Lita frowned with a cutesy innocence that might work on their father, but only pushed Casey closer to the edge of a place she couldn’t remember even coming close to. The girls definitely brought her their fair share of grief, and yeah, this was an extreme case of it because she’d ended up in jail, but the angry niggle that had begun as Wanda grilled her began to increase with hot pulses along her spine. “We tried to tell them what happened. They just wouldn’t listen.” Lita pouted her full lips prettily. The way she had when she’d mutilated her father’s vintage Vette.
Wanda was up off the couch in a shot at Lita’s statement, glaring down at the two twenty-two-year-olds who held her paycheck in their destructive hands. Marty and Nina, too, gathered right behind her, planting themselves in the small entryway, leaving Casey suddenly feeling oppressed, like if she didn’t get air to her lungs, she’d explode.
“What did happen?” Wanda eyed the girls with a hawkish glare.
“Oh, I love your sweaters, and they match. Sooo cute,” Marty cooed to the twins. “Where’d you get them?”
Nina rolled her coal black eyes. “Shut the fuck up, Marty. This isn’t a trip to Neiman Marcus. Leave the Double- knit Twins alone, and let Wanda find out what happened, seeing as Casey”—she swiped two pairs of index fingers in the air—“can’t remember.”
“No!” Casey roared, then clamped a hand over her mouth when several surprised glances cast her way.
“Dude,” Nina barked, hovering over her with a suspicious frown. “If they know what happened, and you don’t, why the fuck wouldn’t you want them to tell your sister? The sister who fucking spent a lot of greenbacks to get you the hell out of the slammer.”
Because, you interfering, meddlesome piece of trailer-park trash—it’s no one’s business but mine.
Casey slapped her hand over her mouth again to fight a gasp, her eyes wide. Where had
that
thought come from? And had she just thought that about
Nina
? Lest she forget how scary Nina was. Hello, badass in da house. She threw an apologetic glance at Wanda’s friend. Even though she hadn’t spoken the words—that she had merely thought them appalled her. “I just—”
“So, ladies, why don’t you tell me what happened?” Wanda interjected again, sending Casey’s anger up yet another spiky notch.
Nary a warning came before that little niggle of irritation turned into a heated push of irate, irrational fury. “Goddamn it, Wanda, I said—
no
! Now stay the hell out of it!” Casey fairly howled, her words gravelly and deep to her ears as she grabbed each of the girls by the arm and gave them a shove out the door. Her chest throbbed, but she managed, “I’ll talk to you two tomorrow.” She slammed the door with a harsh slap of her hand and cheeks that grew hot, then eyed Wanda. “When I tell you to stay out of it, you’d friggin’ better stay—out—of—it! Got that?”
Wow, wow, wowee. Once more, surprise at her harsh, downright ungrateful words to Wanda, who’d been nothing but good to her, made her want to crawl out of her own skin.
Silence pulsed between the women. Nina looked at Wanda, who looked at Marty, who looked bug-eyed at Casey.
Gawking.
Awkward.
Nina was the first to speak, closing in on Casey and cornering her. Her words were threaded with quiet intimidation, spat from clenched, incredibly white teeth. “What the hell is wrong with you? Look here, exorsistah, you ungrateful little whiner, you’d better start spilling and stop wasting our friggin’ time. I don’t have all fucking night to sit around and listen to you piss and moan like some pansy-ass about how you don’t remember what went down. Especially after Wanda, you know, the sister you don’t spend two minutes on the phone with unless it’s a
timed
phone call from jail, begging for cash—the one who just spent an ass load of money to bail you out. Now spew, Sybil, or I’ll beat it the fuck out of you.”
“Nina!” Both Marty and Wanda yelled.
Casey felt her eyes narrow, her chin jut upward, her posture stiffen, all while she stared up at Nina—who, lo and behold, she quite suddenly wasn’t so afraid of.
Well, huh.
A shot of pure adrenaline rocketed through her veins with such a swift surge it jolted every muscle in her body—invigorating her. As if the opportunity to spar with the menacing, überscary Nina was a full-on smackdown she’d invite.
What. The. Fuck?
But abruptly, her mouth opened and words spilled out. “Were I you,” Casey said in a tone that was deep and filled with condescending arrogance, “I’d back off,
bitch
.” She pointed up into Nina’s face, letting her index finger rest just under her nose.
Casey heard the room fill with more gasps, but her vision had narrowed to nothing but Nina’s beautiful face. A face she wanted to ram her fist into—but good.
Nina’s eyebrow rose to a perfect arch, but she didn’t budge. “Were I you, I’d watch my hindquarters, Miss Priss. I so know you didn’t just call me a bitch. You’d better hope I didn’t hear right,
bitch
, because I’ll shove my fist so far down your throat they’ll have to get the Jaws of Life to extract it.” Wanda and Marty hovered behind Nina’s right shoulder, but she held her hand up with an angry flip of her palm.
Casey crossed her arms over her chest in defiance. “Oh, but you heard me per-fect-ly.”
Nina’s lips thinned. “Hookay, I’m gonna to give you one last op to shut that yap of yours because your sister’s my friend. But if you don’t knock it the fuck off right now, it’s on, Princess. Got that?”
For the briefest moment, she warred with herself, an odd struggle of socially acceptable decorum and the need to take Nina out so rife it was palpable. Casey fought it for all of maybe two seconds before the rising fury, so unexpected and uncharacteristic, consumed her. Her last semi-sane thought was, omigod, she was totally going to call her sister’s friend a bitch to get a rise out of her. And then—she did—with a roar so earsplitting and fierce, Nina’s long, wavy hair ruffled from the
whoosh
of her breath. “I’ll say it once more for those in the room who struggle with English comprehension—
back—off—bitch
!”
So it was on.
Nina planted her hands on either side of Casey’s smaller frame and let her face loom mere inches away. Her mouth, tight and pinched, sneered; her next words became a snarl. “You do know we’re game on, don’t you?”
Cockily, she jammed her face in Nina’s. “Guess what, badass? This is me not afraid of you.Yeah. That’s right—I went there!” She flicked a finger in the air, grazing Nina’s hair.
Nina snarled. “This is me telling you, you should be very afraid, little girl.”
“Nina! That’s enough—you know better!” Marty yelled, yanking at her shoulder from behind while Wanda tried to get between them. “Back off! You’ll hurt her if—”
“Bring it,
bitch
!” Casey bellowed, shoving at her so hard, she heard the crack of her palm against the leather of Nina’s jacket. Out of nowhere, Nina was easily ten feet away from where she’d been almost plastered up against her.
And Casey was staring
down
at her.
Which was undoubtedly odd because Nina was at least five inches taller than she was.
“Nina! Nooooooooo! You’ll kill her!” Casey heard Wanda scream.
Yet, she found she cared little because she pointed her finger at Nina again when she attempted to round on her once more. “What about
back off, bitch
don’t you get,
biiitch
?” Somewhere, way deep down, she knew she’d tacked on that extra
bitch
because it would make Nina freak. And she liked it—reveled in it—relished it with lip-smacking anticipation.
Somewhere, way deep down inside, she also knew her ass was so in for a lickin’. Yet, also somewhere way deep down inside—she didn’t give a flying fuck. So she emphasized that way deep down inside disregard by pointing at Nina again and screeching, “Bitch!”
At the top of her lungs.
While Casey Louise Schwartz, always the calm in the middle of chaos, watched flames, bright orange and crackling blue, shoot from her fingertips and headed straight for her sister’s “not as scary as she once was” friend.
And then . . . oh, holy Heaven.
Set Nina’s hair on fire.
CHAPTER 3
So pandemonium and four women became one swirling, writhing entity of high-pitched screams, foul language, and tangled appendages.
Wanda, eyes wide, limbs slicing through the air at a freakishly blurred, breakneck speed, launched herself at the blanket Casey had left on the couch. Throwing it squarely at Nina better than any rodeo-roping cowboy, javelin-throwing Olympian, she managed to envelop her friend in it. Wanda became a distorted ball of color, catapulting herself onto Nina’s smoking head and knocking her to the floor with a hard grunt. Straddling her friend, Wanda tamped out the crackling flames with haphazard thwacks of her palm to Nina’s skull while Nina flapped her arms and swore.
And a frantic-eyed Marty, mere nanoseconds behind Wanda, scanned the room. Her feet beat a thumping path to the small table in the corner of Casey’s living room. Marty’s eyes honed in on what she was apparently looking for, and, wasting no time, her fumbling hands reached for the desired item. Grabbing Casey’s fishbowl, containing her beloved goldfish, Shark, Marty promptly dumped it over a smoking, screeching Nina with a triumphant howl.
A gush of water and colorful rocks splashed over Nina’s head, compressing the blanket flush to her face and leaving an ominous sizzle of extinguished flames in its wake.
Casey viewed this with an almost out-of-body observation while she lingered.
In the atmosphere.
That observation was mingled with an eerie calm. Vaguely the thought flitted through her mind that she should be more than a little panicked. Be it her on-the-job training, or maybe that her feathers didn’t ruffle very easily, she simply took in the scene below her feet, versus allowing the kind of hysteria one should experience when they levitated to flip her out.
“For Christ’s sake, Nina!” Wanda hollered. “Stop fighting me and hold the hell still or I’ll knock your teeth in!” Clutching the lapels of Nina’s leather jacket, Wanda gave her an almost violent shake, laying Nina flat out and pinning her to the floor.
Casey—from her vantage point still ten feet off the floor and now rising—gasped, breaking her strange, cloudy haze of indifference. Who was this Wanda? A Wanda who not only took the Lord’s name in vain but had managed to wrestle the scariest woman Casey had ever encountered to the ground with nothing more than a hard shake.
Never mind that
, her conscience called.
Who. Are.You? All floating in the air like you’re the newest member of Cirque du Soleil
.
Right. There was that. The panic she wasn’t experiencing just moments ago made a sudden appearance—spiky and resonant.
Casey’s fear and surprise by this turn of events were only side-tracked by some of the most creative cussing she’d ever heard.
Nina heaved her hips upward, shoving at Wanda to no avail while she tore at the sodden blanket plastered to her face. “Wanda, get the frig off me now, you fucktard! When I get up off this floor, not only will I kick the shit out of your mouthy, ungrateful sister, but I’ll whip your ass while I’m at it, too.” Droplets of water flung in all directions from lips that had anything but their happy on.
Casey shivered.
While she floated.
Continually moving upward until she had to press her hands against the ceiling to keep from banging her head. Her cheek kissed the frigid, lumpy plaster, allowing her vision from only one eye, but it was enough of a view to see how feral her sister had become. The half of her mouth that wasn’t pressed to the ceiling became slack at her sister’s next words.
Wanda leaned in low, letting the tip of her nose touch Nina’s. Her whisper was sinister. “Don’t make me, Nina Statleon. You know darn well the kind of damage you could do. It’s an unfair advantage I won’t allow.” Her sister spat the warning with thin lips and a throbbing pulse to the right side of her forehead Casey worried might bust the vein that held that angry pulse in check.
Whoa. Exactly what kind of unfair advantage did Nina have against screaming fireballs? Was she some kind of killing machine? A ninja? Because from where Casey stood—er, floated—it would seem she was the one who’d been advantageous in this smackdown. It was
Nina
who was on fire, wasn’t it?
Remorse washed over her. She’d set someone on fire. Fire. She’d felt the flames shoot from her fingertips, purposely directed them with the intent of zinging Nina in a rage she’d never before experienced. Casey looked toward her fingers pressed against the ceiling—fingers that looked like they always did with nails that were trimmed short and neat—half expecting to see some kind of remaining residue, like soot.
Marty refocused Casey’s attention to the scene down below when she planted a foot on Nina’s abdomen, folding her slender arms across her chest. “We’re not letting you up until you promise not to annihilate Casey. Got that, Mistress of the Night?”
“Fuck you, Marty,” Nina shot back, but slowed her struggling.
Marty smiled glibly with a shake of her head. “Promise to behave.”
“The. Hell,” Nina said with a glare so fierce Casey felt the heat of it.
From all the way up near her entryway light fixture. Crazy that.
“Shark,” Casey managed to mumble just as her legs cracked against the ceiling, forcing her head to point fully south and look down at Nina, where she caught sight of her fish. Her eight-year-old carnival goldfish flopped by Nina’s head, desperately seeking air. “Shark! Water—he needs water!”
Quite contrary to her red-hot anger of earlier, tears began to form in the corners of her eyes over her fish. He’d managed to live far beyond expectation, and though he wasn’t a cat or a dog to snuggle with, Casey was attached to him.
Nina scrambled to her elbows. “Fuck you and your fish, you brat! I’ll fillet your goddamned guppy for dinner and sop him up whole with a biscuit.”