Girls Just Wanna Have Guns (37 page)

Ce Ce had barely caught her breath as she dabbed at a fine sheen of sweat. “Oh, good, everyone’s here.”

“Yeah, about that,” Bobbie Faye said, hauling Ce Ce a couple of feet away from everyone. “What in the hell were you thinking, inviting my dad and V’rai and Cam? This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“It’s okay, hon, we need ’em.”

“You
are
following the plan, right?”

“Oh, sure, com
pletely
. Except not.” She turned to the crowd. “We need to get started.”

Francesca paced. “You have got to be kidding me! You can’t be dumb enough to believe in all of that silly junk! All that blue stuff did was give you a bad complexion.”

“I don’t know about that,” Trevor said. “The whole silo blew and Bobbie Faye’s still here. I think Ce Ce’s got a lot of power.”

As Francesca started to argue. Ce Ce said to her, “Keep it up, sugar, and I’ll make sure all of your hair falls out.”

Francesca clamped her lips closed, but she was clearly unhappy.

“Now, Bobbie Faye, come on over here.” Ce Ce led Bobbie Faye to a set of three concentric rings Monique was setting up: a dozen candles formed an outer ring and a dozen little jars of some sort of liquid Bobbie Faye wasn’t about to question too closely formed an inner ring, with
sand between the two. “Careful when you step over,” Ce Ce instructed. “Don’t break the circle.”

“What’s this?” Bobbie Faye asked. She’d seen Ce Ce do locator spells for people who’d misplaced their cell phones or keys or laptops and even one time when a woman lost a baby grand piano. The woman never did explain how she managed to lose something the size of a cow, but Ce Ce helped her find it. The locator spells were usually made up of a little bit of spice tossed over the client’s shoulders, and then the person had to turn around a few times while saying something stupid in another language which could very possibly mean “I now humiliate myself.” Bobbie Faye had expected Ce Ce to come up with something a little flashier because the goal was to completely agitate Francesca, but she still expected the spell to be an actual locator spell. This? Not so much.

“You need to know that this,” Ce Ce said, holding her hand as Bobbie Faye stepped over the candles, “is the most powerful spell I’ve ever done. But it’s one-time only—we won’t get another chance.”

“I am not here to watch
The Bobbie Faye Show
,” Francesca huffed, pacing off to the side.

“You’re not going to turn me into a chicken or anything, are you?”

“That would be fun,” Francesca said, cheering a bit.

“No,” Ce Ce answered, but she didn’t look Bobbie Faye in the eye.

“We don’t think so, anyway,” Monique added. Ce Ce frowned at her. “What? You were worried, is all I’m sayin’.”

“If you want to keep being my apprentice, you gotta learn when not to tell that part.” Ce Ce turned to Bobbie Faye and said, “You’ll be fine. There are just a lot of ingredients and everything has to be just right to pull it off.”

Bobbie Faye leaned close and whispered, “What happened to the simple locator spell we talked about?”

“You gotta have touched the thing at least once. You
didn’t touch the diamonds, so I have to do something stronger.”

“How strong?” This was starting to worry her. The last time Ce Ce did something strong, Bobbie Faye had looked like a giant blue jellyfish.

“It’s a love protection spell,” Monique volunteered and then slapped her hands over her mouth when Ce Ce threw her a withering glare.

“A love protection spell? Like to protect me from love?

Where in the hell was
that
a couple of years ago?”

“Hey, still standing here,” Cam said, and Bobbie Faye blushed.

“Sorry.”

“No, I deserved that.”

She frowned at him—he was just being so freaking confusing. Accommodating. Cam was
never
accommodating. Benoit’s being shot and in surgery had clearly unsettled him, because he wasn’t being himself.

“How is this supposed to work for what I need?”

“It’s a combination spell—it gives you the protection of the strength of the people who love you and that gives you the purity of sight—you’ll know the real thing when you see it.”

“The diamonds?”

“Um,” Ce Ce said, looking away, “them, too. Now, I just need you to stand really still while I do this.”

“Wait—people who love me?” This was so fucking not what Bobbie Faye had in mind. She wanted to annoy and upset Francesca by looking super-empowered, and that wasn’t going to work by having the most humiliating moment of her entire life played out in front of Trevor, or for that matter, Cam. And her family. And those band guys who were gaping at this whole thing. (If that one guy made the sign of the cross any harder, he was going to dent his forehead.)

“Yes,” Ce Ce answered, “five people who love you. Enough to die for you. And the spell will know if they’re lying.”
She sprinkled something purple around Bobbie Faye’s feet. “Which is why, a lot of times, it doesn’t work. . . .”

Bobbie Faye didn’t like the way Ce Ce’s voice sort of trailed off there at the end. “What happens if it doesn’t work?” she whispered, as if the spell would somehow hear her and start paying closer attention. Monique kept one hand plastered over her mouth, but started waving the other in the classic, “I know, I know, call on me,” maneuver.

“We don’t want to think about that,” Ce Ce said, and then when Bobbie Faye stopped her from moving to the next ingredient, she caved. “Well, the person in the circle usually dies.”

Bobbie Faye leapt out of the circle.

“No fucking way. Where’s the back-up spell?” Ce Ce gave her a blank look. “Please tell me you didn’t put everything into this one spell?” She didn’t even know how to process that. Everything she’d hoped to accomplish with this little insanity had just boomeranged on her. Maybe if she went and found Lori Ann, that might give her one person for the spell, and on his most desperate day, Roy would count for two. “I am sooooo not getting in that circle, Ceece. You’re five people short, so we’re just gonna—” and the next thing she knew, Trevor had picked her up and lifted her over the candles, setting her down into the center of the circle again, the heat of his hands pressing through her thin dress at her waist.

“She’s only four people short.”

She gaped at him, and felt a sudden presence behind her as Cam stepped up to the circle.

“She’s only three people short,” Cam said. The shock that slammed to her brain nearly switched off the part that told her legs how to work.

“What are you doing?” she asked him.

“What I should have done a long time ago.”

“See, I told you,” Francesca piped up, “that Cam wasn’t going to like it that you got engaged to someone else.”

Glaciers cracked and melted at the North Pole, millennia
passed, spaceships landed, the world ended and began again before there was a single sound in the room. Bobbie Faye was absolutely certain her head had exploded and no one had bothered to tell her. Cam looked at her left hand, then looked past her to Trevor and said, a little too casually, “She’s not wearing a ring.”

“She will be,” Trevor said for the second time that day, and Bobbie Faye wondered if he’d lost his mind, because it was one thing to make Francesca annoyed that Bobbie Faye was getting all of this good attention, but there was no way in hell Cam was going to swallow that as easily.

Francesca leaned in to where Cam stood in the circle, a wicked little smile playing in her eyes and she said to him, “I’ll bet you wish you hadn’t thrown Bobbie Faye’s engagement ring into the lake now, don’t you.”

“Ring?” Bobbie Faye asked, the word rough as razor blades in her throat.
He had a ring?

Cam glared at Francesca, and for Bobbie Faye, the satisfied expression on her cousin’s face was the final piece of the puzzle clicking into place. All of Francesca’s double-crossing hadn’t just been because of the usefulness of having someone like Bobbie Faye as a scapegoat for the diamonds. Bobbie Faye had what Francesca always wanted: attention. And, from the expression on Fluffy Head’s face, it galled her that Bobbie Faye had
Cam’s
attention. No, framing Bobbie Faye wasn’t enough. Francesca hadn’t been able to resist the symmetry: take everything away from Bobbie Faye, and make it look like the woman Cam had chosen instead of her had shot and (maybe killed) his best friend. Hell, Francesca probably hoped Cam would have to be the arresting officer.

“I didn’t mean for you to find out this way,” Cam said, referring to the ring, and Bobbie Faye came back to the present. Trevor was searching her expression, frowning, since she hadn’t responded, not even with a smart-ass answer.

“Only two short,” Ce Ce said, stepping into the circle and bringing them back to the task.

“Only one short,” her uncle said, joining them, and
Bobbie Faye glanced over at him: tears in his eyes. She knew he’d cared about her—her mom always took her to visit him when she was a kid—but this much? This wasn’t poss—

“None short,” her dad said.

Of all of the people Bobbie Faye thought would have stepped up to fill that spot, her dad wouldn’t have even made the list. Rage rushed her body, a heat-seeking missile wanting to detonate on someone, and she couldn’t tell if she was livid that he had never said anything about caring for her before, or angry because he was probably lying right now.

“You realize if I die, I am coming back to haunt your ass.”

Her dad chuckled. “Girl, there’s a lot you don’t know about. Now hush and let Ce Ce do her thing.”

Bobbie Faye wished she understood, she really did. How could he love her at all? How could he stand there as if he did, when he’d never been in her life? When they’d been so hungry after her mom had died, and she’d volunteered to clean up two restaurants after-hours just so she could bring home leftovers to Roy and Lori Ann. Where was he then?

“Let it go,” Ce Ce instructed, “and look for peace. Face true north—that would be Trevor.”

Bobbie Faye faced him, brushing away the traitorous tears running down her cheeks.

“If I croak, you’d better kill somebody,” she told him.

“Deal.”

“Hush,” Ce Ce said. “Now put your hand on Trevor’s heart and Trevor, you put yours on Bobbie Faye’s. Everyone else, place their right hand on Bobbie Faye. No cell phones, no talking through the spell. No moving away, either, no matter what happens. If you do, I can’t promise you’ll be safe.”

Bobbie Faye placed her palm on Trevor’s chest and she would have sworn electricity jumped from his to hers as her own heartbeat accelerated. Ce Ce’s words sifted back
to her from a few minutes ago:
People who love you. Enough to die for you
. Trevor had stepped up, immediately, no hesitating. She gasped and looked up into Trevor’s eyes and knew he saw her finally understand.

At the same time, she felt Cam’s hand at the base of her neck as he stood directly behind her, his fingers threaded through her hair. He’d wanted her out of his life. He’d been glad she was gone, and he’d made it crystal clear that she should stay gone. She’d have never guessed he’d been contemplating getting married.

Or that there had been an engagement ring.

In a lake, no less . . . and yet . . . he was standing in this circle. Along with her uncle and dad, and the whole world made absolutely no sense.

Ce Ce had begun the spell. There was smoke (Bobbie Faye didn’t know how or where it started, but it filled the room) and a whirlwind of pressure and movement around the circle, but the wind didn’t knock the art from the interior displays. The candles flickered, and a roar echoed off the tall glass walls, and then the musicians’ instruments started playing . . . Bobbie Faye wasn’t sure who was more shocked—her, Francesca, or the musicians who weren’t actually
playing
their instruments. Suddenly there was the brightest white light she’d ever seen, and it was emanating from . . .

Her.

Oh, wow
.

She couldn’t look away from Trevor’s eyes, and his hand over her heart was warm and powerful and molten and she felt like they’d interconnected somehow. Then energy flowed from everyone’s hands, and it felt like . . . love streaming through her . . . from her uncle and her dad. And such a flood of feeling from Cam. She didn’t understand, and her gaze never left Trevor’s, but Ce Ce’s words tugged her somewhere else . . . words about listening to her heart, listening to her instincts, sharpening her senses for her own protection. The noises roaring around them increased and the lights snapped out and there were bizarre
crashes going on somewhere beyond the circle, but inside there, she felt safe. If this was dying, then that was okay.

She saw the night sky above them, which was really weird when you think about it, because she was inside and she didn’t remember this building having skylights. But there it was, filled with stars, and she floated somewhere above the city. Maybe she
had
died back there, but she didn’t feel like haunting anyone just yet. She felt like floating there, watching the stars, until from somewhere far away she heard Ce Ce say, “Now call her back, Trevor.”

When she opened her eyes, Trevor breathed a haggard sigh, his face drawn and worried. He was on his knees, cradling her in his arms in the center of the circle, Cam kneeling just inches away, a sick expression in his eyes. Bobbie Faye looked back and forth between them, and Trevor said, “I’ve been calling your name for five minutes.”

She looked around and saw Ce Ce, who was handing out her card to the musicians. “Ceece, did it work?”

“Honey, it worked, or you wouldn’t still be here.”

“Are you okay?” Cam asked as Trevor helped her up, and she didn’t know how to answer that. In a way, yes. There was a peace she felt that she hadn’t expected, and maybe that was because of the outcome of the spell—hell, she was still alive, score that one in the win column—but the how and the love amidst the loneliness in her life? Nothing made sense. “You’re kinda,” Cam looked her up and down, “glowy.”

She looked down and sure enough, there was almost the impression of a halo effect around her, and she lifted her arms and examined them. “Well, it beats the hell outta being blue.”