accidental 11 - accidentally ever after (17 page)

Duh, duh, duh! She wanted to scream.

“I have her now, Stokes!” the man with Marty yelled.

But she had no time to fret over her foolishness as flaming arrows began arcing the sky. Grabbing the harness on Carl’s back, she began to run for cover, but he was slow and sluggish, his gait hindered by whatever had happened to him in his human form.

And then she remembered.
Again.
She could damn well breathe fire.

Dragging Carl as fast as she could, she
did
head for the cottage, darting between flaming arrows as though she were wearing a pair of Air Jordans rather than four-inch heels.

“Stay behind me, Carl!” she hollered as an arrow landed directly in front of her. “Don’t move!”

Inhaling deeply, she prayed her reach would go far enough into the woods to fry the bastards.

The harsh taste of smoke filled her lungs, forcing her to exhale in a long, shuddering cough. Fire erupted in a molten orange-and-blue stream, thick and wide as she swerved her head and just as she heard the men scream, she heard her name.

“Toni! Over here! Come to me!” Jon bellowed as what sounded like Dannan’s footsteps pounded through the forest.

“Toniiiiiii! We’re coming!” Nina roared.

Yeah. Right. That wasn’t Nina. She wasn’t falling for that again. Instead, she exhaled harder, moving her head from side to side until stream after stream of fire flew from her lips.

“Knock it the fuck off!” Nina yelled again as footsteps neared.

Toni hiccupped, stopping the flow of fire as she peered into the night.

As the smoke cleared, Nina stomped forward waving away the smoke, half of her hair and a portion of her gown totally obliterated, the bluebirds, though quiet now, still circling her head, their feathers singed and puffs of smoke spewing from their tiny beaks.

“You got the bad guys. Now cut it the fuck out and listen to me, Fire Starter! It’s
me
, nitwit!”

Oh no. No, no, no. Toni backed away, pushing Carl with her. They rounded the corner of the back of the cottage, plowing their way through deep snow to stop on a small patio area with a back door. As footsteps grew closer, so did Toni’s panic.

Obviously, these particular bad guys weren’t going to give up so easily, and she had to protect Carl or they’d be making reindeer soup out of him—or Nina’d make Toni soup out of
her
if he ended up hurt. But he was too slow to make a break for it.

Think, Toni. Think. What’s the one thing they’d never suspect you to do?

Trap herself
inside
the cottage.

Holding her finger to her lips, she looked at Carl to signal him to be quiet, yanking on his harness and dragging him toward the tiny red door.

With a slow turn of the handle, she found it swiveled all the way. Thank God.

Leaning down, she whispered in Carl’s ear, “On three, buddy,” and pointed to the cottage door. Holding up her fist, she threw up her fingers one at a time and on three, burst through the cottage door, yanking Carl in with her and slamming it shut.

She whirled around, her eyes searching for a lock or a bolt to secure their safety as she heard the rumble of footsteps coming from the other end of the tiny cottage. “Front door’s open, dingbat.”

Her heart began to pound as Carl pulled away from her, running toward the front of the cottage. “No, Carl!” she hissed. “That’s not Nina!”

“Get in here, nutball! Now!”

Okay, maybe that was Nina. How could she be sure?

And then there were gasps.

Then the maybe-not-so-fake-after-all Nina said, “For the love of dolphins. Is there anybody in your fucked-up kingdom who doesn’t have more issues than
Playboy
, Flawless?”

Toni snuck to the quaint kitchen’s entryway and poked her head around the corner to see everyone was gathered about a big claw-foot tub.

But was it really everyone, or were they just shifters
pretending
to be everyone?

How was she supposed to know? They needed a safe word or something.

“I smell you, Fire Starter,” Nina said. “Get the hell in here, and do it now, or I swear on these stupid wings flapping around behind me, I’m going to rip your feet off and take them to the damn castle myself!”

Toni stepped out from the entryway and into the light of the sitting room as the group parted to fully reveal the claw-foot tub.

Toni’s mouth fell open, but only after she, too, gasped.

Note to Realm,

Look, I’ve been introduced to many a wonder here in your magical kingdom. Good times I’ll remember for always. A gift, really. But this? Well, you’ve outdone yourself. Kudos.

She lifted a finger and pointed toward the tub. “Is that a…?”

“Mermaid, honey. I’m a mermaid. You want me to sound it out for you?”

* * * *

Squirrels and rabbits and all manner of small forest creatures hovered in a corner by the fireplace, shivering as Nina began scooping them up, stroking their heads while she ordered the bluebirds to explain that they weren’t there to harm them.

Seven small men in pointy red-and-white-striped knit caps with festive suspenders attached to their breeches stood to the right inside the cozy cottage, arms crossed over their chests, stout, short legs wide apart, stoic faces in place.

One sneezed, and without thinking, Toni said, “
Gesundheit
.” She approached him with slow steps, taking care not to frighten him. “I’m Toni. You’re Sneezy, right?”

“
Who
?” he barked up at her, his face scrunching, making his bulbous red nose almost disappear into his face.

“Sorry. I meant, what’s your name?”

“Charming’s my name,” he growled at her, his face screwing up into a scowl. “We’re the Seven Wharfs. And I warn ye, harm one hair on her head, I’ll make yer liver my supper!”

“Okay, little man, chill on the death threats,” Nina said, patting him on the head with a grin. “We ain’t gonna hurt anybody. Sit yourself down over there with your little friends and mind your manners.”

Then she turned to Toni, dropping two fuzzy rabbits into her arms. “Make nice. They’re freaked-out.”

Jon sat beside the tub on his haunches as he listened to Muriel explain to him how she’d ended up in a cottage in the middle of nowhere after a battle with some sea witch named Pricilla, while the real Marty and Wanda rifled around in the kitchen, scavenging for food.

Muriel was simply stunning, her red hair spilling from the bathtub and falling to the floor in pools of color. The sapphire-blue of her clamshell bikini top shimmered, reflecting against the four or five inches of water left in the tub.

But her tail? Her tail was magnificent, regal in its ever-changing color, iridescent against the firelight.

And it was a
tail
.

She was a real mermaid.

O. M. G.

“What happened?” Jon asked, his gorgeous face full of concern.

Yeah, what happened, Perfect Ten?

Muriel’s eyes burned with anger, her creamy cheeks flushing red. “It was Pricilla the Sea Bitch! I angered her when I clubbed one of her smarmy pet eels to death after he made a pass at me. She hurled me from the sea and I landed here.”

“How long have you been here?” Jon asked, looking around the cozy cottage with its homemade quilts and tiny chairs made out of rough wood.

“Too long,” she drawled, fanning her fin, her eyes sad.

“How have you survived like this, Muriel?” Jon asked, leaning into the beautiful woman…er, fish.

She lifted a long, slender finger and pointed to the small, very angry-looking Wharf men with a gentle smile. “These little darlings fill the bathtub to keep my fin alive. But they can’t carry me to the ocean and they simply cannot do this forever. I so long for home,” she wailed, a tear escaping her emerald-green eye. “Damn that thorn in my side Pricilla! When I get my hands on her, I’m going to dine on her eels for supper!”

“You know each other?” Toni asked, her eyebrow raised. Why it bothered her that Jon knew this luscious creature was a sure sign she needed to take a step back. She had no claims to him. He’d kissed her, and he hadn’t been back for more.

Jerk.

Jon nodded affably, his smile fond, his white teeth flashing as he allowed a squirrel to cuddle against his ear, scratching its chin. “Aye, she often swam near my boat with her sisters when I was a child. We’ve known each other many moons, have we not, Muriel?”

She fairly purred her consent. “Indeed we have, I—um, Jon. Some of my most precious memories are from the days we spent together, when the sun was high and the water warm as a freshly heated bath.”

Yeah, yeah. Good times.

“So why don’t we just take her to the ocean?” Toni asked. “I heard it as we searched for berries, didn’t I? It can’t be that far.”

“’Tis dangerous, Toni,” Jon said, as though she were some kind of dolt. “You have no idea the kind of power Pricilla the Sea Bitch has—she can steal your very voice.”

Toni rolled her eyes at him. “Is that all? I can think of a few voices I’d survive without. Don’t be such a sissy. We just need to get her to the water’s edge, right? Dump her in…I mean, gently place her in the ocean, and we out. What’s the big deal?”

“You know nothing of the sea, Toni,” he spat, his blue eyes angry, his expression tense.

Was he willing to let Muriel suffer because he was scared of some crabby witch? Clearly, he wasn’t so flawless after all.

The long day, her frustration, her aching, pinched-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives feet, and her stupid, confining dress made her lash out. “No,
you
know nothing, Jon Doe!” she yelled at him, stomping toward the back door, her arms full of shivering bunnies.

She opened the door and stepped outside, sucking in the bitterly cold air.

“Touchy, touchy, Red. Your green’s showing,” Nina crooned in her ear.

Toni whipped around to face the vampire. “Oh just hush. I’m not jealous. What’s to be jealous of? Her gorgeous hair, her perky breasts? Her emerald-green eyes? You’d think being in the water all the time would shrivel her creamy skin to a prune. But no. She’s this close to perfection. But am I jealous? Don’t be silly. I’m just tired and annoyed. She needs help, Nina. Are we just going to leave her here? She can’t live in a bathtub forever.”

“You damn well
are
jealous, and I’m all in favor of throwing her back. But Flawless says this bitch Pricilla is badass.”

“And we’re not?” she asked as she stroked the bunnies’ heads.

“Look, kiddo, you’re way ahead of yourself. We’re weaker here than we are at home. You can breathe fucking fire. Sure, that’s pretty damn useful, but not so much in the water. Use your lady brains, would you?”

Point. “Okay, that’s fair. But I can’t just leave her. I won’t. What if you guys had left me?”

“We didn’t get a choice, remember?”

Toni’s face flushed. “While that’s true, would you have left me
given
the choice? If Brenda hadn’t threatened you, would you have just washed your hands of me? And don’t lie to me because I’ll know. Remember, I don’t just breathe fire.”

Nina scratched a fuzzy brown squirrel under the chin and smiled at him. “Fair enough.”

“Did you just agree with me?”

“Yep.”

Toni looked to the sky with a cringe. “And there was no thunder? No lightning?”

“Did you just push my last goddamn button?”

“Sorry.”

“Now let’s address the girly feelings because I know that shit’s comin’.” She looked at the bunny nestled in her arms. “Cover your ears, fluffy dude, here comes the whine.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Yeah? Coulda swore I saw your eyeballs roll to the back of your head when the fish-chick was talking about moons and warm water. But maybe I read that shit wrong.”

“You absolutely did.”

“Liar.”

“Am not.”

“Are damn well so. You two have been avoiding each other like the plague since we left Fairy-ville.”

She clenched her teeth so hard, she was sure they’d break. “Everything is fine.”

Nina held up the bunny and rubbed him against her cheek, her voice raising an octave when she said, “Hear that, little guy—shit’s all good.”

“Shit’s peachy,” she said, dropping another bunny into Nina’s arms.

“Listen, I’m just gonna say this once and then I’ll let it go. The adrenaline in cases like these runs super high. So all those lady feelings get distorted and amped-up a notch or ten in your lady brain. You get all excited over shit that would normally roll off your back. Everything turns into a drama. Flawless is a good guy. He likes you. I can tell. You like him, too. That’s nice. So stinkin’ nice. But keep some shit in mind, here. You live in another realm, Toni. It’s not like you can catch the redeye here from Jersey to visit, yanno? So don’t fuck with the dude. I don’t know what the castle and all this happiness stuff means, but maybe it has to do with finding your brother, and that would mean going back to Jersey.”

Her chest became tight. “You heard about my brother?”

“Because—”

“Vampire,” Toni interrupted on a sigh.

“Right. Also, something else I want you to think about. This Stas is a lowdown fuck. If I ever run into him, his head staying on his shoulders is gonna to be the least of his GD worries, cuz I’ll eat his intestines for my midnight snack while I make that puke Andre watch. He’s a bag o’ dicks to be sure. But you didn’t do this to your brother, kiddo. You didn’t launder money. You didn’t hack off someone’s finger. You didn’t kill anybody.
Stas did
. You didn’t do anything but be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You tried to make shit right, and no one would help you. That’s not cowardly. Clear?”

Toni remained silent, but Nina nudged her shoulder, her eyes intense as she looked down at her. “Clear?”

Tugging one of Nina’s sopping-wet curls, she nodded. “You’re all right, vampire,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Yeah? Well, you suck as bad as this godforsaken dress,” she said with a grin.

Toni laughed, forcing her eyes to her feet to keep Nina from seeing her tears, and then she sucked it up. “Here.” She handed Nina the remaining bunnies. “I’m going to convince a stubborn pain in the ass to help me get Muriel to the sea.”