Cover Spell (17 page)

“Oh, sure. Of course, honey. We have too much going on at the restaurant, and there’s a big engagement dinner next Friday I’m working on. You two just go and have a wonderful time.” She paused, and I realized the likelihood was high that my father hadn’t given his blessing at all on this weekend, but she rambled on before I could approach the topic. “Like I said, there’s plenty of food, and you know where the extra wine is. All of the beds have been changed, and I might have even left a load of clean towels in the dryer. It would be such a huge help if you could fold those for me.”

If folding a load of laundry was all I needed to do to have a solo weekend with my hot, sexy boyfriend at our beach house, I was in.

“Got it, Mama. I can do that, and let me know if there’s anything else you can think of. Thank you so much. Finn’s going to love it!”

“Honey, you just go and have a good time.”

I hung up the phone and sent Finn a quick text.

You. Me. Beach. Naked all weekend. Interested?

I waited for his answer, and giggled when I saw his response.

Hell, yeah. On my way to pick you up now.

Our flip-flops were piled by the deck stairs, coated in layers of sand. Just next to them was a mound of shells we had collected on our sunset beach walk. My cluster contained pink-dotted scallop shells, a smooth olive shell, and my favorite treasure from the hunt, a green whelk. Finn’s stash consisted of a heap of beach rocks—each slightly different in shape and size, not what I was used to scouring the tidal pools and surf for.

After dinner we pulled our wooden rocking chairs to the edge of the deck that sat nestled in a valley of sand dunes, and propped our feet up on the railing. I felt my body relax and let go as each wave pounded the shoreline. A half-empty bottle of wine rested between us, and the little bit of courage brewing from the pinot grigio opened a portal of questions I had bottled up since I met Finn. I looked at his beautiful face, half shadowed in the dark, and reached across my chair to touch him.

“I want to know.”

“What do you want to know, Ivy?” He smiled.

He was relaxed and it wasn’t just the wine. Ever since we had arrived at the house, he had been happier than I had ever seen him. I knew the water had that effect on people, and I loved seeing how it made Finn feel to be here, in this place that was so special to me.

“Tell me something; tell me anything about your childhood, your parents. You never talk about it. I mean, you were a kid once, right?” I giggled and took another sip of the wine, hoping I hadn’t pushed too much.

“There’s not much to know. I had a rough time growing up. I don’t talk about it much.” I felt his happy-go-lucky mood ebbing like the waves only a few feet from us.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up something that’s hard for you. I just don’t know much about you, other than what we do together in Sullen’s Grove.”

I shifted my attention toward the moonlight zigzagging through the tidal surges. Maybe I could change the subject. I felt like I had completely violated girlfriend rule 101: Don’t be nosey.

“Eh, it’s not too hard to tell you.”

He flashed a small smile and I exhaled in relief. He picked up the bottle of wine, and poured another round of drinks before revealing a diluted version of his childhood.

Finn’s parents adopted him when he was an infant, and when he was in college, they died in a mysterious boating accident while vacationing on one of those cute little coastal Georgia islands. Just the thought gave me chills. They were non-magical, regular, loving, adoring parents. I had seen a tattered picture of them in his wallet once when I was digging for change to tip the delivery kid. I could only imagine what Finn went through when he realized how different he was from the people who raised him. Maybe his unabashed disregard for magical secrecy stemmed from living with a secret he couldn’t even share with his parents.

“I don’t even know what to say. I’m so sorry about your parents.” I pulled my feet from the railing and turned toward him.

“Thanks, babe. It was a while ago. I’ve learned to live with it.”

He reached down and picked up one of the rocks from his pile. Through the moonlight, I saw him toss it in the air, but he left it suspended, hovering over us. The ocean breeze picked up, and Finn let the rock drop through the summer night into his hand, scattering pixie-size bits of glitter into the salty air.

I scanned the decks of the neighboring houses, worried one of our neighbors had scene his antigravity rock trick, but we were the only ones out.

“I have an idea.” Finn had a mischievous glimmer in his eye.

Before I could respond or absorb the conversation from the last ten minutes, he scooped me up and dropped me on the chaise lounge tucked in the corner of the deck. This was one of my favorite reading spots at the beach house. I could see the entire beach from here. A wooden shutter bordered one side, and the other looked out into the open seascape.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I whispered to him, still worried our neighbors were interested in a nightcap on one of the many surrounding decks.

“Me, kid?”

Uncontrolled giggles escaped my lips as Finn pounced on me and started nibbling on my neck. He tugged on the bottom of my T-shirt with his teeth and worked it up past my belly button where his mouth had free rein on my stomach.

“Ok! Ok! Stop. Finn. Shhh.” I tried to control the laughter. “Please. My parents aren’t going to let either of us back here if we wake up the whole beach. Shhh.”

“How about this?” He ignored my pleas.

He abandoned the tickling assault on my stomach and lowered himself on the chair so he was firmly pinned against me. After brushing back the flyway strands of hair around my face, he took my face in his hands and kissed me. His lips tasted like the wine and bits of ocean salt, and I longed for more of his mouth, but he broke away, leaving my body aching for him.

“And this?” he growled.

I felt his hand slide over my breast and linger over my stomach, but this time I wasn’t giggling. I bit down hard on my bottom lip, trying not to moan. I stared into his eyes, which now looked almost pitch black with the night all around us. Expertly, his fingers loosened the button on my shorts. I lifted my hips for him to slip them off.

“What if I do this?” he teased.

The gathered layers of my shirt skimmed over my face and hair as I lifted my arms to let him deposit my shirt on the sun-worn deck. Slowly, I lowered my arms and locked them around his neck, pulling his lips back to mine.

“Finn?”

“Mm-hmm?” He was roaming his way down my shoulder one heat-infused kiss at a time, and my entire body felt singed from the sun and his lips. Nothing felt better than this.

“Your turn,” I whispered in his ear, and relished in the low growl he uttered in the curve of my shoulder.

I reached for the edge of his shirt and tugged upward. I yanked harder, urgently needing his skin to be pressed to my body, already stripped naked in the moonlight. We eased into the cushions of the chair, and my fingers worked their magic on the zipper to his shorts. Triumphant, I dropped them on the deck next to the growing pile of discarded clothes with a smile.

“Ok, I think I bought us some time.” Finn slid into the café chair next to me. “Ivy? You ok?” He grabbed a pastry and took a bite. “You look like your mind’s somewhere else.”

“Uh, yeah. Totally fine.”

I took a deep breath, wishing I hadn’t gone down the steamiest of memory lanes just now. I never sat in the chaise lounge again to read after that night—too much Finn and sex to get anything accomplished.

Abruptly, he tossed a manila file on the table, and the edges of a few pictures peeped under the cover of the folder.

“What’s this?”

“I picked it up at the station yesterday and had planned to show it to you at dinner last night, but we both know how our night went. I never got around to it.”

He had me blushing again.
What was going on with me today?

I flipped open the top of the file and gasped at the display of four-by-six pictures tucked inside. The first was a recent headshot of Emmy Harper, probably taken in the last few months, I guessed from her auburn hair color. I set it aside and flipped through the next few. A young woman with strikingly pouty lips and sad eyes stared back at me, another with dark hair, and another with the same sexy, forlorn look. All of the girls looked like they were probably twenty years old. I shuffled through the stack and realized the farther down the pile I sorted, the older the pictures were. A slow, sickening pit formed in my stomach.

“What is this? Who are these girls?”

I dropped the pictures from my hands and folded the file over their young, beautiful faces.

“It seems we have a serial kidnapper in New Orleans,” he reported.

“But, some of these pictures are old, really old. How far back do the kidnappings go?”

Finn thumbed through the pictures, pulled out the one from the bottom of the stack, and flipped it over. He held up the black-and-white photo of the girl.

“This one says she went missing in 1947.”

“1947? Is there a copycat serial kidnapper since 1947? How many girls?”

“I didn’t have too much time to dig into it yesterday, but it looks like eight girls total. Their disappearances are spread out too far for the detectives to notice their connection and be able to link them together over this many decades. Did you notice anything about them?”

I stared at him. “Of course, they all look like Emmy Harper.” I paused, and then shuffled the pictures in front of me. I reached for the one of the pretty girl from 1947. It was probably the clothes, but I couldn’t ignore the resemblance. “No, they don’t look like Emmy; they all look like Josette Henri.” The sickening pit swirled. I didn’t want the rest of my coffee or beignet. “You don’t think it’s a vampire do you?” I didn’t want to say the word. It would answer the supernatural element and evil vibe that kept looming over the past twenty-four hours.

“No, definitely not their style. It’s something else.”

Finn picked up his coffee. Whew, I was relieved we weren’t dealing with vamps, although in New Orleans that was definitely not out of the question.

“What did you tell the police just now on the phone? That’s who you were talking to, right?” I pressed for an answer.

He folded the file’s contents and shoved them in the jacket pocket opposite of the jasper. “I told them Emmy’s room was empty at the hotel.”

“What? Why did you do that?”

We hadn’t really discussed our next step, but I thought we had agreed we would keep the supernatural aspect off the police’s radar for as long as possible. With what I had just seen, that seemed even more imperative. Why would he tip off the other detectives?

“Because, we need to search Magnolia Plantation. If the police are at the hotel today, that leaves the house open for us to search.” He winked at me and leaned back in the chair.

I tried to settle in my seat. I needed to start trusting his decisions. “What do you think is at the house?”

I realized from the confidence dripping from Finn’s words that he had already formed a plan, and as usual was plowing forward without me. I would have to play along. I knew he was dealing with more now that the blue jasper was in his possession. I might be the only thing anchoring him to our current reality. If I let go of one more thread, he might fly out of reach like a balloon untethered to anyone or anything.

“It’s more of a
who
is at the house.” He leaned in a little closer. I couldn’t see his eyes through the sunglasses.

I shivered. The atmosphere had changed. The dark swirl I had felt yesterday was close. I was trying to gauge where it was coming from while Finn continued.

“The man from yesterday, the one with the bruise on his cheek that you wildly ran after? Mr. Trench Coat.”

I nodded. “Yes? What about him?” My witchy tingle was firing rapidly. I knew it was nearby.

Finn pulled his sunglasses down to the brim of his nose, and whispered, “He’s sitting a few tables behind you.” He grabbed my hand on the table and squeezed it to keep me from spinning around. “Don’t. Don’t turn. Trust me; he’s there. He’s going to follow us to the house. Just act like you’re totally into me, and you didn’t even notice him. Can you do that?”

I nodded. My heart was racing, and I kept fighting the urge to peek over my shoulder at the man.

“Ready?”

Finn took my hand and led me away from the table. I looked up at him. His face was completely cool, and then I looked straight ahead. We finally had a lead, and I wasn’t going to scare him away even if we were the bait.