“You’ll ruin everything!” Francine growled and lunged.
No.
Amber flung her hands out just as the front door to Francine’s house opened. Magic shot out of Amber’s hands like a gale-force wind and lifted Francine clear off her feet and sent her sailing several feet off the ground before she hit the ground and slid across the hallway.
“Oh, holy smokes!”
Amber whirled around to find a slack-jawed Kimberly Jones standing in the doorway.
“You … you …” Kim said, gaze darting from Amber to Francine’s prone form in the hallway and back to Amber again. “You … you …”
Oh, this couldn’t possibly go well. “Kim …”
Kim kicked broken glass out of the way and quickly closed the door, pressing her back against the wood. She visibly swallowed. Amber was almost positive Kim hadn’t blinked.
Amber’s chest heaved. She was more concerned at this moment that the power behind that blast of magic might have been enough to stop Francine’s heart than she was about Kim. But Amber would likely need to deal with Kim’s screaming once her adrenaline wore off. “What are you doing here?” was all Amber could think to say.
“Oh my God, Amber,” Kim said, coming back to herself. “That picture you sent me! Chloe told me so many times that Johnny calls her Kitty Cat and he calls himself Snugglebear. What are the odds? I was so freaked out about it that I just rushed over here.”
There was a groan from behind them and Amber and Kim jumped and whirled toward the hallway. Francine pushed herself to sitting and rested her back against a wall.
Amber was still so angry and her throat hurt and she needed to know what on earth Francine’s connection was to all of this. She stalked toward the disoriented woman and squatted in front of her; Francine flinched away. If she wasn’t clearly in so much pain, Amber was sure she would have run screaming from the house already. Amber lowered her voice so only Francine could hear her. “Tell me everything and I promise I’ll consider not tossing you across the room again.”
Francine swallowed, shying away from Amber a fraction. Mentally, Amber uttered the truth spell she’d been using so much lately, grabbed hold of Francine’s forearm—her magic singing from the contact—and then asked, “What role did you play in Chloe Deidrick’s kidnapping, Francine Robins?”
“It was all indirect,” Francine said, eyes widening as she realized her mouth was working without her permission.
Amber stood, towering over the woman.
Kim gasped, joining them in the hallway, though it looked as if she was warring between staying or bolting out the front door.
With her head resting against the wall, Francine let out a dejected sigh and said, “I got fooled by 055BelHavenGuy, too—just like Chloe did. At the start of Frank’s campaign, he wanted a tutorial on social media. We hit on all the major ones, but he wanted to know how Scuttle worked too. I didn’t really know myself, but I knew it was big with the younger crowd, so I created an account. I didn’t realize until later that anonymity was what users went for on there, so I posted my actual photo and bio on the site. My Belhaven guy started chatting with me almost right away. He said his name was Johnny and that he thought I was beautiful.” She snorted derisively. “After almost a year of talking, we met in person in Portland; he claimed he had a job out there. He gave me flowers; he was really sweet. And we got along great, just as we did in messages, but I didn’t have that romantic spark with him, you know?”
Francine raised her brows hopefully in Kim’s direction, subtly trying to remind her of the times that they’d bonded over their dating woes. Kim’s expression was hard and her arms were folded tight across her chest.
Francine frowned slightly and brought her focus back to Amber. “Johnny said he could tell I was hung up on someone else. We still talked all the time after that; he became one of my closest friends. I told him … everything. About my job, Frank, Chloe … and confessed my feelings for Frank.
“After a while, he told me he was an undercover journalist working on an explosive series of stories about corrupt politicians. He said he was drawn to me because of my connection to the mayor. He admitted that at first, he’d just been using me for intel, but once we became such close friends, he confided in me about his research into Frank. He told me Frank wasn’t who I thought he was and that he was worried for me because Frank was potentially dangerous. He dropped Shannon Pritchard’s name in conversation one day, then mentioned a rumor about hush money payments the next. He’s the one who tipped me off to the very thing that ended up getting me fired. But I think he wanted that. He wanted me ticked off and heartbroken so that when he needed me to go through with my part of the plan, I would.” She laughed. “I’m so stupid.”
“What did you do?” Kim asked, more bewildered than anything.
“Johnny—whatever his real name is—convinced me that Frank killed his long-time girlfriend Shannon, but was never caught, and that the hush money payments he was making were to a witness,” Francine said.
“You told me you didn’t have any idea what the payments were for,” Amber said.
“By the time you came to talk to me, that was true again,” said Francine. “Chloe was gone. I knew Johnny had lied about nearly everything. I was such a mess that day you came to talk to me. I didn’t know what to think. I was in love with Frank, and I knew he adored Chloe, but there was something so fishy about his past, regardless of what Johnny had told me. He’d planted a seed of doubt and it was growing like crazy.”
Amber still wasn’t sure how this all resulted in Francine’s shoes being covered with mud. She knew she had to be patient; Francine was on a roll now, either coerced by the magic still, or by her own guilt, Amber couldn’t be sure.
“The night of Chloe’s disappearance, Johnny messaged me and thanked me for all my help. He said he had a colleague who was in town and based on everything I’d told him, this so-called colleague had been able to find and interview Chloe for the story, which would make it an even more powerful piece. He said once the explosive exposé hit shelves, he’d give me a finder’s fee of sorts since his contact never would have been able to find Chloe without me.” Francine wrung her hands. “I’d still been at the bar when I got that message and something in my gut told me something very bad had happened.
“Frank sent me a text that night asking if I’d seen or talked to Chloe—you two were still at the bar. I drove right from the bar down Blue Point Lane since I know her best friend lives down that street. I found her car before you two did.”
Amber gaped at her.
“I went walking around that whole area calling for her. Got a few feet into all those trees and bushes. It was dumping buckets by then and I almost rolled my ankle half a dozen times in those dang shoes,” Francine said. “I knew it was all my fault. I’d basically given this Johnny guy a blueprint of Edgehill because of how much I talked about it and pictures I’d sent him, thinking I was just sharing my town with a friend. I’d willingly given this guy everything he needed to know about Frank and Chloe. I went home before you two found her car. And then the next day, and the days after that, Chloe was just … gone. I knew I’d irrevocably screwed up then. I helped Chloe get kidnapped even if he had a hired goon do the snatching.”
“You didn’t turn any of this over to the police?” Amber asked.
Francine shook her head. “I was in so deep. He said he’d been keeping screenshots of our conversations and since I was stupid enough to have a handle that was Francine103R—I mean I used the freaking area code of Edgehill in my name!—I figured it could be pretty easy to prove it’s me given how many dang selfies I sent him. He said he could send all the screenshots in anonymously to the police and no one would know where they came from, but I’d be implicated.
“I didn’t know how I’d be able to prove any of this from my side. Even though we talked for a year, I don’t even know his real name. I don’t know what he really wants from Chloe or who he is. There are all these rumors a
bout Johnny being the leader of a sex ring or something! What if I did something to completely ruin Chloe’s life? All I know is that he’s a con artist and I fell for every one of his lies.”
Amber merely stared at her.
“Are you going to press charges?” she asked, her chin quivering, as if she was fighting the urge to cry. “I probably should have thought of that before I attacked a friend of the chief of police. I just … I freaked out.”
“You should be freaked out,” Kim said. “The whole town’s been losing its mind over this and you never once told anyone you were involved with the guy!”
“Amber showed up here like some kind of angel!” Francine said, waving a hand in Amber’s general direction. “I’ve felt so isolated here and then I suddenly had friends and a project to lose myself in and I didn’t want to ruin that.”
Amber couldn’t say she didn’t know what all of that felt like, but Francine staying quiet could have resulted in things going much worse for Chloe. It still wasn’t clear what the girl’s fate was, after all.
“Why did you call him Snugglebear?” Amber asked.
Francine turned beet red. “How do you know about that?”
“I saw the card on your fridge.”
Sighing, she said, “I made it up. He said he was from Belhaven and he’d been a Belhaven Bear many years ago. Somehow from there, I made up the nickname.”
Amber told Francine that Sean had sent a picture of that same card to Chloe, claiming he was going to give her the bouquet the night they met.
Francine winced. “God, that guy is sick. He’s sick and I’m an idiot for falling for it.”
Amber wanted to say that this kind of thing probably happened to women—and likely quite a few men—all the time. Alan had said that predatory men targeted children through apps like Scuttle; the idea that men like Sean with even worse intentions than acquiring money were out there preying on the young and vulnerable made Amber’s stomach twist.
In the brief silence, Francine, who was still sitting with her back pressed against the wall, cocked her head at Amber. “How did you do that earlier? I swear I was on my feet one second, then halfway down the hallway the next. I remember you lifting your hand and—”
Amber locked gazes with her and said, “Sleep.”
Her eyes rolled back in her head and then her chin dropped to her chest. Her limbs relaxed and breathing deepened.
“Oh, holy smokes!” Kim said beside her.
Amber wasn’t sure how to handle Kim. Did she really want to deal with another memory erase spell? Was her skill with memory erase even strong enough?
“Holy smokes, holy smokes!”
Slowly, Amber turned to Kim, trying to figure out the best lie to go with. Would the psychic story still work? Hypnotist?
“Are you a …” Kim swallowed, her balled fists pressed to her cheeks. She looked like a startled goldfish. “Are you a witch? Can you do … magic?”
Amber knew her skills were decent enough that she could erase these last five minutes and make Kim forget this conversation if she started screaming. “Yes.”
“Oh. My. God,” Kim said. She took one step back, then another, her fists still pressed to her face.
“Listen, Kim,” Amber said slowly, priming her magic to dart into Kim’s mind and pluck out any memory of this. “It’s not—”
Kim squealed and bounced on the balls of het feet. “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened!”
“Wait, what?” Amber said, her magic deflating like a soufflé.
“This actually makes so much sense now,” Kim said, pacing back and forth across the length of the narrow hallway. “This is why you’re so secretive! You’ve been holding onto the most epic secret in the history of the universe. Do you have any idea how badly I wish I could do magic? It’s like literally my only dream in this life. Holy smokes!” She stopped abruptly to stare at Amber with wide eyes. “Do you have a broom? Can you fly?”
Amber let out a burst of nervous laughter. “No. The chief asked that too.”
“Chief Brown knows?”
“Yes! That’s why we’re together so much. Sometimes my … skills can help him out with a case when regular police methods won’t work.”
“Oh my God, Amber, that’s so cool,” she said. “And holy smokes I’m sorry I thought you were trying to hook up with him. This is so much better. Also, you two need a TV show.”
“Right! I keep trying to suggest that, but he thinks I’m loopy.”
Kim stared at Amber now with a giddy sort of delight that was downright unsettling.
“Kimberly, you can’t—can not—tell anyone about this.”
“I won’t!” she said, holding up two fingers. “Scouts honor.”
“You blurted things to Francine within a couple of days!”
“I was tipsy on appletinis!” Kim said.
Amber pursed her lips.
Kim closed the distance between them and grabbed Amber’s hands, giving them a shake. “You can trust me. I promise. I’m feeling a little choked up that you told me at all. I know sharing this with people has to be a big deal and I’m glad I’m one of those people.”
“Jack knew,” Amber blurted.
Kim’s brows shot toward her hairline. “Past tense?”
Amber nodded. “It’s a long story, but yes. I can get into all the sordid details of my witch family—”
“Uhh … yes, please, and thank you. Tell me when and where and I’ll bring the wine.”
Smiling, Amber said, “But Jack learned even more about all this than the chief did and he couldn’t handle it and asked to have his memory wiped of all of it. Which meant he couldn’t really remember me. That’s why things have been so weird between him and me lately.”
Kim grunted. “Dangit, Jack Terrence. Well, just know I can handle it, okay? I promise.”
We’ll see, she wanted to say. Instead, she smiled and said, “Okay.”
“What do we do about her?” Kim asked, letting Amber’s hands go and turning to face the now snoring Francine.
“I’ll talk to the chief when he’s got a free minute. I guess I can just keep her asleep until then?”
“Maybe we should put her on her bed at least?” Kim said. “You grab her feet; I’ll grab her shoulders.” Then she grinned. “That’s how I know we’re truly friends now. Only your closest friends will help you move a body.”
Chapter 21
Amber had just reinforced the sleep spell on Francine, who lay peacefully on her bed, when her cell phone started to ring. It was coming from the front entryway, given how distant it sounded. Francine had been taunting Amber with it before the scuffle. Had it rolled under something?
Muttering a quick locator spell, she was tugged forward. She followed the sensation through Francine’s bedroom, past a bathroom, and through a small library-like room before Kim had a chance to catch up with her.
“Oh!” Kim chirped from behind her. “This is like when you found Chloe’s phone isn’t it?”
“Locator spell,” Amber said as she darted into the entryway. The contents of Amber’s purse lay strewn on the floor, along with the bag of Francine’s mud-caked shoes. Amber’s magic helped guide her hand under the bench seat, and she did her best not to slice open her knees on the scattered shards of broken glass vases; the large box Francine had brought Amber lay on its side in the middle of the entryway.
Amber pulled out her phone just as the screen went black. She immediately called the chief back. “Hi?” she said breathlessly.
“We’ve got her,” he said.
Amber slumped to the floor in relief, forgetting all about the glass. “Is she—”
“She’s fine. Shaken up, but just fine,” he said. “Sean Merrill was arrested at his job at the gas station roughly twenty minutes ago. It’ll still be an hour at least before we can head back, but she’s safe and she’s coming home.”
Amber started to cry.
Kim dropped to her knees in front of Amber. “Oh no. Are
these happy tears or sad tears?”
“Happy!” Amber said, laughing and crying at the same time.
“Oh thank God!” Kim said, throwing her arms around Amber.
“Oh, and chief?” Amber said, once Kim had unhanded her. “You’re going to want to talk to Francine Robins. She unknowingly is how Sean was able to get his guy into Edgehill and out again without being seen. Sean has been working a long con on Francine—also pretending to be Johnny with her—and slowly pumped her for information. I have no idea if she did anything criminal here, but she did try to choke me half to death.”
“What?”
“She also saw me use my magic and was starting to freak out so I put her to sleep.”
He went silent.
“Chief?”
“Put her to sleep like a dog or put her to sleep or …” he whispered.
“How dare you even ask me that!”
“Call the station and have someone come out to grab her for questioning,” he said. “We’ll deal with the rest later.”
Nodding, she said, “I’m so happy you found her.”
She could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Me too.”
Later that day, when the chief had texted Amber that they would be in Edgehill within twenty minutes, Amber, Kim, Ann Marie, Nathan, Jolene, Bobby, and Betty had piled into Ann Marie’s minivan with the signs they’d hastily made, and hauled tail to the mayor’s house. Somehow, news of Chloe’s impending arrival had spread even further than Amber’s group, and people were already swarming the sidewalk and lawn in front of the house, as well as across the street. Ann Marie had to park two blocks away.
As Amber’s group of eight made their way up the sidewalk, Amber saw that a parking spot was being held at the curb by Bethany Williams and several of her friends directly in front of the house.
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