No. Damn it, what was my echo-self doing? Though I had made some boneheaded choices, I never considered myself stupid. But here was the proof that I very well might be a complete moron. After the disaster of the afternoon, my sixteen-year-old echo self had sought out Bill Tucker again. Inadvertently, my gaze slid to where the fae prince stood.
I must have a thing for bad boys. And my dad was right, Grammy B’s stubborn streak. Everyone had told me Bill was using me. I’d shown myself the video camera, heard about the list. I knew my parents would be out of their heads with worry. And I was still in there.
Josephine Louise Whitmore, you are a dumbass.
If our lives hadn’t been tied together I would have left her to it. Even if I managed to prevent the accident, Bill might knock me up. Or give me an STD.
But our lives were bound together. I had to help myself. Even when I wanted to strangle myself.
The large doors to the barn were sealed up tight but there had to be a standard size door around there somewhere. I lurched ahead, stumbling on the uneven and soggy ground. Robin caught me by the arm before I went careening into a drainage ditch. “Lamb, think this through. If you bust in on them again and they take off in that car, you’ll have engineered the very situation you’ve been striving to avoid.”
A sound of frustration bubbled from the pit of my stomach. “So, what should I do? Sit out here and wait for them to finish? I can’t do that.”
Misting rainwater dropped off his hood and onto my hand. “Maybe we should use some magic.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“You know how in the story of Cinderella the faery godmother turns a pumpkin into a sweet ride? Maybe, you should do the opposite.” He chucked his chin toward the car.
“I forgot my—” I held out my hand and the magic wand appeared into it the same way it had that morning. “Never mind. How do I do it? Say bipitty bopitty boo?”
“Not unless you want Disney to sue your ass. It’s just like with the time travel spell. Imagine the outcome you want and focus that will through the wand. It’s a tool that will manifest what you envision.”
I envisioned a pumpkin. Why not stick with the classics? Straightening my arm, I pointed the wand at the car and pictured a massive orange gourd.
Nothing happened.
“It’s not working,” I grumbled.
“Try again.” Robin placed his hand over mine. “You can do this, Joey.”
I closed my eyes and took strength from the heat of his hands. The warmth coursed through me and shook something loose.
“That’s it,” Robin crooned in my ear. Every hair on my body stood at attention. A prickle of raw power, like that of electricity proceeding a lightning storm, surged through me. The world faded away until it was just the two of us, the wand and the car. Against the shell of my ear, the fae’s lips whispered a rhyme. “If you can see, it can be.”
I repeated the words to myself, picturing the pumpkin, seeing it.
My lids lifted and my lips parted. There before me stood a four-foot-tall pumpkin, complete with trailing vines and crooked stem.
A thrill coursed through me. I had done it. “It worked!”
“Not exactly.” Robin circled my chin with one finger and adjusted it so I looked to the spot beside the pumpkin.
Where the Camaro still sat.
“Damn it,” I snarled. I’d done magic, a real honest to goodness transformation spell like a real faery godmother. And I’d frigging missed. Morphed the Chestnut tree not the stupid car.
“Try again,” Robin urged, but as he spoke, the barn door was dragged open. The inside looked like a gaping maw of an angler fish as two flashlight beams flicked on.
“Joey,” I called and ran toward my echo self. “Come with me, now. You’ve got everyone worried sick about you.”
“What are you doing here?” Young Joey shone the light into her own face, probably to add a solid visual to how irritated she was by my arrival.
Her hair was mussed and pieces of straw clung to it and her sweater. She had that just gone for a roll in the hay look. I glared at her and at Billy. Had the idiots even practiced safe sex?
“That’s my question exactly. Did you not pick up on the fact that he’s total scum? What about the list?