Cover Spell (16 page)

We walked the path of our late night pursuit until we arrived at the corner. The sidewalk was still wet from rain.

“I don’t think there’s anything here.” Finn stepped back to watch me canvass the area.

It was only a light buzzing sensation at first, but my witchy tingle started firing. I tuned out Finn and zeroed in on where I sprinted around the corner in my bare feet. A two-story red brick building sat where the sidewalk curved. Bits of brick were chipped from the façade of the building, and they lay crumbling on the sidewalk. I looked down and spied a neatly piled stack of the brick chunks. I reached down and picked up one of the pieces, rolling it in my palm with my thumb.

“Someone piled these here. They weren’t here last night. I would have run right over them, and without shoes, I would have noticed them pretty quickly.” This didn’t make any sense.

He took the rough, rocky piece from my hand, and we both studied the area surrounding the brick pile. My hands traced the corner of the building’s foundation and followed the jagged exterior. Every few inches there was a divot where the chunky brick pieces had been removed. It looked like a hole had been created by a chisel. There was exactly the same distance between each opening. The holes alternated on each side of the building until the last one was just my head and out of my reach. The cavities formed an intended trail.

“Here, let me.” Finn reached over my outstretched arm, and tapped the last divot with his fingers. He tapped the sides of the tiny open space. Gradually, he pulled something out of the hole and brought it closer for us to examine.

“What is it?” I looked at Finn, and then back at the half shiny, rock-like object in his hand.

His eyes darkened, turning the light blue to flecks of navy.

“Finn, you’re scaring me. What is it?”

I had never seen him like this. Serious was not his style, especially not dark and serious. A line of joggers trotted next to us and stopped at the crosswalk’s red light.

He didn’t notice the small crowd next to us. He traced the smooth surface of the stone that was lying in his palm in a repeated pattern. He looked lost, and I wasn’t sure if he could form the words he needed to tell me what was happening. I grabbed his free hand and led him to the rear side of the building so we were shielded from cars and curious runners.

I was starting to wonder if the person who had created the pile of brick rubble was watching us. There was a good chance he was close.

“Please. Tell me what this stone-rock thing is,” I urged.

It was flat on one side, and rounded and jagged underneath. Little hints of blue rippled through the center to its surface. It wasn’t much bigger than a quarter, but the effect it was having on Finn was enormous.

As if walking out of a haze, he shook his head, turned toward me, and spoke. “It’s a blue jasper.”

I wanted to tread lightly; he was obviously shaken, but I didn’t know why. I waited.

He was quiet, so I prodded him some more. “What’s a blue jasper? What does it do?”

“You don’t know?” He looked at me with heavy eyes.

“No. I’ve never heard of it. Just tell me. What is that thing?”

He stopped tracing the mysterious stone. “This is what I’ve been searching for. This is what I could never find. Your ring. Trying to learn how to
Time Spell
. All of that was to find this blue jasper. It’s the key to my Shadow Quest.”

He held it out, pinched between his finger and thumb, and released it to me. I took the stone in my hand and eyed it. A small, sorrowful sigh escaped my lips. I was holding in my palm the one thing that tore Finn and me apart, and in that instant, I knew it would do it again.

W
E STOOD
behind the brick building for what seemed like an hour, but minutes pass slowly when you realize the choices you have made have set things in motion you can’t take back or undo.

“I think we need to talk about this.” I reached for his hand, but he stepped away and slid both his hands in his front pockets. Like the line loosening on a fishing pole, I felt one of the strings holding us together slacken and unravel.

“There’s nothing to talk about except where we’re going to find Emmy Harper.” He smiled at me, but I could tell he was struggling to regain his usual charming demeanor. I wondered if he could feel the threads loosening too.

“You don’t think we need to discuss that, out of the blue, a jasper you’ve been searching for, for years shows up in an old building in New Orleans, while we happen to be in pursuit of a kidnapper?” I couldn’t imagine discussing anything but this.

“Babe, it’s not coincidence. It can’t be. It was obviously planted to distract me. To throw us off. There is nothing unplanned about this jasper. But I’m not going to let it. It actually makes it more of a clue than what we had before.”

“What do you mean?” I questioned.

He plucked his sunglasses from his inner jacket pocket and slid them on, covering the crystal blue eyes that were now tinted with a mask of shadows.

He sighed before explaining. “There are only a few of these stones in the world, and only a few people who even know they exist.” He took the jasper from me, tossed it in the air, and tucked it in his crisp, white shirt pocket. “If anything, this little rock gave us a suspect list.”

He had a way of turning things around, but no matter what he said, he couldn’t spin it enough to make me forget what that blue rock had already done.

A breeze drifted off the water, and the humid morning was tolerable as long as the wind kept sending waves of cool air. A large rusty barge, at least one football field-length long, floated past while the crew looped rope and secured the vessel for a voyage.

Finn was on the phone while I ordered coffees and a plate of beignets for us at one of the open-air cafes near Jackson Square. He was far enough away that I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and I wasn’t sure who was on the other end of the call. He was going to have to redirect the police investigation and somehow keep them at bay while we located the real kidnapper. Finn would have no trouble leading them down the wrong rabbit hole. This was a moment when I was actually grateful for his keen deceptive skills. I settled into my chair and watched the pigeons hop in and out of the table-and-chair maze surrounding me, rooting for leftover crumbs.

The discovery of the blue jasper spawned a confusing combination of renewed hope that we would find Emmy, and of murky feelings that Finn wouldn’t be able to walk away from the Shadow Quest now that he held the missing piece.

I didn’t know much about Finn’s quest. I put together the bits and pieces of a broken story he scattered in front of me when we dated. He dodged the usual getting-to-know-you dating conversations. Simple, “Where are you from?” “Why did you want to be a detective?” and “What’s your family like?” questions were tossed aside and deflected with flirty finesse. I grilled Ian about any detail he could give me about Finn when we first started dating, but those two had a brotherly code that even my sibling status couldn’t break.

For a witch, a Shadow Quest is both a blessing and a curse. It chooses you only if you want it, but once you accept the quest, there is no turning back. It becomes your sole focus, your driving force, and the ultimate end game. It’s rare that a witch shares the details of his or her Shadow Quest with anyone. Usually, the news comes out after the quest is complete.

I remember overhearing my mother and Aunt Pansy talking in hushed voices about my uncle’s quest. He was gone for months at a time, and my aunt struggled with the endless waiting. It wasn’t easy for Holly to grow up with a father who was in and out of her life. Sometimes I thought that was why she had a soft spot for Finn. She saw slivers of her father’s struggle in him.

The same shroud of secrecy was true with Finn. It wasn’t until he left me in Savannah, and our romantic weekend turned hellish that I discovered he had a quest. On the drive from Savannah back to Sullen’s Grove, I had conjured every imaginable scenario—the top offender being another girl. I didn’t expect the quest. I showed up on his doorstep to retrieve my ring, and demanded an explanation. I knew he would try some kind of excuse to smooth things over. Even when he was confronted, even when he didn’t want me to leave, he wouldn’t tell me what his mission was or what he was trying to accomplish. He was full of apologies and lines, but he expected me to forgive him based on the sheer fact that he had a quest. I couldn’t. He should have told me from the beginning. Maybe I could have helped him. If he had opened up, Savannah never would have happened.

I exhaled and then sipped on my coffee. I pinched off a bite of the yummy, doughy beignet on the table. Finn was leaning on a pillar, one ankle kicked out in front of the other. The sun made his dark blond hair look lighter on top. He pressed the phone against his ear with his shoulder and reached in to tap the blue jasper with his hand. I could tell he was already worried about the stone.

Thinking back on our early dating life, I realized how secretive he had always been. My body and heart felt as if they knew him inside and out, but really, I didn’t have much information about the man who had turned my life upside down on more than one occasion.

Finn wasn’t from Sullen’s Grove—that I knew from the beginning. During one of our weekend beach trips to my parents’ summer home, he finally told me he was from Georgia.

Daddy was always a little standoffish with Finn. I think it was his relationship with Ian that finally convinced my parents he was worthy to be my boyfriend. How many times had Ian rubbed that in my face?

Finn was the first boyfriend I brought home who shared our family’s magical talents. I thought for sure they would love him. But I thought wrong. The entire awkward dinner at the Grace residence was crammed with my father’s huffing, my mother’s attempt to make polite chitchat, and Ian laughing at every mistake I made. I was surprised Finn stuck around after such an unwelcome initiation into my family.

Mama called me at work one afternoon to let me know she and Daddy couldn’t make it to the beach, and she wanted to know if Finn and I would be interested in going for the weekend.

“I just hate that no one is going to be at the house this weekend. I mean, it’s just sittin’ there, and I loaded the fridge with all kinds of things last weekend.”

My mother was notorious for over-shopping at the grocery store. She said she did it to make sure Daddy had everything he needed for his gourmet meals. I always thought she was stocking up for the next hurricane, as if we wouldn’t have ample warning.

“Really, Daddy’s ok with Finn and me going to the beach house alone?” It didn’t seem possible.