Pawsitively Betrayed

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “Dad …” Amber said in a voice that wasn’t hers. “Can you at least tell me who these people are and what they want?”

  “The less you know, the better, E,” Raphael said as he stepped over the threshold and playfully ruffled Edgar’s hair. He jangled his car keys off one finger and the first hint of a smile graced his face. “No one believes me, but I know this is what we need to turn our lives around. These people can help. I only have to be gone for a little bit and when I get back, everything will be better, I promise. Not everyone gets the chance to start over.”

  Edgar, his voice strained, asked, “Are you doing this because I can’t remember where it is?”

  The hint of the smile was gone and Raphael clamped a hand over his once-jangling keys. “Belle never should have put you in this position in the first place. That blast could have killed you. Now you’re … different. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I never should have moved us here. She warned me. I was an idiot to think I could change her mind.” He grunted, his head tipped back to the roof of the patio for a moment while he collected himself. “It was always about her. Always. Even when we were kids. Now she’s even screwing up my life from the grave.”

  “Dad …” Edgar said. “You can’t mean that.”

  “I do, E,” Raphael said, his jaw set. “Now that she’s gone, I can make decisions about my life. I’m doing this for you as much as myself. I can get … this—” he gestured to Edgar’s entire person, “reversed. All of it. I can fix it all. Just wait for me here, okay? I’ll be back before you know it.” He started to walk backward, offering his son a salute.

  A mounting worry filled Amber’s chest then. An ache she recognized as grief, as one of loss. Some part of Edgar had known then that his father wouldn’t come back. Whether he thought Raphael was lying to him and didn’t actually plan to return, or if Edgar knew his father was in danger, Amber couldn’t be sure.

  “Don’t go!” Edgar said, taking a few steps forward. “You’re all I’ve got left. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

  “Not as much as fixing this,” he said. “Not as much as unraveling all of my sister’s mistakes.”

  “Screw you, then!” Edgar snapped. “I’m practically on my own even when you’re here anyway.” He turned and stormed toward the house, but he was whipped around. Raphael’s face swung back into view, his finger pointed in Edgar’s face as his father yelled something about respect. Edgar shoved him, then ran inside and slammed the door in his face. Edgar rested his head against the door.

  Don’t fret, came a whole other voice. It was in Amber’s—no, Edgar’s—head. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  “Go away,” Edgar growled.

  I’m afraid it’s too late to make that request, friend, the voice said. I do suspect it’ll just be me and you now.

  Neil, Amber realized.

  Oh. Tsk, tsk. You’re not supposed to be here, Amber.

  Before she could react, she was airborne.

  Her startled yelp was cut off when she hit her bed again, sending it sliding several inches on its wheels before it thudded into the wall. She slipped to the floor, her legs stuck out in front of her and her back against the side of the bed. She imagined she looked like a discarded doll.

  Edgar was by her side in an instant. “Dang. Are you okay? What happened?”

  Amber winced, rubbing her head. “Neil kicked me out. Sort of literally.”

  “He’s a jerk,” Edgar said, nodding. A noise-cancelling bubble slammed down around them. “What’d you see?”

  She recalled the memory as he helped her to her feet. Her head spun. “It’s all true. The WBI made him an offer on how to fix it. I honestly think he planned to come back to you. Well, you know, assuming altering time didn’t eliminate your existence.”

  Edgar chuckled darkly as they both sat on the side of her askew bed.

  “They told us Uncle Raph had been on an unknown mission when he was attacked by a Penhallow,” Amber said. “But it was their mission. They’ve known this whole time what Uncle Raph had been planning to do and they didn’t tell us.”

  “Because they want my dad restored so he can finish what he agreed to do fourteen years ago,” Edgar said, sighing.

  “I just don’t know if they really think a Penhallow intervened,” Amber said. “Agent Barker says our grandparents are dead … but who knows if he was lying about that, too.”

  “You know, in a different life, I think Agent Barker and I could have been friends. But in this one?” Edgar shook his head.

  They were quiet for a moment, sitting side by side on Amber’s bed. She cleared her throat. “I want to help Uncle Raph, I honestly do. And I know he’s your dad but—”

  “But it’s hard to know whose side he’ll be on when he gets his memories back,” Edgar said slowly. “Theirs or ours.”

  “Yeah …” Amber said. “I would hope time and introspection would change his mind, but he’s had Patrice in his head for who knows how long. Other than the orderlies, Patrice has been his closest friend for years. He could be even angrier and more determined to go through with this now than he was then.”

  “Do we abort?” Edgar asked suddenly, turning to study her face. “Can we wait until the middle of the night and just duck out of here?” He winced then, heel of his palm pressed between his eyes. “Neil hates that plan.” Edgar fought it as long as he could, but then screwed his eyes shut, grabbed his hair at the temples and stuck his head between his knees. He let out a roar that was equal parts frustration and heartbreak.

  Amber’s throat felt tight. She hated seeing him like this, unable to help him. She placed a hand on his bent back, but he bucked away from her touch as if it had scalded him. “We’ll stay, okay!” she practically shouted. “We’ll stay, Neil! Leave him alone!” She didn’t know if Neil could hear her as if he was on the other end of a phone line and Edgar was the mouthpiece.

  After a few moments, Edgar settled a little. The roaring had stopped. He let out a shaky breath and slowly sat up. Releasing the hold he had on his hair, he swiped a hand under his nose.

  “Edgar, I—”

  The noise-cancelling bubble abruptly dropped and Edgar stood. His eyes were lined in silver now. He looked so impossibly tired, like that ordeal—like the last two days especially—had shaved years off his life. “I’m going to take a shower.” He walked away without looking back, grabbing his bag off the floor in the corner as he went. She wondered if his inevitable tears started the moment he closed the door, or if he would save them until he was under the spray from the shower.

  She listened for the sound of the water turning on, and shower curtains rings sliding along the rail, before she let her own tears fall.

  Legendary witch? he asked, but it came out almost like a purr, as if he were sharing a quiet, intimate secret. How can someone as ordinary as you be legendary? You’re going to screw it all up, you know. Best to quit now and leave the rest up to fate.

  Amber’s eyes shot open.

  It took her a moment to reorient herself. She lay on top of the mint green comforter in the Mermaid Inn. The room was dark. She pushed herself up, half expecting to hear that voice again—Neil’s voice. But the memory of it faded along with the rest of the dream. Edgar was under the comforter on the other bed. He wasn’t in his vampire pose this time, but the fetal position. Amber wasn’t sure that was any better.

  Tapping the screen of her cell phone on the nightstand revealed that it was just after midnight. A text from Jack had come in ten minutes before.

  I’ll be awake for a while if a nightmare wakes you up.

  The simple message made her eyes well up again. When she called, he answered immediately.

  “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  “I would have expected you to be asleep by now, old man,” she whispered.

  He laughed.

  Edgar groaned a little and shifted under the comforter.

  “One sec,” she said, and eased off the bed. Since she’d fallen aslee
p in her clothes, she only needed to slip on her shoes. Unlocking the motel room door, she peered outside. The parking lot was quiet, the air cool. Craning her head to the left, she double-checked that Silent Agent wasn’t lurking anywhere, then she crept out onto the sidewalk, gently closing the door behind her. The lot had at least twenty cars in it, but she didn’t see any people other than the figure of a man on the other end near the motel entrance. He leaned against the wall smoking a cigarette while he talked on the phone, if the rectangle of blue light was any indication.

  “Okay, hi.”

  “Hi,” Jack said. “What’s going on over there?”

  She gave him a brief rundown of it all. “I hate that I can’t help Edgar. The reason he’s suffered with this for so long is my family’s fault. He’s been through so much already.”

  “I don’t know him that well,” Jack said, “but I don’t think anyone can make Edgar do anything. He wouldn’t be there if he didn’t want to be. Which means he doesn’t blame you for any of this.”

  She knew Jack was right. Edgar had told her as much. But the guilt was eating away at her. That, and her crushing self-doubt. Her greatest fears about everything had manifested through Neil’s voice—the voice of the man who had killed her parents.

  “What else is bothering you?” he asked.

  She sighed, then tried to explain her mounting worries. Once she got started, she couldn’t stop. She told him that she blamed herself not only for Edgar’s condition, but for Melanie’s death. If she had been honest with Melanie about her abilities, maybe Melanie would have come clean about the affair she’d been having with Derrick Sadler. Maybe Amber could have recognized Susie Paulson’s and Whitney Sadler’s odd behavior for what it was before Melanie was poisoned. Maybe she could have saved her.

  She blamed herself for Wilma Bennett’s death—the maid who had been killed as collateral damage by Kieran. He’d wanted the three Blackwood women good and scared so that when he came calling for the grimoire, they’d willingly give it up.

  And now Henrietta’s life, and Edgehill itself, hung in the balance if Amber didn’t do what the Penhallows wanted. She wanted to believe that her raw, untested magic was powerful enough to restore Raphael, but it was possible that even if she were successful, it would help her enemies get closer to their goal. If Amber and Edgar abandoned the mission, Neil would torture Edgar into madness. It was a lose-lose situation.

  Silence descended on them after she finally stopped speaking. It went on long enough that she was convinced she’d scared Jack away all over again.

  Finally, he said, “What I wouldn’t give to be able to hug you right now, Amber. I don’t have any answers. I understand why you feel this way. This is … a lot. I don’t know how I would deal under this kind of pressure. Heck, I almost had a total system meltdown over serving scones to Olaf Betzen.”

  Amber managed a little laugh, some of the tension in her chest easing.

  “But you have to know that you have people here who are rooting for you,” he said. “Kim and I don’t have a lick of magic between us, but we’d go up against a Penhallow for you in a heartbeat. Chief Brown is probably as freaked out about this as I am, yet that guy is basically your best friend now. Your aunt and sister would tear the Penhallows apart with their bare hands for you. Edgar has been through heck and back and he’s not only still supporting you, he’s by your side.” She could imagine him shrugging. “That doesn’t sound like someone who’s the reason for all these terrible things. It sounds like someone who is doing her best and who has a ton of people who love her. Win or fail, right choice or not, we’ll all still be here.”

  Amber started crying.

  Jack cursed softly, his tone regretful. “Do you have a teleportation spell up your sleeve? ’Cause we really need one right now.”

  Once she got herself together, she huffed out long, shaky sigh. “Thanks, Jack. I guess I just needed to purge it all.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “This is what boyfriends do.”

  She fought a grin. “Oh, so it’s official now?”

  “Definitely,” he said. “You’re stuck with me.”

  “Good.”

  After a moment, he said, “You should probably try to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

  Amber nodded. Her throat hurt from talking so much, and her eyes itched from crying. At the very least, she should take a hot shower. “Night, Jack.”

  “Night, Amber.”

  Though nightmares didn’t plague her, her sleep was fitful.

  With Jack’s words ringing in her head, she felt a little less daunted, at least.

  Win or fail, right choice or not, we’ll all still be here.

  That was the thought that would get her through. That, and the text she received early the next morning from Kim.

  I believe in you, friend! Kick butt and get back here ASAP. You’ll be here for the parade, right? RIGHT? I may set the floats on fire just so I don’t have to answer anymore terse emails from the Floral Frenemies. It is my solemn wish that a blight of locusts eats their entire town.

  Chapter 21

  Amber wasn’t sure what Agent Barker did at Peaceful Meadows while she and Edgar visited with Raphael. For all she knew, Agent Barker knocked out every orderly in the place with a powerful sleep spell and then holed up in a viewing room to observe the goings on in Room 9. She pictured him leaned back in a chair, feet propped up on a table with his ankles crossed, as he watched a bank of monitors. Maybe he had a bowl of popcorn, too.

  Either way, she and Edgar found themselves alone with Raphael the next morning. He greeted them both by name, which was a good sign. Amber had pretended not to notice Edgar’s eyes welling up.

  Currently, Raphael lay on his back on his rumpled bed. Amber had positioned his beloved chair beside it. Raphael’s gaze was focused on the ceiling, and his hands were balled into fists by his sides. His anxiety was a palpable thing—as was his hope that this would work.

  The plan was to show Raphael memories that were tied to magic, hoping that jogging the recovery of one buried thing would help unearth another. Since Raphael couldn’t remember anything about his life before Peaceful Meadows, she couldn’t ask him to hold details of a particular memory in his mind as she had with Edgar last night. She would have to go rooting through his memory drawers like a burglar.

  Raphael assured her that he understood how the process worked. His tone was relaxed enough, but his fingers firmly grasping a handful of his sheets told her otherwise.

  She shot a look over her shoulder at Edgar who was busy wearing a hole in the floor, his bushy brows smashed together and his eyes on the ground. She wondered if he was giving himself a pep talk or if he was currently having a mental fight with Neil. Maybe both.

  Refocusing on Raphael, she uttered the words of the spell, took a fortifying breath, and then placed her hand on his arm. The first two memories she pushed at him were received with relative ease. She could feel the muscles in his forearm bunch and relax occasionally under her palm, but otherwise the process was moving along more smoothly than the one from yesterday.

  She moved onto a third memory—the one where Willow had slipped past the rubber banister stakes—and had just gotten to the part where Amber and Edgar were lathering up Willow’s head and hair with mayonnaise when all the players in the scene froze. A glob of mayo hung in the air like an opaque bubble.

  Then everything vanished. It was like the color leaking from the abandoned neighborhood, but all at once. She pitched forward into the abyss of black, screaming on the way down but unable to produce a sound.

  Besides, one needed a mouth, a throat, and vocal cords to scream and she had none of those now. She couldn’t feel the wooden chair she sat on or the warmth of Raphael’s forearm beneath her hand. The black was all-encompassing, and she knew on some level that she should be panicking, screaming, begging for help. But now she just … was.

  “Am I dead?” she asked and was surprised she had a voice when she didn’t h
ave a body.

  “No,” came the reply, and she recognized it as Raphael’s voice, but there didn’t appear to be another person here with her. Just two consciousnesses. Was Patrice here as well? “We don’t have a lot of time, Amber. I need you to listen to me. The orderly Stanley Johnson isn’t who you think he is.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Patrice,” Raphael said. “My memory was restored a couple years ago, but I have to pretend it wasn’t. Patrice threatens me on a daily basis that if I don’t do as she says, she’ll take it all away again. But I can’t even share my true lucidity with Patrice.”

  If Amber had a head, it would have been spinning. “But she’s in your mind, isn’t she? How can you hide that from her?”

  “She isn’t in my head the way Neil is for Edgar. If she has eyes on me, she can use her magic to float thoughts into my head. She’s the one who got them to install the camera that’s aimed at my chair,” Raphael said. “What the WBI has told you is likely only part of the truth. I was never hit with cursed magic; I wasn’t infected the way Edgar was. I had all my memories and powers buried by my parents, as I think you figured out. Patrice found me here a few years ago. She’s no memory witch like the Henbanes are—like you are. But slowly, bit by bit, Patrice was able to restore my memories. Restoring my powers, however, is beyond her abilities. That’s why the Penhallows have done what they can to reunite us. They wanted you to believe that finding me was organic.”

  “Was Patrice the one who put the meadow image in Willow’s dreams?” Amber asked.

  “Yes and no,” Raphael said. “The Penhallows have been keeping tabs on you and Willow for years, but they started paying closer attention ever since the cloak started to fade on Belle’s grimoire. The network of witches—mostly Penhallow, but some from other clans—rotate which witches are assigned to watch you. A few in Seattle have been assigned to Willow and Gretchen. That’s how the Penhallows knew your sister started looking for me. They communicated through the network to devise the best way to influence Willow. One of them posed as a barista at Willow’s favorite coffee shop and got a dream tincture into her drink that opened her mind to influence. The witch then projected the simple image of the yellow flowers, blue house, and red chair into Willow’s mind while she slept.”