Pawsitively Cursed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  When she pulled her aunt into a tight hug, the gesture was returned with a laugh.

  “Easy now,” Aunt Gretchen said, chuckling as she patted Amber’s back, her head just below Amber’s chin. “I’m an old lady with fragile bones.”

  “Pah!” said Amber, pulling away but holding onto the woman’s arms. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing here? The Here and Meow is still months away.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said, “but Willow will be here soon, won’t she? I was anxious to see my girls before things got too hectic here.”

  Too hectic? Aunt Gretchen always showed up during the peak of the festival, never before. She said she preferred it that way. So why was she here three months early?

  Amber squinted at her aunt. Gretchen had never been a huge fan of traveling, which she did less and less of as she got older. “Spill. I have ways of making you talk if you won’t do so willingly.”

  Gretchen’s mouth quirked up, though Amber wasn’t sure why. It hadn’t been an idle threat. “I’ve missed you, my sweet girl,” she said, patting Amber’s cheek with her cool hand.

  Amber’s eyes narrowed further.

  With a sigh, Gretchen said, “I haven’t been feeling well lately and I wanted the comfort of my family. Is that sufficient?”

  Something twinged in Amber’s chest. “Oh no. What’s wrong? You shouldn’t be traveling if you’re not feeling well. I would have come to you. Do you want to come upstairs? I can make you some tea, or—”

  Gretchen huffed and Amber snapped her mouth shut. “That right there is why I didn’t mention anything sooner. You’re such a worrier! If I’d told you I felt ill, you would have dropped everything to come see me. I don’t want to upend your life.”

  “You upended yours when Mom and Dad died,” Amber said. “Coming to look after you is the least I could do. Chicken soup, tinctures—”

  Gretchen wrinkled her nose. “Your tinctures were always rather … questionable.”

  Amber gasped. “They’re not all bad.”

  Though if Amber was being honest with herself, especially in the wake of Melanie’s death, she wondered if she should not only throw out her current supply of tinctures but stop trying to make them altogether. Most of what Amber knew of magic had been self-taught. There had been much trial and error over the years—often more error than trial.

  She and Willow had never received the full witch education from their parents that they’d been promised once they graduated high school. But their parents had died before that happened.

  Their grimoires had gone up in smoke with the rest of their house, further distancing Amber from her witch heritage. When it came to her magic, she always felt as if she was floundering in the dark. She didn’t have Willow’s knack for glamour spells. She wasn’t a skilled kitchen witch like her aunt. Gretchen claimed her own talents didn’t stretch beyond herbs and tinctures—so if Amber and Willow wanted to test their magic beyond that, they’d be on their own.

  Amber’s best spells, as far as she could tell, were the ones that came from contact with a person or object. She needed connection, something that tied her to her subject. Tinctures and potions were always a step away. And, when Amber used them, something often backfired.

  Perhaps crafting her animated toys was as far as Amber’s magic would ever take her. She grimaced slightly as she thought about the possessed lion incident. Not every witch could be a master at the craft, just as every person couldn’t be a master musician.

  The reality of it still stung.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Gretchen said, clearly reading the distress on Amber’s face, “Annabelle was rather awful at tinctures too.”

  Amber stilled.

  Annabelle.

  Amber and Willow’s mother. Gretchen spoke so little of her deceased brother and sister-in-law that sometimes Amber wondered if the woman had entirely purged them from her memory.

  “Is that right?” Amber asked, trying to keep her tone light and nonchalant. Whenever Gretchen did speak of Amber’s parents, Amber feared she’d say the wrong thing and Gretchen would clam up again.

  “Oh, yes,” Gretchen said, a small wistful smile on her face. “Annabelle tried as she might to be a kitchen witch like her mother, but it never seemed to work out for her. Once, when she was a young girl, she crafted a sleep tonic for Miles—your grandfather—since he’d been complaining about terrible nightmares. She wanted it to be a surprise though, sure she’d be able to prove to everyone once and for all that she was just as good at tinctures as her mother. So, one night, she slipped the tonic into Miles’ nightly glass of milk.”

  Amber, mouth slightly agape, softly asked, “And did it work?”

  “Like a charm!” Gretchen said.

  Amber grinned.

  “Problem was, he didn’t wake for three days!”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Mmhmm. Poor Annabelle was too scared to tell anyone what she’d done and kept quiet for nearly a full day, terrified she’d killed her own father. Your grandmother Ivy found her hiding in a closet in the attic and soon figured out what had happened.”

  Amber winced. “Was he okay?”

  “Oh, sure. Eventually,” Gretchen said. “It became a running joke in the family that one could never leave an unattended drink lying around, or else Belle would slip something into it to make you sleep for a week. Your father loved that story. She made the mistake of sharing it with him when they first started dating. He told that story to everyone he could.”

  Amber frowned, wondering why she’d never heard it. But her parents had been so close-lipped about their magic for most of Amber’s life. Willow and Amber grew up knowing they were witches, and knowing their parents were, but it was to always, always be a secret.

  Amber knew they’d moved to Edgehill when she was very young specifically because it was a town not inhabited by other witches. They’d moved several times before Edgehill became their permanent home. They wanted a normal life, they said. For themselves and their daughters.

  The only family Amber had met, aside from Aunt Gretchen on the Blackwood side of the family, had been Uncle Raphael and his son Edgar—the Henbanes. They’d moved to Edgehill when Amber was twelve. Amber remembered her mother being furious that her older, estranged brother had put down roots in the same, remote town as she had. Amber hadn’t seen her uncle and cousin much, even though they’d both lived in Edgehill for years. They’d moved to the outskirts shortly after Edgar’s mom, Kathleen, passed away. Even at twelve, Amber had worried about the two grieving men alone in their house out in the middle of nowhere.

  She’d wanted to get to know her uncle and cousin. Two more witches to share experiences with, especially with Edgar, who was only a few years older than she was. She’d wondered, if she could only find a way to his house, if he could teach her about her magic. Willow had so obviously taken after the Blackwood side of the family. Maybe Amber was more like a Henbane—like her mother, uncle, and cousin.

  Any time Amber or her sister had tried to ask more about their powers, their parents would say they needed to wait until they were eighteen. Once they were adults, they’d promised, the girls would truly learn what it meant to be witches.

  Then their parents had died, taking their secrets with them. Uncle Raphael abruptly moved away. Edgar suffered a psychotic break.

  A frown tugged at the corners of Amber’s mouth. “I wish we’d had more time with them.”

  Gretchen sighed. “I know, dear. Me too.”

  A somber quiet settled over them. Amber wondered if Gretchen was lost in her own memories of Annabelle and Theodore Blackwood.

  Amber, deep in her gut, believed something sinister had happened the night her parents died. It hadn’t been started by an electrical glitch, no matter what the firefighters said. How had two able-bodied, healthy adults not smelled the smoke? What little had been found of their remains had been located mostly in their beds. Had they lain side by side, sleeping peacefully while
their house went up in flames around them?

  Amber didn’t buy it.

  “Maybe they had a nightcap or two since you girls were having a sleepover at your friend’s house and they slept more soundly than usual,” a neighbor had offered to a sobbing Amber as she stood outside the blackened remains of her house.

  Willow had sunk to the sidewalk beside Amber then, her back to their home, staring off into space.

  Fire trucks had lined Ocicat Lane, red lights bouncing off the walls of nearby houses, all left untouched by the fire. None of the neighbors had heard or seen anything unusual, though a few claimed the flames had burned blue. But none could say when the fire started. No one had noticed anything was wrong until it was too late to save the house or her parents.

  Nothing about it had felt right to Amber. Not then, and not now.

  “You have that look on your face again, little mouse,” Aunt Gretchen said now.

  Amber pulled herself out of her thoughts. “What look?”

  “That look that means you’re thinking about things that will never bring you any peace.”

  “Don’t you wonder what happened that night?”

  Something flashed across her aunt’s face. Anger, maybe. Then it was gone. “Why don’t you help me find a place to stay, hmm?”

  Subject change, as usual. “You don’t want to stay here?”

  “You live in a shoebox.”

  “It’s quaint!”

  “It’s tiny,” she said. “A tiny apartment for my little mouse. Go on. Find me a suitable place. The Manx, maybe? Something with a king-size bed and a bathtub with power jets.”

  Amber tried not to let her disappointment show. She should have known better, though. Aunt Gretchen didn’t talk about that night. Amber had tried countless times in the days and months after the fire, when her aunt had swooped in from Portland to become the new guardian for the Blackwood girls. Amber had poked and prodded at Gretchen’s defenses, hoping the woman would crack under pressure. Amber had been sure Gretchen knew more about the fire than she let on. They would get into horrific screaming matches about it—potted plants and chairs and knickknacks tossed around the room by unseen hands as Amber’s magic rebelled right along with her.

  “Get out of that head of yours,” said Aunt Gretchen from off to Amber’s right.

  She snapped out of her memories once again to find her aunt had moved to the other end of the store and now stood at the base of the stairs, holding firm to the straps of her overnight bag. Amber figured she had ten minutes tops to get her aunt situated upstairs before she would need to open the store. She’d have to call the Manx on her lunch break.

  Amber hurried over to her waiting aunt, taking her bag from her. “How long are you here for?”

  “Time will tell.”

  After a long pause, Amber staring down her nose at her aunt, she said, “Are you sure you’re all right? You look a little rundown and pale.”

  “You have the bedside manner of a rotting toadstool,” she said, huffing. “I’m here for family. That’s all.”

  When they were halfway up the stairs, Gretchen said, “Speaking of, when you have some free time, maybe we should pay Edgar a visit.”

  Amber nearly missed the next step and had to place a steadying hand on the wall beside her to keep herself from stumbling. Then she stopped altogether, continuing to watch the slowly ascending figure of her aunt. “Why?”

  “I’m here for family, remember? He’s family, too. Even if only by marriage.”

  Amber hadn’t seen Edgar in years. After the fire, he’d told anyone who would listen that they hadn’t burned in their beds while they slept, but that they’d been trapped inside.

  She’d often wondered if “trapped” hadn’t meant that they’d been stuck under the debris of a collapsed roof, or that objects had obstructed their paths to doors or windows or hallways, but that someone had trapped them inside. Amber’s gut had always told her another witch was behind it. Someone from her parents’ past, maybe. Someone tied to the reason why a family of four witches purposefully ended up in a town devoid of magic.

  A Penhallow, her gut said. Only a Penhallow would do something so terrible.

  She’d tried to ask Edgar about it. Every time she mentioned the clan of cursed witches, his eyes had grown wide with fear. Though many things could do that to him back then.

  And, a month later, Edgar completely recanted his story and checked himself into a mental hospital in Belhaven. Once he returned to Edgehill, Amber had tried to keep in contact with him, but he became a recluse who refused visitors. After being shut out time and again, she’d given up.

  As much as Amber believed Edgar had been of sound mind when he first made his claims about the suspicious circumstances of her parents’ death, Aunt Gretchen had been adamant that Edgar was “off his nut.” The screaming matches that resulted in flying pots and books often centered around the fact that Amber thought people should take Edgar seriously, while Gretchen wholeheartedly disagreed. Her aunt had said he was a bad influence and that he was filling Amber’s heart and mind with false hope.

  So why did she suddenly want to see someone she so thoroughly dismissed years ago?

  Once Amber reached her studio and had set Aunt Gretchen’s bag on the bed, she found her aunt standing by the window, arms wrapped around herself. Amber instinctively knew her aunt was staring out into the distance at the half-finished building that had once been the Blackwood family home. Gretchen had started the slow restoration process a year or so after the fire, but the project had been abandoned after Willow had been accepted into a design program in Portland.

  Willow had left for college. Gretchen left to resume her life in a bigger city not so haunted by ghosts. And Amber had stayed behind.

  Amber sidled up next to her aunt now.

  “Aunt Gretchen?” Amber said softly, gaze focused on the distant strip of Ocicat Lane. “Please tell me what’s going on. Why are you here now when you hate to travel? Why do you suddenly want to see Edgar?”

  Her aunt took a long, shuddering breath. “There’s no easy way to say this, little mouse, so I’ll just come out with it. The Penhallows have resurfaced, and I believe they’re heading for Edgehill. I believe they’re heading for you.”

  Chapter 3

  “What?” Amber asked, whirling to face her aunt. “What do you mean they’re coming for me?”

  Aunt Gretchen turned toward Amber and grasped her hands. “Oh, my sweet girl …”

  “Aunt Gretchen, please tell me what’s going on. You’re starting to scare me.”

  The Penhallows, a witch clan family burdened with cursed magic, had often been the bogeymen in her nightmares—the people she could blame for her parents’ death. Rumor had it that the family had gone underground after the Blackwood parents died. She hadn’t heard so much as a whisper about them in fourteen years.

  With a sigh, Gretchen said, “Every night since the death of your parents, I’ve taken a tincture to grant me a window into your and Willow’s futures.” Before Amber could voice the flurry of questions that Gretchen clearly saw forming in Amber’s mind, the woman soldiered on. “I’m not a clairvoyant. I cannot see very far into the future, nor do these visions come to me with crystal clarity.”

  Amber hesitated. “How does it work?”

  “I take a bit of it with my evening tea, and if there’s a looming threat on the horizon, it will manifest in my dreams,” Aunt Gretchen said, letting Amber’s hands go. “Remember when Willow just started dating that rat Jeffrey Sanders?”

  Amber cocked her head. “Her old boss who ended up getting arrested for money laundering?”

  Aunt Gretchen nodded. “Mmhmm. And you remember where she was when that arrest happened?”

  Amber blinked several times in rapid succession, wracking her memory. “She went to see you because you fell and injured your hip.”

  “Did I though?” Gretchen smiled.

  “You sneaky witch,” Amber asked, laughing. “What else?”
<
br />   Gretchen laughed too. “I made up an excuse to keep you girls home one day during high school when there was an outbreak of norovirus.”

  With a gasp of sudden realization, Amber said, “That was the weekend you took us to the beach! You let us cut school on a Friday. I just thought you wanted to get us away from everything for a few days.”

  “I did,” she said. “But I also wanted to protect you from contracting a nasty bug.”

  Amber was suddenly sixteen again, waking up to the horrible news that her house had caught fire with her parents inside. She recalled the ashen face of Alice’s mother when she hurried into Alice’s bedroom where she, Amber, Willow, and Julie had been fast asleep in their sleeping bags on Alice’s floor.

  Had Gretchen seen that event coming?

  “No,” Gretchen said, and Amber wondered if perhaps her aunt was clairvoyant after all. “I know that look, little mouse. I didn’t start taking the tinctures until after Belle and Theo died. I was just as shocked by it as you were.”

  Amber sighed, her mind circling back to where this conversation had started. “So … you’re saying you dreamed the Penhallows are coming for me?”

  “A Penhallow. Singular,” said Gretchen. “They’ve been keeping a low profile for years, but they appear to be resurfacing. A friend of mine in Maine said a Penhallow was detected there recently. They leave behind a trace—a signature—if they use their twisted magic. You can almost touch it. When you walk into the dregs of it, it’s as if you’ve stepped into a giant cobweb. It clings to you.

  “As for your Penhallow, I don’t know his or her name, or what they look like. I just know a Penhallow is bringing their cursed magic to Edgehill, and they have you in their sights.”

  Amber didn’t understand.

  “Why me?” she asked, trying her best not to let her panic rise from the hollow pit of her stomach and choke her. “I’m … not exactly a skilled witch. I’m a screwup at best; amoral at worst. Don’t the Penhallows only try to siphon powers from the most powerful?”