Pawsitively Betrayed Read online

  “So does that mean Neil Penhallow knows where the Henbane book is?” Agent Howe asked, alarmed.

  Agent Barker eyed Edgar as if were Neil himself—a threat.

  “No. Only I know where it is,” Amber said. “It’s safe.”

  “The book is of great interest to the WBI,” Agent Howe said. “If you could—”

  “No,” Amber said.

  Agent Howe’s nostrils flared. “Our resources are more extensive than yours. That book cannot fall into Penhallow hands.”

  “I know,” Amber said. “And it won’t,” she added with more conviction than she felt.

  “That’s all you want it for?” Edgar asked, his voice low. He seemed to have pushed Neil back down in his mind, but he was clearly still struggling. The bags under his eyes were pronounced; Amber wondered how he’d been sleeping lately.

  They both were both involuntary members of the insomnia club.

  The look the agents shared didn’t sit well with Amber. Agent Howe was the harder one to read, so Amber focused on Agent Barker. Despite the lecture she got in the car, she had to know the truth. She was banking on the fact that they likely hadn’t taken the time to refortify their protection spells between the ride over here and now. And if they had, maybe she had enough magical juice to mow down their protections again.

  She called on her magic, still as bouncy and anxious as she felt, and funneled it into a truth spell. “Agent Barker—

  “Amber Blackwood, don’t you—” Agent Howe started, but Edgar cast a wind spell that was so strong, the agent tumbled to the ground.

  “Agent Barker,” Amber said, “why does the WBI want my mother’s time-reversal spell?” Then she hurled her magic at him.

  He clearly fought the magic, wincing as he held onto the lip of the table. Amber felt the resistance, like two magnets repelling each other. It felt like an oncoming sinus headache, the pressure making her eyes water. But Amber’s magic eventually pushed her way past his defenses. The mental dam burst open and she sucked in a gulp of air as the pressure in her mind released.

  Glaring at her the whole time, he said, “Annabelle didn’t know what she created. The Henbanes and Blackwoods immediately labeled the spell as a danger that should be kept from the world and hidden away. The WBI knows the spell’s true potential and the benefits it could have for humankind—witch and non-witches alike. Yet, every time the WBI has tried to gain access to the spell, they’ve been outmaneuvered.”

  Amber cocked her head at that. How many times had the WBI tried to get the book over the years? Had her parents not just been hiding the book from the Penhallows, but from the WBI, too?

  Agent Howe got to her feet, brushed herself off, and slid back into the booth. Her expression made it explicitly clear that she would murder everyone at this table if she wouldn’t get punished for it. And even then, she might risk it.

  Agent Barker, jaw clenched as if that would keep the words inside his mouth, said, “We have the intel, firepower, and knowledge of hindsight on our side. Where the council failed, the WBI will succeed. One of the final pieces of solving the Penhallow problem is Annabelle Henbane’s spell.”

  He sagged and Amber’s magic retreated. Amber wasn’t sure which version of history Agent Barker believed or had been taught to embrace—that the council created the Penhallow curse through no fault of their own, or that the curse had been borne out of actions so reckless, the council was just as guilty as the Penhallows. Either way, as far as Amber’s magic was concerned, Agent Barker had spoken his truth.

  Agent Howe glowered at Amber. “I’ve had quite enough of you. Amber Blackwood, where is the Henbane grimoire?”

  No! her magic instinctively screamed, and shoved hard against the agent’s probing magic. The sudden sinus pressure in her head made Amber’s eyes water. The hint of an image of a deserted town started to form in her mind, and even that was too much information. No! her magic yelled again, slamming a door on the prowling, foreign magic. No, no, no. “I won’t tell you,” she ground out.

  The magic retreated.

  Agent Howe’s jaw was tight. “Truth spells aren’t foolproof, Amber. As you just demonstrated, if the recipient of the spell has a strong enough desire to keep the truth hidden, they can fight it. Or they can outright lie.”

  A sound spell immediately went up around the agents and the pair launched into a heated discussion that neither Amber nor Edgar could hear. There was quite a bit of pointing in Amber and Edgar’s direction and Agent Barker was turning a rather stunning shade of red as Agent Howe laid into him. Amber was glad there wasn’t any silverware on the table, otherwise Agent Barker would have a fork in his eye by now.

  “Do we bolt now or …?” Edgar whispered, attention focused on the muted argument.

  “Problem is, they’d find us,” Amber said, equally engrossed in the scene as her cousin. Her sinus headache was fading at least. “And we just royally ticked off two members of the flipping WBI.”

  “They had it coming,” Edgar said, folding his arms on the table. “I don’t like either one of them.”

  Zelda had told Amber and Edgar that the history they’d always been taught had been wrong. It was no secret that the power-hungry Penhallows had been a problem well before their curse took hold, and that the council, at its wit’s end, had needed a way to control the clan. But that was where stories diverged.

  Growing up, Amber had always been told that the now-defunct witch council had stripped a Penhallow of his power, and when that Penhallow later retaliated by murdering a council member, the magic from the murdered man transferred into the Penhallow. But that transferred magic had been corrupted—cursed. A witch without magic was like a butterfly without wings; one needed the other. So when the councilmember died, his magic filled in the missing places in the Penhallow even if that magic didn’t belong there.

  In Zelda’s version of history, however, the council had forcibly taken a Penhallow to a great ley line convergence in Sedona, Arizona. The council, hands clasped, used the Penhallow as a conduit, and had cast a severing spell that they then poured into the convergence at once. The goal had been to strip all Penhallows of their powers simultaneously, using the ley lines—ribbons of magic that span the world—to reach every Penhallow on earth. What happened was an overloading of the ley lines that then short-circuited the entire magical grid. Not only had the council caused the Penhallow curse, but they’d also created six pockets of unsteady magic across the world. One of those pockets was on the outskirts of Edgehill.

  Amber didn’t know how two wildly different versions of history existed simultaneously, especially when the history wasn’t that old.

  Zelda had shared a memory with Amber from Zelda’s childhood when one of those unsteady pockets of magic erupted without warning. Zelda’s entire community had had to flee at the drop of a hat when the lines exploded, releasing tainted magic into the air that would have killed everyone had they stayed. “Do you see now that anything more done to the ley lines could cause untold effects?” Zelda had asked. “What if another blast to the ley lines causes them to splinter even more?”

  “Where the council failed, the WBI will succeed,” Agent Barker had said. Was he suggesting that the WBI planned to use the time-reversal spell to go back to that moment in Sedona and not reverse it … but do it better? Who knew what kind of destruction that could cause? Their grand plan might result in something even worse than what had happened to the Penhallows.

  Amber was so lost in thought, she hadn’t registered when the sound-cancelling spell around the agents dropped. When Agent Howe spoke, Amber flinched.

  “We have the authority to effectively arrest you both and bring you in for formal interrogation at our headquarters,” Agent Howe said. “Pull another stunt like that—either one of you—and we’ll haul you out of here unconscious. By admitting you know the location of an object we consider to be a threat to national security, and then refusing to hand over said object, we could label you as terrorists.”

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nbsp; It was such a ludicrous statement that Amber almost laughed. Neither agent looked remotely amused. She sobered quickly.

  “We want to work with you, Miss Blackwood,” Agent Barker said. “Not against you. This can be a relationship beneficial to us all, but you need to cut us a little slack. We’re on the same side here.”

  Alan Peterson the PI had used the same line on her. She’d grown to trust him, but the jury was still out on these two.

  Agent Howe let out a slow fortifying breath. “Records show that you were the last person Kieran called, and it happened the night before his escape. Is that correct?”

  Edgar stiffened. “Wait, what?” He furiously tapped the side of his head, his gaze focused on something in the middle distance. “And what about you? Your brother escapes prison and you didn’t say anything?” He tossed his hands in the air and slumped in the booth. “Great. Now he’s cackling like a madman.”

  The agents stared at Edgar with twin expressions of mild concern.

  “No, you know what?” Edgar sat up straight and turned forcefully in the booth to glare at Amber head on. She rocked back an inch. “I expected this much from him, but you? When were you planning on telling me any of this—when Kieran shows up trying to kill us both again?”

  An irrational swell of anger made Amber offer him her own glare. “My plate’s been a little full. I can’t keep you informed every step of the way.” She instantly regretted the words.

  Amber knew her long sleepless nights were catching up with her. She was exhausted. One of her animated toys almost gravely injured a child, Henrietta was in a coma, a Penhallow was possibly in her town again, and these two nightmare people from the WBI were calling her and her mother’s grimoire a threat to national freaking security.

  She didn’t need her grumpy cousin making her feel any worse than she already did.

  “Ohh, sor-ry, Miss Legendary Witch,” Edgar snapped. “I’m just dealing with a psychotic witch in my head day and night. I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. Have you called? No. You only call me when you need something.”

  She knew she shouldn’t engage him. They both were sleep-deprived and were very good at getting under each other’s skin. Edgar had become a big part of her life very quickly over the last few months. Despite everything he was going through, he always did what he could to help her, whether that was teaching her Magic Cache or giving her magic lessons. He was grouchy more often than not, but at least recently, he had been doing his best to make time for her. And, yeah, maybe she could have called him. Maybe some part of her even felt guilt that she hadn’t.

  But to say she only called him when she needed something? Low blow, Henbane.

  Amber turned in her seat and it was Edgar’s turn to instinctively scooch back. “Don’t. You. Dare. I tried for years to get you to at least talk to me and that was only to make sure you were all right. If you’re upset now because I haven’t called in a few days, sorry, okay? But phone lines go two ways. You haven’t called me either. Did you know I had to shut down my shop?”

  He said nothing, but color rose in his cheeks, letting her know her words had hit their mark. She felt badly, but barreled on anyway.

  “There are better ways to let me know your feelings are hurt than to give me a guilt trip. I worry about you every day. I want Neil out of your head too and I feel horrible that you’ve basically had your life ruined because of what my family has directly or indirectly done to you.”

  Edgar now looked downright furious, but she knew him well enough now to know that he wasn’t mad at her in this moment, but himself. “I’ve never blamed you. Or your parents. This is all the Penhallows’ fault. Always has been.” He worked his jaw and his eyes grew a little glassy. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said he was near tears. “Never say you ruined my life. Never. Got that? You’re one of the few things that’s made it bearable.”

  Amber’s eyes welled up and her bottom lip shook a little. Oh goodness, was she going to cry? After a moment, she croaked out, “Love you too, cousin.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, sniffing and quickly looking away. “Same.”

  Agent Howe let out a soft groan as if she couldn’t imagine who she’d ticked off in a past life to be sitting in this exact place at this moment.

  In a stage whisper, Agent Barker said, “The whole terrorist thing feels a bit much now, right? She’s the least terror-inducing terrorist I’ve ever met.”

  Amber flushed.

  “Do you know anything about Kieran’s escape?” Agent Howe asked, ignoring her partner.

  “Nothing,” Amber said, trying to reel in her emotions. “He called that night and I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “What was the nature of his call?”

  Amber chewed on her lip. Given Agent Howe’s barely contained annoyance, Amber figured it would be in her best interest to be honest here. Maybe the information would buy Amber back into her good graces a little. This was something she hadn’t even told Zelda, Simon, or Edgar. “His magic is back. Healed, I mean. The way it was supposed to be.”

  Neither agent seemed surprised by this, but Amber didn’t know if that was because they’d already known, or because they had unshakeable poker faces.

  Edgar let out a low whistle.

  “When was the last time you were in contact with your father, Mr. Henbane?” Agent Howe asked.

  Edgar choked mid-whistle, gasped, then started to cough. Amber patted his back.

  “I’ll take that as not recently,” Agent Howe said. “It was actually the movements of your sister, Amber, that put Raphael Henbane back on our radar. The timing of it all struck our offices as interesting, given everything else. Is it safe to assume that you haven’t been to the facility to see him then, Mr. Henbane?”

  Edgar sputtered again. “He’s … alive? You found him?”

  Agent Howe rose a brow in Amber’s direction, silently asking, “Should I tell him, or should you?”

  Sighing, Amber recounted what Willow had told Amber just a couple weeks ago: that Willow had tracked Raphael to a psychiatric institution in upstate Washington and that his memory had either been completely wiped or heavily tampered with. Reluctantly, she also added that Raphael was afflicted with a condition similar to Edgar’s own, but in Raphael’s head, it was a female voice taunting him to find the coveted grimoire.

  Edgar had turned his mashed-together brows and pursed lips toward the direction of the table about halfway through Amber’s story. Perhaps he was so angry now, he didn’t even have the strength to maintain eye contact. If he didn’t tear her a new one now, he surely would later.

  “Willow doesn’t know who the female voice belongs to,” Amber told the agents. “We assume it’s a Penhallow, obviously, but Willow didn’t get a name out of him or anything.”

  “Well, that’s at the heart of why we’re here,” Agent Barker said. “We need your help. Clearly Kieran feels a connection to you. Whether he values you as a person or feels indebted to you because of how you helped him, it doesn’t matter. We need to use that to our advantage before he tries to use it for his.”

  Amber cocked her head, wondering why Kieran’s name had been brought back into this. “What do you mean?”

  “Our belief is that Kieran’s secret got out,” Agent Howe said. “Even though his magic is healed, we don’t believe this will change the Penhallows’ long-standing mission. The Penhallows don’t want a fresh start, they want to go back to the height of their power.”

  “Which means they still want the spell,” Edgar ground out, though he still kept his gaze focused on the table. “They still want to stop the curse from ever happening in the first place.”

  “Exactly,” Agent Barker said. “Kieran is now saner and has a connection to the infamous Amber Blackwood. You’re known not as the witch with the cure to the curse, but the witch with the location to the Henbane grimoire. Kieran will be seen as the perfect poster child for their cause. He’s rational, he can blend in better than a glamoured Pen
hallow because his magical use won’t have a signature, and he has access to you and your family. We believe the Penhallows are working now to manipulate him to do their bidding. And then he’ll be headed straight back here. To you.”

  Amber swallowed. As much as she wanted to believe that Kieran had changed—truly changed—she could never fully disassociate the new Kieran from the old, cursed Kieran who had not only murdered an innocent, but had threatened her town, and had nearly killed her.

  “What does any of this have to do with my father?” Edgar asked, looking up.

  Amber glanced over at him briefly, glad his boiling rage of an expression was pointed at someone other than herself.

  “Our intel suggests that Raphael Henbane had been up to something that spooked the Penhallows,” Agent Howe said. “He posed a threat of some kind, and he was hit with a blast of cursed magic, just as they did to you, Mr. Henbane. We don’t know how much Annabelle shared with her family in Delin Springs before they scattered to different parts of the country and effectively became fugitives. Your grandparents passed away years ago; Raphael is the last living member of Annabelle’s immediate family who knows the truth of what happened while Annabelle was on the run.

  “The fact that Raphael lived here in Edgehill for a while implies that Raphael and Annabelle remained in contact most of their adult lives. We believe Annabelle confided in her brother about something that eventually led to his run-in with the Penhallows. He then learned something about the Penhallows that they didn’t want him to remember. Perhaps they tried to kill him and failed, and Raphael’s current condition is the result. We believe when he left Edgar here in Edgehill shortly after Annabelle’s death, he had every intention of coming back—a Penhallow just got to him first.”