Marty swallowed hard, her voice trembling as she read, “If Oliver uses his horn to heal too often, it won’t just debilitate him, it will kill him.”
Oh, sweet mysteries of life.
Chapter 8
Well, that explained his seizure. It was as though using the horn was draining his life force or something. He felt weak as a kitten as he lay on the couch like some helpless lump of laziness, unable to do anything but listen to the conversations around him about how he was going to die if he overused this superpower that had so haphazardly been thrust upon him.
Hearing he could die unsettled Oliver, but he was too exhausted to do much about it.
Just then, Vinnie came to stand over him, her fiery-red hair falling around her pale face as she hitched her jaw. “May I sit?”
“Sure,” he whispered, his voice husky and raw.
Everything on him hurt like hell. He felt like he’d been run over by a semi then squeezed out of a sausage casing, but somehow, for this woman he found so intriguing, he managed to inch over and pat the space beside him.
Her pretty brown eyes oozed sympathy as she settled in beside his hip, smelling of pears and cinnamon. “Did you hear what Marty said?”
He inhaled a ragged breath. “I did.”
“That’s why you feel the way you do right now. You’ll recover, of course, but you can’t keep doing that, Oliver. It hurts you to heal people.”
Oliver struggled with this diagnoses on a million levels. “I heard. So I have this power by way of a sparkly horn on my head that makes me look like a horse on a merry-go-round.” He used his fingers to make air quotes. “But I’m supposed to look away when someone is hurt? How does that work?”
She licked her peachy lips and took his hand in hers…her warm, soft hand…and attempted a smile. “You can’t save everyone, Oliver. That’s going to have to be how that works. You have a good heart, I suspect and it won’t be easy. Listen, I realize it’s a crappy position to be in, but do you want to die? Every time you use your horn, it’s a death wish. Every time you use it to heal, you’ll feel worse and worse. It’ll take longer to recover, and if you keep doing it, someday, you simply won’t recover.”
Oliver blew out the breath he was holding. “Okay, that aside, what do I do about my horn? If I stop helping people heal, I still can’t go to work like this or even out in public. I look ridiculous. Who’s going to take me seriously with a unicorn horn?”
“What do we do about this?” she gently reminded him with a soft smile that lit up her eyes. “We’re in this together, Oliver. My mother did this to you, and that means I’m going to comb the ends of the earth to find out how to make it better. I don’t know what we’ll do about your horn, but there has to be a solution.”
Oliver shook his head. He wasn’t so caught up in this mess that he didn’t see how Alice felt about her daughter. She’d done this from a place of love. “You don’t have to do that, Vinnie. I’m sure you have a life and a job to get back to.”
But she shook her head right back at him. “I’m on fall break right now, which is why I was up so late reading last night. I’m at your service for as long as you need me.”
“As much as I appreciate that, I need you to look at this from my POV, a more objective one, if you will. Alice meant no harm. I’m not angry enough not to see that. She loves you a lot. She talks about you all the time, even though she never mentioned your name. Not once. She simply called you her daughter. In fact, I thought you didn’t even live in New York, the way she talked about you. But talk about you she did. How smart you are, how pretty you are. What a good person you are. She loves you, Vinnie.”
Vinnie looked down at the floor for a minute before she gazed at him, her brown eyes filled with guilt. “You probably thought I lived somewhere else because I put a lot of distance between us. My mother is infamous for her nutty bid to be a part of the paranormal world. It’s been this way all my life, and it makes me so crazy. As a result, I sort of had to give her some boundaries. But in the process, I forgot to keep a closer eye on her. The way she feels about the Gods and Goddesses, at least in my opinion, is obsessive and unhealthy.”
He liked hearing Vinnie’s voice. It was soft but strong, warm but authoritative. “You don’t feel the same way? I mean, about the paranormal?”
She shrugged her small shoulders with an indifference he knew she meant. “I’m not dying to be one of them, no. I’ve accepted that my line of ancestry is watered down. I’ll live forever and that’s that. That I can’t make history-defining matches or shoot golden arrows or do any of the things Gods and Goddesses do doesn’t bother me the way it does my mother. I don’t feel the need to fit in, and I don’t go where I’m not wanted. That’s what troubles her more than anything, I guess. I mean, look at the lengths she was willing to go to in order to prove she could find me a husband. She pounced on a spell she knew nothing about, repeated it incorrectly, and boom, look what happened.”
“But look at what she managed,” Oliver said, pointing to his horn. “She did turn me into a unicorn. It might not have been the right spell, but it was a spell, so maybe you’re all not as watered down as you think.”
Vinnie’s lips thinned in clear disapproval. “Maybe. I’ve never tried to cast a spell unless she forced me to practice an incantation, and that never went well. Still, the fact remains, she didn’t make you fall in love with me, which was the intention of the spell. Mom just can’t accept that she didn’t inherit the magic of Hecate, or any of her ancestors’ powers, period. They’d laugh her right out of Goddesses’ Night Out if they knew what she’d produced from that half-assed spell, and I hate that for her.”
Oliver drove his free hand behind his head to prop himself up and looked at her thoughtfully. “Here’s something to think about. Do you think what she did has more to do with the fact that she loves you and she really just wants you to be happy, than it does proving a point to anyone, herself or her fellow Goddesses?”
“You weren’t at my tenth birthday party…”
“Nope. But I’d love to hear all about it. What happened?”
On a sigh, Vinnie shook her head. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you and finding a solution to your predicament.”
Oliver smiled. “Well, if we’re going to be stuck together for who knows how long while we un-unicorn me, Vincenza Raphaela Morretti, we might as well get to know each other. So spill the beans.”
She looked as though she gave it some thought, and then decided to throw caution to the wind. “It was a disaster. A total mess. Instead of doing what I wanted, which was to go to a movie and out for tacos, she invited a bunch of junior Gods and Goddesses and gave me a surprise party.”
“Junior Goddesses?” Damn, this world got stranger and stranger. The image in his head of all these omnipotent people floating around with average humans was almost comical.
“Children of undiluted Gods and Goddesses who have real powers.”
“Ah. And?”
“And they were expecting magic and fairies, the way all junior Gods and Goddesses do, and all they got was a really drunk Barney in a smelly, worn costume and some homemade chocolate cake with sprinkles. There were no dancing carousel horses come to life. No fairies with gossamer wings, spinning sugary spools of cotton candy. I mean, how exciting is a drunk Barney when you can have real-live fairies? Needless to say, no one ever wanted to come to another party of mine, and I knew that would happen. It’s why I asked her to take me to the movies.” Vinnie paused for a brief moment and shook her head, her eyes shimmering as she remembered. “No. I didn’t ask. I begged.”
He heard the disappointment in her voice, and Oliver found it upset him, too. Which made him want to fix it for her, even though he knew he couldn’t. “But doesn’t that say more about the snobs these Gods and Goddesses raised than it does about your mother, who only wanted to give you something nice?”
Vinnie’s smile was vague and sad. “It’s not about what she could or couldn’t give me, Oliver. It’s about h
er listening to what I really wanted. I really wanted some one-on-one time with her, not a party where I knew all the other parents would mock her at school the next day during drop-off.”
That stung Oliver’s heart. “So you were trying to protect her.”
Vinnie’s eyes went hard like granite. “Not just her, Oliver. I was trying to protect me, too. And yes. I hated the way they talked in hushed whispers about how she tried so desperately to fit in, or how they joked that she was the black sheep of Goddesses and she’d never be like them, no matter how hard she tried. They giggled about it more often than not, and it made me angry. I didn’t know what to do with that anger. The paranormal can be elitist at the worst of times. Ask the ladies of OOPS.”
“But the OOPS women are paranormal,” he insisted, not fully grasping the hierarchy of supernatural beings.
Vinnie clucked her tongue and put her hand back in her lap. “But it was an accident. They’re not pure by a true paranormal’s standards. It’s sort of the age-old story. You know, new money, old money. Rich, poor. They’ve managed to pave a way for themselves because they’ve done a lot of good, and they don’t seem to give a flying fig about acceptance. They pave their own way because they’re strong, feisty, empowered women, but I think even they’ll tell you they’ve been snubbed a time or two.”
“And I suppose Nina couldn’t care less about fitting in anyway. She’d just beat the acceptance into everyone, huh?” he joked.
Vinnie giggled, and he liked the sound in his ears. It made him happy, but then she grew serious. “Well, there is that, but I’m not like Nina. I’m not as pushy or as vocal. I got angry, but I kept it on the inside. I didn’t come out swinging. The end game of this is, I never fit in—we never fit in. We were misfits, but I accepted that from a very early age. My mother just couldn’t. She said it was like giving up and dying. She said we belonged whether they liked it or not.”
“So she sort of dragged you along behind her and forced you to be a part of something you wanted nothing to do with.”
“She was like the ultimate pageant mother. You know, like Toddlers and Tiaras? Except, there were no tiaras. She dressed me up to fit the part, but when you can’t create a spell or make things disappear, there’s no hiding it. I was always going to be a runner-up. So, I crafted a life with everyday people because that’s basically who I am. Just an ordinary, everyday person.”
He hated that she felt ordinary. Whatever this pull to her was about, Oliver sensed she was anything but ordinary. “Who’ll live forever…” he reminded.
“And that’s a very long time to live with the hope a group of people, who aren’t that nice to begin with, will eventually accept you.”
Oliver heard the hurt in her voice and was incapable of not sharing his experience with a similar personality. “You know, I had someone in my life who was a lot like Alice.”
“Your mother? But no,” she said, shaking her head while he watched her fiery-red curls float around her face. “That can’t be right. You said had.”
“Yep. Had is the correct word. We broke up. Or rather, she cheated on me with someone who has enough ambition to suit her needs.”
As he spoke those words, he realized the usual malice and anger of Denise cheating on him seemed a lot farther away than it ever had before.
She tipped her head, the light catching her eyes as they twinkled. “Ah, ex-girlfriend?”
“Ex-fiancée. Her name was Denise, and she was never happy with how little I wanted to climb the corporate ladder. She was always pushing me to be someone I wasn’t. I like my job. No. I take that back. I love my job as an ordinary housing developer who works with various coalitions for seniors to build affordable housing. I make a decent amount of money. I don’t make a million dollars a year, but I work hard and I’m paid well enough, have good benefits, can afford a nice vacation a couple of times a year. I didn’t want what Denise wanted.”
“Yeah, but at least Denise didn’t turn you into a unicorn. She might have wanted to change you, but I don’t think this is what she meant.”
“Don’t think for one second if it were possible, she wouldn’t have. We’d be making a website with some kitschy name and culling our client list as we speak.”
Vinnie chuckled. “That bad?”
He sighed. Maybe he’d let it fester so long it seemed worse than it really was. “I guess at the time I didn’t really see it. Mostly because I, like your mother, didn’t listen. I kept thinking my vision was the best vision. But when I caught her red-handed, cheating on me, that is, I saw all the signs I’d ignored before. Denise wanted everything, but I was content with what I had. Never the twain and all. I’m not afraid of hard work, but my goals were more humanitarian than financial. I don’t need a big house and a fancy sports car.”
“But Denise did?”
He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t blame Denise for wanting something he didn’t anymore. He took partial blame for their breakup because he simply didn’t listen to what she’d wanted.
“More than I did. In fact, I foolishly bought this house, thinking it would make her happy. I thought we could renovate it together. You know, a fun project for couples?”
Vinnie nodded. “I get that. I love DIY. I suck at it, but I love it.”
“Denise? Not so much. When she said she wanted a house, she meant in a swanky suburb, move-in ready. Not a fixer-upper. But again, it’s not as though she didn’t tell me.”
Vinnie looked around his living room with surprised eyes. “But it’s so beautiful, Oliver. Are you telling me you did this with Denise?”
He snorted. “No. I’m telling you I did this in spite of Denise. A fixer-upper wasn’t what she wanted at all. She had no interest in picking up a hammer. So imagine my shock when I surprised her with this house, which, when I bought it, was a dumpster fire.”
“Well, to be fair, you didn’t consult her. Buying a house should be a together thing.”
“Where were you four years ago when I was making impulsive decisions based on the stars in my eyes and my big fat ego?”
Vinnie giggled. “Trying to keep my mother from blowing up the world.” They both laughed then. When they caught their breath, she asked, “So did that end your relationship? Was that the straw?”
“No. The straw was coming home to find her in a compromising position with her boss in the middle of the rubble that was eventually going to be her sort-of dream kitchen. So I broke up with her and licked my wounds by turning this house into all the things she said she liked.”
“Well, for a renovation done out of spite, you really nailed it. Denise had good taste.”
He chuckled. “Fortunately, we had similar tastes. So when I was done wallowing, I dove in feet first and did all the things I thought we were going to do together—alone. But it helped me heal.”
Vinnie frowned and squirmed a little. “So the boss. I’m guessing her boss had enough ambition for two men?”
He had plenty of all the things Oliver didn’t. But he no longer felt like he had to measure up. In all this renovation, he’d learned to accept himself and discovered what he found important. He wasn’t all the way there yet. Denise’s betrayal still stung a little, but not the way it once had.
When he finally answered, he said, “It would seem so. She married him last year, I think.”
“Oh, Oliver. I’m sorry. How awful.”
He shrugged his sore shoulders. “Not really. I’m glad it happened now. We’d have fallen apart if she was expecting trips to Bali every year, and I was secretly planning a trip to Wisconsin for cheese-fest.”
Vinnie made a comical face. “Cheese-fest? Seriously?”
“What can I say, she liked cheese,” he defended. “I thought she’d love it. Turns out, I didn’t pay close enough attention to what she loved. I heard what I wanted to hear.”
She spread her arms wide, her eyes twinkling. “And in the process, turned into Chip and Joanna Gaines.”
“Now there is that. I can sheetrock w
ith the best of them,” he said with a laugh. “But here’s what I mean. I get that you just want to do you. Nobody gets that more than I do. You have the courage of conviction to stand your ground. I, on the other hand, just turned a deaf ear and a blind eye. But what I’m really saying is, I understand what it’s like to be pushed in a direction you don’t necessarily want to go, and I also understand what it’s like not to truly listen when someone is clearly telling you how they feel.”
“And now look,” she said, pointing to his horn. “If there were ever a direction somebody didn’t want to go, I suppose this is the one.”
Feeling a lot better, he used his free arm to push himself up. “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the sparkly horn. Speaking of, have we had any luck finding anyone who might be able to help us get rid of it?”
Vinnie pulled her phone from the pocket of the soft blue sweater she wore and scrolled her texts. “Not yet. My friend Khristos, also a God, is asking around for us. He’s really respected in the community, especially with the elder Gods. If anyone can find anything, it’s him.”
“How do you know Khristos?”
Her smile was fond. “We went to school together. In fact, he looked out for me a lot.”
“Because you were Goddess-light and people picked on you?”
She let her head fall back on her shoulders with a tinkling laugh. “No. Because I was an overachiever and he was a good guy. He’s several years older than me, but we were both in the same grade.”
Oliver pointed a finger at her and teased, “You were one of those kids, huh?”
“Guilty. It’s hard being eleven and a senior in high school. Khristos made it easier. He kept the jerks away. We’ve been friends ever since, see each other from time to time.”
“And now he’s married to Aphrodite 2.0?”
“Quinn, yeah. She’s such a great lady, who stepped into some impossible shoes with style and grace.”
“Isn’t she, by the standards you explained, impure, too? Because she’s half-human?”
ACCIDENTAL UNICORN, THE Page 9