Pawsitively Swindled

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “Bianca?” the mayor said. “Why don’t you say a few words? We can work out a few details while we’re all together.”

  Instead of just standing and turning to face those assembled, Bianca Pace walked along the length of the stage to the stairs on the side of the room, then joined the mayor and chief. Bianca took her sweet time getting up there.

  “Oh, please can I strangle her?” Kim whispered at Amber. “Just a little. A light strangling?”

  “Shh!” Amber said.

  Kim huffed and sat back, her arms crossed and one leg bouncing.

  Bianca stood tall and proud in the middle of the stage, back ramrod straight, the mayor and chief standing behind her on either side like backup singers for a pop star. Her black hair fell just below her shoulders and was shiny as raven feathers. She wore black slacks, a silk white shirt tucked into it, black heels, and a blue paisley scarf tied around her neck. Scratch that: she didn’t look like a news anchor; she looked like a flight attendant from the 1950s. Amber felt a little self-conscious. She hadn’t bothered to wash her hair this morning; it was in a loose, greasy ponytail now.

  Whitney Sadler would have adored Bianca: a well-to-do woman who looked down her nose—literally—at people for not being up to snuff.

  Amber felt her lip curl slightly.

  Then she tried to think of what her late best friend, Melanie Cole, would have done. Melanie had a knack for defusing uncomfortable situations even when a room was full of too-big, competing personalities.

  “Meet them halfway,” she would say. “Just because they look poised on the outside doesn’t mean they’re not full of insecurities on the inside.”

  Amber did her best to plaster on a smile.

  Bianca swept her piercing gaze from one end of the aisle, starting with the mayor, and down to the other side, ending at Chloe. “Is this … all of you?” she asked, her voice smooth as butter. “Four adults and a child? I heard you were having a hard time keeping the committee well-staffed, fraught as it’s been with scandal and murder, but goodness, I didn’t believe the rumors.”

  Chief Jameson choked back a laugh. Mayor Sable paled.

  Bianca somehow hiked her nose up further. “No one wants to be here less than I do, and on a Saturday no less, given that I’ve been accused of everything from price-gouging to vandalism. Frankly, I would rather not deal with people who blame others for their shortcomings.” She flicked a lock of hair out of her face unnecessarily. “But when the mayor—” she turned to the woman behind her and nodded, “makes a personal request, we comply.”

  Amber’s face flamed further.

  “Now, the parade is, as the mayor said, our pride and joy, so we’ll be in charge of the float design, as we have the most experience with it. Not just anyone can design a float; they’re works of art. We have a reputation to uphold. Plus, I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but Marbleglen was recently voted—”

  “The safest town in Oregon,” the entire Here and Meow Committee droned in unison.

  Then a smattering of laughter sounded from the group.

  “Oh! That was like a really weird Pavlovian response!” Kim said.

  Marbleglen had received that designation for years, and it seemed every resident was keen to remind people of that fact—bringing it up in conversation even when it wasn’t relevant. Amber could only imagine how much more smug they’d grown as news about Edgehill’s last string of hardships had traveled north into Marbleglen’s gossip-hungry ears.

  Bianca glared down at Kim like she wanted to heave both her shoes at Kim’s head, but was worried doing so might scuff the material. “As I was saying, since we want to maintain the same level of quality that our attendees expect—with our festival, anyway—we’ll need you to attend the float decorating sessions on the days we assign you. Don’t worry; it’ll be easy: it’s like paint-by-number. Even a child could do it.” She aimed a false smile at Chloe. “And you already have children on staff, so I think you’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, good heavens,” Mayor Deidrick muttered under his breath from beside Amber. “I may have made a horrible mistake.”

  “Now,” Bianca said, hands clasped in front of her. “What kind of budget are you working with? Do we need to supply the float materials for you? I only ask because your finance chair came down with a bad case of homicidal tendencies, so I don’t know if you’re currently in dire straits. I have a really great accountant who could help you all balance your books, but he’s not cheap and—”

  Kim jumped to her feet and everyone flinched. Bianca gasped delicately and held her hands to her chest as if Kim were a rabid dog that might try to bite her. “Now you listen here!”

  Amber sunk down in her seat and covered her face as the room filled with shouts and name calling.

  “Yikes,” Mayor Deidrick hissed. “Is it too late to move?”

  Amber laughed, despite herself. Sorry, Melanie. We tried. But some people are just awful.

  Chapter 2

  The day following the joint committee fiasco, instead of meeting her cousin Edgar in town for their weekly Sunday morning pancake breakfast, Amber was tromping around in the tall weeds of his property at the crack of dawn, swatting away tickling grasses and biting insects alike. Thick beams of warm sunlight cut through the gaps in the canopy of leaves above her. If she angled her head just right, they looked like fat fingers reaching toward the ground.

  Between dealing with the stress of Kim slowly becoming unhinged again under the pressure of the looming Here and Meow Festival, Jack Terrence remembering that Amber was a witch, and developing a serious case of sleep deprivation thanks to ever-present Penhallow nightmares, Amber was doing all she could to keep herself distracted. The nightmares had begun in earnest after Jack’s memories returned. The brief contact their hands had made caused a jolt of magic to zap them both. That zap had not only reversed the memory-erase spell but had also done something to Amber’s own memories. The ones from that night were more vivid now, rousing her from sleep most nights.

  But she didn’t want to think about any of that right now. Some people would say she was “ignoring her life spinning out of control.” She would tell those people to shove it.

  She kept marching forward, willing herself to stop imagining what critters might be lurking in the foliage surrounding her. The grass came to her waist in some spots. It was surely snake habitat, wasn’t it? The more she walked, knocking the weeds out of her way, the more she was sure it wasn’t snakes out here. It was scorpions. Stinging scorpions that were so deadly, one sting would paralyze her instantly, and then a swarm of scorpions would come and devour her body. Were scorpions carnivorous?

  Perhaps the nightmare-induced insomnia was getting to her.

  That and the lack of coffee this morning.

  Yelping, she slapped an open palm onto the back of her hand. Scorpion! her brain shrieked. But it was more likely a mosquito.

  That would give her malaria.

  “Are you even trying?”

  Squinting, she angled her head up and then turned to the left, where a small shed stood beside a sagging oak tree. Edgar, her annoying cousin-turned-magic-tutor, was perched on the roof of said shed like some kind of smirking, bearded gargoyle. He sat on the spot where the roof came to a peak, his feet dangling off the edge. He casually peeled an orange, dropping bits of rind into the tall weeds below.

  “Of course I’m trying,” Amber said, one hand on her hip and the other shielding her face from the sun. “But it’s not my fault that you’ve clearly never heard of a lawnmower. How is anyone supposed to find anything out here?”

  “And you say I’m grumpy.” Edgar, having successfully peeled the orange now, pulled off a wedge and popped it in his mouth. “You’re supposed to be using your magic. You don’t need landscaping equipment.”

  Amber pursed her lips, surveying the wild jungle that was her cousin’s yard. His large, ramshackle house was back the way she’d come, sitting several hundred feet away. She turned that direction. Sunlight
winked off the shiny surface of Edgar’s new pickup truck parked in front of the wooden house. Amber’s dusty rental car sat beside it, looking as dejected as Amber felt. The gravel road leading off the property stretched out before her and disappeared around a bend. She could escape. It wouldn’t take much. She could sprint to her car, peel out of here, and get a gingerbread latte from Coffee Cat.

  Her eyes slipped closed for a moment, head titled back a fraction, as she pictured herself in the warm and cozy café. Maybe Jack would be there across from her, playfully chastising her for choosing a hoity-toity place like Coffee Cat over his own Purrcolate.

  She didn’t like how often her mind strayed to Jack lately. A little over a week ago, he’d hit her with the bombshell that the memories erased by Amber’s Aunt Gretchen had come back to him. And he had, as he put it, remembered everything.

  Everything! Which included her being attacked on this very property by a cursed Penhallow witch, who tried to choke her to death so he could gain access to her mother’s grimoire. That was the attack that plagued Amber’s mind every night—assuming she could fall asleep in the first place—and left her so bone-deep tired that she worried about things like paralytic scorpion stings.

  She hoped being back on Edgar’s property would help her process what had happened to her. Edgar promised that the more she came back, the easier it would get. “Face your fears,” he’d said.

  But this was only the third time she’d been back here. The first time had been two days ago and she’d gotten halfway up the long driveway before it all came back to her. She’d slammed on the brakes, her breath coming in shallow gasps. She vividly remembered the feel of Kieran Penhallow’s magic wrapping around her neck like a vise as he growled, “Give me the book, Blackwood!” at her like a man possessed. The horrible sight of Willow and Aunt Gretchen being flung through the air, the two women hitting the ground in crumpled heaps.

  She’d thrown the car into reverse, slammed on the gas, and zipped backwards down the driveway, back out onto the road, and then cried the whole way home.

  But she was back a day later—early yesterday morning before the disastrous committee meeting—and had made it all the way across the driveway without completely losing it, and then had successfully pulled her car into the spot beside Edgar’s truck. It had taken her an hour to get out of the car, though.

  Edgar had coaxed her to the wild area she stood in now. He’d taken one of her shaking hands in his big, strong ones, and had gently led her away from the spot where Kieran had tried to kill her, away from the house, and toward the shed. They had stopped in the middle of the field of tall grass, and he’d stood in front of her. “Breathe.”

  She’d done so. Taking his cues, letting his steady presence calm her, until he was able to let go and she could stand there without feeling like her lungs were going to collapse in on themselves.

  “You’re safe here,” he’d said. “I won’t let anything happen to you, cousin. Do you trust me?”

  She had nodded.

  “Good,” he’d said. “Now do what you came here to do.” In a dramatic, over-the-top tone better suited for a host on a gameshow, he’d said, “It’s time to play Magic Cache!”

  She’d called on her magic and rooted around in this grassy area, in the shed, around the shed, in the bushes, along the ivy-choked chain-link fence, around the base of trees. Nothing. After a couple hours, she’d given up.

  That night, after nightmares had left her skin clammy and her heart racing, she’d gotten up, pored over the map of Edgar’s property that he’d given her several days before, and then had shown up here, bright and early, to try again.

  As she’d slowly driven down the rutted driveway in the wee hours this morning, she couldn’t help remembering how many times over the last few years she’d shown up here with peace offerings—everything from pastries to an expensive marble cat statue—in hopes that her reclusive, grumpy shut-in of a cousin would finally open the door for her. It had only been recently that he’d let her in, both literally and figuratively.

  But when she’d shown up today, all those dark, painful memories evaporated like the dew from his sagging porch warmed by sun, steam rising in waving tendrils from the wooden railings. He’d been sitting on his creaky steps, a mug of coffee clutched in his hands, and a second one sitting beside him. He’d known she’d be back. Whether that was because he knew firsthand how stubborn and persistent a Blackwood could be, or because he was haunted by Penhallow-nightmares too, she couldn’t be sure.

  All she knew was that she was beyond grateful that she had Edgar Henbane in her life again.

  “You do know that Magic Cache is something children play, right?” Edgar asked now, instantly ruining any fuzzy feelings she had for him. He still sat on the roof of his shed. He popped another orange wedge in his mouth. “This is how witch kids have Easter egg hunts.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re insulting or encouraging me,” she said.

  “The first one.”

  When she glared at him, he merely laughed.

  “You’re thinking too hard,” he said. “Locator spells are about listening to magic. You need to rely on your senses, not your brain.”

  Amber dropped her hand to her side and scanned his overgrown property in dismay.

  Edgar sighed. “Remember what I told you: there is magic in everything. There’s a baseline of one percent magic in all things—from a seed to a rock. Even though Edgehill is considered magic-free because the only witches in it are you and me, every town in every city on every continent has magic. Ambient magic, you could say.

  “Although spells used on cache items are weak, once they’re in place, a witch isn’t needed to ever recast the spell. The ambient magic around the item is enough to keep the spell alive. Ambient magic is strongest in nature—so, believe it or not, my overgrown yard in desperate need of a lawnmower is actually a great example of where best to hide a cache. And, now, it’s giving off a very low pulse of magic like a beacon for you to find.”

  “So it’s kind of like a solar-powered light,” Amber said.

  “Exactly,” he said. “The magic used on the item, for the sake of this explanation, would give off a reading on your magical Geiger counter as, let’s say, a one-point-five percent. It’s a very faint uptick in energy and you need your magic to find it; your eyes won’t help you. Think about being in a dark room and touching the walls in search of a light switch. You know it’s there, but you can’t see it, so you have to rely on your sense of touch. With Magic Cache, your magic is a sixth sense. It’ll be subtle, though; it’s not going to be as easy to notice as the signature a Penhallow leaves behind.”

  Amber remembered that sticky, molasses-like feel a little too well. A Penhallow’s signature was like a giant spider web.

  A mosquito whined by her ear and she swatted it away.

  “Okay,” Edgar said, sounding ever-patient even though she was sure he’d much rather be doing literally anything else on a Sunday morning. “What does it feel like when you’ve done a locator spell to find your cell phone—again?”

  She ignored the slight, absently touching a hand to her stomach. “Like I’m being yanked forward by my belly button.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “It’s the center of the chest for me. Anyway, that’s the feeling you’re looking for. Magic Cache is about honing your locator ability. It’s the equivalent of learning multiplication tables or cursive handwriting for non-witch kids in elementary school. It’s a useful skill, but as you get older, you only really use locator spells to find stuff you’ve lost, which is the most basic version of the spell. When you don’t remember what nine-times-seven is, you use a calculator, and adults mostly only use cursive for their signatures, which are often illegible scrawls anyway. With Magic Cache, you’re improving that very basic skill to something that can be used with pinpoint precision if you work hard enough at it. You’re training to be a mathematician or a master calligrapher.”

  “You’re very philosop
hical this morning.”

  “I’m trying to really dig deep into this tutor persona you’ve forced on me,” he said, eating another wedge of his orange.

  “I didn’t force you to do anything,” she said. “You said, ‘I’ve got an idea for what we can do with the grimoires, but I’m going to have to help you get better at magic first because good grief, it’s embarrassing.’”

  “I didn’t say embarrassing, and I definitely didn’t say ‘good grief.’” He wrinkled his nose. “I believe I said ‘utterly tragic.’”

  If only she had the skills needed to magically shove him off the roof and into the scorpion-infested grass. “I hate you.”

  He grinned.

  “I don’t know why you think insult—oh,” she said, suddenly frozen like a deer who’s just spotted a hunter hiding in the brush. She placed a hand on her stomach. Then she felt the tug. It was faint, so faint she could easily convince herself it had been her imagination. But then it happened again.

  “Listen to it,” Edgar said, his tone calm and encouraging. “It’ll tell you where to go.”

  She closed her eyes and waited, vaguely annoyed with her cousin because she realized he’d been taunting her as a way to refocus her attention, to stop her from demanding her magic to do what she wanted. Edgar had told her that once she’d conducted the locator spell, it would remain active for several hours. Her magic had been searching for the object in question for half an hour now, rooting around like a pig in search of truffles.

  Where is it? she asked for the millionth time this morning, but she was calmer now. Normally she was firm and confident when she made her inquiries. The stronger her convictions, the more her magic behaved as she wished. For Magic Cache, Edgar had instructed her to be gentler.

  So she asked her question then simply waited. When a tall stalk of grass grazed her hand, she didn’t flinch. She could hear the song of a small bird nearby. Then a second. A critter scuttled through the grasses, the sound like the crinkle of paper.