Pawsitively Betrayed Read online

  Terri hurried into the room a moment later, followed by two other nurses. Amber wondered if she’d heard the beeping or if she’d gotten an alert at her desk. Either way, she urged Kim and Amber to leave while they tended to Henrietta.

  Amber didn’t say anything until she and Kim were back in Kim’s car, the scent of their uneaten sandwiches filling the space. Amber hardly remembered leaving Henrietta’s room, much less getting into Kim’s car. What could Molly Hargrove and Henrietta have been arguing about?

  “Oh my God, Amber!” Kim finally chirped. “You have to tell me what you saw.”

  Amber snapped out of it and explained what the memory had shown her. “The thing is, I don’t know when that memory happened.”

  Kim reached into the back seat to pluck a sandwich out of the bag. “Eat this. Maybe it’ll help you come up with an idea of what to do next.”

  With that, Kim pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward The Quirky Whisker. While Amber ate, she ran through all the possible reasons why Henrietta and Molly would have been arguing. Amber cursed herself once again for not being nosier. She knew so little about Henrietta.

  “Do you think Molly was doing a follow-up story on Henrietta and her divorce or something?” Kim asked. “Hen’s divorce was movie-level coo-coo town, after all.”

  Amber swallowed her bite of sandwich. Of course Kim would have the scoop. “What made it so coo-coo?”

  Kim turned to look at her askance and the car swerved. Kim yelped as she righted it. “It’s criminal how little gossip you hear, you know that?”

  Amber winced as she peered down the side of her seat where a knocked-loose pickle had fallen during Kim’s near miss with a parked car. Amber swiped at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. “Why do I need to keep up with gossip when I have you?”

  “True, true,” Kim said, thankfully keeping her eyes on the road this time. “Okay, so Hen’s ex was a financial guy at some big company. He had been siphoning cash out of their accounts for years, apparently. He was funding his and Hen’s lavish lifestyle with all the stolen money. A few years ago, just before she moved here, a woman contacted Hen and said she knew ‘exactly what her husband was up to,’ then hung up.”

  “Oh gosh!”

  “I know! So, of course, Hen immediately thinks he’s having an affair and starts snooping. Hen was blindsided by the call, but she also had enough little suspicions over the years that it piqued her curiosity enough to make her go digging. She eventually found all this evidence that her husband was actually a high-level crook.”

  “Dang,” Amber said. “Then what?”

  “Well, this woman ended up being the wife of another man at this company, and she had just stumbled on all this evidence that her husband and Hen’s husband were running a scheme to rob this company to fund an even shadier operation that had something to do with drugs. Or was it money laundering? I can’t remember. It was bad, whatever it was,” Kim said. “She and Hen banded together to take down their husbands before their husbands took them down as collateral damage.

  “They sold their story to a newspaper for a pretty penny, then on the same day, they left their husbands and fled the town they were living in. Hen moved here, and the other lady moved to the east coast. Apparently, the story broke a few days later and both men ended up in jail. I think the company paid Hen and the other lady hush money in exchange for not doing more interviews. The company folded pretty recently, though. I think Hen’s money from the whole debacle is running out.”

  “Wow,” Amber said. “Why would Molly want to do a follow-up story on it now unless it was an anniversary or something?”

  “No clue. It’s just a theory,” Kim said. “None of it explains how or why Hen is in a coma though, right? That’s still the Penhallows.”

  The bite of sandwich in her mouth suddenly tasted like sawdust, and she grimaced as she swallowed it down. She placed the rest of the sandwich on the paper laid out across her lap, her appetite gone. She could give the rest to Willow.

  When they pulled up outside The Quirky Whisker, Amber wrapped up the rest of her lunch and stuck it in her purse.

  “Feel free to say no, given everything,” Kim said, a bit hesitantly after a brief pause. People milled about the sidewalk on either side of the car. “But do you think you can make it to the float decorating session tonight? It’s the last, last one to put the final touches on the float before the parade on Friday. Harlo and Bianca were both total nightmares yesterday. I can’t wait until this is over.”

  Amber didn’t like the idea of being around so many people without having a proper clarity spell in place, but she also knew how stressed out Kim was with all her Here and Meow Festival director duties. And despite all that, Kim still found ways to make sure everyone else was doing okay, as evidenced by the sandwich in Amber’s lap, and the weekly doughnuts delivered to the hospital.

  A woman holding the hands of two small boys hurried across Russian Blue Avenue. One of the boys broke free just as they reached the sidewalk in front of Purrfectly Scrumptious and he dropped to his knees before Savannah the Maine coon, who was sprawled on her back while two little girls cooed over her. Savannah’s eyes were squinted closed as she basked in the attention. The Here and Meow season was no doubt Savannah’s favorite.

  “I’ll be there,” Amber said, not realizing that was going to be her answer until it was out of her mouth. “I may bring Willow with me though. You know, as magical backup.”

  Kim beamed. “The more the merrier! And it’ll be good to have a bigger buffer. I may strangle Bianca otherwise.”

  “She wants to have a spa day or a girl’s night out when all this festival madness is over, by the way,” Amber said.

  “Oh my God. Amber, she is the least relaxing person on this planet!” Kim said. “A spa day with Bianca Pace! Now I’ve heard everything.”

  Amber laughed. “We’ll meet you over at the float barn in a few hours, okay?”

  Kim nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “And thanks for lunch.”

  “Of course,” Kim said. “Now get out of here. I have like ten minutes to get back to the bank and I have to scarf my sandwich on the way.”

  Stepping out onto the sidewalk, Amber only allowed herself to stand there for a moment before she hurried inside the shop. Even with the clarity spell in place, Amber didn’t trust her eyes.

  She quickly closed and locked the door behind her, peering out the glass at the bustling world happening beyond the quiet walls of her shop. Amber had come so far in the last few months—actually venturing out to meet new people, strengthening her friendships, and trying new things. And now she was locked up again like the recluse she’d once been. The Penhallows had taken her parents and now they were taking her sense of safety in her beloved town.

  How long would it be before they took something else?

  Chapter 6

  Amber and Willow headed out for Marbleglen a little before 4 pm. They both had cast Willow’s latest version of the clarity spell before they’d left.

  “Do I get to meet the infamous Bianca Pace?” Willow asked from the passenger seat just as Sphynx Way turned into Buttercup Road.

  “She should be there. When Bianca and I were caught up in trying to free Simon, Harlo got a taste of what it would be like to be the head of the Floral Frenzy Festival. I think most people like working with Harlo better, and Bianca senses that. So now she’s trying to insert herself back into the leadership position so Harlo doesn’t snatch it away from her,” Amber said.

  “Who I really want to meet is Simon,” Willow said. “It would be nice to get to know a witch we aren’t related to.”

  After the ordeal Simon Ricinus had gone through last month—being framed for the murder of Marbleglen’s Chief of Police—Amber hoped Simon was able to bounce back. Amber had no clue what jail was like to begin with, but to be there when you weren’t guilty of the crime had to be ten times worse. Simon was a witch, so he had magic at his disposal, but he
also couldn’t have used it so brazenly that someone would have realized he was … different. That was a can of worms no witch living in a magic-free area wanted to open.

  She hoped he was back in his garden that he loved so much, and was as busy making wreaths for the Floral Frenzy as Amber was at making her toy cats for the Here and Meow. She hoped his sleep wasn’t plagued by nightmares.

  Willow oohed and ahhed at the beauty of Marbleglen as Amber drove the now-familiar path to the float barn tucked behind the gates of Magnolia Estates. When Amber drove past the house on Sweetbay Court where Randy Tillman had been staying last month, she gave a little shudder. Tillman, along with the new chief of police and the mayor of Marbleglen, had been caught up in the murder plot of the former chief of police, Eric Jameson. Unraveling the plot had, at one point, involved Amber conducting multiple stakeouts on this very road while she was disguised as the redheaded Sienna Tate. Amber had spent three long days as Sienna, waiting for Tillman to do something nefarious and show his hand.

  The gravel lot to the right of the float barn was packed with cars, so Amber and Willow had to make a trek up the road on foot. Since float decorating was messy business, she and Willow were both dressed in old jeans and oversized shirts. Willow’s had the logo of her company on the breast pocket of her grungy shirt. Amber’s jeans were still speckled with spots of black from all the times she’d absently rubbed her dirty fingers on her pants during the process of placing an endless number of black onion seeds on the Edgehill cat float. Amber had her brown mid-back length hair in its usual braid, while Willow’s was tied up in a wild bun on top of her head that still managed to look chic.

  Mid-to-late spring was Amber’s favorite time of the year, where it was some perfect mix of not-too-hot and not-too-cold. The sound of voices hummed in the slight breeze. The buzz of the insects in the air seemed to be in sync with Amber’s own buzzing anticipation of seeing the floats again. The Blackwood sisters both had artistic sides—Amber with her toys, and Willow with her graphic design—which they’d learned a few months ago was something they’d inherited from their mother. The Henbane grimoire was filled with detailed drawings of herbs and plants. Amber knew Willow would appreciate the design of the floats with the eyes of an artist.

  When Willow finally had a full view of the barn, she stopped in her tracks and gasped.

  The leftmost float was the one designed like a vibrant garden. The top of the giant willow tree that was the star of the float still hadn’t been attached to the trunk yet; the cap of the tree adorned in long, droopy branches was being worked on just outside the barn by a cluster of teenage volunteers. At the front of the float sat the giant white mushroom with large red circles decorating its cap, and an all-black, dog-sized beetle perched on top. A giant ladybug now crawled its way up the bark-covered trunk of the tree. Beyond the willow was a garden of wildflowers, some being visited by insects propped up on wires to help mimic flight. The whole thing was just as much a celebration of the beauty and vibrancy of spring as Kim’s Hair Ball gala had been.

  The rightmost float was Edgehill’s. From what Amber could tell, the float was mostly complete. The cat at the head of the float reminded Amber of her Alley. Its body was nearly all black, but a white triangle-shaped patch covered the cat’s nose and half of one cheek. Just behind him, Amber could make out the cat who sat on its haunches and licked a paw. The pads of the cat’s upraised foot were lined with the soft petals of pink roses.

  As much as Amber loved the cat float, and admired the beauty of the garden float, it was the float in the middle that nearly took her breath away. The meadow of marbled rhododendrons was complete now, their unique navy blue-and-white marbled pattern on display. If this float was even half as beautiful as the meadow the founder of Marbleglen had discovered—the meadow that had made him fall to his knees and weep at the sight of the “glen of marbled flowers”—Amber understood what had stirred such emotion in the man. The back half of the float was covered in blue flower pieces of varying shades to represent the water of Lake Myrtle.

  The design team had truly outdone themselves.

  “Oh my God!” someone said.

  Kim had materialized behind them, but her attention was focused on the floats. She had a hand pressed to either side of her face like a shocked cartoon character. “They got so much work done on the garden float after I left yesterday. I’m still on the fence about how much we’re allowed to hate Marbleglen as a rival, but holy smokes they make a pretty float.”

  Willow laughed her tinkling bell laugh and Amber smiled.

  Kim dropped her hands. “Hi, Willow. So nice that you could join us! I’m not sure what’s left to do today. Bianca and Harlo apparently got into a heated argument over the rhododendron float just after I left. Nathan and Jolene said it got so intense that several people left only halfway into the evening shift, just to get away from them. An entire bucket of tapioca pearls got dumped on someone’s head. That might just be a rumor, but I hope it was Bianca.”

  It took less than a minute to reach the barn, but somehow Kim and Willow had already launched into a squee-filled conversation about John Huntley and his impending arrival in Edgehill. He wasn’t due to arrive until the second-to-last day of the festival, but Kim kept hinting that maybe he’d grace the town a little sooner, since, despite being a heartthrob television actor and Grammy Award-winning country star, he was also “positively giddy” about cats. John’s people had been in contact with Kim and the mayor on numerous occasions recently to make sure the celebrity would have a trouble-free visit.

  Kim and Willow were so caught up in their conversation that they didn’t see Amber hang back. The pair joined the small group of Edgehill volunteers while Amber stood alone, scanning the assembled crowd. The clarity spell didn’t reveal anyone was wearing a glamour, but it was also possible that Willow’s spell wasn’t strong enough to detect a Penhallow-level glamour. And, as Zelda had said, it was possible a Penhallow could be wandering around with his or her true face. In that instance, a clarity spell would be even less useful.

  Chloe, Ann Marie, Nathan, and his wife Jolene welcomed Kim and Willow. Chloe and Willow squealed before wrapping each other in a hug. Willow had sometimes tagged along when Amber had babysat Chloe, and they clearly remembered each other.

  Amber’s mind filled with the image of Henrietta lying on that hospital bed. Last week, Henrietta had been here, too. Even she and Bianca had gotten along relatively well. Guilt was like a lead weight in Amber’s stomach. No matter what had put Henrietta into a coma, it tied back to Amber somehow.

  “Get over here, Blackwood!”

  Snapping out of her thoughts, she found Nathan smiling at her, while the rest of the Edgehill group waved her over. Smiling softly to herself, she joined them. They spoke of Henrietta and wished her well, but there was no malice thrown Amber’s way. The only person blaming her was herself.

  Harlo approached the group. The fifty-year-old man wore grubby jeans and a stained shirt, as did everyone else, but like Willow, was able to make it look chic. He had bright green eyes and he was rocking salt-and-pepper stubble. He was equal parts easy on the eyes and intimidating. Harlo doled out assignments for the Edgehill group and then everyone scattered amongst the floats.

  Amber had been assigned to the rhododendron float with Willow, working on the lake section. The float designer had apparently been “deeply unhappy” with the way the flowers’ petals were reflected in the water. Amber had a feeling that his unhappiness had been at the heart of the argument between Harlo and Bianca yesterday, each snipping at the other for failing to do a job worthy of the designer’s approval. A large swatch of flower parts had been entirely removed last night, according to Harlo, and now a substantial number of volunteers were frantically filling the space back in.

  Though Amber did her best to get lost in her task—as Willow was doing beside her, bopping along to whatever was piping out of her earbuds—she was distracted by a group of people on the other side of the float. I
t was a trio of unknown twenty-something Marbleglen residents: two young women and a man. Her first, largely irrational worry was that they were Penhallows sent here to stare at her in intermittent bursts, solely to drive her batty.

  After catching the trio quickly looking away for the sixth time, Amber’s already frayed nerves made her snap, “Can I help you?”

  The two young ladies sucked in a breath.

  The boy straightened his shoulders and looked Amber square in the eye. She noted, though, that his pale face had turned an alarming shade of red. “We’re just wondering what you’re doing in Marbleglen. We assumed your absence yesterday meant you were licking your wounds.”

  “Jesse!” the girl next to him hissed, slapping him on the arm. “Rude.”

  “Well, if we’re being honest, all three of you are rude.”

  Amber, a little shocked, glanced over to see Willow had her earbuds out and was glaring daggers at the trio across from them.

  “You’ve been whispering like little kids about my sister for the past half hour,” Willow said, none of her usual easygoing charm evident now. “So out with it. Licking what wounds?”

  The boy, Jesse, visibly swallowed. “You know, that scathing article in Friday’s Herald.”

  “What article?” Amber asked, though she truly didn’t want to know the answer.

  “It was about the top five businesses in Edgehill that Marbleglen residents should visit during the festival season,” Jesse said. Then in a tone that suggested he thought both Blackwood sisters were a little slow, he added, “Don’t you read the Gazette? That Declan guy wrote one just like it about Marbleglen. Hargrove’s was more cutting than Declan’s, though.”

  Willow stiffened beside Amber at Connor’s last name.

  “And?” Amber prodded.

  “And,” one of the girls chimed in on Jesse’s behalf, “Molly mentioned five businesses that won that contest you guys do, which was a little lazy on Molly’s part, if you ask me. But she also mentioned toward the end of the article that normally she would recommend The Quirky Whisker too, since you have really unique gifts, but this year she said she couldn’t do it in good conscience. She listed a bunch of odd events that have happened in Edgehill over the last few months and how most of them could be tied back to you.” She awkwardly cleared her throat, likely from the death glare Willow was shooting her way. “She said your products are unsafe for both kids and adults.”