After Amber fed the cats, she called the chief. It wasn’t until the phone was ringing that it registered with her that it was just after six in the morning. She had to hope that his job and/or the new baby in the house would ensure he was awake, and not that he would answer the early morning call in a groggy panic.
“Morning, Amber,” the chief said. “Please tell me you’re calling at this ungodly hour because you have good news.”
“Chloe’s alive,” she said.
She almost heard his posture straighten, fully alert now. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I don’t know where she is or who has her, but for at least twenty-four hours, she’s okay.” She then proceeded to explain how a premonition tincture worked, but he cut her off in the middle of it.
“I think I’m at the point where I don’t need the details on how this all works,” he said. “The details give me hives.”
“Okay, then I won’t explain how I found out that the nosy PI in town wasn’t hired by the mayor,” she said. “Whoever hired Alan Peterson seems to think the mayor can’t be trusted. Have you been able to find out anything about Shannon? Is there some way that this client of Alan’s is related to Chloe or Shannon somehow? Who else would be invested enough in Chloe’s disappearance other than a family member?”
After a long pause, he said, “There’s a news article from a small town in Montana that details Shannon’s car accident seventeen years ago. She hit a patch of black ice and her car went into a lake, where she drowned. There were marks on her body that imply she’d suffered physical abuse for a while, but none of her injuries are what killed her—the car pitching into near-freezing water is what did that. There’s an obituary for her in that paper, too. Nothing else. We have a social security number for her, but when we looked into it, we found it actually belongs to a woman who died twenty years before Shannon was apparently born. It’s as if Chloe’s mother didn’t actually exist.”
Amber blinked rapidly. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“Yeah, we’re all scratching our heads here, too. Don’t know if that means Shannon was in the country illegally so her identity isn’t on paper, or if Shannon Pritchard is a fake name,” the chief said. “We’ll keep looking, but something is definitely fishy here.”
“Have you been able to look into those monthly payments Francine mentioned?”
“We’re working on that, too. We’re also close to getting a search warrant on the Deidrick home; Frank won’t let us back in. When Chloe first went missing, Frank consented to have us search the house from top to bottom. With consent, we don’t need a warrant. However, when we went back a couple of days later, he refused to let us in unless we had one,” the chief said. “But if we’re granted one now, it means a judge has reason to believe a second search could prove fruitful.”
“That doesn’t sound good for Frank.”
“Nope,” the chief said. “It sure doesn’t.”
Though the premonition tincture hadn’t revealed Chloe’s location or the identity of her kidnapper, Amber felt some of the tension leave her shoulders, if only because she knew the girl was safe. Scared and lonely, yes, but she was alive. And, even if her accommodations weren’t ideal, they were feeding her and she had a decent place to sleep. And that sense of relief allowed Amber to tend to more of her responsibilities—namely filling all the orders she’d gotten behind on and making a list of all the toys she still needed to make for the Hair Ball.
Sometime while Amber had been getting ready that morning, Kim had texted her with, Want to grab lunch with me today? I can pick you up at noon. I’m losing my mind and I’m this close to strangling Ann Marie.
At noon on the dot, Kim pulled up in front of the Quirky Whisker. The Bowen sisters had already left for lunch, so as soon as Amber saw Kim out front, she hurried outside, locked up, and climbed into Kim’s car.
“Hi,” Kim said. “I’ve had six cups of coffee.”
With that, she pulled out onto Russian Blue Avenue.
“Hi to you, too,” Amber said. “Why are you going to strangle Ann Marie?”
“Ugh! Can we not even talk about it? I don’t even want to talk about the Hair Ball. We can talk about literally anything else. I just want this to be a fun lunch outing with someone who I don’t want to strangle,” Kim said.
Amber winced. “Sure. I—”
“The Hair Ball will go fine, right?” Kim said, punctuating the question with a semi-hysterical laugh. “So many businesses are desperate to be named Best of Edgehill—what if I’ve planned the whole thing wrong? Everyone is going to hate me!”
“Breathe, Kim,” she said. “You’ll be fine. Lean on the rest of us, okay? The Bowen girls are ready to take on as many hours as possible to allow me the time to help you.”
Kim nodded vigorously without looking at Amber. “I’ve missed Melanie so much lately. She was so good under pressure. I’m a mess.”
“I miss her, too,” Amber said. “But she’d tell us that we’re strong women capable of anything we put our minds to.”
Kim nodded again.
“So where are we headed?” Amber asked. “Think we have enough time to get Mexican food?”
“Yes! But! Oh, fiddlesticks.” She thumped the heel of her palm on the steering wheel. “Can we make a quick stop at Hiss and Hers first? I totally forgot I was supposed to check on their table display. Since we can’t have people sample home decor the way we can sample cupcakes, we’re having Pawterry House and Hiss and Hers put together table displays using only items from their shops. I need to approve their displays before the Hair Ball. Oh my God, Amber, last night Ann Marie and I went to The Applaws to see the one-man play they’ll put on during the gala. It was a disaster! They let the owner’s son, who is in a creative writing program, write an original play for the gala. It was so bad. I don’t know if it was the acting or the writing or both, but it was a total stinker. Half the audience walked out. Now they have to scramble to put something else together in only a week.”
Amber winced.
“The table display for Pawterry House is gorgeous, so I have my fingers crossed this will be a good one, too. I don’t think I can handle another flop like Stan Tackles a Unicorn.”
Amber snorted. “I don’t even want to know.”
“You really don’t,” Kim said. “I’m scarred for life.”
Hiss and Hers was on Himalayan Way, not far from Paws 4 Tea, where Susie Paulson used to work before she was arrested for her role in Melanie’s death. Amber wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to step inside that shop again.
Kim pulled up outside Hiss and Hers in one of the diagonal parking spots at the curb. When she got out, Amber gave her friend a quick scan. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a French braid; she wore a pair of skinny jeans, a silk floral top, and two very mismatched flats. One had blue and white stripes, while the other was leopard print. Amber thought it best not to mention it.
Though Hiss and Hers always gave Amber a sense of claustrophobia because the small space was so jam-packed with items, she loved it because the front of the shop was all windows, letting in a ton of natural light. The shop specialized in unique, repurposed furniture and trinkets. There were dressers that had vintage suitcases as the drawers, couches made out of claw-foot bathtubs that had been cut in half lengthwise, and steel drums that had been turned into ottomans. In the middle of the room stood a table draped with a white tablecloth. On top was a rustic springtime display. There were vases made from colorfully painted Mason jars and small tin buckets stuffed with pastel flowers; a wire cupcake tower had been filled with wooden wreaths topped with stuffed birds and eggs to resemble nests; and small repainted birdhouses sat on wide-based wooden candle stands.
“Oh my God, Amber,” Kim said softly, grabbing Amber’s arm. “It’s so cute!”
A voice sounded from ahead of them. “Do you really like it? We’re not quite done yet, but it’s almost there.”
Amber glanced up to see a petite, smiling woman walking their way. Grace Williams, Bethany’s mother, had short hair that was so black—given the woman’s pale complexion, Amber guessed the color had come from a salon—and a tiny hoop in one nostril. Her eyes were a striking purple thanks to colored contacts.
“It’s adorable,” Amber said to Grace, shaking her hand.
After releasing Amber’s hand, Grace said, “Glad to hear it! We’ve gone through a dozen displays by now. This last one was mostly Bethany’s doing. She painted all the jars, buckets, and stands herself.”
Just then, a younger version of Grace emerged from the back of the cluttered shop. Her light brown hair matched her natural complexion, which was a bit paler than what seemed healthy. There were bags under her eyes, and she sniffled periodically as she made her way to her mom’s side.
Grace wrapped an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Poor thing is still recovering from a nasty bug. She’s missed school every day this week.”
“I already started getting acceptance letters to college,” Bethany said, her voice a little nasal, “so it doesn’t feel like I’m missing too much. I think I have senioritis on top of having the flu.”
They all laughed.
“Oh, Kim, I wanted to find out if what I’m working on for the centerpieces for the Hair Ball are okay,” Grace said. “I know you’re in a pinch with those, but I didn’t want to start making dozens of them if you don’t think they’ll work. They’re in the back if you want to take a look.”
Kim arched her brows at Amber.
“Go ahead,” Amber said. “I need to find something for Willow’s birthday next month.”
With a nod, Kim followed Grace toward the back of the shop. Bethany, eyes closed, was leaning against the small glass cashier counter, which was filled with animals made of smooth river rocks. The poor girl looked like she needed to be in bed, not in the shop.
Amber moved toward the front, where there was a display of brightly painted tin cans that had cooking utensils sprouting from them like flowers.
“Hi … Amber?”
She glanced over to see Bethany standing a few feet away, pulling her oversize cardigan tighter around her body. “Hey, Bethany.”
Bethany’s green eyes were red-rimmed; they looked itchy. “You saw Chloe the night she disappeared, right?”
“That’s right,” Amber said, turning to face her.
“She’s always really liked you,” Bethany said. “Respects you a lot. She was happy she got to be on the Here and Meow Committee partly because she thought it would mean you two could get to be friends now that she was older.”
Amber’s stomach knotted. “I was happy she joined us, too.”
Bethany squeezed herself even tighter. “I heard she was talking to you about Johnny … the guy she’d been talking to on Scuttle?” When Amber nodded, Bethany quickly glanced over her shoulder toward where her mom and Kim were still talking at the back of the store. “I think Johnny did something to her. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Amber’s brows shot toward her hairline. “Why do you think that?”
“Even if she decided she wanted to, like, elope or something crazy, there’s no way she wouldn’t tell me or her dad. Even if she and her dad were fighting about her dating Johnny, she’d still eventually call him to tell her where she was. Running off and not saying anything to anyone just isn’t how Chloe is,” Bethany said. “Something about Johnny always felt really off to me. Did you hear about the hack?”
“Hack?”
“Yeah. I don’t know the details ’cause I don’t understand how all that stuff works, but some guy hacked into Scuttle and found names and email addresses for all the kids in Edgehill who use it and posted the names online. The list got pulled, I think, but Johnny started talking to Chloe after that list went up. I mean, maybe he’s someone from Belhaven who’s seen her at a game or something, but maybe it was someone pretending to be a kid from Belhaven, you know? Chloe showed me his picture, but it was only that one picture. Kinda looks like a stock photo if you ask me. He never sent more than that because he was ‘shy.’” Bethany rolled her red-rimmed eyes. “I don’t think he’s who he said he is.”
“Did you tell the police or her dad any of this?”
Bethany vigorously shook her head. “No. If she’s really okay, she’s going to be so mad at me for ratting her out to her dad.” She hesitated—opening and closing her mouth a couple of times—before she finally said, “I don’t have anything against her dad. He’s always been really nice to me and everything. But … I don’t know … lately things between them have been a little weird? I can’t even explain it. Chloe told me she found out something about him, too. She wouldn’t tell me what it was; she said she didn’t want to get into it until she had all the details, but it’s about her mom.”
“What about her?”
Bethany glanced over her shoulder again and then took a small step toward Amber and lowered her voice a fraction. “Chloe thinks she was murdered.”
Amber’s eyes widened. “And she thinks her dad—”
“Chloe didn’t act like she thought it was her dad who did it or anything,” Bethany said quickly, cutting off Amber’s question. “But she would get really anxious when she talked about it—and never talked about it when her dad was home. It’s like she didn’t want him to know she was looking into it.”
“How was she looking into it?” Amber asked, wondering what Chloe had been able to find that the police couldn’t.
Bethany shrugged, arms still crossed. “I just have a really bad feeling about it all. I think that’s why I can’t get better. It’s like I’m literally worried sick about her. She would never go this long without calling me even if she’d run off with Johnny—so all I can think is that she can’t call me. She’s my best friend. I don’t know what I’ll do if—”
Even though the girl had to be contagious, Amber closed the distance and pulled her into a hug. Bethany wrapped her arms tightly around Amber’s middle and burst into tears. Amber wished she could tell her that Chloe was alive and safe.
“Shh,” Amber said, gently running a hand down Bethany’s hair. “Shh. We’ll find her, okay? Chloe is a fighter. She’ll hang on until we can get her back.”
After lunch—during which Kim talked about nothing but Hair Ball matters—Amber had nothing on her agenda. She’d expected to get a list of errands from Kim, but when Amber asked for an assignment or seven, Kim had waved her off.
“I’ve got things covered for today,” Kim had said. Amber had been fairly certain Kim’s eye had been twitching through most of lunch.
With the Bowen sisters scheduled to run the shop for the rest of the afternoon, Amber called a hello to them just before the shop officially reopened for the afternoon, and then trudged upstairs to get to work on the rest of the cat toys she needed to make. On her way, she called the chief.
“Two phone calls in one day?” he asked, sounding vaguely distracted.
“I just had an interesting conversation with Chloe’s best friend.” As she fed the cats, she recounted what Bethany had told her. “What could Chloe have found out about her mother? She’s got far fewer resources than you do.”
“Maybe she was snooping in the house and found something Frank had hidden somewhere,” the chief offered.
“Maybe,” she said halfheartedly.
The chief was silent for a long time, though Amber could hear the clack of his fingers on his keyboard, and the occasional sound of drawers rolling open or closed. “I think I have something you can help me with.”
She had just sat down at her dining room table to get started on her next batch of cats and froze with a hand reaching toward a stack of unpainted plastic pieces. “Is Amber Blackwood a consultant on the case now?”
“A) Don’t refer to yourself in the third person: that’s weird,” he said, “and B) don’t get ahead of yourself here. I’ll ask for help when we’ve hit a dead end. Like now. During our preliminary search, Frank was in a heightened emotional state and wouldn’t have necessarily thought to dispose of or hide anything incriminating. We found absolutely nothing of note. But we very easily could have missed something that seemed insignificant to us but was very important to him. Maybe whatever we missed, Frank realized his mistake in letting us in and that’s why he’s demanding a warrant now.”
“And you want me to help you find what he might be hiding?” Amber asked.
“Yes,” he said. “We spent hours in that house looking in every drawer and cabinet. We searched for secret doors to basements or attics—anywhere someone might be hiding a person—or a body. We were extremely thorough and found nothing, but if a judge is granting us a warrant, I’d like to know I did everything in my power—or yours—to be sure.” He paused, then cautiously asked, “Is there a spell, like the locator one, you could use?”
Swallowing, Amber nodded—then remembered he couldn’t see her. “I can come up with something.”
“Can you be ready in twenty minutes? I can come pick you up.”
He wanted to do this now? She kept her voice steady as she said, “See you then.”
She kept her cool until the call was disconnected, then she let out a squeak and flailed her arms. What on earth was she thinking? She couldn’t use a locator spell on something she didn’t even have a name for!
Think, Amber. Think. This is for Chloe.
Based on Amber’s conversation with Bethany, it was just as likely that Chloe had hidden something in that house. Amber was sure she could tap into Chloe’s energy better than she could Frank’s. Hopefully the chief wouldn’t mind Amber changing the plan on him last minute.
Amber needed a spell like the one she had used on the receptionist at the morgue, where her magic had teased out the young woman’s guilty pleasure. Or when her magic had found Susie Paulson’s biggest recent regret. Amber needed to locate what Chloe didn’t want her father to know she’d found. Assuming, of course, that whatever this thing was—the thing she wouldn’t even tell her best friend about—was in the house to find. Assuming it was a thing at all.
Amber consulted her grimoire, finding the spell that most resembled what she needed, and then scribbled down her own variation on a scrap of paper she could take with her. Stuffing the note into her pocket, she snatched up her purse, phone, keys, and jacket that she’d unceremoniously dumped on a chair not more than ten minutes before and made her way back down the stairs.
Lily and Daisy Bowen were busying themselves with restocking shelves and filling orders.
“Hey, ladies, I’m off again,” Amber said. “Thanks again for helping me out this week. I need to give you both a raise.”
Daisy grinned. “I wouldn’t say no to that.”
Just then, Chief Brown’s cruiser pulled up out front.
When Amber turned to thank them again, the sisters were sharing a knowing look. Good grief, not them too! Amber sighed and then darted out the door.
It wasn’t until she was strapped in and she and the chief were headed down Russian Blue Avenue that he spoke. “Jessica got wind of the affair rumor before I could figure out how to bring it up. She heard it in the hospital just hours after Isabelle was born.”
“Oh no,” Amber said with a groan. “How did she react?”
“She said I have to do chores every night for a week before she’ll consider forgiving me. She mentioned something about pulling weeds,” he said. “Thing is, I don’t think she’s actually upset at all—she just wants me to do chores. But in case she is mad, I don’t want to risk ticking her off.”
“I’m sure you look just as dashing in a pair of gardening gloves,” she said.
He cut her an annoyed look out of the corner of his eye, but there was no malice in it. “So, what’s your plan for when we get in there?”
“I have a two-part plan. For the first one, can you take a right up here and drive to the end of the street? It’s a dead end that’s overgrown on three sides.”
He stared at her in utter confusion for a split second but did as she asked.
Once he was parked in the secluded location, she said, “Try not to have a coronary, all right?” Then she draped her jacket over her head.
Since she and glamour spells didn’t mesh, she decided it best to keep this simple. She would change only her hair color and style—glamoured hair had a tendency to hold longer than facial features—the shape of her nose, and the color of her eyes.
When she removed the jacket from her head, she pulled down the passenger-side mirror to examine her handiwork. The chief yelped and smashed himself against the car door as if she now had three heads, rather than just one with blonde hair styled into an A-line bob. Her eyes were green now, instead of brown, and her nose was a bit wider.
When she turned her face to the chief, he flinched again. “You can’t tell me not to have a coronary and then do that, Amber.”
“Sorry!” she said. “But if people are already suspicious of us spending time together, isn’t it going to look even weirder to have me show up to help the police search the house? I joked about being a consultant on the case, but maybe this—” she said, gesturing to her face, “can be your new consultant. You can call me Cassie.”
“My God,” he muttered, then gave his head a good shake. Without another word, he pulled out of the secluded area and headed back toward Russian Blue Avenue.
When they were halfway there, she broke the silence. “Instead of looking for something Frank hid, I think we should look for something Chloe might be hiding. Can we be in her room in private? I think even if what we’re looking for isn’t in Chloe’s room, her energy will be strongest there. If I can tap into that, my magic will hopefully be able to lead us in the right direction.”
“Got it,” he said, though he sounded vaguely queasy. His knuckles were white thanks to his death grip on the steering wheel.
When they pulled up outside the Deidrick home, there was already another squad car there—and the Channel 4 news van. Not to mention a handful of reporters loitering on the sidewalk, one of which was Connor Declan.
“Aw, crap,” Amber and the chief said in unison.
“I thought I’d have to deal with the media vultures a little less in a small town …” he muttered, gaze focused on his rear-view mirror. “Well, Cassie, I guess this … alteration was a good plan. Just say you’re a consultant on the case if you have to say anything—avoid talking if you can help it. Absolutely don’t go into details. If they don’t have details, they can’t cross-check.”
With a nod, she let herself out of the car. A couple of the reporters jogged over when they spotted Chief Brown, holding out recording devices as they asked him what had changed in the case that made a judge agree to issue a warrant.
Is Mayor Deidrick responsible for the disappearance of his daughter?
Is it true that Mayor Deidrick is a suspect in the death of his late wife?
Is there a connection between Chloe’s disappearance now and the mysterious death of Shannon Pritchard?
Carl, Garcia, and a handful of other officers joined Amber and the chief as they all moved as a unit toward the house. None of the officers said anything, just marched forward as if the reporters didn’t exist. Even goofy Carl was doing a good job of keeping his mouth shut.
When they were a foot from the door, Chief Brown, without breaking stride, said, “We cannot discuss the details of this case at this time,” voice loud enough so the gaggle of reporters could hear him.
Amber kept her head down largely because she didn’t want to have this fake face of hers recorded and wind up on the news. All she needed was Connor scrutinizing the footage for long enough to realize how similar this face looked to Amber’s. Why had she agreed to this so readily?
In a matter of minutes, they were inside the mayor’s house. Frank Deidrick was his usual gracious self, but that simmering rage was just below the surface—Amber could see it. She could practically feel it.
“And who is this?” the mayor asked the chief, though Frank’s attention was squarely on Amber. “You look very familiar. Have we met before?”
Amber kept her voice high and light. “I don’t think so.”
“If you would excuse us, mayor,” the chief said, a hand on Amber’s lower back as he gave her a gentle push toward the hallway that would lead to the staircase. He produced a copy of the warrant and handed it to the mayor as he walked past him. “Please give my officers room to search the premises. Failure to do so will complicate matters for you even further.”
The chief barked out orders to his officers. They broke off into pairs as they got their assignments. Amber then followed the chief up the stairs. Chloe’s room was to the right of the upstairs bathroom, the door standing open. The chief pulled a pair of white latex gloves out of a pocket and handed them to her, then put on a pair of his own. Once she had them on, he motioned to the bedroom door with his chin. Amber walked in first.
The room had a queen-size bed pushed into a corner on the left side of the room, piled high with fluffy pillows and blankets. Discarded jeans and shirts were strewn on the end of it, as well as on the floor around it, along with jackets, shoes, and socks. A closet with two dark-wood French doors stood open, the rack inside so laden with clothes that the bar the hangers hung from bowed in the middle. The floor of the closet was a jumbled mess of more clothes, shoes, boxes, and bags.
On the right side of the room was a large vanity with a rectangular mirror resting above it. The outside edge of the mirror was hung with fairy lights, a handful of printed-out pictures stuck to the glass. Amber walked to the table, stepping over clothes, books, and shoes.
The pictures featured Chloe and her friends, Chloe laughing more often than not. Amber recognized Bethany Williams in most of the photos, the girls with their arms flung over each other’s shoulders or around waists. Almost every picture seemed to be taken at school or in this bedroom—no pictures by lakes or pools on a hot summer day.
The tabletop was littered with what looked like homework—her laptop, a book with an orange highlighter resting on the open spine, scribbled notes in Chloe’s looping scrawl. In a partitioned tray to the right of her schoolwork were makeup pots, eyeshadow pallets, bouquets of brushes, and sticks of lip gloss, lipstick, and mascara. Above the vanity, a giant wooden, painted-black C hung on the wall.
A set of white drawers sat on either side of the vanity, the tops piled with more clothes and framed photos.
“Did the room end up like this after the first search, or …” Amber asked, looking around at the mess.
The chief shut the door, a soft whoosh sounding as the door passed over the large navy-blue throw rug that covered most of the floor. He pressed his back against the door. “Nope. I think this is just what it means to be a teenage girl. You were a teenage girl once; your room didn’t look like this?”
“Aunt Gretchen was not a fan of clutter,” Amber said. “Just think—in seventeen years, Isabelle’s room could look like this.”
The chief grumbled. “We searched this room thoroughly, even looking for false bottoms in drawers, under her mattress, or things stuffed into the bottom of boxes. Came up empty.”
Sticking her gloved hand into her pocket, Amber pulled out her newly crafted spell—one for finding what has been hidden. Namely, finding what Chloe hid from her father specifically. Amber walked back to the vanity and found a picture taped there of Chloe and Frank, the two sitting outside a restaurant, Frank with his arm draped over the back of Chloe’s chair, and Chloe with her eyes squeezed shut and her tongue out. Who had taken the picture? Amber wondered. Francine? A friend of Chloe’s? A waitress?
Relaxing her shoulders and doing her best to calm her mind despite the chief’s curious gaze boring a hole into the side of her head, Amber uttered the spell. When her magic perked up, waiting eagerly for its assignment, Amber focused her attention on Chloe’s face first. What did you not want—and then she focused on the easy smile of Frank Deidrick—him to find?
Just like with the locator spell, her magic pulled her, as if a rope had been tied tight around her middle and someone on the other end yanked. It yanked her backward, away from the vanity and back toward the other side of the room. She almost rolled her ankle as she stepped on a tennis shoe. Her magic was leading her toward the third set of drawers in the room, this one resting against the wall to the left of the closet.
Amber tugged open drawers and rifled through each one, fingers searching for any hidden catches in the tops or bottoms of the drawers, just as the chief and his officers had apparently already done. The chief, thankfully, didn’t patronize her for going back over old territory. He kept perfectly quiet as he let her work.
When all the drawers revealed nothing, she took a step back, thinking maybe she’d been wrongly drawn toward the dresser. But her magic gently pulled her forward again.
It was like playing a game of hot/cold with a voiceless disembodied friend. Step back: Cold! Step forward: Warm.
She peered behind the dresser; the gap between it and the wall was thin. Inching the dresser away from the wall a fraction, she ran her latex-covered fingertips over the dresser’s back. Warm! her magic urged.
At the base of the dresser, there was a half-oval cut out below the last drawer, leaving an inch space between it and the floor. Amber knew the cutout was for decoration, but she didn’t understand what purpose it could serve other than as an entry point for dust bunnies to congregate and be lost forever. Amber lay flat on her stomach and peered into the dark space. Warmer! her magic said.
Using the flashlight on her phone, Amber angled the light into the space, revealing a whole herd of dust bunnies, a bottle cap, a lone sock, and a couple of hair ties. With her cheek pressed to the navy blue throw rug, Amber saw a dark yellow something poking out from the top of the small, dark space. She reached her hand in, palm up; the top of the oval cutout was low enough that the wood gently scraped against her forearm. She flicked her wrist up, her fingers searching … searching.
Hot! said her magic, and then her fingertips grasped something smooth. It crinkled like paper.
After a pull here, and a yank there—the unfinished edge of the cutout scraping harder against Amber’s skin—something detached from the bottom of the shelf. It sounded like masking tape being ripped off the top of a packing box. A heavy packet of paper hit Amber’s gloved hand and she carefully dragged it out, like a waitress carrying a tray on an open palm.
She sat cross-legged on the cluttered floor, her phone lying beside her, and held the half-inch-thick packet with both hands. Nothing was written on the large manila envelope, the small copper prong clasp on the back bent down to keep the flap closed. She had never been more desperate to open anything in her life, but she figured the chief would have to analyze everything first. She glanced up at the chief, who still stood with his back pressed against Chloe’s door.
After several moments of him staring at her a little slack-jawed, he said, “Your face is back.”
Amber noticed then that her shoulder-length hair was down around her shoulders and back to its usual brown, rather than the blonde A-line bob she’d walked in here with.
The chief walked over with his hand out, the white glove in sharp contrast to his black jacket. A little reluctantly, she handed him the packet. He waded across the sea of clothes to get to Chloe’s vanity and placed the envelope on top of Chloe’s laptop before picking up both. “Can you change your face back to Cassie’s so we don’t draw any unnecessary attention to ourselves?”
Shoulders sagging, she got to her feet. All that excitement and work to find the packet and now she would have to go back to the Quirky Whisker. Her curiosity about what Chloe had squirreled away was sure to give Amber an ulcer before the chief ever got around to telling her what was in the envelope.
“We’ll need to be here another hour or so before I can feasibly make up an excuse about driving you back to the station,” he said. “So stop pouting. In an hour, we’ll both get to see what’s in this thing.”