Pawsitively Betrayed Read online

  She dropped to her knees in front of him. It took a second, but then she remembered his name. Noah. He had short black hair, brown watery eyes, and a little trail of snot running out of his nose. He had been rubbing the back of his pudgy hand against one eye, then jumped slightly when he realized Amber was in front of him. He stopped whimpering and gave a little sniffle.

  “Are you okay, Noah?” she asked, searching those sad eyes. “Did the bear hurt you?”

  He sniffed again, then he straightened, resolve sobering him up. Amber got the impression he was pleased to be asked his side of the story. “I was just playing with him in my room, Miss Amber. I wasn’t doing anything bad … just playing chase like we always do. He was running after me and then … boom!”

  Amber flinched.

  “Can you fix him, Miss Amber?” he asked, a bit urgently. “Did I do something to break him? I love Toast a lot.”

  Amber fought a laugh, despite the tension in the room. When children got a new toy, part of the activation process was assigning the toy a name. The act of naming it allowed Amber to tailor the spells so they worked best for the child in question. It added longevity to the spells, too. She remembered how enthusiastically Noah had shouted “Toast!” when she asked him to name something brown.

  “I like Toast better than all my other toys. I even like him better than that smelly dog that lives across the street. I just want Toast back.” Noah’s tears started up again.

  “I demand a full refund,” Sally said from somewhere behind Amber. Amber ignored her.

  She was mildly relieved that the boy was upset because he’d lost his friend, and not because the explosion had wounded or traumatized him. She shivered at the thought of all the possible things that could have gone wrong. A glitchy spell in the hands of a child had always been her biggest fear—which was why she checked and triple-checked that everything was in order before any of her creations graced a shelf.

  Had the stress of the last few months made her careless? Her stomach ached.

  “Did you hear me?” Sally asked, followed by the stomp of a foot. “A. Full. Refund.”

  “Yes, of course,” Amber said without looking at her. Addressing Noah, Amber said, “I’ll work on Toast and get him back into tip-top shape. I promise.”

  The boy smiled for the first time since his mother had dragged him in here.

  “Absolutely not!” Sally said, reaching around Amber to grab hold of the boy, his arm once again hoisted in the air.

  Amber quickly got to her feet.

  Sally got nose-to-nose with her. “Your toys are dangerous, Amber.” Giving the boy’s arm an absentminded shake, she said, “Look at him. You get him to fall in love with these weird toys of yours—he won’t play with anything else—and then it almost kills him!”

  Amber flinched once more.

  “You should be ashamed,” Sally hissed. “We’re never buying another toy from you. I’ve always known something about this place, about you, was … strange. Off. Not right. Now I have proof. I should have listened to my gut. You better believe every parent I know will hear about this.”

  Noah wailed. “But I want Toast!”

  “Don’t buy toys from here!” Sally called out, doing her best to make eye contact with every shocked onlooker. “They aren’t safe for your children!”

  “Listen, Sally,” Amber said, hoping that if she lowered her own voice, it would make the woman lower hers, too. “I’m sure there was just a—”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Sally said, taking a step back. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer. I’m leaving.” She yanked her son toward the door, then whirled to address the other patrons again. “I suggest you all leave, too.”

  Then she was out the door, pulling her son after her. Noah looked back forlornly over his shoulder, stumbling over his own little feet because he only had eyes for the shop where he’d abandoned his friend Toast. Amber still held the mangled bear.

  The tension in the shop was nearly tangible. When she turned away from the retreating boy and his mother, she spotted Willow and Aunt G standing in the doorway of the Employee Only door. Kim and Ben still stood wide-eyed on the right side of the shop. Movement to her left caught her eye just as a pair of women delicately put down the toys they’d been holding. They gave Amber a wide berth and hurried out of the shop with their eyes downcast.

  The bell above the door sounded more like a gong.

  Amber felt sick.

  Slowly, the shoppers resumed perusing, but they did so while casting worried looks over at Amber every few seconds.

  In high-stress situations, Kim either went totally mute or talked non-stop. Her being quiet through all of this somehow only added to the tension.

  Amber had only made it halfway across the shop—intending to duck behind the counter and never come out—when the bell above the door chimed again. She half expected Sally to have returned with her lawyer already.

  Instead, Chief Brown stood there.

  The look on his face made her stomach drop. He was in full-on cop mode.

  “Hello, uhh … Miss Blackwood,” the chief said a little awkwardly. “We have a bit of a situation and I think it would be best if you come down to the station.”

  Kim, still silent, detached herself from the counter to stand beside Amber. A silent guard.

  “Is this because of Sally and the exploding toy bear, because—”

  “What? Exploding … what? No,” he said, shaking his head. His gaze briefly drifted to the ruined plastic bear she clutched to her chest. “Like I said, it’s a … situation.”

  Amber figured the situation was magic-related, as he was one of the few people in town who knew she was a witch, but she was still so rattled from her run-in with Sally Long that she wasn’t thinking clearly. “What kind of situation?”

  He pursed his lips, then gave a quick scan of the patrons—as well as Willow and Aunt G who presumably still stood at the back of the shop—before taking a step toward her. “It would be best that we get your statement now before this gets out of hand.”

  Her nerves were frayed. “Before what gets out of hand?”

  Letting out a huff of resignation, he said, “It’s about Henrietta Bishop.”

  The image of the forty-something divorcée popped into Amber’s head, with her wild mop of red hair. She’d been in the shop only yesterday. Amber was almost too scared to ask. “What about her?”

  He quickly scanned the shop again, the cast a furtive glance at Kim who stood with her arm flush with Amber’s. Amber had to assume the brunette’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates. “As of this morning,” the chief said, “she’s in a coma.”

  Kim gasped. “Shut the front door!”

  Chapter 3

  Amber stared slack-jawed at the chief. “What?”

  He bent so low, his mouth was practically on her ear. He urgently whispered, “Like I said, it’s a sensitive matter and I need you to come down to the station.”

  Huffing out a breath after he took a step back, she nodded. “Fine.”

  Without another word, he went out the door, knowing, apparently, that she’d follow him.

  Amber turned to Kim, whose eyes were still wide, and said, “I promise I’ll tell you everything when I get back.”

  “What if—”

  “No, you can’t come with me.”

  “I could—”

  “He’s not going to let you in on this conversation, Kim,” Amber said.

  “Maybe I could—”

  “Who knows how long this will take,” Amber said. “You have to get back to work. I’ll call you. I promise.”

  Kim groaned. “The second you get out—”

  “First person I call,” Amber said.

  Begrudgingly, Kim nodded.

  Shifting her attention to Willow and Aunt G, Amber said, “You’ll be the second call.”

  “I’ve only been back in Edgehill for a few days and you’re already getting arrested, little mouse?” Aunt G asked. “It usually take
s at least two weeks.”

  A patron somewhere to Amber’s left let out a little gasp. The rumor mill was going to have a field day with this one.

  Amber managed a chuckle, which helped loosen the knot of anxiety in her chest. She quickly grabbed her purse from behind the counter, feeling the eyes of the still-remaining customers on her the whole way, and then hurried out the front door after calling out an awkward goodbye.

  The chief waited in his cruiser directly outside The Quirky Whisker. She wasn’t sure if she was still allowed to ride shotgun. She eyed the back seat, which had a hatched partition that protected the officer from any delinquents being escorted to the station. She remembered the day the chief had found her snooping around the coroner’s office in the days after Melanie’s death, and had made Amber ride in the back like a criminal.

  He seemed to sense her hesitation and reached across the passenger seat to open the door for her. “C’mon, Amber. No need to be dramatic.”

  Her nostrils flared in annoyance and she climbed into the car. “I think I have every right to be dramatic. Am I under arrest?” She closed the door a little harder than necessary.

  “Do you see any handcuffs?” he asked.

  She honestly wasn’t sure if that was rhetorical or not, so she didn’t reply. What had happened to Henrietta?

  The chief pulled out on onto Russian Blue. It wasn’t until The Quirky Whisker was out of sight in the rearview that he said anything. “This is all preemptive. I got a call from Thea Bishop, Henrietta’s sister, early this morning. According to her, last night Henrietta called Thea in a mild panic, saying she didn’t feel right and that her deteriorating condition was scaring her. She told Thea about doubling up on your ‘sleepy tea.’ Apparently half a cup is enough to get her to sleep, but she told Thea that the tea wasn’t as effective lately. She had finished her second cup just before she started to feel really off, called her sister, and then collapsed while she was on the phone.”

  “Oh my God,” Amber breathed.

  “Thea is the one who called an ambulance. Henrietta had been breathing but unresponsive when she reached the hospital. By late this morning, she was in a coma.” He paused a bit too long, and Amber’s stomach tightened again. “Thea said she was going to get on the first available flight here from Ohio.”

  While all of this sounded terrible on its own, Amber was twice as horrified because this was all so similar to what had happened to her close friend, Melanie Cole, just months before. Something from Amber’s shop had, initially, been treated as the reason for Melanie’s death. While it was later proven that nothing toxic was in the vial of headache tonic Melanie had supposedly ingested just before she died, Amber had still been under scrutiny simply because of the reputation of her “weird” products.

  In the end, it had been discovered that ethylene glycol had been added to Melanie’s tea, slowly making her sick.

  Was this all a coincidence?

  “Oh, and I should add that Thea is both furious … and a lawyer.”

  It took Amber a moment to process this. “So … Thea thinks that my tea poisoned Henrietta?”

  “Yes,” the chief said simply. “Thea went online to look up the ingredients in your tea, as Henrietta has a few known allergies, but Thea couldn’t find your store listed anywhere. She wants to be in Edgehill to care for her sister, but she also made it very clear she wants to talk to you in person to learn what’s in your products.”

  Amber stared out the window, not really seeing anything.

  After a minute of silence, he asked, “Did you say something earlier about a toy bear?”

  Amber had almost forgotten. She told him about the altercation she’d had with Sally Long just minutes before the chief had arrived.

  “Is this just really bad timing or is there something … else going on here?” the chief asked when she was done. “Have you ever had problems like this before?”

  “Never,” she said. “I mean, I’ve had toys malfunction on me countless times, but I work all those kinks out a million times over before I put a toy on the market. A toy exploding while a child is playing with it, or one of my tinctures making someone sick …” She shook her head, her stomach queasy again. “Those are pretty much my worst nightmares. It’s why I’ve never wanted to expand the toy-making operation. I need it to be small and contained so I can make sure that everything that leaves my shop is safe. Too much could go wrong if production is scaled up. Too many corners would be cut for the sake of time, money, or both.”

  The chief pulled into one of the diagonally aligned parking spots in front of the station. Neither made a move to get out.

  “I’m not one to jump to conclusions,” he said, “but we likely need to consider the possibility that a Penhallow is behind both instances.”

  Amber had thought the same thing but hadn’t wanted to voice it out loud.

  “What would a Penhallow have to gain from undermining your business?” he asked.

  “To keep me off-kilter,” she said. “To find ways to introduce even more variables into my life to increase their chances of being able to trick me into telling them where I hid my parents’ grimoires.”

  Last month, Amber, Willow, and Aunt G had driven several hours away to the small, remote town of Quill where a dead zone was located. From Amber’s brief foray into Magic Cache with her cousin Edgar, she had learned that there were unexplainable spots of varying sizes scattered across the earth where magic simply didn’t exist. These particular spots were difficult to locate, making them well-loved challenges for the most hardcore Magic Cachers.

  The trunk holding Amber’s parents’ grimoires was now hidden in one such dead zone, and the hard-to-trace spot had been layered with ten spells. If a Penhallow was somehow able to find the location, he or she would then need to break through the wall of spells—which got more complicated and powerful the closer one got to the grimoires. And even then, the trunk had been layered in a powerful boomerang spell. If the books were threatened in any way, or if someone other than Amber or Willow tried to take them, the spell would be triggered and would send the trunk of books back to Amber.

  The problem with that was that the books would also simultaneously lose their cloaking spells, making them easily traceable. The magic that came off the Henbane book, her mother’s book in particular, was not only strong, but unique. And then Penhallows desperate for the highly coveted time-reversal spell inside the grimoire would come flocking to Edgehill. Assuming some weren’t already here.

  If the books were ever unexpectedly returned, Amber would have to drop everything and run. Anything to keep the books, her family, and her beloved town of Edgehill safe.

  Amber supposed it was no wonder that she had such a hard time sleeping lately.

  The chief, with his gaze locked on some spot ahead of him, finally said, “A Penhallow can take on the identity of anyone they choose. And it sounds like they can change that appearance often. With the town filling with tourists, that means they could both hide in plain sight as well as become dozens of different people. You’re going to need to devise a way to tell who’s friend and who’s foe.”

  That knot of anxiety tightened again. “What, like a safe word?”

  “Maybe,” he said, not acknowledging her sarcastic tone. “You cast truth spells on everyone you came into contact with when Kieran was in town, didn’t you? You can’t do that now. There are too many people.”

  As he said that, a large group of tourists stopped in front of the chief’s cruiser, their guide pointing to the building.

  “You can’t cast a truth spell on each new person who comes into your shop,” he reiterated. “Nor can you cast one on every stranger you meet on the street. And from what you said happened a few days ago, Damien and Devra were in town for a while without you even knowing it. So you can’t use their magical signature as a way to know they’re here.”

  Amber stared at his profile for a moment, likely as shocked as he was that over the course of a few short months,
they had gone from being leery of each other to him casually discussing details about the cursed Penhallow clan. Somehow his casual, practical tone made her sense of dread even more acute.

  She looked away. “Hinklebert.”

  His head cocked in her peripheral vision. “Excuse me?”

  “That’s our code word,” she said. “If I get suspicious about your behavior, I’ll ask for the word.”

  “Right. Hinklebert,” he said flatly. “Life was a lot less weird before I met you. You know that, right?”

  She didn’t say anything. She watched out the windshield as the backwards-walking tour guide continued down the sidewalk to some other destination. On this stretch of sidewalk, the nearest shop was Paws 4 Tea. It was the tea shop where Susie Paulson had worked—the woman who had helped Whitney Sadler poison Melanie’s tea for weeks.

  If Henrietta’s coma and Noah’s exploding bear were both the work of a Penhallow doing their level best to unsettle her, she was disgusted that someone would stoop this low. But it made sense that a Penhallow would take something that Amber feared most and use it against her, and to use the raw memories of Melanie’s demise and throw them back in Amber’s face.

  Without a word, she let herself out of the cruiser and made her way inside the station.

  As usual, Dolores, a.k.a. Sour Face, was behind her wooden box of a desk, clacking away at the keyboard. Amber didn’t even bother to acknowledge her; it wasn’t as if she’d speak to Amber anyway.

  The chief came up behind Amber and said, “Right this way, Miss Blackwood.”

  Instead of taking her left, toward his office like he had been doing for months, he directed her to the right and into the tiny closet-like interrogation room he had taken her to when she’d been under suspicion for Melanie’s murder.

  She silently took a seat at the tiny table and clutched her purse to her chest.

  The chief excused himself for a minute, closing the door behind him. She could feel the eyes of the two cameras in the corners watching her. Thankfully, instead of the chief leaving her alone for ages as he had before, the door opened again a minute later.