Toni shook her head in confusion. “That can’t be right. What do I have to do with King Dick’s son? Nothing. That’s what. Now, you three stay with Nina. I’m going to go find out if I can’t get the king to see me so I can figure out how we might go about getting you three home, pronto.” She turned to leave, but Wanda grabbed her by the arm.
“Um, no. You go nowhere alone. Are you forgetting this queen wants your head? Are you forgetting she’s sent out every jackhole from here to eternity to try to stop you? I’m telling you—this little castle drama has to do with you. I feel it in my gut. So if we go, we go together. Marty, you stay with Nina and Carl.”
Nina grabbed Toni’s hand just as she was about to make her way inside the ballroom. “Listen to me, kiddo. Shit feels off. Wanda’s right. I know my vampire senses are all fucked up here in Never-Never Land, but I just have this bad damn vibe I can’t shake. You keep your eyes and ears open. Don’t leave Wanda. Got that?”
Toni tugged one of her beautiful curls and smiled, trying to keep her hands from shaking. “Got it, Fairy Godmother.”
She and Wanda clasped hands and began to fight their way into the ballroom, past the dozens and dozens of servants milling about, setting tables and fluffing flowers, while Toni tried to shake off the same bad vibe she was apparently sharing with Nina.
Just a little more,” Jon urged Dannan as he reached his long fingers between the thick bars of the cell to try to retrieve the keys.
Dannan grunted as he strained to yank them from the unconscious Günter’s waist.
“To the left, my friend. The left,” Jon directed as he stood on top of the lone barrel in their cell, looking out into the prison’s exterior.
The ogre’s blue fingers swept across the dirt floor, stretching, reaching, all while he grunted.
“How did ye know about the guard’s distaste for the sight of blood, ogre?”
“Ye trained with him often while I watched from the woods. When one of the lads was nicked by his opponent’s sword, a mere scratch if ye were to ask me, the boy fell to the ground as if he’d been gutted like a fish when he looked upon a single drop of blood.”
Jon looked down at the deep gash in his arm from Dannan’s teeth, where he’d bitten him in order to draw enough blood to frighten Günter into passing out. “You bit me, Madman.”
“I did. ’Twas delicious. Should I ever go back to the ways of the old order of picking humans’ bones clean, I’m comin’ for ye, lad,” he said on another grunt as he finally got ahold of the keys. He swung them around his finger with a grin then tossed them to Jon.
Jon reached between the cell bars and unlocked it, letting it swing wide as Dannan spilled out of the cramped space with a loud moan, crashing to the hard dirt floor.
Jon dragged Günter to the far wall of the dank cellar and sat him in a corner, straightening his jacket for him before giving the guard a pat on the shoulder and muttering, “Sorry, friend. I’ll make it up to you. Merry Christmas to you and yours!”
Dannan clapped him on the shoulder. “Leave him. He will recover. We must go, lad—the hour has just struck nine!”
As they made their way through the maze of the prison beneath the castle, ducking one lone guard and taking back his sword from the artillery room, Jon could only think of one thing—he would either always remember this moment because he’d won the heart of the woman he would love eternally.
Or she was going to, as Nina said, kick his ass to the curb and return to her land of Jersey without ever looking back.
Toni began to make her way through the crowd, her eye of the tiger on the king’s throne, still empty. The crush of people entering the ballroom thickened, swirls of colorful dresses and men in formal jackets crowded her path as they all waited to see the king’s entrance.
Wanda clung to her hand. “Slow down,” she warned, just before Toni heard the soft sound of a piccolo.
She cocked her head and listened again, closing her eyes and inhaling the musical magic.
She knew it was a piccolo because in eighth-grade music, she’d been assigned one and she’d sucked monstrous balls at it. However, whoever was playing it would have garnered an A from crabby old Mr. Bartowski.
Her hand was somehow separated from Wanda’s as she crowd swelled, swallowing her up and Toni followed the sound, unable to stop herself.
Maybe it was Jon? Harps were usually the instrument of choice for her True Love Top Forty, but she couldn’t take a chance it wasn’t him somewhere in this vast room. Maybe one’s true-love tune changed when they were in someplace as grand as a castle?
So she followed the sweet strains out of the ballroom, down a long hall, powerless, mesmerized by the sound, her heart pounding in the hopes she’d find Jon and they’d fix this misunderstanding.
She was convinced that was what it had to be. But wait. Maybe he didn’t hear music or see halos glowing over her head. Maybe he was her true love and she wasn’t his?