Pawsitively Secretive

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Amber nodded, her palms growing a bit clammy. It felt like she was back in high school in math class before a big test she hadn’t studied for. “Okay, let’s see … I’ve only run into him three times now. He was being a creepshow when we saw him at the Catty Melt, but that doesn’t mean he’d been doing anything odd before he went to breakfast. He was at the search for Chloe on Saturday—maybe he talked to his client that morning.”

  Edgar nodded. “That’s good. Saturday the 18th. Now, what time do you want the memory to be from?”

  Amber chewed on her bottom lip. “We were told to meet outside the Sippin’ Siamese at 8 a.m., and the only thing that was found during the search was Chloe’s cell phone—which I found—so anything after 8 won’t be of any use, probably. If we go too early, though, the memory we get might just be of him sleeping.”

  “Yep,” he said, nodding. “What time did you get there? You saw him across the street before the mayor made his announcement at 8, right?”

  “Right. I saw him before the chief and I did the locator spell in the alley—and that was around 7:30. So maybe we should try for 7?”

  “That seems reasonable.” Edgar grabbed his grimoire, balanced it on his knees, and flipped a few pages. He tapped a page. “All right. This is the one. Basically, slot the details you need into the blank spots. Your intention actually isn’t as vital with a spell like this as the details are. Remember: date, time, and location. Sounds like you don’t know where he was other than being on the west side of Korat Road, right? We’ll just have to hope that’s specific enough.”

  Amber nodded, making her way over to Edgar. She sat beside him and cautiously took his offered grimoire.

  “Memory spells are innately easier for Henbanes, so you shouldn’t get too wiped out by this one,” he said. “But there’s a risk you might pass out in the middle of it.”

  “What? Why didn’t you mention that sooner?”

  “Sorry,” he said, wincing. “You already look so freaked out; I didn’t want to freak you out more.”

  She groaned. Well, she couldn’t back out now: her curiosity about whether it would work was overpowering her fear. She plucked the business card off the coffee table. While she held it in one hand, she calmly recited the spell, slotting in “Saturday the 18th of March,” “seven in the morning,” and “the west side of Korat Road” where necessary. As she spoke, she felt her body grow heavier, her thrashing magic rapidly coursing through her limbs like water rushing through a dry riverbed in the middle of a flashflood, and into the card she held.

  Edgar’s encouraging words of “You got this, Amber” sounded far away and drowned out. Her vision blackened at the edges, but she willed her heavy eyelids to stay open, for her gaze to stay rooted to the words of the spell as she read them as fast as she could.

  She was sure she wasn’t going to make it—that her magic would be depleted before the spell was complete and the little bit of Alan’s energy in the card would evaporate.

  But then a brilliant white light tore through her vision and she was hurled somewhen else.

  Chapter 11

  When the light faded, Amber stood on familiar car-lined Korat Road. The sky was a sickly gray, the morning air chilly on her skin even with the hint of sunlight trying to break through the cloud cover.

  She lifted her wrist to check her watch. It was a heavy, chunky thing that wasn’t really her taste—too flashy—but her brother had been so proud of the purchase, mostly because he’d actually remembered her birthday this year.

  Amber froze.

  Those memories had come to her so easily, yet they weren’t hers. These were Alan’s memories. Unlike the time she rode along as an unfeeling passenger through her father’s memories, Amber felt as if she were truly here. She was aware of everything, from the environment around Alan, to what was happening in his mind. It was unnerving. Was this what it was like for Neil’s magic, trapped as it was in Edgar’s head? It was like being in that in-between place of sleep—almost awake, almost asleep, and fully conscious of the world around her. This was the danger of magic that dealt with the mind—your magic could get trapped. Even though Neil Penhallow was physically in an institution somewhere, at least some of his magic—his essence—was stuck in Edgar’s consciousness.

  What would happen to her magic if something went wrong? Could her magic get lost not in a person, but in a certain point in time—looping endlessly through the same small snippet of memory?

  Amber could only hope that if her physical body showed some sign of things going sideways, that Edgar could rescue her from being trapped somewhere.

  Currently, Alan was standing near the small gaggle of reporters, one of whom was Connor’s editor. Alan watched as Amber told Connor to join them, and he quickly hurried away from her. Alan found this dynamic fascinating—were they friends, mere acquaintances, two people trying to remain civil while in the throes of a failing relationship? His gaze lingered on the brunette even though the young man stood only a few feet from Alan now.

  When she caught him watching her, a flare of embarrassment bloomed in his chest. He’d gotten so good at blending in, that when someone actually noticed him, it threw him off. His instinct was to turn away and melt back into the crowd, to slip from view and her memory. But something about her intrigued him. He didn’t think it was something as simple as attraction. She was beautiful, there was no doubt about that, but it was something else. She’d too quickly homed in on him watching her. She, like him, was overly alert. There was a nervous energy about her—a telltale sign she was hiding something. They were subtle clues, ones others might miss, but he saw them. It could be connected to Chloe, but it just as likely could be something else. Perhaps connected to the young man who’d fled her presence as if he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

  When Alan won their staring contest, and she shifted her gaze to her phone instead of him, he deftly stepped behind the large news van and out of her direct line of sight. He waited a minute or two, then peered around the back of the van, expecting her to have met up with the friend she’d so clearly been waiting on, but instead he spotted her being escorted down the sidewalk by the chief of police.

  Alan stayed out of sight—despite the pair of them shooting anxious looks over their shoulders periodically—as he watched them duck into an alley. He couldn’t see what they were doing, and certainly couldn’t hear anything, but at one point, the chief pulled something from his pocket and handed it to her. Within a matter of minutes, the chief was jogging down the alley, leaving her at the end of it. Curious.

  Alan’s phone rang as he watched the woman walk unsteadily down the length of the alley. She looked a little drunk, honestly, as if she’d forgotten how to walk. Had the chief given her a substance of some kind? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d found out a cop was selling drugs he’d been siphoning from an evidence closet.

  Fishing his phone out of his pocket, he flipped open the disposable device and pressed it to his ear without bothering to look at the caller’s ID—he rarely programmed numbers into these things anyway. “Peterson.”

  “Any news?” the female voice asked.

  “They’re conducting a search of the woods this morning,” he said, still watching the woman as she lurched forward a couple steps, then paused, hand to her stomach, before she unsteadily stumbled forward again. “It’ll be another half hour at least, I’m guessing. The mayor said eight, but things like this rarely start on time. Even if something like this is highly irregular.”

  “A search?” the woman asked, her voice a little shrill. Alan didn’t even know the woman’s name. She’d introduced herself as a concerned citizen who was looking out for Chloe Deidrick’s best interest and requested he keep a close eye on the mayor. She’d wired him the agreed-upon fee within an hour. He wasn’t necessarily crazy about a client being this anonymous, but it wasn’t the first time. And it wasn’t as if “Alan Peterson” was his true name anyway. As long as clients paid him, he didn’t care what they
did—or didn’t—call themselves. “Do they expect to find her in the woods? Why didn’t you mention this sooner?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to get worked up over something that might not pan out,” he said, watching as the woman in the alley got a hold of her limbs and strode out onto the sidewalk, under control again. “It’s very strange that the mayor is pushing for something like this so soon—it’s almost as if he expects to find something out there. Like he knows something is out there. Guilty people do this all the time—they either get anxious about being caught, or antsy that their crime isn’t getting the attention they think it deserves, and then start behaving in a way that points law enforcement in the direction the criminal wants them to go.”

  “So you do think they’ll find her?” The woman was in near hysterics now.

  “No,” he said, sounding more patronizing than he intended. “I’m saying it’s very possible that this move on the mayor’s part is calculated. Maybe he’s staging this elaborate search that pulled in most of the Edgehill police force—and police from nearby towns—as a distraction. Something else could be going on right now and he’s making sure most of the town has their backs turned so someone else can act with less fear of being caught.”

  “Caught doing what?”

  “I have no idea, lady,” he said. “This is all speculation. You’re paying me to observe, not to be clairvoyant.”

  “If you’re going to be nasty, I can hire someone else, you know.”

  Alan rolled his eyes. “No skin off my nose.”

  While the woman on the other end huffed her indignation, Alan watched a second woman—this one in a ridiculous pink cap—push her way through the crowd to join his mystery woman.

  “Keep watching the mayor,” the woman finally said. “I want to know where he goes at night, who comes to his house, who comes to his office. Everything. He covered his tracks when Shannon died and got away with it. Don’t let the same thing happen with Chloe.”

  That was enough to get Alan to tear his gaze away from the pair of brunettes, the mayor’s voice amplified now by a megaphone. He jammed a finger into his free ear to hear his client better and rested his back against the side of the van. “You really think he killed Shannon?”

  “If he didn’t do it himself, he got someone else to do it for him,” his client said. “His hands might be clean in the sense that he didn’t pull the trigger himself, but his money is dirty.”

  Alan pursed his lips. “So far the guy has the most boring social life I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t go anywhere after ten at night and is up by six every morning. No one comes to the house. Maybe there’s nothing to find.”

  “Keep watching,” she said. “Everyone has secrets.”

  A white light cut through the vision and Amber gasped, opening her eyes to see her apartment from an unusual angle. Then she realized she was lying on her side on the couch, her feet still on the floor. She slowly pushed herself to sitting, wincing a little as her head started to thrum.

  Before her swimming thoughts could solidify into anything coherent, a glass of water and a flattened palm with two small pills were shoved in her face. She followed the arm up to a familiar face whose black brows were pulled together. Edgar.

  “You all right, cousin?” he asked.

  She swallowed, her mouth parched. She took the pills and water from him. After she’d drained the glass and he’d fetched her a second one, she felt a little better. But she also felt like she’d been hit by a truck.

  “You are severely out of shape,” he said, staring at her while hinged over with his hands on his knees.

  She mustered up enough energy to glare at him.

  He grinned. “Ah, there’s that Blackwood charm.” Standing to full height, he said, “You’ll be okay. Just takes practice. And sleep. Sleep will recharge your batteries better than anything else.”

  Suddenly starving, she carefully got to her feet and shuffled into the kitchen to inhale two slices of cold pizza.

  Edgar stood in the doorway of her small kitchen, arms crossed as he leaned a shoulder on the refrigerator. “So, what’d you see?”

  She told him that Alan wasn’t the PI’s real name, and that his client wasn’t the mayor, but a woman who somehow knew Chloe went missing. “Based on the way she talked—like being clueless about the search that happened on Saturday—she’s not local. And whoever she is, she knows about Shannon—the mayor’s dead wife—and thinks the mayor had something to do with her death.”

  “Dang,” Edgar said, chewing his bottom lip. “The chief have any idea what happened to Shannon?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Connor doesn’t either. He said the Gazette is trying to track that down.”

  “Seems weird that in this day and age, it’s so hard to find out what happened to her,” Edgar said. “Can’t we just Google it?”

  Amber laughed. “I’m guessing they already tried that. Plus, with enough money, you can alter whatever narrative you want. Maybe anyone who knew the truth about what happened was paid off to keep it out of the paper.”

  “Or maybe that creep who stole Chloe out of the woods—and the person who killed Shannon—also gets paid to shut up witnesses for good,” Edgar offered.

  Crossing her arms tightly across her chest, she fought off a sudden chill. “We have to find out what happened to Shannon.”

  After Edgar left, Amber was filled with a nervous energy. She knew she should sleep, that her magic—which felt sluggish—needed her to rest. But she couldn’t get Alan’s client’s words out of her head: His hands might be clean in the sense that he didn’t pull the trigger himself, but his money is dirty.

  Had the mayor’s dirty money bought the assistance of the man who’d chased Chloe through the woods? But why would the mayor, if he truly adored his daughter as much everyone claimed, kidnap her? It couldn’t be simply to keep her away from the mystery boy from Scuttle. It went deeper than that.

  She snatched her cell phone off the coffee table and called her aunt using the video function. Her aunt had the ability to figure out technology far faster than Amber had the ability to figure out tinctures.

  “Hi, little mouse,” Aunt Gretchen said, her face smeared in something mint-green colored.

  “Ahh! What on earth is on your face?”

  “An exfoliant,” she said. “You look like you could use one. Why do you look like death warmed over?”

  Amber told her about the memory spell she and Edgar had used.

  “Ah, well, that would explain it,” she said. “And since you have that wild look in your eye right now, I’m guessing you want to resume work on the premonition tincture? Your mother got that same look. You Henbane women get a bug up your butt about something and you don’t give up until you see it through.” She sighed. “Go get your supplies, little mouse. Let’s see if we can get through the lesson this time without smoke, hmm?”

  “And you say I have the bedside manner of a rotting toadstool,” Amber muttered as she propped her phone up on the counter and got to work getting the necessary ingredients together.

  Aunt Gretchen merely laughed.

  It took two hours, but when Amber added the final pinch of wild asparagus root to the glass bowl, the tincture turned bright red and then, seconds later, the color vanished altogether, leaving behind a bowl of what looked more like water than anything. There was a very faint pink hue.

  “Perfect!” Aunt Gretchen said, clapping.

  Amber sagged against the counter, staring at the bowl in disbelief. No smoke, no stench of burnt plastic, no black sludge. “It’s safe to drink?”

  Aunt Gretchen nodded. “For tonight, since you’re already so exhausted, I would take a smaller dose. Only a teaspoon in your drink of choice tonight. Tomorrow evening, you can take a full tablespoon. That batch there should last you a couple weeks. Keep it in a sealed container in the fridge and it will hold. If the pink darkens to purple, toss it out and start again.”

  “Okay,” Amber said, rubbing he
r eyes. “Thanks again, Aunt G. I know I’m not the best student.”

  “Pah, you’re a fine student. Tinctures just aren’t your specialty; you’re definitely your mother’s daughter.” Aunt Gretchen smiled warmly at her. “Sleep well, little mouse. I expect a report in the morning.”

  “Will do,” Amber said, yawning so deeply that her eyes watered.

  “Remember: read the spell, state the person you wish to see in your dreams, and then drink the tincture as quickly as you can, keeping your thoughts focused on the person the entire time.” Worry lines marred her aunt’s forehead.

  “I’ll be okay, Aunt G,” Amber said. “I’ll talk to you in the morning. Good night.”

  Her aunt nodded once, quickly, her expression a little wary. “Good night, my sweet girl.”

  Amber disconnected the call, got ready for bed, and then stood in the kitchen staring at the innocent-looking liquid in the bowl. It was hard to believe that something that appeared so innocuous had caused her so much trouble—and was something that could potentially let Amber see into the future.

  After sealing the tincture away—minus a teaspoon—in an airtight container and storing it in her fridge, Amber poured tonight’s portion into a glass of water. Her grimoire, with the new spell she’d gotten from Aunt Gretchen, lay on the counter. Most of the magic was in the tincture itself, but Amber had to fall asleep with her intention true, and Aunt Gretchen had warned her that the tincture would work quickly to knock her out.

  She took her glass and her spell book to her bed. Once she was situated, she made sure she had the words memorized, then placed her grimoire on her nightstand. Tom and Alley lay on the foot of the bed, their sides flush, watching her as if they knew something was amiss tonight.

  “I’m a little nervous, guys,” she told them. “What if I see nothing because her future no longer exists?”