Pawsitively Swindled

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Amber had stuffed Edgar’s Belhaven map back in his glovebox and had her Edgehill map spread out on her lap. She kept an eye on the black dot as they drove, worried the thing would disappear, but it remained in place.

  When Edgar reached the dead end marked on the map, he parked and turned to Amber. “We’ll need one more thing,” he said, muttering a spell before waving a hand over the map. Two more dots appeared then. “Witchy GPS. My dot is the handsome one,” he said before climbing out.

  Amber rolled her eyes as she reluctantly followed, leaving her purse behind. On the short drive to the other end of the neighborhood, her body and sore muscles had had a chance to relax and now movement hurt. Even carrying the weight of her purse seemed like too much work at this point. If only she could go home, take a nice long bath, and then sleep the rest of the day away.

  Folding the map so just the rectangle she needed was facing up, she walked around the truck to stand beside Edgar, who was glaring at what was essentially a wall of brambles. The two dots representing her and Edgar were, according to the map’s legend, roughly a mile from where they needed to go. Her ankle throbbed, as if asking, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  Edgar uttered a spell, then lifted his hands in the air. Holding them there for a second, doing a rather impressive imitation of a church steeple, he abruptly pulled his hands apart. It was as if he had pulled aside a curtain. What lay past the bramble wall wasn’t any less daunting, but Amber could at least see patches of the ground now. “You first,” he said, his voice strained; he had to keep pouring his magic into this spell to keep the curtain open.

  Amber hobbled forward, slipping past the bramble curtain, and waited for Edgar to join her. Once he did, he used air spell after air spell to flatten the thorny bushes that blocked their path. She stepped carefully, mindful of her ankle. They hiked over difficult terrain for a good fifteen minutes before they were anywhere close to the dot. Another fifteen put them on top of the thing.

  All Amber saw was brush, trees, and hanging vines. She was fairly certain her hair was full of plant bits and that she was covered in mosquito bites.

  As they both turned in a circle, searching for any sign of where the cache might be, Amber groaned. “I need to do the memory reveal again, don’t I?”

  “I was hoping we’d find it before you had to, but I think so, yeah,” he said. “Let’s see if I can do it this time.”

  But after three attempts, with Amber coaching him through it, nothing had happened.

  “My memory magic isn’t strong enough,” he said, shaking his head. “Just another reason why people haven’t been able to find this thing.”

  As Amber gazed around her, she wondered how much more damage she would do to her body if she was thrown into one of these thorny bushes. “Lucky me,” she deadpanned.

  “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Squaring her shoulders, Amber found a spot not too overgrown with foliage and knelt, working her fingers past the layers of plant debris until she touched the soil below. By the time she’d touched her other hand down, her magic had grown sluggish again. Yet, it was worse than that. It felt drunk—drugged. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to get it to cooperate at all. But they’d come too far to give up now.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, then closed her eyes. Something sharp poked her knee. A creature of some kind skittered in the bushes. A distant bird screeched.

  Show me what was here fifty years ago.

  The magic here was so strong, it didn’t so much as blast her off the ground, as hit her with a force so hard, she instantly blacked out.

  The first thing she registered when she woke up was that she was leaning against something warm and solid. As she stirred, she realized Edgar was half cradling her. “Hey, cousin,” she croaked.

  He flinched. “My God, Amber!” he said, clearly furious. His face, angled toward her at an awkward angle, had gone so red, it was almost purple. “You scared the crap out of me! I was half convinced you were dead.”

  “Sorry,” she said, struggling to sit up. “Not dead, just—”

  Her mouth fell open as she realized the overgrown brush was gone. They were in what looked like a courtyard. The ground beneath them was no longer hard-packed dirt covered in wild plants, but a giant tiled circle, the material inlaid with a swirling pattern of red triangles that looked like cut brick. The edge of the circle was ringed with reddish-brown latticework covered in bright green ivy. In the middle of the courtyard was an enormous concrete fountain, its wide base ringed with regal-looking cats who balanced the bowl on their heads. Two tiers of bowls rose above the main pool, with water gushing in a steady flow out of the topmost, smaller bowl. The thing was nearly big enough to swim in. Idly, she wondered if a witch designer had crafted this fountain, as it was so huge, it seemed to defy normal laws of physics. It boggled her mind.

  “According to the map,” Edgar said, getting Amber to her feet, “the cache is in that fountain. Or under it.”

  “Of course it is,” she muttered, making her way toward it.

  As they stood at the fountain, the lip of the widest bowl coming to Amber’s chest, Edgar said, “I’ll see if I can find it. I know this lesson was about you finding it, but you look terrible.”

  She didn’t fight him on it. Instead, she rested against the bowl and watched him. He placed his hands on the lip of the bowl and closed his eyes. She watched as a sense of calm washed over him once the spell had been cast and he waited for his magic to guide him where to go. She might have been better at memory magic, but he was far more skilled at Magic Cache.

  After a minute, he cursed. “It’s in the fountain.” Grumbling, he started to untie his shoes. “There was one really terrible cache once that was in a fountain. The item was a penny. The bottom of the fountain was covered in pennies. Took me nearly an hour to find the dang thing.” He chuckled. “That was a good one.”

  Her cousin was a flat-out weirdo.

  Since the fountain was so massive—the water nearly three feet deep—Edgar would have to go swimming after all. He stripped down to boxers and an undershirt, cursed some more, and then hoisted himself onto the lip of the fountain. Swinging his legs around, he cursed again, complained very loudly that the water was unnecessarily cold, and then slipped into the water.

  Amber grew increasingly anxious the longer it went without him finding it. In the present, this fountain no longer existed. If the magic snapped back into her, would Edgar be trapped in that courtyard until she got back to him? Or would something horrible happen to him since he wasn’t from this time period? Would the magic here expel him from the memory? Would he survive it?

  Edgar’s head popped out of the water and he grinned at her. “Catch!”

  She snatched a metal box out of the air. It was a vintage metal lunch box, probably only big enough to hold a sandwich, and featured a variety of Coca-Cola logos. Edgar swung himself onto the lip of the fountain.

  Amber’s magic stilled. “Jump!” she screamed.

  Edgar did so without question, hitting the ground just as the magic surged back out of the scene around Amber and slammed into her, knocking her out cold.

  This time when she came to, she had been propped up against a tree stump. The metal lunchbox sat in her lap. Something sharp poked the side of her thigh. Her head was heavy, her chin pressed to her chest, and it took considerable effort to raise it so she could seek out Edgar.

  Her rumpled, damp mess of a cousin paced in a tight line a foot away from her. His jeans, T-shirt, shoes, and jacket were back on. There were faint water marks on his knees, but other than that, he looked mostly dry.

  “So there is a magic dryer spell?” she croaked out.

  He whirled to face her, relief clear on his face. Then he masked it with a smile. “Yep. It’s not the most effective, but it’s better than nothing.”

  She chuckled. “I’ll have to let the chief know.”

  “You all right?” he asked.

  She managed her b
est approximation of a shrug, then refocused on the lunchbox. Somehow the thing was in pristine condition, as if it has just been placed in the fountain—which Amber could no longer see—yesterday, and bone dry. As far as this box and the confused magic trapped in this place, though, maybe it had only been yesterday. “Can I open it?”

  “Go for it,” he said, then took a step back. “Given what we had to go through to find the thing, I’m a little worried it’s full of demonic beetles or something.”

  Amber frowned down at the box. She gave it a shake. Edgar flinched. Amber didn’t hear the hiss or scuttle of demonic beetles, just the rattle of the handle. She tipped the box up so the base rested on her legs and the single clasp resting underneath the black handle faced her. Using her thumb to press up on the clasp, it snapped open easily.

  Slowly, she opened the box to reveal a doll inside. It was about four inches tall, had a cap of brown plastic hair, and wore a yellow and pink dress, and yellow shoes. Though the body of the doll was plastic, the face had been painted on paper. The painted eyes were a bright green and were ringed in long drawn-on lashes. The doll had two circles marking her rosy cheeks, and she smiled up at Amber from inside the tin.

  “Oh! I’ve seen one of those before. It’s a Talk-Up Doll,” Edgar said. “It’s a toy from the 70s. You pull her body away from her head and she talks.” When Amber cocked her brow at him, he shrugged and said, “I was really into vintage toys for a while.”

  “Of course you were,” she said, laughing.

  She grabbed the doll out of the tin and flinched when a small red spiral notebook popped into existence and landed in Amber’s lap. “Memos” was written across the front in a curling font, and a large black circle with “25c” was stamped in the bottom center.

  The doll’s face was cute enough, but pulling her body away from her head just seemed creepy. She did so anyway.

  “Oops! I lost my head for a moment!” the doll yelped, its body pulled back toward the head by way of a string.

  “Nope! Not a fan of that!” Amber said, shoving the doll at her delighted cousin.

  As he amused himself with that—“Here comes my body!”—Amber flipped open the slightly worn cover of the spiral notebook. There was only one line on the first page.

  Z. Rockrose. Cache creator. June 7.

  The date was from forty-nine years ago.

  “My feet are getting closer!”

  “Edgar, focus,” Amber said.

  He grinned at her. “Sorry. These things are hard to find. Anyway, what’s the book say?”

  “Z. Rockrose,” she said. “He or she is the only person in the guestbook. Do you know anything about the Rockrose family?”

  He shook his head. After a moment, he said, “Aunt G might know about them. You still not talking to her?”

  Amber pursed her lips.

  “What did she do?” he asked.

  Just as insomnia made Edgar chattier, all-over body pain made Amber offer up more information than she would have otherwise. “That night she wiped Jack’s memory? She only used a temporary spell, and his memory came back. Aunt G didn’t tell me she did that. I would have liked a warning.”

  “Ouch,” Edgar said. “How’s Jack taking it?”

  Amber released a soft sigh. “He apologized. He wants to try … this again. Whatever this is.”

  “Seems like maybe you should be thanking Aunt G then, no?” he asked.

  She glared at him in a way that she hoped clearly said, “How dare you take sides!”

  Edgar checked his phone, not fazed in the slightest. “We should get heading back. It’s only ten thirty, but maybe if we get back soon, you’ll have enough time to take a nap or something. You need a shower more than a nap, though.”

  Nodding, Amber pushed herself to standing. “Guess we have to keep the cache, huh? Unless you want to go back in time so you can hide it in the fountain again?”

  “No way,” he said. “Sorry, Mr. or Ms. Rockrose. This is ours now.”

  Because of her limited experience with cache guest books, she didn’t know how far a cache item had to get from its location before the spell on it was broken and the guestbook was returned to the cache creator. What happened to a guestbook if it was sent back to the owner, but the owner had since passed? Amber hoped that once the thing disappeared, it didn’t cause problems when it reappeared somewhere else.

  Edgar pulled the doll’s body away from her head. “I’m falling apart!”

  Amber hobbled after him. You and me both, girl.

  The trip back to the truck felt as if it had taken three years, rather than half an hour. She groaned very loudly once she let herself inside and sagged in the passenger seat. His truck with its mummified french fries felt like an oasis.

  Glancing out the back window, she saw Edgar standing by one of the back tires, phone pressed to his ear. She wondered who he was talking to. She felt like she’d only just scratched the surface of who her cousin was. Did he have a bunch of nerd friends she didn’t know about?

  While she waited, she pulled the small spiral notebook out of her pocket and stared at the first and only entry again. Z. Rockrose. Since there was a possibility that this thing might disappear at any moment and return to the owner, Amber grabbed a pen out of her purse and added her own line.

  A. Blackwood. April 22nd.

  Then, just in case the owner was still alive, Amber added her phone number, too. She dropped the notebook into her bag.

  When Edgar finally got in, he deposited the Talk-Up Doll in the cupholder on the dash, and placed the Coca-Cola lunch box in the back seat. Then he let out a long sigh. “That was the roughest caching experience I’ve ever had.” He glanced over at her. “Well, I guess it was worse for you.”

  “Was it better or worse than the fountain of a million pennies?” she asked as he started up the truck.

  “So much worse! The penny was fun-bad. That was just bad-bad. What we just went through was ridiculous!” he said, laughing. “And this was just the practice round. Good grief. Belle and Theo found tons of hiding places for the grimoires over the years and rotated them around. I was thinking one spot—a dead spot—would be best, since they’re hard to find. I just didn’t think it would be that hard.”

  “Most of them probably aren’t stuck in time,” Amber said.

  As Edgar drove them back to The Quirky Whisker, he did his best to explain MMORPGs to Amber. She found herself mildly intrigued by the time they returned, and feeling warm and fuzzy inside again that she had Edgar back in her life.

  And then she saw Jack Terrence standing outside her shop.

  Suspicion flared hot in her belly and burned away those fuzzy feelings. As they pulled up to the curb, Edgar rolled down Amber’s window and Jack approached.

  “Hey, guys,” Jack said, then recoiled slightly when he took in the state of them, especially Amber. “Yikes, you weren’t kidding when you said she looks like she lost a fight with a rose bush.”

  Suspicions confirmed, her head whipped in Edgar’s direction. “That’s who you called earlier?” she hissed at him.

  “You’re welcome,” he hissed back. Then, louder, Edgar said, “I was thinking you could just keep an eye on her? I don’t think she’s got a concussion or anything, but she probably needs company for at least a few hours and I need a nap.”

  Amber would have strangled Edgar had she the energy to do so. Instead, she grumbled, “Thanks for the help today.” Then she snatched the Talk-Up Doll out of the cupholder on his dash and said, “You can have this back after you’ve thought about what you’ve done.”

  “Hey!”

  Once out of the car with all her belongings, she closed the door. She turned back almost immediately and peered in through the opened window. “Try and get some sleep, okay? Please?”

  Edgar nodded. “I’ll guzzle a gallon of sleepy tea. I’ll have to get up to pee within an hour, but an hour is better than nothing.”

  Amber stepped away from the curb.

  As he pulle
d away, he called out, “Call Aunt G, you stubborn Blackwood!”

  Face flushed, she turned to Jack, who looked even more worried about her than Edgar had when he was convinced, however briefly, that one of the magic veins had killed her.

  “There’s about half an hour of your lunch break left before the shop needs to open up again, right?” Jack asked before she could get a word out. “I got here just before Daisy and Ben left—is he a new hire?—and they said you and Lily are covering the rest of the day. I assume you set that up before the rose bush incident. I was thinking you could go upstairs and get cleaned up, and then I can help you and Lily man the shop.”

  Amber cocked her head at him, trying to process everything he’d just said. Her very tired mind could only focus on one thing. “Help me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Edgar said you were too stubborn to close for the day or have Daisy or Ben work an extra shift to help Lily, so we thought it made more sense for me to help. I have no clue how to run a store like this, but I figure it can’t be much different than running Purrcolate. Except I don’t know what the price of anything is, what the inventory is, or where to find anything.”

  Amber laughed. “You don’t have to do this, Jack. Lily and I can manage.” She took a step toward the door, experienced mild vertigo, and listed to the side. Jack caught her by the elbow. Her face flushed again. “Okay, maybe not. But I can’t ask you to—”

  “You’re not asking me to do anything,” he said. “I’m volunteering. Larry can manage the café for an afternoon—plus we hired some new people recently. I want to be here, okay?”

  She took in his stubbled chin, his small smile, and the hopeful glint in his green eyes—and caved. “Fine.”

  He grinned.

  It took her the full half hour to get herself showered and patched up, but she felt like a new person. Her ankle, however, had ballooned. Definitely sprained. After Jack had fed the cats lunch—Tom was now in love—Jack helped Amber back down the stairs into the shop. He’d tried to get her to stay upstairs, but she had refused. She hobbled behind the counter and flopped onto a stool.