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.