“I don’t have much spare time working for Nova, but if I get a small break, I love to repurpose old furniture, read, go to concerts. I especially love live music.”
“No kidding?” he said with a smile. “I love live music, too. In fact, I saw a great band last week at a dive bar in Queens. Damn, the lead singer was amazing. Um…I’m trying to remember the name of the band…” He paused a moment, and then he snapped his fingers. “The Watermelons. That was it! Don’t let the name fool you, either. It sounds light and breezy, but they surprised me with their depth.”
Murphy clapped her hands and bobbed her head. “The Watermelons? Shut up! On one of my rare nights off, I saw them a few months ago at a little place in Brooklyn! The um…the Flying Squirrel was the name of the club. Really good stuff.”
He grinned wider. “I like The Flying Squirrel. It’s kitschy—and they have amazing onion rings.” Sten paused then as he studied her, before he asked, “So you’re an alternative music fan?”
Murphy shrugged, thinking of the enormous collection of music on her phone. “I’m just a music fan. I love it all. From Doris Day to Ed Sheeran. I have a pretty extensive collection of music.”
He grunted with a teasing smile. “Ed Sheeran? Really?”
She waved a finger at him. “Don’t you give me that look. I love him, and nothing can sway me. But I also love metal, rock, punk, eighties, country, if that gives you an example of how wide my tastes range.”
He rocked back on his heels, crossing his arms over his chest. “Not a huge punk fan, but I do like Doris Day.” Glancing at her, his eyes held a challenge. “How do you feel about classical? And be careful what you say. Your answer will determine if we can take this conversation any further, or I have to wash my hands of you forever.” He took an exaggerated breath inward then put a hand on his hip and waited.
Murphy grinned. “First, I used to play the piano and with that came plenty of classical music. Second, Rachmaninoff all day long, buddy.”
He blew out the breath, his wide chest expanding as he wiped his brow with a comical motion. “You play the piano? And phew. Lucky you, because if you had said—”
A loud crash from the wide marble entryway made them both turn around. And then a cheerful voice bellowed, “Where’s my favorite troll king?”
From the sounds of it, Gilda had arrived.
A very tiny, round woman in a colorful ruffled skirt with multicolored beads around her neck virtually danced up to Sten and made him bend down by crooking her finger at him.
He kneeled in front of her, and she grabbed him by both sides of his face with her chubby, dimpled hands.
“My boy!” she chirped in her tiny voice, pressing kisses to Sten’s cheeks and forehead. “How are you? Still as big as ever, I see.” She swatted his butt and chuckled.
Sten swooped her up in a hug, sending her chubby legs flying outward before planting a kiss on her rounded cheek. “Good to see you, Gilda. It’s been too damn long.”
She ruffled his silky green hair as he set her on the floor before planting her hands on her hips and giving him a saucy expression. “And why is that? Does ruling a kingdom keep you so busy you can’t come see old Gilda every once in a while?”
He chuckled deep and low. “If you only knew the half of it, Miss Gilda. And now we have this mess to deal with.”
Murphy caught Gilda’s attention, her sparkling blue eyes darted over to hone in on her. She wiggled another finger. “You. Come over here and lemme get a good look at ya.”
Murphy’s cheeks went hot but she did as she was instructed, holding out her hand to the tiny woman.
But Gilda swatted it away, instead holding out her pudgy arms to Murphy. “Welcome to the fold, newb! C’mon, get in here!”
Gilda’s joy was infectious, encouraging Murphy to do as she was told until she was engulfed in a cinnamon-and-pear-scented hug that made her heart warm. “It’s nice to meet you, Gilda.”
The tiny woman backed up and gave her a coy smile. “You’re cute as a button, ain’t ya. You single?”
“Gilda!” Sten protested in admonishment. “That’s personal. Give her a minute to adjust before you start grilling her, would you?”
Gilda winked at Murphy. “What’s the harm in asking, right? Besides, all I have to do is sprinkle a little troll dust on her and I’ll have her singing like a caged canary, and you know it, big guy.”
“You know that’s only allowed in times of crisis, Miss Gilda. So as your new king, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Sten said with an amused chuckle.
Murphy couldn’t help but laugh, too, at this colorful woman with the wild purple hair sticking out at odd ends on her head, and her vivid personality virtually an entity all its own. “It’s okay, er…big guy,” she said with a smile. “I am single indeed, Miss Gilda. Thirty, still a loner, a former graphic designer gone personal assistant to a big-mouth glamor girl turned Scandinavian troll. I have a dog named Pancake, and I live alone.”
“Well, you’re not alone anymore, sweet stuff,” Gilda responded. “You’re a troll now, and we stick together. We’ll figure this out in no time.”
Wanda and Marty stood quietly listening to the exchange until they, too, caught Gilda’s eye, and she was once more back in motion.
“You two!” she said with a wide grin and a point of her fingers. “Boy, do I know about you! Pretty as a picture, the lot of you. Where’s the mean one?”
Marty snickered. “She’s at home, watching after the accident victim. We only let her out of her cage when absolutely necessary.”
Gilda threw her head back and laughed out loud, hearty and rich. “I hear she’s a real kick in the pants. Boy, it’s so awesome to meet you gals. We talk about you three all the time at our bi-monthly sewing circle. We call you The Three Trollketeers!”
Trollketeers?” Murphy whispered to Sten.
He leaned into her ear, making her wiggle with a hot shiver. “Same as your musketeers but with funny hair and shorter legs.”
“Seriously?”
Sten snorted. “No. It’s a joke, Murphy. A troll joke.”
Murphy laughed. “I would have put them in the Charlie’s Angels category, because not one of them is hard to look at, and they’re pretty badass, but if Gilda says Trollketeers, I say yes, ma’am.”
Gilda doled out more hugs to the women, and then she whirled around to spy Bellamy, who’d slunk off to the kitchen.
“And you! You come over here right now, young lady.” Gilda pointed to the spot right in front of her on the beautifully marbled floor. “So what’s this I hear about a curse?”
Bellamy’s eyes circled her feet, but Gilda cleared her throat, making her head snap upward, her face flushed with clear humility. “It’s true. I bought a curse from someone. I can’t remember who or how, or even when. And I’m sorry, Miss Gilda. I swear, I’m sorry.”
Gilda’s pudgy face went instantly sympathetic, and she held out her hand to a distraught Bellamy. “C’mere now. Give old Gilda a hug first, and then I’m going to give you the hell of your lifetime, young lady. I know you know better than to mess with trolls like that. Ain’t nothin’ but trouble you paid good money for, and I know you got plenty to spare, but this wasn’t the way to waste it.”
That was when Bellamy really broke down and began to sob, but Gilda led her over to her puffy white sofa and sat her down, pulling her into her arms.
She wiped at Bellamy’s tears with the edge of her colorful skirt. “Listen now, no time for tears. We have to find whoever did this and see justice served. You hear me, Bellamy? Now look at me. Look me in the eye.”
Bellamy hiccupped a cough, lifting her eyes to meet Gilda’s as the small woman placed her hands on either side of Bellamy’s face, almost like mimicking a vise grip.
“Sten, grab your girl, would ya? It’s for her protection. And you ladies? Stick together.”
When Murphy began to protest—though, admittedly, it was a weak and pathetic protest—Sten put a finger to his
mouth and simply said, “Trust,” before he wrapped his arms around her and braced her against his chest.
And listen, it wasn’t a horrible position to be in. He did have a big, brawny chest, and he smelled like heaven. So it wasn’t like it was a hardship.
Still, they hardly knew each other.
“Now hold on to your panties, folks,” Gilda instructed with a twinkle in her eye. “Hold on tight!”
Gilda closed her eyes, her ruby-red lips moving in a silent litany of words as Bellamy fell into an almost trance-like state, and then the room felt as though all the air had been sucked out of it.
Murphy struggled to breathe, but Sten held her tight, and as the room began to rock, she found herself clinging to his strong forearms.
“What’s happening?” she yelled into the sudden wind that whipped through in invisible-tornado fashion, her heart thumping.
She began to feel as though she was in a bizarre accordion as the air expanded and evaporated, and Bellamy’s beautiful things swirled past them…
Right before it expanded one last time and violently shot Gilda across the span of the living room like a balloon losing all its helium.
Chapter 13
“Gilda!” everyone in the room screamed at once as the items levitating in the air crashed to the floor, leaving a mess of pillows and broken picture frames.
But Gilda had managed to latch on to a doorframe, and she slid down it like a fireman’s pole, brushing her hands off when her sandaled feet hit the ground.
Then she did a little dance. “Woohoo! What a rush, huh, ladies?” she exclaimed, throwing her chubby arms in the air and grinning at Marty and Wanda.
Bellamy sat up, looking a bit groggy and disoriented, but no worse for wear as she brushed the hair from her face with trembling hands. Marty brought her a glass of water and tucked a blanket over her legs.
Sten busied himself picking up some pillows, with Murphy helping, as he asked, “So what’s the score, Gilda? Give it to me straight, no chaser.”
“Welp,” she said. “Here’s the good news. Bellamy’s gonna be just fine. No residual harm from cross-contamination when she bought the curse, and whoever gave it to her definitely wiped her memory clean. They made sure the minute she daggone well used the curse, she’d forget where it came from and who it came from.”
Murphy processed that for a moment. She hadn’t been lying. Score one in Bellamy’s favor.
“I told you,” Bellamy muttered. “I told you I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t lying.”
Murphy stopped what she was doing and sat on the couch next to her, patting her hand. She deserved at least some credit. “Are you okay? Can I get you anything? Some more water maybe?”
“You don’t have to be nice to me, Murphy,” she said tiredly, running her hand over her hair. “I don’t deserve it.”
Murphy patted her hand, but she didn’t know what else to say.
Marty’s question thwarted further conversation when she approached the tiny woman. “So, you gave us the good news. What’s the bad news, Gilda?” she asked, smoothing down her hair as Wanda helped her pick feathers from an exploded pillow off her sapphire-blue jacket.
Gilda looked to Murphy, her eyes going soft, making Murphy rise to brace herself. “The bad news is, it’s some bad magic. Some really bad, bad, dirty, stinky magic. I’d even go so far as to wonder if whoever gave her the curse didn’t know it would turn your sister into a troll. But for darn tootin’ sure I know this—if they did know, they also knew it would turn her into a treasure troll.”
Wanda blew the loose strands of her hair out of her face. “Can you tell if it was a troll who sold her the curse, Gilda? Or some other entity?”
She clucked her tongue. “Aw, heck yeah, it was a troll. I can smell rotten troll from ten miles down the road.”
“Can you smell the name of the troll from ten miles down the road?” Sten asked with an indulgent smile.
It was clear to Murphy there was history between these two and an affectionate connection that couldn’t be ignored. A connection she envied because they had each other to turn to in times of need.
Gilda planted her hands on her ample hips. “You know good and well I can’t do that, Sten Peerson. All I can do is tell ya the magic comes from the north end of Troll Hill, and it ain’t pretty magic. It’s some kind of convoluted mess we outlawed years ago, and if you don’t get it off that poor child’s person soon, not only will she be stuck as a troll, but she’s gonna end up workin’ in the mine and digging her way toward her death. You understand me? We have to fix this, and fix this soon!”
There was that place again. The north end. Wasn’t that where Sten said crime and drugs were at a premium?
Gilda’s cheerful open face had gone quite severe, her eyes flashing myriad colors and that made Murphy’s stomach sink to the ground and her legs feel like soft butter.
Sten clucked his tongue, his chiseled face neutral, his thoughts unreadable. “So no idea who or what he looks like—or if he’s even Nova’s breed of troll himself? Or is he like us?”
Murphy was still a little unclear about the breeds of trolls. If she had it right, Nova’s particular look didn’t automatically make anyone else who looked like her a treasure troll specifically. There were trolls who looked just like her, but had other abilities far less valuable. They were also rarer, than the type of troll Murphy and Sten were—which were easily identified by color.
Gilda shook her head, making her thatch of purple hair fly around her head. “Nope. I read all Bellamy’s thoughts—sifted through that brain of hers like I was sifting flour for troll cakes—and whoever put the mojo on the curse, so to speak, was pretty dang thorough, because I didn’t see much but how sorry she is. And make no mistake, Sten, our girl here’s sorry.”
Then, just as all those words were sinking in, as everyone began once more to attempt to clean up the mini-tornado that was Gilda’s wreckage, Bellamy’s cat sashayed into the room and strolled over to Murphy.
It sat at her feet and reached out a paw to swipe at her calf. “I know what he looks like,” a soft voice said with a distinct purr.
Murphy looked around, her eyes chasing after everyone in the room—everyone who was still busily cleaning up—silently.
As in, no one else was talking and that meant either the cat was doing the talking or she was going crazy.
“Lady. Look down!”
Murphy’s eyes flew open wide as she looked down at the beautiful gray cat, its silky coat brushed to a shiny perfection as it sat before her and swished its bushy tail.
“Yep. That’s me talking to you. The Phony One’s cat. My name’s Gaston. And yes, I’m named after the asshole in The Little Mermaid.”
“Wasn’t he from Beauty and The Beast?” Murphy asked before she could stop herself.
She was talking to a cat. Now, that might not appear terribly crazy to most—especially this bunch, because they had their very own talking cat. Except, no one seemed to hear the cat talking but her.
“Whatever. It was some stupid movie she watched over and over when she was a kid. She rambled on about it one night after she got me from the shelter while she was wrapped around a bottle of sauvignon blanc and a box of Cheez-Its, feeling sorry for herself.”
“You were a shelter pet?” Why was Bellamy suddenly not so heartless? It was easier to be angry with her when she was a brainless, soulless twit.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter right now,” Gaston purred. “Listen, I have some information for you about the curse, if you want it.”
Even while her alarm bells sounded in her head, Murphy still couldn’t believe what was happening right before her very eyes. First Pancake and now this cat. Talking. Animals were talking to her.
“Am I really hearing a cat talk?” Her voice shook as she asked.
“I dunno. Maybe it’s all in your head, and you really are bananas.” Then Gaston laughed. “That was a joke.”
Twisting her fingers together, she fretted, “
Why is this happening?”
“Why aren’t you listening?”
“Because this is crazy!”
Gaston’s ears twitched as he gave her a haughty look. “Crazy is relative in your case, seeing as you have pointy ears, horns, and you’re pink, don’t you think?”
Okay, that was fair. “Forgive me if I’m a little freaked out right now. It’s been the craziest two days of my life full of vampires and werewolves and zombies who like to eat broccoli.”
“Broccoli?” Gaston spat. “I wonder what Rick Grimes would have to say to that?”
“You know about The Walking Dead?”
He blinked his round, glassy eyes. “I know what I know. The question is, do you want to know what I know?”
She gulped. She was talking to a cat no one else appeared to hear. Did she want to know if she was going mad?
Sure. Why not? “I say this with heaps of hesitation, but yes, I want to know what you know.”
“It was a guy who sold the princess the curse.”
Her stomach took a dive toward the floor and her mouth went dry, afraid of what else she was about to hear. “Okay, and?”
“And she paid a lot of money for it. Cash money. Rolled that paper off her palm like she was a Kardashian.”
Bellamy could afford to do that, but she still didn’t understand the point. “And?”
Marty interrupted their conversation when she touched her arm and gave Murphy an odd look. “Murphy, honey, what are you doing?”
Gaston swished his tail and purred. “She’s hot. MILF hot.”
Should she tell them the cat was talking to her or would they chalk it up to stress and think she’d gone off the deep end?
Though, to be fair, she reminded herself once more, they had a talking cat of their own.
Murphy knew a guilty look crossed her face, but she didn’t know how to hide it. “What do you mean?”
Marty squinted, cocking her head and folding her hands in front of her. “You were making a weird noise…I don’t know how to describe it. It was sort of like…like you were speaking your own language.”
The Accidental Troll Page 12
