Toni didn’t have the chance to say one way or the other before Nina was in attack mode.
She circled Brenda and made a fist. “Hold the bloody fuck on!” Nina yelped, stomping her foot in the snow. “I’m no GD fairy godmother. I hate people. I hate all people, and the hell I’m wearin’ this stupid—”
But Brenda was no longer listening. With a wave of her wand, the tip of the silvery stick emitting a glistening silver dust, she said, “There’s nothing more I can do for ya, Dumplins. The realm has spoken. But here’s to you, Toni! Go on and get ya some of the good stuff. Bye, y’all!”
And then she and her unconscious sister were gone.
When the silence of Brenda’s departure became painfully awkward, when their mouths could no longer hang open without freezing in position, suddenly Nina became animated, her eyes darting around the clearing.
“Aw, for fuckity-fuck’s sake! Has anyone seen Carl? Where’s Carl?”
Chapter 3
“Carl?” Nina hollered, frightening the villagers who’d begun to disperse and go back to doing whatever it was villagers did when they were done gawking at the realm-jumpers.
Nina lifted her skirts with an angry growl and began searching the perimeter of the village in a blur of motion Toni still couldn’t believe she was witnessing.
“Carl! If you don’t come back here right now, I’m taking away your broccoli cupcakes for snack for a solid week, and you’re gonna get coal in your stocking, mister!”
Carl had looked pretty pale back at the store. Maybe he was sick. Fear struck a chord in Toni’s belly, spurring her to action. Fear she understood. Fear had been her fuel for three years. This was her fault. She’d done this. She had to get her shit together and help find him.
“Is Carl the young man who was with Nina in the store?” Toni asked Marty with trepidation.
Marty nodded, her blue eyes full of worry. “That’s our Carl. He’s a zombie and the sweetest thing ever. He’s not used to being alone. We need to find him right now or—”
“Carl!” Dannan yelled, his tiny voice whipping in the blustering wind as he headed into the woods, selflessly helping to search for someone he didn’t even know. “Come to us, lad!”
“How about we split up into small groups? We’ll cover more ground that way,” Toni suggested, forgetting everything but finding Carl.
The tall pines to the left of them, separating the village from the path, rustled and parted as yet another tall figure emerged, and everyone stopped all motion.
Dear Realm, please don’t let this be Maleficent.
For a brief moment, the skies, their dark-purple clouds spewing snow, brightened. Magically so. The heavens opened, and shafts of light mimicking rainbow prisms shone down upon a head of shiny ebony hair.
Birds chirped, frogs ribbited, and just shy of angels singing, Toni was sure she heard the strains of a gentle harp playing somewhere in the distance.
And from the tall trees, out stepped a man. A man so perfect, so magnificent, so chiseled and hard, each of the women, Nina included, stopped and stared as though he’d cast a real live spell on the lot of them.
His thighs bulged beneath the rust-colored pants he wore, the laces pulled tight in a crisscross pattern, ending at his tapered waist; his chest wide and muscled beneath his green shirt and dark brown vest.
Eyes of the bluest sapphire, fringed by a thick down of dark lashes, stared at her. His hair was wet from the snow but it gleamed in all its ebony-ness, slicked back from his face, the ends falling to his jawline.
His cheekbones were high, sharp, and his jaw square and lean. And his arms—oh, those arms. Just thick enough from heavy labor, but not so thick he couldn’t put them down at his sides.
There was a collective breathy sigh as everyone’s eyes glazed over. He was the most beautiful specimen of man she’d ever seen and it took all she had to keep from letting a breathy sigh escape her throat, too.
As he tromped from the woods, the snow swirling around him, he had his arm around the neck of a reindeer—a very pale and green-around-the-gills reindeer. “Milady?” he called, his voice like liquid warmth, washing over Toni, bathing her soul, and leaving her weak in the knees. “Would this be your Carl?”
Nina approached the newcomer slow and steady, lifting her glasses as the prisms of light above his head faded and the clouds returned.
The reindeer covered the distance between them, running toward Nina with a slow, crooked gait. The animal stopped in front of her and patted his hoof on the snow before tucking his head, antlers and all, into her hip.
Nina’s long fingers lifted his muzzle as she looked down into his eyes. “Carl?”
The reindeer reared his head up and tapped his hoof on the ground again.
“Aw, for Jesus’s sake, Carl! What happened, little buddy?” She ran her hands over his back and head, checking him thoroughly.