Betty Harris. “The council did an excellent job of spreading the story they wanted everyone to believe. History favors those who are left to tell the story, no?”

  Shrugging, Amber said, “That was the story I always heard.”

  “Me too,” Edgar said.

  “Did anything strange ever stand out to you about that story?” Zelda as
ked.

  “I’ve wondered how the council managed to strip the Penhallows of their powers in the first place,” Amber said. “That seems like a massive undertaking for a dozen witches. The Penhallows had already gone off the rails by then, so I can’t imagine they all just showed up at the council’s doorstep and volunteered to be stripped of their powers.”

  “Bingo. No one asks how it happened anymore. They just accept that it did and move on,” Zelda said. “The story that was spread for years was that the transfer of power from councilmember to Penhallow had been an odd, unexpected consequence—that the attack on the councilmember had been random and had set off the curse in a way that no one saw coming, right?” Zelda said, and Amber nodded. “It’s a lie. The stripping of power and the curse happened at the same time, and it affected the entire clan in one fell swoop, not a curse that slowly spread over time.”

  “What happened?” Amber asked.

  “Do you know what a ley line is?”

  “Lines of energy that run across the globe,” Edgar said.

  “Yes. There are several theories about what they are, but for people like you and me, they’re lines of energy that crisscross the world. It’s said that where ley lines cross, there’s even more energy,” Zelda said. “When the council decided that it was high time to stop the Penhallows, they didn’t systematically track down the Penhallows one by one. Councilmembers didn’t fan out across the globe to smoke the Penhallows out of their hiding places like rats. No, it was the council who grabbed an unsuspecting Penhallow and took him as hostage. The whole council then converged on Sedona, Arizona. The council joined hands on a ley line—with one councilmember keeping physical contact with the Penhallow so the council could better target the whole clan at once—and channeled all their magic into the power-stripping spell, blasting all that concentrated energy, including the vortex energy that’s ever-present in Sedona, into one of the most powerful ley line intersections on the planet.”

  Amber’s eyes widened. “Were the Penhallows that bad? I know they’d been siphoning powers for a long time … my parents didn’t talk much about our powers—just that we needed to hide them—but they made sure we knew about Penhallows.”