Free Cover Spell by T.A. Foster Page B

he was pacing, on the phone, and was using his serious detective voice. I waited for him to wrap up his conversation so he could answer my questions about the circus ring I had waltzed into this morning. However, my witchy tingle started to surge.
    There was a slow wave of dark energy emanating through the lobby. It was barely tangible, but the little pricks hit me the farther I stepped away from Finn. Like a beam from a flashlight, the sinister force only illuminated a small space. Finn was still talking, and I couldn’t get his attention. Searching the lobby for the source, I felt someone’s stare penetrating the side of my face. First, I looked down at the floor and pushed my foot around as if I was bored, and then let my gaze rise over my right shoulder.
    Sitting in the corner, drinking a cup of coffee, was a man with dark hair and delicate-looking hands. A light bruise mark lined the top of his right cheek. He placed his cup on the china saucer, exposing a gold watch below the cuff of his coat. It flickered under the light of the chandeliers. I began to shiver. The man bowed his head at me and walked out of the lobby. He was wearing a long, tan trench coat, but instead of an umbrella, he pulled a folded newspaper from inside his coat and shielded his face from the rain with it as he merged into the pedestrian sidewalk traffic. There was something eerily familiar about him that I couldn’t put my finger on. My mind zipped through a catalog of faces, but I couldn’t place how I knew the man. It was one of the many hazards of time travel. I jumbled decades of faces. I looked at Finn to see if he had seen him, but he was still engrossed in his phone call.
    “All right, babe, gotta go, detective stuff, you know?” He winked at me and tucked his phone in his pocket.
    “You’re leaving? Do you have a lead on Emmy? Why did they take Evan?” Everything was happening so fast, and Finn hadn’t answered a single question I had thrown at him.
    Finn’s eyes narrowed when I mentioned Evan’s name. “Are you worried about him?” I didn’t answer. “It seems he had more than one public argument with Emmy. They’re just asking him a few questions to see what he knows. It’s standard procedure.”
    “What he knows? Like a suspect? Those arguments with Emmy Harper were nothing, just creative differences. Taking Evan Carlson in is ridiculous!” My voice was starting to carry, and Finn put his finger to his lips. “Sorry. But it is ridiculous; he didn’t have anything to do with Emmy’s disappearance.” I locked my arms in place and glared at him.
    “Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s my job, not yours.” He squeezed my arm and took a step back. The small group of officers was waiting for him by the revolving door. “Dinner tonight. We’ll talk.”
    He didn’t wait for me to reply, and jogged off to meet them. They walked out into the rain and into a fleet of New Orleans PD cars. I watched as Finn hopped in the front seat of one of the cars and drove off.
    I guess I would have to wait to tell him about the strange evil-buzz in the lobby, and the man in the coat. I was hoping he had felt it too.
    “Ivy? Ivy, you coming?” One of the girl’s from the sound crew was motioning me to follow her into one of the hotel’s many conference rooms. “We’ve got a meeting.” She rolled her eyes. “Image consultant.”
    I shuffled into the room with the rest of the production staff. I had heard about image consultants and had spent many a night with a glass of wine in hand, glued to my favorite show about a professional image fixer, but this was unreal. How did I end up in this meeting? There was a short, long-haired brunette in a white linen suit, with stiletto heels waiting for the group to quiet down. Wow, she even looked like a professional fixer.
    “All right, everyone. I’m Kelly Saint-James and I’m here on behalf of the studio.”
    I saw eyebrows shoot up on the faces around me. I was apparently the only one who