But the idea of going back to her tiny shop to deal with countless, unfamiliar faces was too much for her. She knew Willow and Gretchen were safe inside the store. The wards would keep the Penhallow out.
She was banking on her assumption that she was safe too—as long as the cursed witch believed Amber and her family were his best chance to find the grimoire, anyway.
After an hour of aimless driving, Amber found herself on the corner of Claws Way and Ocicat Lane. Ocicat was a short street with only a dozen houses on either side. The neighborhood was only half finished.
Amber’s old house was at the end on the right. The street and sidewalk gave way to a field a few feet beyond Amber’s old house, as if the construction team had given up halfway through the project. Amber wondered if her parents had chosen the house because of that fact.
Willow and Amber had spent hours of their childhood out in that field, running around like wild animals. Their cats would roam the wilderness with them, catching insects and mice. On long summer days, the sisters would fill their backpacks with snacks and make the half-hour trek to Chartreux Creek. The year Amber turned ten, their father had tied a tire swing to one of the sturdy branches of a huge oak. The girls spent hours out there reading and swimming and talking about boys.
The tree was gone now.
A lot was gone now.
Though Amber could see the house from her bedroom window, she hadn’t been to the site of the fire in years.
A car honked and she jumped. Her gaze flicked to her rearview mirror. She was still idling at the stop sign. She waved apologetically and crept forward through the intersection, and soon parked at the curb in front of 543 Ocicat Lane. An empty lot sat to the right of the house. Her old neighbors had moved shortly after the fire. No one wanted to buy the house after the neighbors had vacated it, considering that the house next door was a blackened ruin. It eventually fell into such disrepair, it was torn down.
543 Ocicat Lane still stood, though. Waiting for someone to finish restoring her to her former glory. The house had been fixed up enough that it was no longer considered a danger.
Amber got out of the car and rested her arms on its roof, staring at the partially finished house. Gretchen had worked to get it repaired, so the inside was gutted. The roof had been replaced, but boards still covered a few of the windows. Somehow the porch had survived. She could still smell charred wood—or perhaps that was just her memory conjuring up the scent. To this day, actively burning fireplaces filled her with a mild sense of panic, solely because of the smell.
She could picture the red and blue lights flashing, silently cascading in swirling patterns over the neighbors’ walls. She could see the ash in the air, falling like black snow.
She didn’t know why she came today. It wasn’t as if the grimoire could be here. There was nothing left inside the house and there hadn’t been a secret basement, cellar, or attic.
Still, she closed her car door and walked around to the sidewalk. Weeds grew around the porch where Amber and Willow had played cards. Where Amber had sat with her mother, her arm around Amber’s shoulders, as she sobbed over having her heart broken for the first time at fourteen. Where Amber and her father had painted the Adirondack chairs a bright orange that Willow and their mother hated.
Amber stood at the base of the steps now, hands in the pockets of her slacks, memories cycling through her head. The front door had been replaced, since the firefighters had kicked in the old one.
A tiny mew pulled Amber’s attention away from the door, and toward the brush surrounding the steps. She inched forward and pulled her hands from her pockets so she could rest them on her knees. She held her breath, waiting, not sure now if she’d heard the sound at all. Then the mew sounded again. Amber rounded the steps and peered under them as best as she could, but the weeds here put Edgar’s to shame. These looked to be full of barbs and thorns, too.
Another mew and then another.
Standing to full height, Amber scanned Ocicat Lane and the houses across the street. She didn’t see movement, but it didn’t mean no one was watching her skulk about the yard of her old house.
The mewing was a tiny cacophony now.
Screw it, she thought, and cast a simple air spell, sending the air down toward her feet. A patch of the thorny weeds flattened as if someone had just stepped on them with a heavy boot. She flattened another patch, then glanced over her shoulder. No one was watching. She sent out another burst of air. She needed to clear a path for herself to get under the steps without tearing her hands apart in the process.
After a minute, she’d flattened the weeds enough that she was able to duck under the porch steps. And there, in a roiling mass of gray, white, and brown, were half a dozen newborn kittens. They cried and yowled, their eyes not yet open. Amber knew better than to touch them—hopefully their mother was nearby looking for food. But they looked rather sickly, despite being in possession of such powerful little lungs. She hoped they hadn’t been abandoned.
After a minute or two of their tiny cries, she couldn’t take it anymore and patted her pockets for her cell phone so she could call Nine Lives Cat Rescue. But then something shiny caught her eye.
It lay next to the wall of the porch, a few inches behind the kittens. In order to reach it, she would need to completely get underneath the steps. She used one more burst of air to flatten the brambles, careful not to further disturb the kittens. She gasped when she almost instantly recognized the object: her father’s favorite watch. She crept forward, hunched over to avoid hitting her head on the steps, and plucked out the battered piece of jewelry. The watch face was almost completely blackened, and the clasp was missing entirely, but it was definitely his watch.
Crawling back out, she brushed herself off. As soon as she moved away from them, the kittens resumed their frantic mewing. Shoving the charred watch into her pocket, Amber returned to her car, finding her phone in her purse. She dialed Nine Lives.
After they told her they’d be there in fifteen to twenty minutes, she sat back to wait in the seclusion of her car. She hoped the mama cat would show up if Amber was out of sight—and then maybe Nine Lives could rescue her too.
She pulled the watch out of her pocket and flipped it over to read the inscription on the back. Most of the letters had been lost to wear, time, and the fire, but Amber didn’t need to see the words to know what they said. “To my beloved Theo. I cherish every second with you. Love, Belle.”
Amber ran a thumb over the letters, a tightness building in her throat. She missed them both so much sometimes she thought it would drown her. She was beyond desperate to know what had truly happened to them. Amber didn’t have many friends. She didn’t date. She stayed home with her cats and stared out at this unfinished house hoping she’d remember something that would break the case wide open. When the house burned down, when her parents died, when this watch in her hands stopped ticking forward the seconds—Amber had stopped too.
Her thumb swept back and forth, back and forth over the worn inscription.
What happened, Mom? Dad? Who took you from me?
Then, abruptly, the world around her exploded in a burst of white light.
Chapter 13
When the light faded, Amber was somehow in her old house—but as it was fourteen years ago. The air here didn’t hold a hint of charred wood. In fact, she couldn’t smell anything.
She sat at the round table in the dining area where it was positioned in the little nook surrounded on three sides by windows. The walls were a cheery yellow here, the blinds and windows open. Bright, warm sunlight poured in. Her mother called it their “breakfast nook.”
But Amber couldn’t feel the chair beneath her, or the worn surface of the table under her arms. She couldn’t feel the sunlight on her skin.
She could, however, see her mother sitting across from her. The sunlight streaming in behind her shone on her dark brown hair. Amber was torn between being awestruck that her mother was here in front of her—alive
and healthy—and being floored by how similar she and her mother looked. Amber saw her own big, brown eyes, button nose, and heart-shaped face reflected back at her.
How was she here? How was her mother sitting in front of her as if the past fourteen years hadn’t happened?
Had Aunt Gretchen been wrong? Was time travel actually possible?
But when Amber looked down, the arms resting on the table weren’t hers. The watch she’d found—in perfect, shiny condition now—was wrapped around a wrist far more masculine than hers. They were her father’s arms, she realized. His hands were clasped in front of him, and his gaze was focused across the table at Belle.
Her mother’s lips, so much like Amber’s own, turned up now, smiling at her.
No, not at her now. But at her father, back then.
“This is nothing to smile about, Annabelle,” Theo said. Amber didn’t feel her lips move. She wasn’t possessing her father’s body so much as she was a silent, undetectable passenger.
Amber could tell his words didn’t have the bite he’d intended. Her father always had a hard time being upset with her mother for very long. “How did he find you?”
Belle sighed, her shoulders slumping and her smile slipping. She folded her arms on the table now, too, mirroring Theo’s posture. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’ve been in Edgehill for years. I don’t use my magic any more now than I have in the past, so it’s not as if he could locate me based on my signature.”
A witch’s magic had a “signature”? And another witch could track it? That was news to Amber.
“What did he want?” Theo asked, and Amber could hear the bite in his tone now. Could tell the words struggled to make it past clenched teeth.
“Are you still angry with me?” she asked. “If you’re going to yell at me again, I’ll come back to finish this when you can talk to me without making half the kitchen explode. Again.”
Theo huffed out a breath. “I fixed all the broken plates and glasses before the girls saw anything.” He sounded like a little boy who’d just been scolded.
Belle stared at him for a beat.
“I promise to listen this time,” he said. “So what did he want?”
“The same thing he’s always wanted,” Belle said, diverting her gaze.
“You?”
“Don’t start, Theo.”
“His obsession with you is why you’ve basically been a fugitive half your life.”
Amber had never heard her father sound so … bitter.
“His obsession with the grimoire, you mean,” she said. “He wants that more than he wants me.”
“Don’t be naïve, Belle,” he said. “Why is he after it now? Isn’t the book still cloaked?”
Belle pursed her lips and sat back slightly. “Of course it’s still cloaked,” she snapped, then leaned forward again. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Okay, okay,” Theo said, holding up a hand. “So he doesn’t know it’s here?” Some of the bitterness had faded and was replaced by a tone that had a classically hopeful Theo Blackwood note to it. Amber could tell where Willow had gotten that from. Amber and Belle had always been more cynical. “Was moving it here until we found another location for it a bad idea? Do you think he sensed it somehow? That he saw something?”
Belle shook her head. “No, he has no clue. He was wearing the face of old Mrs. Wilton and ambushed me in Ma and Paw’s. She was just asking casual questions while we’re shopping, like any other week. But then she followed me out to the car and eventually started asking if you and I had done any traveling lately. I knew then something was off. Mrs. Wilton never gets very personal with her questions.” She abruptly stopped talking.
“What?” Theo prompted.
“We move it, what, every five years? Do you think we’ve become predictable?” Belle asked, worrying at her bottom lip with her teeth. “Did we slip up somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” Theo said, sighing. “Maybe?”
“Everyone here is so friendly … maybe over the years someone has been keeping track of our movements. Maybe someone asked about a family vacation and I inadvertently gave something away.”
“It’s possible he found us a long time ago and has been biding his time here, waiting for us to screw up.”
Belle whimpered and dug her fingers into her hair, elbows resting on the table. “Is this all my fault?”
“Hey,” Theo said, voice soft, and placed his outstretched arms on the table, his palms open and seeking hers.
Belle looked up, sighed, and took his hands. Amber wished she had more senses than sight at her disposal right now. She wished she could feel her mother’s palms against hers.
“You said he didn’t have a clue where it is, right?”
“Right,” she said. “All he knows is that he can’t find a trace of it. He dropped the glamour in the parking lot. I swear I almost fainted. I haven’t seen that face in … so long.”
“You think he was just trying to scare you?”
“Maybe,” she said, letting one of his hands go so she could chew on a thumbnail.
“I really wish there was a way to destroy a spell once it was written,” Theo said. “Burying this thing in remote locations every time the cloaking spell wears off is getting old.”
“I can work on crafting a spell that lasts longer,” Belle offered.
“Band-Aid solution for a bullet wound.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to do. We can’t let anyone find it.”
“I know, I know,” he said, sighing. He rubbed his thumb back and forth across her knuckles. “But the girls will be of age before we know it. We have to tell them eventually. If something happens to us, Amber will have to be the one to keep it hidden.”
Belle pulled her hand from Theo’s and crossed her arms. “I know. I’m working on it. Kathleen and I are on to something. I can feel it.”
Theo started to say something, but then stopped.
“What?” Belle asked.
“Do you think the surge in magic-use is what alerted him somehow?” he asked. “Even if it’s Kathleen increasing her usage, maybe it could be tracked back here since she’s doing all this for us?”
“You do think this is my fault.”
“I don’t,” he said quickly. “I just … I’m out of my depth here, Belle. It’s all starting to spiral. Can’t you sense that?”
Belle wedged her thumbnail between her teeth again.
“Plus, I—”
She squinted at him. “I know that look. Out with it.”
“Raph called the other day …”
Belle’s expression looked no less harassed. “You speak to my brother more than I do.”
“He’s worried, Belle,” Theo said, voice soft. “All these spells Kathleen has been doing are starting to wear on her. Mentally, I mean. She’s starting to develop insomnia; when she does sleep, she wakes up screaming.”
Belle closed her eyes and massaged her forehead. “She hasn’t told me that. She told me she’s been a little tired since her magic hasn’t been used this much in a while. I thought it was like muscle fatigue, not that she hasn’t been sleeping.”
“I understand why you’re doing this,” he said, tone still soft, “but there’s only so much even a Caraway can see into the future. She can’t see every possibility. There are too many variables.”
“I know,” Belle snapped, eyes still closed, fingers still massaging her temples. Then, softer, she said, “I know.”
“We’ll figure it out. His arrival in Edgehill doesn’t change anything. Our plan has served us well for this long. He’ll back off if we keep our heads down. Like you said, he’s just fishing for information.”
Belle’s gaze flicked toward the stairs. Theo turned to look too. Amber knew he was looking at the small closet embedded into the side of the staircase.
When he turned his attention back to Belle, he said, “We’ll keep you and the book safe. I won’t let anything happen to my girls. Any of them,” he
said. “I promise.”
Belle managed to aim a small smile in Theo’s direction. “That might be a promise you can’t keep, love.”
Light flashed again, the relatively calm scene in the breakfast nook peeling away like paint stripped from a canvas. Then Amber found herself standing in the front entrance of the house, watching in bewilderment as a braces-wearing Willow and Amber’s younger self came hurrying down the stairs and right past her on their way to the door. Her mother was hot on their heels.
“Bye, Dad!” Amber called out, but he stopped her with a, “Hang on! Give your dad a hug, pumpkin.”
Amber had always acted like she hated the nickname, but deep down, she loved it. Only her dad called her that. She made a show of rolling her eyes, then doubled back to throw her arms around his middle. They were almost the same height now.
Though this memory was from her father’s point of view, Amber started filling in things from her own memories. The way she’d felt that evening. How she’d been so carefree when she’d left.
“Bye, Dad,” young Amber sing-songed, then tipped her head back to look up at him. He was still nearly half a foot taller. Her good nature immediately slipped when she saw the pained look on his face. “Dad? What’s wrong?”
His bottom lip shook. “Nothing, pumpkin. I’m just going to miss you, is all.”
“Oh, relax, Dad,” Amber said, laughing now. “It’s just a sleepover. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He nodded, though his eyes watered. “Yeah. In the morning.”
A twinge in her chest at the sight of her father being near tears—he was an emotional guy, but he’d never cried over them going to a sleepover before—made her scramble for something to say that would lighten his mood. Was this some kind of midlife crisis? “We can try out that waffle iron Mom got forever ago. Think we could make blueberry waffles in that thing?”
He managed a smile then; he loved breakfast food. “That sounds great, pumpkin. Blueberry waffles it is.”
Willow poked her head back into the house then. “Amber! Hurry up. Mrs. Carr is waiting.”
Pawsitively Cursed Page 14