Toni stood off to the side as the women gathered around “Carl” and stroked him, and she wondered…what the hell?
Some inventory was necessary if she was going to go any further. Her brain was a jumbled mess of what was real and what was make-believe.
So far today, she’d been pitched down a rabbit hole in a dressing room, dumped in a strange land, knocked a drunken, kind-of-irritated witch out cold, heard talk of vampires, werewolves and zombies, nabbed a pair of cute shoes she couldn’t take off, met a blue ogre and a good witch with a magic wand, discovered she was going to be forced to have some happily-ever-after she’d never asked for, and now the sweet, shy man-child she’d met in the outlet mall was a zombie turned reindeer.
And none of it—none of it appeared to make these women question a single second of what was happening to them.
“Milady?” the devastatingly handsome man said, bowing regally before her. “Jon Doe The Stable Boy, at your service.”
And then there was this. Jon Doe. The stable boy. Seriously? A man of this ilk deserved a much bigger name than Jon. Maybe something like Perfect or Granite or Flawless, perhaps. But Jon seemed much too simple.
“Milady?”
She licked her chapped lips and swallowed, holding out her trembling hand. “Toni. Toni Vitali.”
He nodded his perfect head and smiled, pressing his warm, yummy lips briefly to the back of her hand. “A lovely name for a lovely maiden.”
Her eyes would’ve rolled if they weren’t now frozen in their sockets. Maiden. Hah. But there was something else. Something new and unfamiliar to Toni. Her heart literally fluttered in her chest as though it, too, had wings just like these women, and her stomach gurgled. Not unpleasantly, but with an excited skip.
“Milady?” he asked, his eyes curious.
“Thank you for finding, um, Carl.”
“No trouble at all,” he offered gallantly. “He was just grazing in the woods, and his unusual coloring made me stop and ponder his breed—it’s like no other. He looks nothing like my stable of deer. It was then he began to whimper, and I worried he’d lost his mother. I see I was right. Odd as that seems.”
Toni snorted, condensation escaping her lips in a puff of white. “Odd? You don’t know the half of it.”
He pointed to her shoes, sparkling in the twilight. “I see you have the king’s shoes. How did you manage that?”
“The king’s shoes are pretty popular around these parts, huh?”
Jon ignored her question and instead asked, “Speaking of parts, what land is yours?”
“Land?”
“Yes, from whence you hail.”
“I hail from the land of designer outlet malls with wormholes. Better known as Jersey,” she said as she shivered, her teeth beginning to chatter.
Jon tilted his head, his blue-blue eyes twinkling. “Jersey? I’ve not heard of this place. Is it far?”
Toni shivered again, crossing her arms over her chest. “Far is a subjective term at this point. But you best believe, it’s a long way from Shamalot.”
Pulling off his vest, he wrapped it around Toni’s shoulders, his fingers brushing her exposed skin and evoking another shiver as a ripple of awareness shot along her spine.
“Have you sought lodging? The eve is upon us, my lady Toni, and the weather will sour quickly.”
Now, homeless and penniless, she knew. She had this. Rubbing her hands together, she asked, “Got a match?”
“A what?”
“Never mind. Listen, do you know how to get to the castle? Because according to Brenda the Good Witch of the South, I have to give these babies back.” She pointed to her shoes—shoes that were killing her frozen feet right now.
Jon’s face darkened for a moment and then it was as though an idea formed, because he smiled wide, his ultra-white teeth as perfect as the rest of him. “I do know the way to the castle. Do you need an escort?”
“She don’t need nothin’ from you, Hot Breeches,” Nina crowed, Carl nestled close to her side.
Marty and Wanda joined Toni, their eyes on Jon. Because really, whose eyes could will themselves away from a long hard stare at all that man?
Toni unglued her own gawking stare from his hulking physique and made introductions. “Jon The Stable Boy, this is Marty, Wanda, and Nina. All fair maidens dumped in your backyard.” Because of me.
Jon bowed once more, his thick, dark hair gleaming as the last of the day faded. “Miladies, the pleasure is mine. How can I be of assistance?”
Marty whistled and fanned herself with her hand, looking to Wanda, whose wings had taken up a mad whir. “Are you warm? Is anyone else warm?”
“On fire here,” Wanda croaked then swallowed, the light-blue veins in her neck working when she nodded. She grabbed the hand Marty was using to fan herself and pointed it at her own face as she lifted the back of her fancy hairdo.