Cover Spell (6 page)

W
HEN
I arrived at the set the next morning, there was a long line snaking around the coffee cart. The rest of the crew was bustling on the steps of the main house. I pulled on the strap of my bag and marched over to Archie Preston.

I practiced my speech in the shower, in front of the mirror, and during the car ride. I had no idea how he would react to my suggestions, but I was sure I had strung together the right words for my proposal.

“Excuse me. Excuse me.” I attempted to project my voice while the wiry man was barking orders to an assistant. He swiveled in his seat to address me.

“Yes?” He looked me up and down.

“Hi. I’m Ivy. Ivy Grace. I don’t think we’ve met.” I reached out my hand. He didn’t take it. Instead, he sat with his arms crossed and waited. “Well, you see, I’m the writer. I wrote
Masquerade
and I had some ideas for you about the scene. I couldn’t help but notice yesterday the scene wasn’t really flowing.”

“Really? You noticed? How astute. I think even the janitor noticed that scene wasn’t working.” His tone reeked of condescending nasty sarcasm. “What do you want?”

I bristled at his tone. This wasn’t how I envisioned our artistic exchange going. “Well, I have an idea.”

“Ha! You think you have an idea? By all means, enlighten me.”

“Yes, I went over the script again last night, and it’s quite a departure from where I wrote the original scene. Josette and Luke were in her room. It was quiet and dark, and much more intimate. This is all too big and impersonal.” I waved my hand at the monstrous plantation house. “And she was crying before Luke arrived, not how we have it here. She doesn’t start crying until Luke tries to get her to leave. I think it would help. It’s taking too long to connect with what they’re feeling. It would draw the audience in more to their private world. This is supposed to be all about them—their moment, their dialogue—not about the scenery.”

“Huh. Thank you, Ivy. I’ll consider it.” He immediately turned his back to me, and demanded his assistant refill his coffee and make some phone calls for him.

My pride and creative genius slightly wounded, I trudged back to the chair assigned to me yesterday. I brought a wide-brimmed sun hat to guard my skin from the rays and heat. I spotted Emmy Harper with one yesterday and took a page from her fashion sense. I plopped down, pulled out the hat, and started shuffling through the script again. Maybe there was another way to approach the unapproachable Archie Preston. I couldn’t let his lack of sensitivity ruin the beauty of that moment between Luke and Josette.

I glanced at my phone. It was nine, definitely late enough that Jack probably would be in the office by now and on his second cup of coffee. No matter what pep talk I gave myself, the worry and nervousness spawned from last night’s dream still clung to my thoughts. I tapped the number for Raven Publishing.

“Raven Publishing, this is Anne. How may I direct your call?” Jack’s assistant answered the phone with a familiar warmth that made me smile and quieted my nerves in tiny amounts.

“Hey, Anne. It’s Ivy. I was wondering if I could speak to Jack for a minute.” I held my breath. The muscles in my arm were taut from gripping my phone tightly.

“Hi, Ivy. Jack’s not available.” That warmth I so desperately needed was absent in her voice now. She was all business.

I restrained the fear gnawing from the deepest part of me and managed to form a question. “Where is he? Have you seen him?” My heart was pounding. Maybe it wasn’t a dream; maybe Jack was gone.

“Of course I’ve seen him. He was in at seven thirty, roaring about a board meeting. That’s actually where he is now—board meeting with all of the big wigs.”

A pent up breath escaped my lips. He was ok. He was storming around the office and probably miserable as hell in that meeting. I smiled, picturing him in a crisp button-up shirt with a scowl on his face as he took on the company’s executives.

“You stay away from me, Evan Carlson! Stay away!” I turned to see Emmy Harper screaming at Evan from the plantation porch. Her hands were on her hips, and she was backing away from the handsome actor. “Can’t you take a hint? I don’t need your kind of help, jerk!”

“Ok, great. Thanks, Anne. I’ve gotta go.” Before she could ask any more questions or even relay a message for me, I dropped the phone into my bag.

Stunned, I watched Emmy as she raced in the massive front entrance, and slammed the door behind her. Evan was left standing, confused and embarrassed, in front of the crew. The guys from production team I recognized from last night at Easy Eddie’s shrugged their shoulders at him and continued to set up lights, cords, and mics.

Evan put his hands in his front pockets, jumped off the end of the porch, and vanished around the side of the house. My witchy tingles started firing. It didn’t make any sense. I looked around. Everyone was hard at work with the set and seemed to have ignored Emmy’s latest outburst. Maybe they were getting used to her tantrums.

I brushed my witchy instincts aside and focused on the next scene of the movie. I couldn’t imagine how the train station scene would unfold after the debacle I witnessed yesterday with Josette’s bedroom scene. I sighed. All my creative control had been relinquished when Raven Publishing agreed to this movie.

An hour later, the critical electronic components needed to shoot the scene were in place, and the director was perched in his floating seat. Archie pulled the megaphone to his lips. “Ok, people. We’re ready,” he called to the crowd of worker bees below and floated back and forth.

Evan strolled to the front walk where the scene took place. It looked like he was searching for an imaginary “X” on the sidewalk to mark his spot. I thought maybe I saw him mumble something, but my chair was farther back from the front of the house today and I wasn’t sure.

“Emmy? Where’s Emmy?” The director eyeballed the crew on the ground. “Come on, where is Emmy? It’s time.” Everyone looked over his or her shoulders and canvassed the general area with their eyes. “Dammit! Someone go to her trailer and get her.” He snapped into the megaphone. The assistant I had spotted helping him earlier scurried to the talent’s trailer while everyone else waited.

Unrelenting with the megaphone, Archie continued to shout orders and questions. “Are we waiting on makeup again? Who is holding her up? I was ready five minutes ago, people!”

The woman ran back and motioned for the director to lower his hovering perch to the ground. Once within arm’s reach, she stretched forward and whispered in his ear. Even with the megaphone turned off, I could hear his reaction.

“What? She’s not there? Then where is she?” He had calmed his voice, but he was visibly angry.

I saw a few other crew members leave their posts and scamper in different directions to search for the star. Thirty minutes later, Emmy Harper was still not on the set.

The director shouted more questions and directives to the production team. “She’s not here. Did anyone see her leave?” Heads shook left to right. “Mary, Susan, call her. Someone go to her hotel room. Find her. Call her agent. Call her publicist. Get her back on this set. Evan, come with me.”

He jumped from the chair, and walked with Evan away from the house and closer to the bayou stretched out in front of the mansion.

Something wasn’t right. Rarely were my instincts wrong—make that—they were never wrong. My witchy tingle was on high alert. I could feel something in the air swirling with darkness. I scanned the crew around me to see if they were on edge like me. Of course, no one else could sense it. They were scattered looking for Emmy, but I felt something. Emmy Harper was missing and it had nothing to do with hair and makeup.

I waited in my hotel room for hours hoping news would trickle in about Emmy’s whereabouts. Without the movie’s leading lady, production halted. I thought about the rampant gossip already circulating through the movie crew about where Emmy may have gone. Popular theories included she was under-medicated, overmedicated, had a secret lover on the set, was binge shopping, or was striking to get more money. My instincts told me none of these theories was even viable.

Emmy and I had exchanged a few pleasantries on the set. I liked her. She was the perfect actress to play Josette. It was eerie how similar the two looked. I had to hold back from gushing over the likeness; I didn’t want to freak out the timid star. She was twenty-two years old, four years older than Josette had been when I found her in a crumpled, crying heap in 1945. For the movie role, Emmy had dyed her straight blond hair to a golden auburn and added extensions, lots of extensions. Of course, I was the only one who knew how close the resemblance really was. Like Josette, Emmy seemed sweet and shy and doused with a bit of flirty seductiveness. The only time I heard her stray from her good-girl image were the two quarrels I witnessed between her and Evan.

Emmy was still considered a “break out” actress, and this role was supposed to open new doors for her career. It didn’t make any sense that she would jeopardize her newly budding career in Hollywood over a spat with Evan. What would make an actress leave the set of her debut leading role?

I opened my laptop to skim the entertainment headlines. I wondered if the local press had heard about Emmy’s mysterious missing-in-action status. Instead of headlines about Emmy Harper, I groaned at the pictures racing across the screen of Evan and me. I pressed my palm into my forehead. Photos of us with his hand around my waist, pictures in front of the cab, him leaning down to kiss my cheek. Of course, with that picture, it looked like a full-on lip-lock was about to happen. There was even a video of us dancing at Easy Eddie’s. Ugh! Evan was right; people were always watching him.

My phone buzzed and I fished in my bag to retrieve it.

“Ivy, girl! You weren’t kidding. I just saw those pictures of you and Evan Carlson. Yum, yum. I watched the YouTube video first, and you showed up in my Vine feed.” Holly was giggling on the other end of the call.

“That’s not what I wanted. This is exactly what I was worried about with him. No privacy.” I typed in Evan’s name in the YouTube search box, and my jaw dropped when I saw the number of hits. “Ninety thousand people have seen me dancing with Evan Carlson? Oh no. Oh no, no, no.”

“Oh, it’s fun. Look at you two dancing.” She kept laughing. “He’s got moves, and girl you looked hot with him! You didn’t tell me about the hip action last night.”

“Not funny, Holly.”

I closed the top of my laptop. I couldn’t focus with the video of Evan running his hands down my thighs and whispering into my ear flashing across my screen. As annoyed as I was by the whole invasion of privacy, I smiled, remembering what he whispered to make me laugh like that.

“I can’t think about him right now. There’s actually a serious problem here.”

“What kind of problem could be more important than you and your hot new boyfriend?”

“Ok. He’s definitely not my boyfriend. It was just dancing. I’ve danced with lots of guys. Dancing does not equal dating. I’m trying to be serious.”

“Ok. Ok. You do sound serious.” The light giggle abruptly halted.

I lowered my voice and cupped my hand around my mouth, which I knew was silly, since I was alone in my room. “Ok, I can’t believe I’m saying this. Emmy Harper is missing.”

Holly’s shock pealed through the phone. “What? What do you mean missing?”

“I’m not sure, but my witchy tingle tells me something is wrong. She was on the set, and then all of a sudden, she wasn’t on the set. She was just gone.”

While Holly absorbed the information I was giving her, I pulled on a sleeveless green, chevron top that tied at my navel, and shimmied into a pair of hip-hugging white shorts. I couldn’t stay cooped up in this room much longer.

“Are the police involved?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Shouldn’t they be? I mean if the star goes missing, someone should call the police.”

“There are some people from the crew trying to find her. Everyone here thinks it’s actor attitude, but I’m not so sure.” I brushed out my hair in the mirror and pinched my cheeks a few times.

“What do you think it is?” Holly had lowered her voice too. I hadn’t thought to ask her where she was calling me from when the phone first rang.

“I don’t know. I’m going to snoop around downstairs a little and see if I hear anything from anyone on the set. It’s probably nothing, but I’ll let you know.”