“I can tell you where I hope he is. There’s fire there, too.”
Amber snorted. “Well, this cat is the last thing I have of Mom’s. What if I try to get pulled into another memory? But maybe a specific one. I had no idea what was going on the first time, but maybe I can be strategic now.”
“What memory would you try to see?” Willow asked, keeping her dubious expression focused on the rubber cat in Amber’s hands.
“What really happened between Mom and Neil. Knowing if she really did figure out a working time-travel spell might help us decide if we want to give something like that over to the Penhallows.”
“Are we willing to deny him the book at the risk of what he’d do to the town and maybe even the ones beyond it?” Willow asked. “For all we know, more of his Penhallow buddies are on their way.”
“Depending on what Mom has in her grimoire …” Amber shrugged. “Maybe giving Kieran the book would be the worst scenario.”
It was the same back and forth argument they’d had all night.
“Do it,” Willow said. “If knowing what Mom and Dad knew helps us figure out how to make a decision, then do it. I’m here for whatever you need.”
Amber set the rubber cat on its four paws on the counter, draped an arm around Willow, then rested her cheek on her shoulder. Together they whispered, “One by one, let’s have some fun. Two by two, let’s turn it blue.”
Though most of the Olaf Betzen fans had fled Edgehill in droves as soon as Olaf had, it was still busy enough in the store every day that Amber had to practically drag herself up the stairs into her studio in the evenings. She’d felt bad for Sydney Sadler, along with the other fashion show contestants, who didn’t get a chance to re-show their designs—and some who didn’t get to showcase their work at all. Olaf was a busy man and had obligations elsewhere, but he swore to uphold his promise to allow one of the Angora Threads’ interns to join the next season of Ramp It Up. The designers were to send video diaries of their collections to Olaf’s team, and he would make the selection remotely. Amber hoped Sydney got it.
At night, the three Blackwood women pored over their personal grimoires and crafted their own spells in hopes of creating something Amber could use to gain entrance into another memory.
So far, the only memory she’d been able to tap into had been of the rubber cat’s, which featured long, dark days inside Amber’s purse more often than not. How an inanimate object had memories was beyond her, so she tried not to think about it too hard because it creeped her out. Though she was considering giving the cat a better location to spend its days after they figured out the spell.
She’d tried working specific dates and locations into the spells. Willow suggested using specific names. Aunt Gretchen thought infusing memory-aiding tinctures into the paper they wrote the spells on might help. None of them had experience with memory magic, and it proved to be more fickle than Amber anticipated.
Then, two days after the fashion show, as Amber stared at the rubber cat, she wondered if there was a way to come at the spell in a much simpler way.
“One by one, let’s have some fun. Two by two, let’s turn it blue.” She idly swiped a hand over the cat, watching as white flipped to blue and then back again.
“Three by three,” she said, not giving what she said much thought, “please let me see. Four by four, if what Kieran said was truth or lore.”
“Amber?” It was Willow’s voice.
“Uhh … something’s happening …”
A blinding white light tore through her vision, and she only had a moment to yelp in surprise before she was transported somewhere—somewhen—else.
When the light faded this time, Amber was sitting in the front passenger seat of a moving car. A pair of legs were propped up on the dashboard. The girl’s feet were bare, the toenails painted a bright red. From what Amber could see, the girl wore cutoff jean shorts. Resting precariously on one bent knee was the same rubber cat Amber now held. It was a much more pristine white now, both ears and the tail intact. The girl swiped a hand over the cat, half-singing as she did. “One by one, let’s have some fun. Two by two, let’s turn it blue.”
“Why are you always carrying that thing around?” a male voice next to her asked playfully. It was a younger man, Amber guessed.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She swiped her hand over the cat again. The fur flipped to blue. “My mom gave it to me a couple of months ago. She’s not really the gift-giving type, so it feels special somehow.”
The guy laughed softly. “You can get those things in pretty much any novelty store. It’s the kind of thing little kids pull off shelves when they’re bored in line with their moms at the grocery store.”
The girl turned to look at him, gazing at his profile. Then he glanced over at her, grinning. He was boy-next-door handsome. He had slightly shaggy sandy-brown hair, deep brown eyes, and an easy smile. That one grinning look told Amber he loved her.
But, if Amber had truly succeeded in jumping back in time to memory where her mother and Neil had been in love, Amber had no idea who this boy was.
“Even if it’s just a novelty, I hope I can pass it down to my own kids someday,” she said. “But I’d have to get a second one. Sara Caraway assures me I’m destined to have two daughters.”
“Don’t you mean we’re destined to have two daughters?” he asked, attention shifting to her briefly again before turning his gaze back to the road.
Given the quick disruption of the girl’s vision, Amber guessed she’d just rolled her eyes. Then she laughed. “Yes, silly boy. You know you’re the only boy for me, Neil Winters.”
“And you’re the only girl for me Annabelle Henbane. Annabelle Winters has quite the ring to it though, if I do say so myself.”
Amber’s mother laughed again. “You know I can’t think about any of that until I’m done with school.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I just like reminding you that I’m crazy about you.”
Neil Winters. Not Penhallow?
But before she could get an answer to that, the scene peeled away. This time Amber’s mother sat at a desk littered with open books, the thick grimoire Amber had seen in the other series of memories, scribbled-on sheets of paper, and several empty mugs. The boy from before sat next to her, the two hunched over a sheet of paper with line after line of handwritten notes.
“Just one more line,” Belle said. “This one better work. My hand is cramping up again.”
She had just finished the last line at the bottom of the page when all the words on it suddenly burned yellow before fading back to black.
Both Belle and Neil jumped back in surprise, almost toppling out of their chairs.
“Is that it?” Neil asked, voice soft. “Did we really do it?”
Belle had her hands in her hair. After letting out a series of colorful curses, she said, “I think so?”
Neil picked up the sheet of paper and then held it at the top between thumb and forefinger with both hands. Then quickly jerked his hands in either direction, clearly intending to shred it. The paper reacted as if it were made of solid steel.
Amber remembered then how Neil said a grimoire couldn’t be destroyed. She supposed that was true for individual spells too. Amber had never been compelled to tear up a perfectly good spell, so she’d never had reason to test this.
With shaking hands, Belle took the sheet from Neil, though it looked like the boy had released it with some reluctance. Reaching for her grimoire with her free hand, she flipped the cover open.
“What are you doing?” Neil asked, his voice going up in pitch just slightly.
Belle glanced over at him. “What do you think I’m doing? I can’t just leave something like this lying around. I can’t believe you even talked me into creating something this dangerous …”
Neil scoffed, then slipped his arm around her waist. “You didn’t fight the idea that hard, babe. You’re so much more powerful and talented than you know. You just don’t see it. You�
�re a prodigy.”
It was Belle’s turn to scoff. She gently leaned into his side, where the side of his torso rested against hers. “I admit I was intrigued by the challenge.”
“I knew it,” he whispered in her ear. “Delin Springs isn’t big enough for witches like us. It only took you four months to crack time travel, baby. Imagine what else we could do.”
When she turned her head, their noses almost touched. Amber wasn’t sure she had the proper word for the expression on Neil’s face, but it instantly put Amber on edge. The Neil she’d seen in the first set of memories, the predatory, mildly dangerous version of him, was there in that look now.
And then it clicked for Amber. Whose face are you wearing, Neil?
It had been true that Belle had been in love with Neil, but she’d loved the brown-haired, boy-next-door Neil Winters. Not Neil Penhallow in a mask.
With her nose still close to his, she scanned his face. Focusing on the smattering of light freckles on his cheeks, then, briefly, to his lips, before traveling up to those deep brown eyes, the predatory gleam in them gone. “But that’s all this was, Neil. A challenge. We can’t use this.” She moved away from him and gently shook the sheet of paper covered from top to bottom in Belle’s condensed, neat handwriting. “Can you imagine what could happen if a Penhallow got a hold of this?”
Neil’s voice was flat when he said, “Would that really be so bad?”
Belle reared back from him as if he’d just struck her, scooting her chair several inches away. “Are you kidding? They’re cursed, Neil. They’re … they’re hardly human anymore. All they care about is stealing powers from other witches. They kill dozens of innocent witches every year. And those are just the ones we hear about.”
He turned in his seat, then grabbed her free hand. “You love me, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Belle said without hesitation. “But … what does that have to do with anything?”
“You and me forever?”
“You’re scaring me, Neil.”
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “You and me forever?” His tone was pleading.
“Yes. You know that,” she said, voice a bit softer. “Forever.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.” He kissed her hand again, then let go. He pushed his chair back a few inches. “Just … hear me out, okay? What if that spell—” he pointed at the paper still in her hand, “could actually reverse the curse?”
“We can’t know what kind of a ripple effect that would have, though. That’s reversing something that happened, what, five generations ago now? You and I might not even exist in this new future.”
“Our love would find a way to bring us together again. Maybe we’d be in different bodies, but our hearts would be the same. I truly believe that.” He paused for a long time. “And, at least in the new future, we could be together. No one would let us in this one.”
“Neil,” Belle said slowly, lightly wringing her hands. “What are you talking about?”
“Remember, you said forever …”
Before Belle could react, Neil Winters’s face melted away, revealing the black-haired, hazel-eyed Neil Penhallow beneath.
Belle stumbled out of her chair so quickly, she nearly hit the floor. She kept stumbling away from him until her back hit the wall by her bedroom door. “Who … who the hell are you?”
Neil got to his feet, hands out. “Listen, Anna—”
“No!” Belle snapped, hands out. “Stay there. Don’t come any closer until you explain who you are and what you did to Neil. Did you steal his face as some ploy to force me into coming up with that spell? Where is he? What did you do to him?”
“Anna. Anna! Listen to me! I’m Neil. The same Neil you fell in love with.” He motioned to his face. “This doesn’t matter. Neil Winters was a mask. But you’ve seen my true heart. I swear it. I’ve always been honest with you.”
Belle’s laugh bordered on hysteria. “Honest with me? Honest with me? I didn’t know your real name or your face! You’ve lied to me from the beginning.”
Neil, with his hands still out, approached her slowly, as one would a terrified, wounded animal. “Baby, please—”
“Don’t call me baby!” she snapped. “Stay where you are.”
He halted. “It’s always been about you, Anna. I knew I loved you from the first moment I saw you. But I knew you’d never accept that I was a Penhallow—”
Belle let out a sound somewhere between a whimper and a sob.
“So I presented you with a neater outer package that you could accept. Remember, you love me. Not the mask I wear. You’ve seen what’s underneath. That’s who I am.”
Her voice was flat when she asked, “If it’s always been about me, why did you convince me to write the one spell all Penhallows want? Hmm? Did someone send you here? Are you a spy for the Penhallow clan?”
When he didn’t say anything right away, she threw her hands up in dismay. “Oh my God. You are! I’m such an idiot.” She thunked herself over and over against her forehead with the heel of her palm. “Idiot, idiot, idiot.”
“Anna, no,” Neil said, pulling her hand away from her face. But the moment he touched her, her magic lashed out, flinging him away from her as if she were a live wire.
Belle opened the door to her bedroom. “Get out, Neil.”
He struggled to his feet. “Anna, I—”
“Out!”
Neil took a final parting look at the table where the holy grail of spells still lay, then headed for the door, shoulders slumped. When he reached her, he softly said, “I’m still me, Anna.”
She refused to make eye contact now. “Goodbye, Neil.”
His dejected sigh was filled with anguish. Belle slammed the door behind him, then locked it for good measure.
Rushing to her desk, she grabbed the newly crafted spell with one hand, and pulled her grimoire closer with the other. She frantically flipped through the book until she came to the first blank page, roughly halfway in. She placed the new spell on top of the blank page. The book’s inner spine flashed a golden yellow as the loose page fused itself to the grimoire, accepting it into the book.
Belle slammed the cover closed, then held the book tight to her chest.
Though Amber couldn’t feel anything her mother had, Amber knew her mother was crying now. She dropped to her knees, hunched over the book in her arms, and wept.
Amber wished she could crouch beside her mother and drape an arm around her shoulders. She wished she could console her mother about her first major heartbreak, just as Belle had done for Amber on the front steps of 543 Ocicat Lane.
Soon the scene peeled away to show a middle-aged couple—perhaps mid-to-late fifties—standing in a kitchen. Amber was struck by how similar this kitchen was to the one on Ocicat Lane. Had Belle tried to bring a piece of home with her to Edgehill?
Though Amber had never met these people, she knew in an instant that these were her maternal grandparents. Miles and Ivy Henbane. Belle had Ivy’s wavy brown hair, though it was liberally streaked with gray. Miles and Belle had the same nose and mouth.
At the moment, her grandparents wore matching worried expressions.
“Are you two sure this is the only way?” Ivy asked. “There’s got to be something less … risky.”
“Sara Caraway has cast dozens upon dozens of foresight spells at this point,” Miles said. “This is the only scenario that minimizes how many people get hurt. Neil will be … changed, but it’s for the best. He’s a con man, and a cursed one at that. He needs to be stopped. And if he’s stopped, he no longer will be obsessed with the time-travel spell. We don’t need Penhallows sniffing around Delin Springs. I’m still not even sure how he got in.”
“Does the council know?” Ivy asked.
“Not yet,” said Belle.
“And if we can stop him, they won’t have to,” Miles added. “This ends with Neil.”
“How can we be certain he hasn’t told other Penhallows about the spell?” I
vy asked.
“Because he told me he hasn’t,” Belle said.
Ivy laughed. “Sorry, Anna, but haven’t we already established no one can trust a word that comes out of that boy’s mouth?”
“Yes,” said Miles. “But he wants to reconcile with her.”
“I told him I need time to think about everything, but the truth about the spell has to remain a secret if he wants any chance with me. I said keeping this to himself will help prove that the boy I fell in love with is still in there.”
Miles wrinkled his nose at this. Ivy still looked unconvinced but didn’t comment.
“I’m supposed to meet him at seven,” Belle said.
Miles looked at his watch. “You’ve got twenty minutes. You better get going. Keep him talking as long as possible so I have time to get into position.”
Ivy crossed the length of the small kitchen to take Belle’s face in her hands. “Be safe, heart, okay?” She kissed Belle on the forehead. As she left the room, she said, “If either of you doesn’t come back, I will be furious.”
Miles watched her go, then turned his gaze to his daughter. He half-winced, half-smiled. Amber could only hope Belle’s expression matched his. A playful moment before the event that presumably broke up Belle’s immediate family, scattering them to the four winds, and turned Belle into a paranoid nomad. At least until Amber and Willow were born.
After yet another scenery jump, Amber stood just past a well-worn dirt path. It stretched out in either direction, the right side snaking off into the growing darkness, the ground covered in a wispy fog. Trees were to her back. The left of the path curved around the side of the trees. Where Belle stood now was a perfect hiding place from anyone coming up the path. A full moon shone overhead, illuminating patches of the low, drifting fog. Hundreds upon hundreds of stars littered the sky like a dusting of sugar. Amber experienced her mother briefly closing her eyes, making the world go black. Had she been giving herself a pep talk? She opened them again when she heard Neil’s voice.
“I honestly wasn’t sure if you’d show,” he said, as he rounded the curve in the path.
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