accidental 11 - accidentally ever after (2 page)

Bree was always chastising her.
Toni, did no one teach you to fold a scarf properly? The fold of the fabric should be on the outside, moron. Toni? How many times do I have to tell you to remind the customers to apply for store credit to receive an in-store discount? Toni, Toni, Toni
.

She’d heard her name more times since she’d gotten this job than she had in her entire life. The sound of Bree’s falsely cheerful, squeaky voice had become less appealing than setting herself on fire.

But Bree was the boss.

While she couldn’t afford to lose this damn job, Bree couldn’t afford to push her around. Because she was going to lose an arm and maybe some of that luscious blonde hair.

Toni sucked in a breath, straightening her stupid pink blazer, a store-employee requirement. “Bree, please take your hand off my arm.”

Bree’s pouty grape-glossed mouth thinned. “Not until you acknowledge that you’ve heard me, Toni.”

“Heard,” she all but growled.

“Nicely, please.”

“If you were hoping to have me slap some whipped cream on top of that reply, hope harder. I hear it springs and it’s eternal.”

Bree’s eyes narrowed—but she was interrupted by Marty and Wanda’s screams, coming from the changing rooms, at first piercing then growing muted and distant.

“Go find out what those women are doing and check on their creepy boy-toy. He’s not right,” she ordered, giving Toni a light shove.

Closing her eyes for a brief moment, she repeated her daily mantra
. God. Anywhere but here. I wish I were anywhere but here.

Under normal circumstances, before she was desperate and needed a job more than she needed her pride, Toni would have taken Bree out with a right hook to her pert little nose, lightly sprinkled with sun-kissed freckles.

But under her current poor-as-dirt, on-the-run circumstance, she couldn’t afford to get fired.

Making her way toward the back of the store where the changing rooms were located, she spied the woman named Nina poking her head into the changing room area, still clinging to the young man’s hand.

Damn. Was this some kind of scam where these women created a distraction, tied the employees up then robbed the store blind?

But then she heard Nina’s raspy yelp, too, forcing Toni to pick up her pace. She blew past the rack of leftover half-off summer maxi dresses and rounded the arched entryway to the changing rooms…

To find nothing but the slatted door of a dressing room ajar.

Toni frowned, her eyes scanning the store again for the women.

Nothing. Not a peep.

They’d disappeared completely, leaving only a pile of clothes they’d planned to try on just outside the changing room on a cushioned bench.

“Um, hello? Are you in there?” She wanted to kick herself for sounding so chickenshit, her voice coming off weak and trembling while she listened for a response.

More silence throbbed.

Her pulse pounded in her ears as she crept closer to the slatted door. Slipping her fingers around the edge, she whipped it open, half expecting the women to charge out, guns blazing while shouting orders for her to stay where they could see her. Which was, her rational mind told her, ridiculous. Three grown women and a pale man-child couldn’t all fit in the one changing room.

Yet there was nothing but a small whoosh of air, undoubtedly peculiar in a tiny room with no vent or window, but not nearly as bizarre as those women disappearing.

Her eyes caught sight of the soft beige-and-melon scarf on the floor the woman Wanda had been wearing when she’d entered the store.

Toni knelt down to scoop it up and the entire space shifted, tipping her completely upside down. Her head smacked against the carpeted floor just as weightlessness occurred, leaving her falling fast and furious.

Fear set in with a rapid jolt, her brain reeling as she clawed at nothing but black air. Her eyes watered from the vacuum-like effect of the swirling, downward slide her body had been forced to take.

She clenched her eyes shut and swallowed back bile just before she crash-landed onto what felt like…

Toni let her hand move with caution over whatever was beneath her.

Was that a hand? An arm? A person?

A person?

Aw, hellfire.

Just as she rolled away, her stomach pitching and her head throbbing, Toni heard, “Are you fucking kidding me? This is a fine, fine mess, you two crazyfaces. Look what the hell’s happened now! Christ and a GD road trip, Marty! You and all this bullshit girls’-day-out baloney. How many flippin’ times have I told you, I don’t need to damn well shop with you two to bond? In fact, I don’t need to bond at all. I’d rather have my skin peeled off at high noon and have vinegar poured on my seeping wounds on a hot July day under a Texas sun than
bond
. But no. Nah. No one ever listens to the vampire. ‘Oh, she loves us and she knows she does’.” The gruff, husky voice rose an octave, clearly mocking one of the women’s words. “‘She doesn’t mean it when she says that because we’re BFFs and that’s what stupid-ass BFFs do!’ Well. I’m here to tell you, ass-sniffer,
the fuck
I like to shop! The fuck I want to bond over some lip gloss I’ll never wear and hair gel I want to squirt down your throat until those stupid doe eyes of yours swim like little fishies!”

“Nina!” one of the women yelped.

“Don’t you damn well ‘Nina’ me. I have on a
gown
, Wanda Schwartz-effin’-Jefferson. A
yellow
flippin’ gown. Yell-the-fuck-oh. And wings. I have
wings.
Hear that?” she asked as a tiny flapping noise flew to Toni’s ears. “Those are my motherfluffin’ wings! Why do I have wings, Wanda? And why is my hair the size of the Eiffel Tower and as stiff as a ten-day-old corpse? What in the ever-lovin’ fuck is going on?”

“Nina!” yet another vaguely familiar voice from the store chastised. “When, I ask you,
when
has all your carrying on ever helped in a situation like this? Now come over here and give me a yank up because in case you haven’t noticed, Mouth, I have a gown and wings, too! Everything isn’t all about
you
, Selfish Pants. Now, my gown’s stuck in something sticky that rather smells of cotton candy and horse puckey. Help me up and shut up!”

Her gown? That made it plural gowns.

Toni’s brain told her to open her eyes and explore, but whatever, in Nina’s words, GD fine, fine fucking mess these women from the store had gotten into, she was clearly into it, too. And whatever the mess was, it sure didn’t sound good. Or feel good, judging from the lumpy pile of whatever was beneath her.

“Holy just-like-Disneyland,” one of the women whispered before she whistled.

Disneyland?

Aw, c’mon, Toni. You gotta open your eyes, you big ol’ wimp. It’s Disneyland! When have you ever closed your eyes? You didn’t even close them when Stas had his hand around your throat while he used you like a punching bag at the gym and the barrel of his gun was stuffed clear up in the roof of your mouth. Man up, pantywaist.

She forced her eyes open. Then they opened wider.

And her mouth quickly followed their lead as her jaw dropped and her brain buzzed to life.

Toni rubbed her sockets with her knuckles and reopened her eyes. Just in case she’d been drugged—or was hallucinating due to her recent sleepless nights.

Naturally, it changed nothing.

But she tried again just for good measure, giving her eyeballs one last good scrub with her fist. Forcing them open one more time, she took a good, hard look around.

Yeah. She could see the Disneyland reference making sense.

Maybe it was the enormous gray stone castle and drawbridge off in the snowy distance, or the ornate, carved carriage with white horses. Or maybe even the quaint cottages with thatched roofs and men dressed in roughly sewn breeches and matching vests, all staring down at her from a safe distance as though she’d just dropped out of the sky.

Wait. She sorta
had
just dropped out of the sky.

Oh. My. Hell
.

Toni sat up fast, making her head swim. She scurried away from the warm lump beneath her and rose to her haunches, letting her head hang between her knees.

That was when she noted her breasts felt like two freshly popped cans of dinner rolls, squeezed to maximum capacity. Not to mention, her ribs were surely in a vise of some sort.

A vise made of the most beautiful silver taffeta with the prettiest lavender undertones she’d ever seen.

Her hands flew to her chest, feeling for her nametag and the buttons of her pink jacket from the store. But they were gone, replaced with yard after yard of material whispering across the tops of her feet.

“Oh, save us all—she’s killed her!” someone shouted.

Someone British—maybe Welsh? Toni’s head popped up to find a long, thin finger pointing down at her with accusation. She slammed her eyes shut as small feet scuttled away.

Huh.

“Is she dead?” another voice cried, evoking a round of loud gasps.

“Brenda’s not going to like this!”

Toni looked again at the shiny material and gulped. Why did this scenario seem so eerily familiar? And who the hell was Brenda?

Dropping down to the cold earth because her thighs were killing her, she opted out of giving any more credence to the billowing silver tulle beneath the shiny fabric bunched between her thighs.

Then Toni felt a hand at her back, easy yet insistent. “You’re the salesgirl from the store, right?”

The voice sounded as though it came from the woman named Wanda. She couldn’t be sure because there was no exuberant squeal to her tone like there’d been when she found the scarves for sale.

Toni nodded her head, forcing her eyes back open, but she kept them at ground level, risking only quick glimpses because if she looked up, and allowed her brain to register what she thought she’d just seen, she’d lose her mind.

“I don’t know what happened. I heard you all screaming and I went to investigate. The next thing I know, I fell into something. A hole or a vortex…or a vacuum that felt like a
Dyson
was sucking the organs right out of me or…I think—I don’t know—and then I landed here on top of…something…”

“I’m Wanda Schwartz-Jefferson. What’s your name?” she asked, the beautiful, shiny wings between her shoulder blades softly pumping.

Wings. This woman had wings. Genuine wings.

“Your name? Talk to me so I know you’re coherent.”

“Antonia Vitali. Toni is fine, though.”

“Do you want to know what you landed on?”

She stared hard at the snow beneath her feet. “I want to know a lot of things. Like why you have wings, and hair so big I don’t know how you’re still holding your head upright. But for the moment, I vote we wait. I’m sure that’s cruel and callous, because I’m thinking it’s not a stretch to say it was a person I landed on, but I can wait on confirmation if it’s okay by you.”

“You’re in shock. I get it. So for now, give me your hand, Toni. Let me help you up. It’s cold down there on the ground and your new outfit, while absolutely stunning, definitely is not suited for this kind of weather.” Wanda’s voice was warm and reassuring and tinged with kindness, making Toni suspicious.

No one had ever been this nice to Toni Vitali. Not in a long damn time.

They’d just fallen into Cinderella’s lair—was it called a lair? No. It was a forest, wasn’t it? Did Cinderella have a forest? She shook her head.
One
of those God-awful princesses, with the lush hair swinging around their waists, trust issues out the wazoo and a lack of fortitude, had a forest. She just couldn’t remember which one. Either way, who remained calm and reassuring at a time like this?

Wait. Had Stas sent these women? Had that maniac and his crew finally found her? Had they drugged her back at the store? Given her some kind of hallucinogenic? Was she really in some padded cell back at Stas’s House of Horrors and she was just under the influence of drugs?

“Promise I won’t hurt you, Toni. Take my hand.”

Toni did so, but with great reluctance. Wanda snatched her shaking fingers and yanked her up, gripping her shoulders. “Look at me, Toni.”

She did as Wanda demanded, her eyes adjusting to her surroundings in slow increments. Snippets of the big picture flashed to her brain then retreated due to their surreal nature.

No. Effin’. Way.

Then some of it began to sink in. Okay, so thus far she seen a castle far off in the distance and snow-covered trees and a crooked signpost she couldn’t read without her glasses with the name of wherever they were, down at the end of a broad, muddy road winding endlessly into the surrounding forest.

There were horses tethered to wagons, cottages with thatched rooftops, and people all milling about in a cautiously wide circle around them, dressed in outfits right out of the Renaissance fair.

What the hell?

“Where?”
she finally managed to whisper to Wanda. “
H…how
?” It was all she could sputter as she gripped the woman’s cool hand.

The woman named Nina popped into her line of vision, making Toni’s mouth fall open when she saw what she was wearing, but that didn’t stop her from stomping over to Toni and Wanda, the rustle of more yellow chiffon and taffeta than
Joanne’s Fabrics
had on an entire store’s shelves swirling in the crisp air.

“What in the ever-lovin’ fuck is this?” she demanded of Toni, flicking her almost-black hair.

Toni winced. It was a wonder she didn’t lose a fingernail with the amount of hairspray it must have taken to keep all that hair in place.

It was piled atop her head in a riot of sausage curls, at least three layers’ worth, spilling down her back and dotted randomly with bright yellow bows all around her head. This was the gorgeous woman who’d been wearing a hoodie and jeans just moments ago?

Naw.

But it had to be. She had on the same pair of sunglasses. She had the same scary attack-mode stance.

“What…what happened?” Toni murmured, her fingers covering her mouth to keep from gasping.

“Yeah. I’d like to know that, too,” she said, kind of growly and suspicious as she pushed a long, raven sausage curl from her eyes with the back of her hand. “So why don’t you tell us,
Toni
? Who the fuck are you and why the fuck am I here? Who sent you? You’d better pony up or you’d better get right with your maker!”