Girls Just Wanna Have Guns

by Toni McGee Causey

  “Back up, chère,” Aimee said. “I don’t think that crap you’re wearing could look any worse, but I’d hate to find out.”

  “That is so not fair!” Francesca complained. “Y’all always liked Bobbie Faye better. I’m just as much your niece as she is, and it’s my mom we’re trying to help. I should get to come in.”

  “If you want to help, then go home,” V’rai said, and she shut the door in Francesca’s face.

  * * *

  From: JT

  To: Simone

  Rumor of surveillance footage—BF killed the jeweler. Locals have it—not logged in yet.

  * * *

  * * *

  From: Simone

  To: JT

  Do we bring her in?

  * * *

  * * *

  From: JT

  To: Simone

  After she finds the stones, yes.

  * * *

  Bobbie Faye turned back to Ce Ce, who was still sucking air and sweating, her braids tangled as if she’d been running hard.

  “ ’Scuse me, baby girl.” Ce Ce put her big palm on Bobbie Faye’s arm to balance herself while she caught her breath. “But I gotta do this spell quick-like before the timing’s all wrong. This one’s going to work.” Then she looked around as if she’d just noticed the tension in the room and saw Trevor. Bobbie Faye knew it was Ce Ce’s first time to meet the man, and while Bobbie Faye had described him as accurately as possible, Ce Ce’s grip tightened on Bobbie Faye’s arm as if she just might slide to the floor in a puddle of goo. “Oh, my.” She leaned in and whispered a little too loudly in Bobbie Faye’s ear. “Honey, ‘sex on a stick’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

  Trevor turned from the window, decidedly amused and possibly even a little smug.

  “Geez, Ceece. Thanks. I was running a couple of quarts low on humiliation today.”

  “Young man,” V’rai said, “come on in this kitchen and help me make some coffee. And while you’re at it, you and I are going to have a talk.”

  Bobbie Faye blanched as Trevor said, “Talk? That isn’t a Southern euphemism for ‘I’m going to take you out back and shoot you,’ is it?”

  “Not today,” V’rai said. “Are you coming?” She held out an arm for him to guide, which Bobbie Faye knew was a complete ruse, because V’rai had bat sonar and had been negotiating that room for more than thirty years. She probably just wanted an excuse to feel Trevor’s biceps for herself; he slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and the old woman smiled back at Bobbie Faye. She wasn’t entirely sure what her favorite part was—her aunt getting a cheap thrill or Trevor having to meet her crazy family and his big bad agenty self looking just a little bit . . . awkward.

  Okay, the second one was definitely her favorite.

  “So . . . how is it?” Ce Ce asked, nodding Trevor’s direction as she unpacked containers of a clear gel from her big satchel.

  “What? No. No. Not happening. I’ve come to my senses.”

  “Are those the ‘I’m Stupid’ senses? Because girlfriend, you are in serious need of a U-turn if you’re headed that way.”

  “I second that,” Aimee said from where she held the rifle out the dining room window. “Besides, V’rai told me yesterday that he was hotter than—”

  “Aimee!” V’rai interrupted all the way from the kitchen. “You are not supposed to gossip.”

  “Damned bat ears,” Aimee grumbled, but she clammed up and went back to watching the activity on the front lawn.

  “How did V’rai already tell you that when we just got here—oh.” She saw Aimee’s look of asperity. “Right.” V’rai’s “sight” was a royal pain in the ass to the family. She’d known things about everyone, could see things no one ought to be able to see, and could predict things, though she generally refused to tell anyone unless it suited some purpose she had, which had been damned inconvenient at times when Bobbie Faye was a little girl. Her own mom had been very intimidated by V’rai’s talent. Emile had pretty much avoided interacting with his sister-in-law. (Bobbie Faye suspected he didn’t want to know what V’rai saw for him, on the off chance she saw he was going to die a terribly painful death . . . because that was one case where V’rai probably would have been happy to disclose the vision.)

  “Then it’s unanimous,” Ce Ce said, smearing some of the gel on Bobbie Faye’s left shoulder. “If V’rai says he’s hot, then you just need to—”

  “Wait—how do you know V’rai? I’ve been working for you since I was sixteen and you’ve never mentioned knowing my aunt and she’s never been in the store.”

  “Well, I know a lot of people we don’t talk about.” She dabbed some of the gel on Bobbie Faye’s left cheek just as Trevor laughed in the kitchen. Not just chuckling, but a deep, gorgeous laugh, and Bobbie Faye wondered what he and V’rai were talking about to make him laugh like that.

  “I do special delivery for all of these Landrys. V’rai don’t drive anymore—”

  “She drove? I thought she’d been blind since birth.”

  “Not since birth, but she had a system worked out with Aimee.” Aimee was the oldest sister among several siblings. “Aimee’s got that foot thing.”

  “The prosthetic?” All Bobbie Faye knew was that Aimee had been in some sort of car wreck when she was little and had lost a foot.

  “Yeah,” Aimee added, “I can’t feel the pedals, but she can’t see. We have a system worked out—she works the pedals and I navigate.”

  “So much for hoping the crazy wasn’t genetic.”

  “—until that time V’rai ran smack into the courthouse,” Aimee said. “That’s when the sheriff made her quit driving.”

  “Yeah, that was quick thinking.”

  Ce Ce smeared more gel on Bobbie Faye’s left arm and Bobbie Faye asked Aimee, “Has Marie been here lately?”

  “Can’t say.” Aimee glanced at the kitchen and then hunkered down over the rifle.

  “Who’s hiding her?”

  “I could really do for some coffee,” Aimee said. “Here.” She set the rifle down. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Bobbie Faye resisted the urge to shout chicken. As Aimee ambled toward the kitchen, Bobbie Faye looked down at her arm, expecting to see clear gel smeared everywhere in preparation for whatever weird spell Ce Ce was about to do, and when she saw what Ce Ce had done, she damn near had a heart attack.

  Eighteen

  “Ceece! What the hell are you doing?” Bobbie Faye stared at her left arm—it was royal blue. Down to her fingertips.

  “A spell, honey. A really strong protection spell. I think I figured out what wasn’t working with the other ones.”

  “I somehow wasn’t scary enough?”

  “Oh, no, you were plenty scary.”

  “Now there’s an endorsement everyone wants to hear from their employer. I would really like to get through this disaster without looking like a recruitment poster for Blueberry: Fruit of the Month Club.”

  “It’s not bad. It’s just a little blue,” Ce Ce said, not really looking Bobbie Faye directly in the eye when she said it, and she started packing up the empty containers, putting a lid on the one with leftover gel. “Maybe it was the prayer that turned it a little darker.”

  “Prayer?”

  “Maimee and her bunch. They were in the store. Lots of praying might have made this a lot bluer than I remembered.”

  “Might? If this was prayed over by Maimee, I’m probably lucky I didn’t just burst into flames. So what’s the chant thing we need to do?”

  The incantation. Ce Ce still didn’t meet her gaze. “There’s no chant thing for this one—the spell’s already in the gel.”

  “I’m done? I can go wash this off now?”

  “No,” Ce Ce said, moving toward the front door.

  “I really do not want to walk around looking like a Smurf exploded on me.”

  “Honey, it worked for Mel in Braveheart.”

  “Ceece—that side lost. The main character was drawn and quarte
red by the end of that movie.”

  “He probably tried to wash it off. Just don’t do that. Especially in the next couple of hours, because I’m not entirely sure about the exploding quality.”

  “Exploding?” Bobbie Faye felt her insides go squiggly.

  “You won’t explode, dear. I don’t think. But the protection spell has to have something to work on or it can go a little haywire. Which is why I have to get the rest of this back to a safe place,” she said, tapping her big purse where she’d stored the other containers. “Oh, and I think I may have accidentally solved that insurance quote problem you had. You be sure to live so I can tell you, okay? Bye now!”

  Ce Ce toddled out V’rai’s front door as Bobbie Faye looked in the living room mirror and stifled a yelp.

  John and the men he’d hired got into position at the mill; he watched through his binoculars as the crazy-assed voodoo priestess came barreling out the front door of the house, practically plowing over the idiots hovering between the door and their Hummer. He’d known that following Ce Ce was the way to pick up the trail—eventually, in just about any disaster, Bobbie Faye’s boss showed up to try to help the insane ditz. It was poetic justice that the same woman who’d hexed him years ago (and it took two fucking years for all of the warts to go away) should be the source of his finding Bobbie Faye and putting an end to her.

  He had three men spread out, and if she came out with the diamonds, they were his. Regardless, she was dead, out of his hair for good, and he’d still get the payoff. Sweet.

  Trevor listened to V’rai as he followed her out of the kitchen and the only tag Bobbie Faye could put to that expression was . . . deeply bothered. Though it turned into complete disbelief when he looked up and saw her. He stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Shut up,” she said before he could form a sentence.

  “How?” he asked, incredulous, joining her in the living room. “I only left you alone for five minutes. The mind reels at the damage you could do with a half an hour.”

  “Okay, seriously? I hate you. Shut up.”

  He stood way the hell too close, leaning into her space. “I believe we have established that you do not hate me.”

  “And I believe we have established,” she said in her best maniacally perky voice, “that you’re a manipulative bastard.” She smiled brightly just to put a period on that statement. “What gives?” She nodded toward Aunt V’rai because he had already reverted back to looking uncomfortable—which earned V’rai bonus points, as far as Bobbie Faye was concerned.

  “Your aunt apparently has ‘the sight’—something you might have mentioned.” He muttered, low to her, “Your family? Is nuttier than you are, and I would have said that was impossible.”

  “Boy,” V’rai said, “I’m blind, not deaf.”

  Trevor nodded toward V’rai. “She said your dad has a different kind of sight—that he can find anything that’s missing.”

  “Oh, yeah, anything that he wants to find. Which is why I’m here.”

  “Not just because Marie’s been here?”

  She wanted to be there about as much as she wanted a lobotomy. Come to think of it, a lobotomy would have been much more fun. Having to put herself in the position of asking her dad for anything? Made her want to shoot something. Several times. And then maybe kick it. “No,” she finally answered. “Not just because of that. The rice husks tell me she’s been here and it’s still a big guess about why. We could spend days looking for her, and we don’t have days.”

  “So, you’re going to ask him to help track the diamonds.”

  She realized Trevor had given up trying to hide anything from V’rai, which meant V’rai had really impressed him with her freaky-assed “sight” skills with whatever it was she’d been able to see about him. Bobbie Faye wished she could ask V’rai what she had seen, what about Trevor made her trust him—because V’rai seemed to be so comfortable with him—but her aunt was exceptionally close-mouthed about that sort of thing. Of all of the people in all of the freaking South, where everyone would tell you anything if you stood in their proximity, up to and including anything that could completely humiliate a member of their own family, Bobbie Faye had to have the one aunt who actually knew stuff and wouldn’t talk about it.

  She turned back to Trevor’s question. “Old Man Landry—”

  “Bobbie Faye,” V’rai chastised, “he’s your dad. Call him something proper.”

  “Cranky Old Bastard,” she said pointedly, and V’rai shook her head, annoyed. “He doesn’t need to track them. He just sees stuff. Wherever it is. Even if it’s a couple of thousand miles away, he can pinpoint it.” Trevor raised an eyebrow, disbelief evident. “Yeah, I didn’t believe it either, but people call him from all over the country sometimes and he tells them where their stuff is. Unless, of course, it’s a tiara that could be the map to a lot of pirate treasure.” Her mom’s Contraband Days Queen tiara. A map old Lafitte had made for his treasure passed down through the generations. Lost now somewhere in the Mississippi River mud. Then she registered that Trevor had tensed, looking over her shoulder at the kitchen entrance.

  “That treasure wouldn’t be nothin’ but trouble,” a man’s voice barked, a Cajun accent thicker than V’rai’s, and Bobbie Faye turned to face Old Man Landry—Etienne—where he glowered at them. “An’ you don’t need no more of dat.”

  “Gee, millions to live on. Dear God, the suffering I’d go through.”

  “An’ everybody on the planet tryin’ to take dat from you.”

  “I don’t exactly recall you giving a damn before, so you can stuff it now.”

  “You don’t know nothin’. You a crazy damn coo-yôn for lettin’ yo’ ’elf get mixed up in all of this—you don’t got a single damned bit of common sense, girl, do you?”

  Bobbie Faye bristled and Trevor dropped an arm around her shoulder.

  “At least I have guts,” she told Old Man Landry as he strolled into the living room, setting his cowboy hat down on top of the armory on the dining room table. His tanned leathery face, loose baggy skin, and white hair broadcast his age, though his voice was still strong. But it was his cataract-white eyes that tended to grab people’s attention.

  “Guts will get you killed,” he snapped, and V’rai stepped between them and put a placating hand on her brother’s arm.

  “She needs help, Etienne.”

  “Marie’s in trouble,” the old man said, and then he looked at Bobbie Faye. “She’s the baby of the family and we’re all that’s standin’ between her and a bullet from Emile. I’m not holdin’ a grudge against you, girl, I’m telling you for true.”

  “Holding a grudge?” Trevor asked.

  “She shot him a while back,” V’rai answered, as airily as if she were saying, “and then we all had ice cream.”

  Trevor arched a brow at Bobbie Faye.

  “It was a minor disagreement,” she said. “I should have aimed better.”

  “Remind me not to piss you off.”

  “Too late,” she said, and then back to Old Man Landry, “So you’re really not going to help.”

  “Mais non, I’m helpin’—you just too damned stubborn to listen. Go home. I got dis covered.”

  “And while I’m at it, maybe I should just bake cookies for the people who are trying to kill me—maybe I can Betty Crocker them into a diabetic coma and they’ll conveniently forget all about me.”

  Trevor chuckled and when she glanced up at him, she knew the bastard had one more thing in his research on her than she’d like. “Oh, bite me. It’s not my fault those PTA people got sick on the cookies I sent that time.”

  “Although I think fourteen people getting their stomach pumped in one night was a new record for the hospital here.”

  “So totally hating you right now.”

  “You’ll get over it.”

  She hadn’t quite pinged ’til that moment that he had his arm around her and she wanted to smack the crap out of him, but she was too aware of her dad and V’
rai watching them, smug little smiles on their faces. “What?” she asked Landry.

  The old man jerked a thumb toward Trevor and asked V’rai, “He’s the one?”

  “Yep. He’s the one.”

  “The one what?” Bobbie Faye asked, and neither of them answered. Instead, they appraised Trevor. Well, it was possible they were appraising him—they’d turned toward him, heads cocked, chins lifted, but since V’rai was blind and Etienne had cataracts the size of a small car, they could just as easily have tuned into some sort of Cosmic Nutcase Radio.

  “You,” Old Man Landry said, pointing a finger at Trevor, “better take care of her. She’s a handful, but anythin’ happens to her, I’ll be huntin’ your coo-yôn ass down, you got dat?”

  “Where in the hell do you get off acting like you care about—” Bobbie Faye’s voice rose and cracked and her heart thudded against her chest because all of those years, all of those damned years, there wasn’t so much as a freaking birthday card, and he was going to stand there and act like he cared? She felt her nails dig into the palms of her hands and it pissed her off that the old man could get to her.

  Trevor stopped her with a squeeze, which confused her, and the confusion turned to downright amazement when she caught his furious, disgusted expression aimed at her dad. “She can handle herself,” he warned, and there was no doubt it was a threat. “And if she needs me, I’ve got her back.”

  Bobbie Faye tried not to let her breath sound ragged as she exhaled, but she might have tucked herself a little closer to Trevor, might have hooked a thumb in the back belt loop of his jeans, all purely accidental, of course.

  V’rai cracked a wide smile and chuckled. “He’ll do,” she said to her brother.

  “You’d better be right,” the old man answered.

  “Right about what?” Bobbie Faye asked and they all were suddenly preoccupied with the ceiling or the floor. Even Trevor.