Published 2015
Copyright © 2015, Dakota Cassidy.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or event is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.
Manufactured in the USA
Blurb
Antonia Vitali's on the run and in hiding, working as a salesclerk in a designer outlet mall in Jersey. Toni's life has been on a steady downward decline for three years now, the ghosts of her past always nipping at her heels.
Little does she know, her life's about to change when the OOPS girls whisk in for a day of Christmas shopping and fall through a wormhole in the store's dressing room, taking Toni with them!
Now Toni's got a pair of sparkly purple heels gifted to her by the head fairy godmother of them all—gorgeous heels she can't take off until she returns them to the king, a trio of reluctant fairy godmothers, an ogre named Dannan and a mission to get to the castle to find the happily-ever-after she never even asked for. Along the way, the group meets an amazingly handsome, utterly chiseled stable boy named Jon Doe, who offers to help them navigate The Not So Sherwood Forest safely and get them all to Castle Beckett before Christmas Eve.
But who is this hot dude and if her happily-ever-after is at the castle, why does the stable boy's company seem so right? And why does the evil Queen Angria want Toni’s head on a platter?
Join Toni, Marty, Nina, Wanda and Carl, too, as they journey along the treacherous road to love and eternal happiness in the magical realm of Shamalot!
Note From Dakota
Darling readers,
I’ve gone and mucked it up again, sticking my nose where it surely doesn’t belong by using snippets of famous fairy tales and ideas from various television shows to suit my twisted needs. Enormous thanks to: Outlander, Game of Thrones, Galavant, Shrek, Once Upon A Time, and, in one facet or another, every Disney/Pixar movie with a princess or memorable villain in it ever made. Basically what I’m saying is, I’ve maybe toyed with some classics (eep!), but it’s all done with utter and total respect.
I don’t care what anyone thinks about the non-feminist properties attached to my wish to be a princess; I’m honest enough to tell you that when I was five, I wanted to be Cinderella. I didn’t much care about the prince then, but I sure wanted talking mice, a coach, hair that floated around my waist, and that darn ball gown. Nowadays, at almost fifty, I just wanna wear a floaty dress while small forest creatures clean my house. But my love of a good fairytale remains.
Also grateful thanks to Mindy Dawn Fletcher for the brilliant title, my ever-awesome BFF Renee George for the brainstorming, and my amazing DH for some of the whacky parodies on names you’re about to encounter!
For anyone new to The Accidentals, I’ve included a link to Interview With An Accidental, a quick (and mostly painless) interview-style introduction to the women who are the heart and soul of this eleven-book series, originally published traditionally. If you’re a repeat offender (YAY to repeat offending, you rebels!), skip right to chapter one!
Dakota XXOO
Acknowledgements
Illustration: Katie Wood
Cover: Valerie Tibbs
Editor: Kelli Collins
Chapter 1
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (or as some call it, Jersey), there were three lovely maidens and a zombie off for a day full of mirth-filled Christmas shopping and friendship.
Okay, that’s not totally true. Yes, there’s a zombie, but there are only two maidens full of mirth and friendship. The third maiden is so unlike the other two maidens, she wouldn’t know mirth if it slapped her on the ass and called her Snuggle Bunny.
But she totally gets friendship. Swear it.
Back to the story. Allow me to introduce the players in our tale: The first of the trio is our fair Marty Flaherty. With hair fashioned of spun gold—or in some circles, a box of Clairol #222—light of heart and blessed with a gift for perpetual optimism (see Pollyanna), one can surely see the charming Marty comes by her title with ease.
A cosmetic/fashion guru/werewolf, our Marty is an admitted shopaholic, and happily married to her life mate, with whom she shares the blending of two cosmetic empires and a young daughter named Hollis.
The second maiden, equally as fair, is our ever-elegant and oh-so-tasteful Wanda Schwartz. Warm, nurturing, a paragon of decorum, lovingly titled “halfsie” by her BFFs. Which translates to half vampire, half werewolf. Wanda is also happily married, and has an amazing manservant named Archibald who loves to cook gourmet meals.
And then there’s Nina Blackman-Statleon…
Fair maiden number three. Though, I warn you, this storyteller is only using the word “fair” to keep things on an equal playing field so when all is said and done, there’s no bandying the word “unjust” about. #storytellereyeroll
Ahem…
Anyway, Nina is the trio’s resident vampire, adorned with almond-shaped eyes the color of coal and luxurious raven hair totally untouched by any sort of finery. In other words, according to the two previously mentioned maidens, a total babe without even trying.
Dark, broody—dare I say crusty?—and easily provoked, she’s a lover of whatever doesn’t irritate her. Which is next to nothing except for five things: All animals, the elderly, children, someone in paranormal distress, and Barry Manilow. Mother to little vampini Charlie, surrogate mother to zombie Carl, and happily married wife of Gregori.
On this bright, crisp pre-winter day in December, the women and their zombie Carl find themselves fresh off their recent OOPS (Out In The Open Paranormal Support; a crisis hotline, as such) case. A harrowing encounter, wherein they came to blows with the goddess of disorder and chaos, Eris, in a mythological battle to the bitter end to save their friend and client Quinn Morris from certain death.
It was all manner of crazy, people. Fire-breathing horses, serpents, even a Cyclops (hand to heart—swear it’s true) were among their foes—all of which they valiantly conquered like the true warriors they are. That skirmish included Carl, our sweet, sweet zombie, who defeated said Cyclops by using a mighty blow to his big, scary eyeball with, of all things, a copy of Jane Eyre.
Obviously, fine readers, the three fair maidens and one zombie were in dire need of some R and R. So on this unusually chilly, early December day, the gregarious and light-of-heart maiden Marty suggested a shopping trip to the outlet mall in Jersey (I think like exit 92 off the turnpike, for those of you who speak Jersey), one of her and Wanda’s favorite places to unwind, regroup, and most importantly, spend quality time girl-bonding.
Little did they know this particular day would not only change their lives forever, but take them on a treacherous journey filled with pitfalls, magic, a new pair of shoes (so cute!)—and bad, bad dudes.
Lots of bad dudes…
“Oh my God, Wanda! Would you look at this? Only twenty bucks!”
If Antonia Vitali had heard the name correctly, a woman named Marty held up a short, flirty skirt she’d pulled from the rack and was now waving it at a woman named Wanda, who was plowing her way through a pile of seventy-five-percent-off silk scarves.
Wanda’s elegantly coiffed head popped up, one long chestnut strand of hair out of place from her rabid hunt for the perfect
scarf. She’d walked into Discount Designers as though she were royalty and had proceeded to methodically work her way through every sale rack in mere minutes. Tall, stately, wearing clothes Toni could only guess cost more than her entire wardrobe.
“Shut the front door, Marty!” Wanda squealed, her eyes glazed as she blew the errant hair from her face. “I don’t know what to look at first. There’s sooo much!”
“Look at the door first, halfsie. See the one that says ‘Exit’? The one we should be walking right the shit out of? Look at that first,” complained the frightfully pale woman named Nina, wearing a T-shirt that read “I Am A Delicate Fucking Flower” and leaning against the far wall, pushing her sunglasses back up onto the bridge of her zinc-covered nose.
Toni’s manager Bree, aka the most vapid twenty-year-old in the world and younger than Toni by twelve years, cocked her head at Nina, assessing her long, slender limbs. “You know, there’s a dress over there that would change your life!”
She pointed to the far left side of the store, where racks and racks of discounted designer dresses in multiple colors hung, as though she had some huge fabric lottery win she’d chosen to share with the lucky pale woman.
Nina rolled her tongue in her cheek, lifting her sunglasses just a hair to glower down at Bree. “I’d have to have a life to change to wear a dress—or actually give a shit.”
Right on, Colorless One, Toni silently cheered, fighting a chuckle while trying to make it appear as though she was deeply immersed in arranging the stack of leggings just delivered this morning.
“Nina!” Marty scampered across the store’s floor, as quick in a pair of heels as any athlete in high tops. She grabbed onto Nina’s arm and smiled with one-hundred-watt charm at the confused Bree. “She just means her life is small and lonely and,” Marty made a comical pouty face, “sad. So, so sad because she has no need for a dress. No parties. No chance for a date. No nothing. But do you have any hoodies? Black, of course, like her heart?”
Nina gave the woman named Marty a light nudge and made a face. “Get the eff off me, Crazypants. I don’t need a dress. I don’t need anything from this overpriced clothes rack. I can get hoodies online. Plenty of BOGOs to be had if you find a GD Groupon. Now finish whatever you two windbags are doing so we can go to the damn bookstore. Santa’s there today, and that’s all Carl’s talked about since you Skyped him behind my back and told him about this stupid excursion because you knew he was the easiest way to get me to agree to go. Now, Carl deserves a Santa, a nice new book, and some frickin’ ice cream for being used like a two-bit hooker, don’t ya buddy?” she asked the equally pale young man who was holding her hand and wearing a hoodie that matched hers.
The young man named Carl nodded his covered head, shooting Toni an endearingly shy, crooked smile from beneath the hoodie’s material.
Toni nodded her head without realizing she had. Who the hell wanted to shop for clothes when there was Santa and ice cream?
She smiled at Carl on her way to straighten the mussed pile of overpriced designer jeans. “I get it. I’d rather have ice cream, too,” she murmured as she passed him.
Bree cocked her head again, her fluffy blonde curls trembling when she stepped in front of Toni, her toe virtually tapping. “Excuse me?”
Toni gave her the infamous Vitali glaring eyeball, followed by the condescending rise of one eyebrow. “Sorry?”
Bree grabbed her by the arm and squeezed. “Don’t discourage the customers from shopping, Toni,” she hissed, her green eyes blazing. “Now shut up and go, like, fold something.”
Toni shrugged her off but Bree held tight, creating an angry spark of electricity along her spine. First, a woman almost young enough to have spewed forth from her vagina was chastising her. Second, she was being chastised—again.
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 tha
t 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.
Accidentally Ever After (Accidentally Paranormal Novel Book 11) Page 1