Erin pinned him with a dark glare. “It’s not my fault. Roy said he’d had a vasectomy.”
“He told every woman that,” Vera argued. “He just preferred riding bareback. You were supposed to be on birth control.”
“It makes me bloat before my period! I can’t be naked on camera if I’m bloated.”
“Well, now you’re going to be bloated for another six months,” Vera said with satisfaction. “Congratulations.”
I was starting to feel dizzy from the rapid-fire conversation. I needed to redirect the participants. “Why did you kill Roy?”
“Because he lied,” Erin shot back. “He knocked me up after he said it wasn’t possible. When I told him, he said that I couldn’t be in the movies any longer because no one wants to see a fat girl in porn.”
“He really was a pig,” I groused.
“Totally,” Vera agreed.
“I suggested we try pregnancy porn, but he said he couldn’t agree to that because he needed to feel inspired before a shoot and the very idea grossed him out,” Erin explained. “I was trying to talk to him outside the restaurant when he told me that the money was going to stop coming in because he had his eye on someone new. I think it was one of your cousins. He said that I would have to raise the baby with Bobby because he had no money to give me.
“I couldn’t live with that.” Her voice had gone shrill. “He dragged me into this whole mess. Bobby might be an idiot, but he knows we didn’t have sex in the last three months. He’d never believe this baby is his. I needed that freaking money to convince Bobby to stay.”
Things finally slipped into place. “You tried to blackmail Roy in the parking lot, but he had nothing to offer. So you stabbed him.”
Erin didn’t look sorry in the least. “I stabbed him and then I had to drag him out of the truck. He was still alive when I started hauling him out, but he didn’t last long.
“I saw you upstairs that morning,” she continued. “You were at the window. I was certain you saw me.”
“I didn’t.”
“I had to be sure. You were acting strange when you started asking questions at the real estate office the next day. I was certain you were playing a game.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Erin did absolutely everything wrong that day,” Barry explained. “She should’ve left Roy’s truck and taken off on foot, but she didn’t think that far ahead. She panicked and drove to the real estate office, where Vera and I met her. By that time, the police had already been alerted. We couldn’t very well drive the truck back.”
“No,” I agreed. “It was too late.”
“I watched you,” Barry explained. “I was out there every night watching you. I saw you and your cousin snooping around the storage shed one night.”
We were hiding a Ouija board because we’d freaked each other out while drunk. “And last night? Which one of you tried to get into my apartment last night?”
“That was me again,” Barry said. “I was going to make it quick. Really, if you had just minded your own business. I thought that if we took you out of the equation Hunter would turn his attention to that investigation and forget about Roy. There would be no reason for him to look at me because I have no ties to you.”
“Hunter isn’t an idiot,” I pointed out. “Two murders in essentially the same spot would have to be tied together.”
“Not necessarily.”
Oh, geez. They were all idiots. All three of them. “And what happens now?” I demanded. “Are you going to split Roy’s life insurance three ways and live forever?”
“We’re going to do what we have to do,” Vera replied, matter-of-fact. “We may not like each other sometimes — most of the time when it comes to Erin — but we’re tied together in blood now. Unfortunately, some of that blood will be yours.”
My heart began slamming against my rib cage. “If you kill us, Hunter will never stop chasing you.”
“He won’t know it was us,” Barry replied. “We’ll set it up to look like a murder-suicide. Most people will believe that Sebastian has been pining for you since high school and once word got out that you might get back together with Hunter he snapped. It’s fairly straightforward.”
“I really am sorry,” Vera said. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I have nothing against either of you. It’s just ... I can’t go to prison. This is the only way to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
“You could’ve stopped short of covering up a murder,” Sebastian shot back. “That’s one way to avoid prison.”
“It’s far too late for that.” She turned to Barry. “Shoot them.”
He scowled. “Why do I have to shoot them? Why can’t you shoot them?”
“I don’t think you guys have thought this through,” Erin said to nobody in particular, her eyes on us. “I mean ... I’m pretty sure this guy is gay.”
“Who says I’m gay?” Sebastian practically exploded.
“This is not the time,” I hissed, pinning him with a look. “It doesn’t matter what they think. What matters is that we get out of this.”
“Fine, but I’m not gay.” He smoothed the front of his shirt and huffed.
“Later,” I gritted out, my eyes going to the door behind Erin. That seemed our best bet. “We need to make a break for it. We’ll get only one chance.”
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
Vera and Barry were still arguing, so I figured we were okay to move. We’d barely made it two steps before Erin started flapping her arms.
“They’re running! Shoot them!”
I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw Barry reaching into his pocket, Erin’s words serving as a verbal cattle prod.
Things started happening in slow motion after that. I shoved Sebastian as hard as I could even as the strange bubbling sensation I’d felt the night I burned Monica’s eyebrows off started again. It was as if I could no longer hear in real time. Voices were drawn out, and unnaturally deep.
I willed myself to keep it together, but it was too late to stop what was about to happen. Instinctively, I recognized that. Still, I wanted to protect Sebastian. “Get. Down.” Even my voice sounded alien.
Sebastian didn’t argue with the order. Perhaps he sensed something big was about to happen, too. He’d barely dropped to the floor when a light formed out of nowhere. It reminded me of what had happened the previous night as I waited for Hunter to arrive. This time, the explosion that accompanied the wave of sunny light was deafening.
If you asked me where the origin point was, I wouldn’t be able to say. All I know is that we were surrounded by a cloud of light. When the explosion came, it shook the funeral home.
Erin screamed.
Barry yelled.
Vera ran for the door.
Before any of them could take more than two steps, the barrage of magic ripped free and slammed into them, rocking them backward. The blow knocked me back, and my head just missed an end table as I smacked against the floor.
The noise ceased.
Erin’s scream was cut off.