Pawsitively Betrayed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Agent Barker approached the Plexiglas window and the woman behind it hit a button to activate a hidden microphone and speaker system. Once the agent provided his necessary credentials, all three of them signed liability forms, and both Amber and Edgar were asked several questions each. After all that was done, a series of heavy clicks sounded from the metal door and a man in white scrubs stepped into the waiting area. The orderly gave them a run-through of protocols and rules. They were patted down to check for weapons, Amber’s purse was rummaged through, and only after they’d verbally agreed they’d understood what would get them kicked out of here in a hot second, did the man let them through the metal door and into the facility.

  Amber had transferred the spells she needed into a smaller notebook; one the orderly thankfully hadn’t opened and leafed through.

  She had hoped Aunt G would have a Penhallow-specific tincture for them to take before they left, but she still hadn’t come up with a recipe that she deemed suitable. A phone call to Simon last night had revealed he hadn’t had any luck yet either. Willow’s clarity spell was still the best they had.

  Despite the nearly claustrophobic waiting room and the rather extensive screening process, the facility itself, to Amber’s relief, felt warm and inviting. The walls were painted a light blue, the floors were made of a light-colored wood, and the room just outside the menacing door was full of plush, comfortable furniture. A hallway ran straight ahead into what looked like a dining area, the floor lined with a blue and white runner.

  The orderly headed for a hallway to the left, made a right, and then headed up an enclosed staircase. He explained that the patients—who were called guests—stayed upstairs. Guests had a wide range of conditions. Some were patients with terminal illnesses who had stopped treatment and wanted to live out the rest of their days in a peaceful, resort-like setting. Some needed a place to recover from a relapse into alcohol abuse. Others, like Raphael Henbane, were in an almost vegetative state—clearly mentally impaired and unable to function in society. Almost every guest was wealthy or had wealthy families who paid for their time here.

  The hallway on the second floor was lined with closed blue doors. Each one had a number hanging from the wood, and most had something decorative outside—either a doormat, a potted plant, or a statue. It felt like a high-end apartment hallway. And yet, Amber noted how many cameras dotted the ceiling. They seemed to be pointed in every possible direction. Though the orderly had assured them that the guests here had no “violent tendencies,” the cameras positioned to capture every angle made it clear that security was a priority.

  Amber imagined Willow wandering these hallways. Had it unnerved her, being in this place by herself?

  Uncle Raph was in Room 9, at the end of the hall on the right-hand side. The only decoration outside his door was a plain brown doormat. It was a stark contrast to Edgar’s black doormat, which had “There’s No Reason For You To Be Here” written in a cheery red font.

  A camera was directly above the door, pointed down. Another one was in the corner opposite, facing the door. Amber wondered if the rooms themselves had cameras, too. She supposed they must. Which could make conducting spells a bit difficult.

  The orderly fished a walkie-talkie out of his pocket, hit a button, and said, “This is Johnson. I’ve arrived at Raphael’s room.”

  A moment later, a click sounded from the door and the orderly let himself in. “Hi, Raphael,” he called out. “Those visitors I told you about yesterday are here. You’re so popular lately.” He held the door open and ushered them inside.

  Unit 9 was huge, but aside from the bathroom to the right of the door, Raphael’s living space was one giant room—like a loft apartment in a high-rise city building. It was furnished tastefully but minimally; the colors matched the décor downstairs. A few long windows lined the back wall, the scene outside a wash of green pine trees and the blue sky beyond their tops. A hunched figure sat in a wooden chair in front of the windows. His hair was short, mostly gray, and sprinkled with strands of dark brown or black.

  Edgar’s hand snaked out and grabbed hold of Amber’s forearm. She knew he needed something solid to hold onto.

  “I’ll be just outside if you need anything, Raphael, okay?” the orderly called out.

  The shape that was Raphael made no movement to indicate he’d heard him.

  “Excuse me … Johnson, was it? Could I ask you a few questions?” Agent Barker asked.

  “Stanley is my first name, but everyone here calls me Johnson,” the orderly said, then led the way back out.

  The door closed on the start of their conversation. Edgar still had Amber’s forearm clasped, so she didn’t dare move yet. Instead, she scanned the room, her gaze flitting over everything from the mussed sheets on the bed, to his half-eaten bowl of oatmeal on his nightstand, to the packed bookshelves that rested against the wall next to her. A faint layer of dust on the top shelf told her he likely hadn’t touched these books in some time. Her attention shifted back to his unmoving shape in the chair. How much of his day was spent sitting there? Even if this place was luxurious by most standards, and even if money was buying these “guests” comforts the average person couldn’t hope to afford if they found themselves in similar mental and physical circumstances, this felt like such a sad and lonely way to live.

  “D-dad?” Edgar finally managed, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “Dad, it’s me. Edgar.”

  No reaction.

  Amber took a small step forward, which got Edgar moving, too. As they crossed the room, Amber did another sweep of the wide space and found a camera perched in the corner above a window on the far right. It had a perfect view of Raphael in his chair. Amber wondered if they’d installed a camera there based on Raphael’s habits.

  Once they finally reached him, they stopped just behind his chair, both clearly nervous about what they’d see. Amber rounded the chair first and peered into a face that was both so familiar and foreign to her, it took her breath away. He was the spitting image of Edgar, just thirty pounds lighter and as many years older.

  Edgar rounded Raphael’s chair on the other side and let out a shaky breath as he took in his father’s haggard appearance. Edgar squatted beside him, one hand tightly gripping the armrest. Raphael’s elbows were tucked in by his sides, his hands resting limply in his lap. He wore plain gray sweats, a black T-shirt, and a woolen beige cardigan with a red leaping reindeer on either lapel. His unblinking eyes were still focused out the window.

  “It’s me, Dad,” Edgar tried again. “Can you hear me?”

  When he didn’t immediately reply, Amber squatted as well, quickly glancing up to see if a camera sat on the wall here, too. No camera. There was a second one above the door that was pointed in this direction, but with Amber’s back to the camera behind her, this position put the front half of her in the cameras’ blind spots.

  “Hi, Uncle Raph,” Amber tried. “It’s Amber Blackwood. Your niece.”

  Nothing. Raphael didn’t even blink.

  Edgar shot Amber a look across Raphael’s lap that mirrored the hopelessness she felt. Willow had said that Raphael had talked to her. He’d denied knowing her, and that he’d ever had a sister. Had he slipped even further from reach since Willow was here?

  “I don’t know you,” came a soft, gravelly voice, and Amber and Edgar’s gazes both snapped up to Raphael’s face. Amber swallowed down a lump in her throat when she found her uncle’s brown eyes fixed on her. “You look a bit like that other girl. She said she was my niece, too.” Then his head slowly swiveled to Edgar, who hunched into his shoulders as if the weight of his father’s gaze were a physical thing pressing him into the floor. “I don’t know you either. I don’t have a son. I have no family.”

  “That’s not true,” Edgar said gently—far gentler than Amber could remember her cousin speaking in years. “You had a wife and a son. Mom’s name was Kathleen. She passed away when I was a teenager. Your sister was Annabelle. She was married to Theodore
Blackwood and they had Amber and Willow, your nieces.”

  Raphael’s head started to slowly shake back and forth as Edgar spoke. “You have me confused. You’re wasting your time with an old man who means nothing to no one.”

  Edgar’s jaw clenched. “You matter to me. I’ve been trying to find you for almost fourteen years, Dad.”

  Raphael had settled back into his original posture, his eyes focused out the window again. Seconds ticked by with no further movement.

  “Do something,” Edgar hissed at Amber. “Try your simplest memory spell first.”

  Amber’s stomach churned. Memory retrieval was the easiest spell of its type. She simply used her magic to pull a person’s most recent memory to the surface. Short-term memories were easy to grasp, and it didn’t take much energy to snatch one from a person’s mind. But the spell was anything but simple when memories had been removed in such a thorough way. Even all these years later, the memory wipe—or at the very least an extremely powerful memory burial—had been so extensive that nothing over the course of the last decade had triggered its reversal. What had been done to Uncle Raph’s memory could be permanent. Cracking his mind would prove impossible if there was nothing left to crack. If he remembered Willow enough to know what she’d said, and that she and Amber looked alike, it at least meant his short-term memory was still intact.

  All spells that involved the mind were tricky for any number of reasons. The recipient of the spell could throw the magic off course if his desire to keep his secrets to himself was strong enough—witch or not. A person’s most recent memory could be right on the tip of his tongue, and then before the spell was complete, a bird could fly by, triggering another memory entirely.

  And, as Amber had experienced with Henrietta, when someone’s mind was in an altered state, what felt like a recent memory to the individual might not be linearly recent at all.

  She sighed. Why did the Henbanes have to have a penchant for memory and time magic? The complexity of it made her head hurt.

  Still, Amber closed her eyes and called on her magic when Edgar did nothing more than glare at her. First, she’d need to make sure her intention was pure.

  I want to know Raphael’s most recent memory to make sure his short-term memory is stable.

  Her magic was even less responsive than Uncle Raph.

  I want to test this simple spell on Uncle Raphael to help me figure out if I can do this at all. If I can’t, I want Edgar to know now so he’s not filled with false hope.

  Her magic ignited, rising up in her like a swarm of butterflies startled into the air.

  Then she mentally cast the incantation for the memory-retrieval spell. Moments before she finished, she opened her eyes, then wrapped her hand around one of Uncle Raph’s thin wrists. Physical contact always made Amber’s spells stronger. They both gasped.

  A startling burst of images flicked through Amber’s mind. It all happened so fast, it made her dizzy. The point-of-view of the flashes was like one of Edgar’s first-person video games.

  A leather-bound book with “Henbane” embossed on the cover. Flash. Men in dark suits shouting in her face. Flash. A twenty-something Edgar glowering at her. Flash. The door of Edgar’s house slamming shut on a young, confused Edgar. Flash. An altercation between men in suits and an elderly couple. Flash.

  The front of the Pleasant Meadows for a moment, and then a kind woman’s face swinging into view. It was the same elderly woman from the flash of memory just before this one. She took Amber’s face in her hands and murmured something, then kissed Amber on the forehead. The elderly man from the previous memory was there too, hovering behind, his brow pinched as he muttered to himself, clearly distressed.

  Flash.

  When the magic abruptly released its hold on her, Amber tumbled away and fell hard on her backside. Edgar was there in an instant, a hand on her elbow as he tried to help her to her feet. But she was too out of sorts to get up just yet. Her equilibrium was off, the world spinning. She was also trying to piece together what she’d seen.

  All she knew for certain was that the elderly couple had been her grandparents, Ivy and Miles Henbane. Ivy had been kissing Raphael goodbye, not her. They’d been the ones who brought Raphael to Pleasant Meadows. If it hadn’t been for the series of memories Amber had seen months ago—thanks to touching her father’s watch found under the porch of 523 Ocicat Lane—she wouldn’t have known who the couple was.

  After a few moments, as her nausea abated and her heart rate slowed, Amber was able to think about the images a little more clearly. The men in suits hadn’t been shouting at Amber. They’d been shouting at Raphael. Men in suits that bore a striking resemblance to people like Agents Howe, Barker, and Silent.

  She cycled through the memory snippets once more.

  Henbane grimoire. WBI. Fighting with Edgar. An argument between the WBI and Raphael’s parents. Then Raphael’s arrival at Pleasant Meadows with his memory either gone or buried.

  Amber allowed herself to be helped to her feet and then she moved back to her uncle’s side. He still sat in his chair facing the windows, but his eyes were wild and darting now. His chest heaved. “Uncle Raph?” she asked softly, gasping when his eyes locked on hers.

  “She’s won’t go away,” he said. “She’s always in here, whispering.” He tapped his temple. “She says I have a sister who is a witch. She says I can do magic just like my sister but in order to unlock my powers, I have to find where they’re hidden.”

  Amber pursed her lips. “Do you know who she is? The woman in your head?”

  Raphael squinted one eye as if a sudden, terrible headache had just seized him. It was a pained expression she’d seen on Edgar’s face too many times. Softly, he said, “She says I can’t tell you. She says you want into my head so you can steal my magic. She says not to let you in. She says I should only let her in because she’s the only one who cares about me.”

  Edgar was on Raphael’s other side now and he grabbed hold of his father’s hand with both of his own. “I have someone in my head, too. Is her last name Penhallow?”

  Raphael groaned loudly and hunched forward, his head practically between his knees. He sounded like a wounded animal. “Yes,” he ground out. After several long moments, he forced himself to sit up.

  “Mine is a Penhallow, too,” Edgar said. “They’re targeting Henbanes. You are a Henbane, like me. Like your sister Annabelle.”

  Forehead creased, Raphael reached out with his free hand and cupped Edgar’s face. It was such a sweet, intimate gesture, it startled Amber. It seemed to startle the two men even more. Raphael dropped his hand and he shook his head, as if he couldn’t figure out why he’d felt compelled to touch this stranger as if he knew him.

  “How do I know who to believe?” Raphael asked Edgar, then looked at Amber. He sounded like a confused little boy. “I’ve only just met you and she’s been with me the whole time. If you’re my family, why did it take you so long to find me?”

  A strangled sound reverberated out of Edgar and he sniffed. “I’ve been trying, Dad. Honest. Someone didn’t want you to be found.”

  Which begged the question: how had Willow found him when not even the WBI could?

  Raphael let loose an agonized scream then and grabbed hold of his head on either side. He rocked back and forth, eyes screwed shut, while he begged “her” to shut up. “Stop, stop, stop! I don’t have a sister!”

  A loud buzz sounded, the door to the room flew open, and two orderlies—one of which was Stanley Johnson—hurried into the room.

  “Back away!” the other orderly snapped and Amber and Edgar both jumped to their feet and took several steps back. “He’s due for his medication and nap. If he’s feeling better after dinner, you can come back then. If not, you’ll have to try again tomorrow.” He was directly in front of Raphael now, doing his best to talk him down.

  “But—” Edgar started.

  “We’ll come back,” someone said from the door. Agent Barker stood in the doorwa
y, his hands in the pockets of his black slacks. His casual stance was the antithesis of the tension in the room.

  A flash of the WBI memory went through Amber’s head again. Two men in suits shouting at Raphael. The image of the Henbane spell book had come just before the one of the agents. Had the WBI tried to get Raphael to turn over the grimoire? Had that been what Raphael and Edgar had been arguing about? The books had been entrusted to Edgar on the same day Amber’s parents eventually died in a fire. Amber’s mother had put a spell on Edgar to force him to hide the books in a safe location and then promptly forget where he’d put them. Edgar couldn’t have given up the grimoires’ location to his father even if he’d wanted to.

  Perhaps Raphael’s grief over the death of his sister had made him consider the WBI’s demand to turn over the books. Had the WBI threatened him or offered him something in exchange?

  Damien and Devra were sure the WBI was a shady organization. What did they offer you to get you to do some of their dirty work for them? Damien had asked.

  Johnson ushered Amber and Edgar to the door and assured them again that they could come back later if Raphael felt better. After casting a long, worried look at her uncle, Amber followed the men out the door. Edgar and Agent Barker fell into clipped, awkward conversation as they all walked back down the hallway, Johnson leading the way. Amber found herself unable to keep her eyes off the back of Agent Barker’s head, her mind whirling.

  When Amber’s mother was in her twenties, she’d fallen in love with a man named Neil Winters. Amber’s mother had been a prodigy of time spells since she’d been a young girl, and Neil had convinced her to craft a time-travel spell, just to see if she could do it. Annabelle had agreed for the sake of a good challenge, but once the thought-to-be-impossible spell had actually been written, Neil had revealed that he had been a Penhallow all along. Though Neil had claimed to love Amber’s mother, he also admitted that he’d been assigned the mission of getting her to create the one spell Penhallows had been craving: a spell that would allow them to go back in time and stop the curse from ever infecting their clan. Neil had wanted Annabelle and himself to be a powerful witch couple who would unite the clans, once and for all. Annabelle had been horrified about not only being deceived by a man she’d loved, but having foolishly created a spell that, if used, could cause untold harm to the world at large.