accidental 11 - accidentally ever after (3 page)

“
Sent me
?” Toni repeated, utterly flabbergasted at the level of uncontained anger this woman was displaying.

Was this snarling, irate woman blaming her for their landing here? She’d taken the blame for a lot of things in her time—laundered money, snitching, even murder—but time travel to a place that looked like an amusement park set in a storybook? That was too damn far.

Nina, her pale skin like a soft glow against the buttercup yellow of her elaborate gown, now seethed. Like, opened her mouth and flashed her teeth.

“You heard me—who the fuck sent you, and what the fuck do you want with us? Did that crazy bitch Hildegard escape from Hell again? If you don’t start talkin’, I’m gonna start swingin’. Now warm that tongue of yours up with some answers before I snatch it from your pretty head, girlie.”

Wow. This woman was as scary as Stas had ever been, if not scarier. But Toni stood up to him once, gun to her throat and all.

And then she remembered something.

Crazy
. Stas had once told her, always be the craziest fucker in the room and everyone would back down—which was how she’d managed to escape him three years ago.

So she let her eyes go wild as she stuck her face right back in Nina’s, her finger finding its way just beneath her nose. “Blow me, you crazy bitch! Don’t you threaten me! You have no idea who you’re screwing with. Got that? I’m gonna tell you once, back the fuck off or I’ll rip your throat out! We clear,
girlie
?” she bellowed.

Silence fell over the group of women and the small crowd of villagers backed up, clinging to one another.

And then Nina exploded.

Maybe Stas’s advice had been a mistake.

Clearly, Nina held the reigning title of Craziest Bitch In The Room.

Oh dear.

Chapter 2

N
ina let out a hiss just before she lunged for Toni’s throat, her wings fluttering angrily behind her.

But her friend Marty soared through the air in a leap to rival that of a pole-vaulter, her enormous ball gown in a lovely shade of sky blue twisting around her legs.

She landed in front of Nina so fast, she rammed into her, making them tumble to the ground, the two women tangling up in each other’s elaborate dresses. Nina reached around her and yanked one of Marty’s wings.

“Ow! That’s my wing, Nina! I swear, I’ll poke your eyeballs out with my hair if you don’t knock it off!” Marty yelped and managed to wrestle Nina to her back, securing her by mounting her hips and pulling her glasses from her face.

Gripping Nina’s wrists, Marty planted them above her head as a small crowd of villagers gathered, passing a bag of coins and placing bets. “Knock it the hell off, Vampire! Why in all of the universe would you think this woman’s responsible for us falling through that hole in the dressing room, you violent, un-trainable, testy beast?”

Vampire?
Had she said vampire?

No. This day wasn’t happening. It was not.

“Get the hell off me, Blondie, and give me back my damn shades or I’m gonna eat your face off!” Nina screeched with her closed eyes.

But Marty shook her head, the mile-high hair on the top of her skull never budging. “Nope. Not until you promise to use your manners. I absolutely will not have your chaos erupting all over the place like so much vomit until we know what’s going on and where we are. And I won’t have you threatening to beat anyone up until we need you to.”

Wanda leaned into Toni, smoothing one of her long white gloves over her elbow as though it had always been there while her friends continued to bicker. “Very impressive show there. I can’t remember the last person who stood up to Nina, other than one of us or her husband, Greg. Clearly, your fear factor is high, Kimosabe. I like that in a girl,” she said on a chuckle.

Toni turned to look at her, still visually trying to block out Candyland while people peeked out from behind trees and stood at the doorways of their charming, snow-covered cottages. “Question?”

“Certainly.”

“Did that woman—um, Marty, is it?—just call the angry pale lady a vampire?”

Wanda nodded, her hair equally as unmoving as Marty’s. “Marty it is, and she did call Nina a vampire. I fear we’ll have some explaining to do. Your world’s going to be rocked in more ways than one today, I’m afraid. But bear with me until we work out this little kink?” She waved an elegant hand at the ball of limbs and taffeta dresses Nina and Marty had become.

Toni nodded, also refusing to acknowledge that her own hair was now swinging at her waist. “Let’s table that for a little while and focus on,” she swept her hand around at the landscape, “um, this. You seem really reasonable compared to your friend, so I’m going to appeal to you. I swear I don’t know how this happened. Swear it on my life. I’m just a salesclerk at a stupid designer outlet mall store, making just above minimum wage. I don’t know anyone who’d do this. I don’t even know what’s been done, but if at all possible, I say we blame my boss Bree. She’s a horrible human being.”

Wanda nodded again and patted Toni’s arm, her long fingers giving her flesh a squeeze. “You know, I noticed that. Kind of pushy and power-hungry for someone so young, huh? You’d think she was ruling a kingdom, not an outlet store.” Then she giggled, like they weren’t in the middle of some whacked fairytale. “Sorry. Pardon the pun.”

“You heard Bree say those things to me?”

Wanda pulled at her earlobe with the shiny cascade earring attached to it. “Half vampire, half werewolf. Good hearing is one of the tricks of the trade. Though sometimes, it’s a curse.”

Werewolf…
Toni gulped more air into her lungs while her heart raced. “Not ready to acknowledge that just yet either, if that’s okay.”

“Oh, of course, Toni. I understand. You have bigger fish to fry right now. We can talk later about that part of this—whatever
this
is. For now, I have to wrangle the twins. So if you’ll excuse me?”

Now Toni nodded, unable to do much else. “Of course.”

Wanda lifted the hem of her gorgeous champagne-colored gown and hopped over a patch of ice as though she always wore ball gowns and stopped to assess the two quarreling women as they tussled.

Looking down, she said, “Marty, I’m going to suggest you get off Nina and hand her back her glasses before she explodes into a pile of ashes. I know she makes you want to choke her out, but you’d regret the loss of her black soul. I know you would. You’d cry, and quite frankly, you’re a messy crier. Nina? Shut your big fat flapping lips until further notice, or it won’t be Marty you have to worry about.

“Now, the two of you will get up off this ground because you’re ruining your magnificent gowns in the dirty snow; you will introduce yourselves to Toni, who is as freaked-out and in as much a state of shock as we are; and you will do it with your manners intact and your indoor voices. Are we all in agreement?”

Nina’s jaw clenched tight, her face a mask of anger. “Wanda, the fuck—”

Wanda’s fingers snaked out and clamped Nina’s lips together. “Shhh! Now. Don’t speak. Wag that razor-sharp tongue of yours again, lose your sunscreen.”

Marty let go of Nina’s wrists and rasped a sigh, shoving off from her friend’s lean torso to sit upright. “Fine. But one wrong move in Toni’s direction and it’s curtains for you, Dark One. Oh, and nice ball gown, Cinder-Nightmare. Very, very bright and
sunny
, just like your sparkling personality,” she taunted, letting her head fall back on her shoulders to laugh out loud.

Nina growled and with a flat palm to Marty’s chest, knocked her on her back. Scooping up her glasses to prop them crookedly on her nose with an aggravated hand, she shoved the stems of them into the nest of her triple-tier, wedding-cake-like hair.

“You watch yourself, Werewolf, or I’m gonna spin that color wheel of yours until you puke.”

Marty took Wanda’s hand and allowed her to help her up, but Nina dismissed the offer, slapping at the yards and yards of constricting yellow material around her legs when she rose.

Marty approached Toni as she brushed the wet snow from her gown, heavily embroidered with dark-blue and gold thread along the bodice. “I’m Marty Flaherty, by the way. So nice to meet you.”

Toni stuck out her frozen hand and offered it to the pretty blonde. “Toni Vitali. I’m really sorry about this. I’m as confused as you are—”

“No apologies necessary,” Marty cut in on a smile as warm as Wanda’s voice. “If you had any idea what we’ve seen…Well, let’s just say, we’ve seen a lot. We’ve also kicked some ass while we’ve seen a lot. So we’ll figure this out and kick some ass if the situation deems necessary.”

Wanda jammed a finger into the spot between Nina’s shoulder blades. “Speak, Cavewoman. Talk pretty. Make words.”

Nina popped her lips, crossing her arms over her chest, her stance defensive. “Nina If-You-Ever-Stick-Your-Face-in-Mine-Again-I’ll-Rip-it-Off Statleon.”

Wanda’s lips thinned as she drove two knuckles into Nina’s back. “Can it, Bruiser.”

“Well, all right then,” Marty said, a bright smile wreathing her face when she looked to Toni and tucked her clasped hands under her chin. “Let’s figure this out, huh, girls?”

Was it just her, or were these women behaving as though they’d landed on some movie set and a stagehand was going to come along at any second and whisk them off to their dressing rooms? Because they didn’t appear at all phased by this utterly implausible, completely insane turn of events.

Simply saying they’d
seen
things, as Marty had, could imply a wealth of scenarios, most of which were probably nothing like what was happening right now. But who’d ever seen something even close to this?

Toni finally looked down at her clothes and really absorbed her garb, her worst fears confirmed as she plucked at her incredibly tight, unbelievably itchy gown and held up the flouncy-trouncy skirt for the women to see. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing? I mean, we really are…um, we have on…we were just in the outlet mall and now we’re in…”

“Shamalot. You’re in Shamalot. Welcome, welcome!” said a tiny, tinkling voice full of cheer.

If that voice was attached to tiny wings of gossamer, Toni was headed for the nearest whatever they called a bar in these parts and drinking until she passed out cold. And if she was still here tomorrow, she was going to do it all over again.

She’d faced far worse than this in her time—a gun brawl over a borscht dinner…her brother’s finger sent to her doorstep via UPS…the death of her neighbor—this should be cake. Yet, her reluctance to find out whom the voice belonged to was almost bigger than she was.

She didn’t want any more upheaval and surprises. She just wanted quiet. She wanted to get up every morning at six sharp, drink a cup of shitty coffee from her half-dead coffeemaker, take a dribbling, lukewarm shower in her pathetic, rundown apartment, put on her ugly pink salesclerk jacket, catch no less than three busses to the outlet mall, and hand over her pride at the door to Queen Bree.

She’d adjusted to the everyday aches and pains of normalcy and almost-poverty. They were startlingly different from her old life, but they were now like macaroni and cheese, comforting if nothing else. Even if her life unequivocally sucked in so many ways, she was still
free
. Free of most of her fear. Free of the constant tension. Free of Stas Vasilyev.

It had been that way for three years now, and she didn’t want to give it up.

Wanda gripped her arm as the ground beneath their feet suddenly boomed with footsteps. “Stay near me, Toni. No matter what, stay close,” she whispered urgently.

She totally planned to cling to Wanda as ordered for fear of what might come next. Robin Hood and his band of merry men?

Inhaling deeply, Toni turned around with Wanda’s direction just as a light snow began to fall, the flakes soft and strangely fluffier than the ones in Jersey. They fluttered in glittering, actually defined shapes to the ground, landing one after the other, forming neat piles.

“’Tis so lovely to meet ye!” the same tiny voice said with a slight brogue attached.

Through the veil of shimmering white, a creature emerged, hulking and blue—oh yes, he was blue, wearing gold shorts with red piping, attached to suspenders over a naked barrel chest.

The crowd of stunned onlookers began to back up as he made his way toward them with lumbering steps that rattled the earth, knocking snow from trees and leaving a deep path in his wake.

He held out a very blue hand and grinned, flashing white teeth the size of small tombstones. “Dannan The Ogre, if yer wonderin’. Nice to meet ye,” he said, his helium-like voice a gross, almost comical understatement to his size.

Ogres. Didn’t ogres eat people?

“Holeee shitballs,” Nina uttered, shoving Marty behind her. Which, had Toni time to think about it, was in stark contrast to the way she’d nearly bitten Marty’s head off just moments ago.

“No need to fear,” Dannan said affably, as though he wasn’t easily ten feet tall with feet the size of fishing boats. Leaning down, he peered at Toni. “Whass yer name, lass?”

“Inedible?” she asked with a wince, nipping at her lower lip.

He chuckled, light and airy and remarkably like he’d sucked a balloon full of helium. “You’re frightened, are ye, maiden?”

Toni shivered, not just because she was scared, but because he’d used the word “maiden” in conjunction with her—which was utterly laughable. “Should I speak the truth?”

“Please do.”

“Ye is petrified.”

With one finger, he patted her shoulder, the heavy weight of it not unpleasant. In fact, it was soothing and gentle. “I understand completely.”

“Absolutely no insult intended.”

He bounced his round head covered in spikes of snow-white, bushy hair. “Duly noted.”

Nina was the first to approach him, and even
she
did so with caution. “So, where are we again, Papa Smurf?”

“It’s—”

“Yeah, yeah. I heard you, Dannan The Ogre. Now where the hell are we?”

“Shamalot, o’ course. Ye be deep in the heart of the Not So Sherwood Forest.”