The Accidental Unicorn Read online

  The Accidental Unicorn

  Dakota Cassidy

  The Accidental Unicorn

  Published 2019 by Dakota Cassidy

  ISBN: B07WF1QR95

  Copyright © 2019, Dakota Cassidy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

  Manufactured in the USA.

  Created with Vellum

  Acknowledgements

  Cover Art: Katie Woods

  * * *

  Editor Kelli Collins

  Author’s Note

  My darlings,

  Here we are at book eighteen! I’m not sure how the heck we got here, but from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. Nina, Marty, and Wanda thank you for your ongoing love and support. I adore this world. I love its flaws, its outrageous cussing, its enduring friendships, its extended-extended family, and I love that you still keep coming back for more after eleven years. It means the world to me.

  I know this has to end someday. I mean, eventually, there’ll be nothing left to accidentally turn but the vacuum (hmmm…), but until then, onward to another adventure!

  Also, please note, I’ve played fast and loose with the mythology of unicorns (which there isn’t a lot of, by the by) and twisted it to suit my own selfish needs. Any and all mistakes or outlandish fabrications are mine and mine alone.

  Last, but never least, to my BFF Renee George: This chipmunk’s for you.

  * * *

  Love,

  Dakota XXOO

  The Accidental Unicorn

  Chapter 1

  “Thank you for calling OOPS in the middle of the goddamned night when I was just about to go home, have a pint of blood, and finish my binge-watch of Stranger Things. I mean, Jesus on a surfboard. It’s three o’clock in the a-m. Can’t whatever the fuck is wrong with you wait until tomorrow?”

  “I…I’m…”

  “Never mind. My name is Nina Statleon. I’ll be your guide to all things paranormal. For your safety, please keep your hands and feet inside the whacked-ass ride you’re about to go on until we come to a full and complete goddamn stop.”

  “Um…”

  “So how the fuck may I direct your call? Do you have a sudden urge to drink blood and rip someone’s throat out? Because that’s my department. Or are you spittin’ hairballs and feeling like a rare steak might hit the spot? That’s for Marty, or maybe even Wanda, but she’s preggers and the size of a GD tractor-trailer. Probably not a lot of help at this point. Anywho, if it’s brains you’re craving, that’s for Carl, but I warn you, he’s not your typical zomb—”

  “Brains? Why would I…?” Oliver Baldwin couldn’t even finish the sentence, but he couldn’t let her continue to talk, either, or he’d likely projectile vomit.

  Who craved brains? Who? That was sick.

  His stomach lurched a little before it settled to a nice slosh from the remains of the sticky-sweet Frapp from Starbucks he’d had earlier. Maybe this had been a big mistake. Maybe these people were fetishists who merely thought they were vampires and werewolves. People like that existed.

  He’d seen them on some show he used to watch with his fiancée called My Strange Addiction or some such weirdness. And if they thought they were these supernatural creatures, they lived the lifestyle according to the folklore.

  Slept all day, stayed up all night—maybe they even drank blood. But it would take some fancy footwork to prove to him they were immortal and preternaturally strong.

  He was no fool. He knew about these things because of Denise.

  “Tick-tock, buddy. State your case and hurry the hell up. And I swear on all that’s good and holy, if you’re one of the flippy-dippy jokers who want to join us in our ‘cause’ or you’re a crank call, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I can find you just by your scent. Yes. You heard that right. I’ll sniff you out. Don’t test that theory. Because trust and believe, you won’t like how your esophagus looks on the motherfluffin’ outside.”

  Oliver swallowed hard and rubbed the raised knot on his head just under the brim of his knit cap. He had some serious concerns here—one of which was the violence of not only the tone this woman used, but her actual words.

  While true, he needed his esophagus…did he need it more that he needed an explanation for what was happening to him?

  He was feeling pretty iffy about it right now.

  The woman on the other end of the line rapped the phone on something hard. Probably her desk. Whatever it was, it brought him back to the present with a sharp jolt.

  “Hello? I’m hanging the fuck up in three, two—”

  “I’m sorry!” he rambled as quickly as he could before she disconnected and he was really left with no hope. “I got distracted. Uh… It’s none of those things, ma’am. I am in need of none of those things.”

  There was a shuffle and a creak of something, probably the chair this surly woman was sitting on, before she said, “Ma’am? Did you hear that shit, Marty? We’ve become ma’ams. Ain’t that some fuckin’ shit.”

  “No,” a melodic voice responded. The woman named Marty, he assumed. “That ain’t my fuckin’ shit, vampire. That’s your fuckin’ shit. He called you ma’am. Not me.” Then she giggled, and he found it was sweet and soft and pleasant to his ears.

  Rolling his fingers over the mouse pad, he looked absently at the OOPS website and reread the part where it claimed to help anyone in paranormal distress. Oliver wasn’t sure if this was paranormal distress, but it certainly wasn’t normal distress.

  It was just a lot of distressing stress, of that he was clear.

  Clenching his fists, he refocused. “I’m sorry, Miss Statleon, was it? Maybe I’ve made a mistake. When I googled ‘strange phenomena,’ your website came up. Um, OOPS, right? I do have the right number, don’t I? Can you define what strange phenomena means to you?”

  “Can you define what the sound of hanging up means to you?”

  He winced. He’d offended her. “I’m sorry, Miss Statleon. I know I must sound horribly rude. I’m a little mixed up right now.”

  “Forget it, and it’s Mrs. Statleon—but preferably just fucking Nina, and yep. You got the right number. We deal in strange phenomena. That’s just the fancy bullshit keyword Marty puts in the search engines to drum up business, but what it really means is we deal in the cuckoo. So forget that shitty phrase and focus on my next question: What are you? Or what do you think you are? If you’re not a vampire, werewolf, zombie, cougar, bear, mermaid, skinwalker or a phoenix—oh, or a genie; sorry, I forgot that shizzle. That was some crazy, let me tell you—then what the fuck? We’re runnin’ out of shit to be, brother. Soon we’ll have to shut this shit down because there won’t be anything paranormal left to accidentally turn into.”

  “Nina? Put that call on speakerphone, please,” another softly cultured voice demanded sternly.

  “Why, Wanda? Don’t you trust me to handle this?”

  “No!” the two women said in gleeful unison.

  Nina’s raspy sigh grated in Oliver’s ear. “Fucking fine. Listen, I said, state your case and state it fast. I got a full plate and you’re holding up the buffet line.”

  He looked out the window of his house in Buffalo at the cold dead of night, watching as the leaves fell from his oak tree in soggy piles of gold and orange he’d
have to rake come daylight. Under normal circumstances, that would make him happy. Fall was Oliver’s favorite season. Whatever was happening to him was interrupting his favorite season and involved glitter—a buttload of glitter.

  Suck it up, Baldwin, and tell the cranky lady what your problem is. Hurry, before she sniffs you out and does something to your organs.

  “My name is Oliver Baldwin, and I have a problem. I don’t know if you can help because I’m not any of the things you listed, but your website says you have a great deal of experience in paranormal occurrences. I also don’t know if this is a paranormal experience in the truest form, but it’s certainly not un-paranormal.”

  “Is un-paranormal a word?” a softly commanding voice asked. “I’m Wanda Jefferson, by the way. Nice to meet you, Oliver Baldwin.”

  “Marty Flaherty here, too. And of course, you’ve already met our resident cranky pants, Nina. We’re the three women who make up OOPS. So tell us what’s occurring and we’ll decide if it’s un-paranormal or not.”

  Running a finger along the neck of his sweater, he pulled it away from his skin. Suddenly, he was very hot.

  And glittery. Let’s not forget glittery.

  Worse, he was feeling like an idiot, but he was going to dive in anyway because there was nowhere else for him to turn.

  But he needed to be sure he was talking to someone who wouldn’t turn this into some huge joke. Because he didn’t feel like laughing, and this was no joke.

  “Can I ask you ladies a few questions first?”

  “This isn’t like a fucking job application, Oliver. We’re not interviewing with you here, pal. You’re interviewing with us. Got that shit? We’re nonprofit. That means we do this fuckery out of the goodness of our hearts and we owe you shitballs.”

  “Nina,” Marty chided. At least, he thought he had the right voice with the right name. “Don’t be so obtuse. He’s allowed to be concerned.”

  “Do you even know what the fuck obtuse means, Miss Clairol Number Three Fifty-Two?” the growly lady asked.

  “You’re the very definition, Elvira,” Marty shot back.

  There was another rasping sigh—one Oliver had the feeling happened pretty often with the woman named Nina.

  “Ladies, are we still doing this? It’s the same old song every flippin’ time. Stop arguing. Listen to the client. Shut your faces, please and thank you.” He assumed it was Wanda who cleared her throat. “Now, Oliver, please feel free to ask as many questions as you’d like. If, in fact, you are in paranormal distress, certainly we’re happy to accommodate.”

  Pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, he snatched it back when he ran across the bump under the edge of his knit cap. How the hell was he going to explain this?

  Then he shook his head and took a swig of his beer. First, the questions.

  “May I ask what qualifies you as paranormal experts?”

  There was a scuffle of feet and a muffled protest he didn’t understand before the woman named Wanda said, “Well, if being half-werewolf, half-vampire doesn’t qualify me, I don’t know what does.”

  He hissed through his teeth before he took a sharp inhale of breath. The room began to spin a little, but he righted himself by clinging to his dining room table.

  “So you believe you’re a were-vamp?” he asked, puffing out his chest as if doing so would convince him that, despite the weak squeal to his voice, he was still, indeed, a man.

  There was a pause, and then a light chuckle. “You know the term?”

  He sighed and looked at one of the two lone pictures he had left of him and Denise. “I do. My ex-fiancée used to watch a lot of paranormal-based shows. So I’m sort of familiar with the terminology.”

  “Fuck, Wanda! Is this dude gonna come at us with some Vampire Diaries/Supernatural/Teen Wolf bullstank? I’m bone tired of swimming around in the TV legend that is fucking Dean and Sam. Those two pussies wouldn’t know a demon if they—”

  More muffling of sound ensued before Wanda was back again. “I’m sorry for the interruption, please continue, Oliver.”

  He actually found Wanda’s voice very soothing. “Your coworker Nina is actually correct on some level, I suppose. I do know a lot about Sam and Dean, too. If that makes a difference.”

  “Everyone does, Oliver. Everyone does. But it helps that you understand the terminology. So please, do continue to ask whatever will make you more comfortable about what we do here at OOPS.”

  Oliver licked his lips and sat back in his dining room chair. “Okay, so when you say you’re a were-vamp, you mean you practice some sort of religion that supports blood-drinking and howling at the moon, right? Which, I’m assuming, at least means you know something about mythology and the habits of the paranormal.”

  Someone laughed, he wasn’t sure which woman, but it was very definitely a cackle.

  “Um, no. This isn’t a religion, Oliver. Nor is it a cult or a group with a fetish for blood. I am actually a were-vamp. I can shift into a werewolf, though that’s been quite a challenge at what feels like two hundred years pregnant. And I do drink the occasional cup of blood—synthetic, of course—to nourish my vampiric side. When I say I’m a were-vamp, it’s a lot like you see on the shows you watched with your fiancée.”

  “Ex. She’s my ex-fiancée.”

  “What the fuck does it matter, dude? Do you think we give a shit about the logistics of your sad-sack love life? Because you would be sorely mistaken, motherfucker. Sorely.”

  She was right. Crass, maybe even a little too overzealous, but right. They didn’t care about the woman who’d ripped his heart from his chest, and they shouldn’t.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. Anyway, where were we?”

  “We were at the point where you were questioning the validity of my paranormal nature,” Wanda reminded him almost like a gentle nudge.

  He nodded as if there were anyone in the room who cared other than his rescue chipmunk, Baloney, who was currently in the pocket of his flannel jacket. He’d found her on his front porch one chilly, rainy day three years ago. Soaking wet, bedraggled, with a lame left hind leg and, worse, almost half dead.

  He’d called up a friend whose wife specialized in wildlife rehab and discovered Baloney was a she and a Siberian chipmunk—not typically indigenous to Buffalo—which led them to believe someone had either lost her or ditched her.

  That also meant he’d be taking a chance if he tried to merge her back into the wild, and he’d fallen so deeply in love with the little critter, Oliver refused to take said chance.

  Either way, the first sign she’d shown of any serious will to live had been when he’d left a bologna sandwich on the table while he grabbed a soda from the fridge, and even though Baloney didn’t eat it, she was interested, and that meant she was hungry.

  “Oliver?” someone prompted.

  “Sorry. You’re right. I mean, not exactly right. I wasn’t really questioning the validity of your claim as much as I was clarifying.”

  “Bullshit, dude,” Nina groused. “But whatever makes you feel like you can justify calling a bunch of women to help you out in your time of need. I don’t care, Snowflake. Just move this fucking train along!”

  By now, he didn’t feel as much offended by Nina as he did worried she really could sniff him out. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to come face to face with a woman so volatile.

  “I don’t think I’m like any of the people you claim to have helped overcome paranormal adversities. In fact, I know I’m not. I’m not any of the things listed on your website. Though, I’ll admit, the mermaid really made me stop in my tracks, but maybe that’s only because I recently saw Aquaman. Anyway, that’s why I’m not sure if calling you was the right thing to do.”

  “What do you have going on, Oliver? Maybe we should start there? Some of the cases we’ve worked on were presented to us without our having any prior knowledge of the subject’s paranormal existence. As an example, I ask you, who knew mermaids really existed? But they do. I assur
e you, they do. A gorgeous fin, underwater breathing, a faux Atlantis, and everything. Somehow we managed to slog through that just fine.”

  “Well, it wasn’t fine-fine. Don’t let Marty bullshit your ass, Ollie. There was a sea witch who nearly drown our fucking asses and a weirdo wannabe King Triton with a grudge. If that’s your definition of fine, we have a serious motherfucking disconnect,” Nina chirped.

  Oliver blanched. That was certainly an outlandish tale, no pun intended, which sounded more like it had been ripped from a move theater screen than true reality.

  But okay. In the scheme of where he stood right now, it didn’t really matter. He definitely couldn’t go to his GP. He’d be a science project in no time—not to mention, a laughingstock.

  Likely, what was going on was some sort of weird anomalous occurrence. It didn’t explain all of what had happened today, but it sure explained some.

  “Oliver?” Wanda’s soft voice whispered in his ear. “I don’t know about you, but being pregnant makes me pretty tired and I’m well past my bedtime. I, of course, want you to feel comfortable, but I’d also like some sleep. So it would be so kind of you to simply tell us what you think you have, and then we’ll carry on from there or we’ll say good night as we wish you well.”

  Damn. He was a jerk. He hadn’t once thought about how he was stalling because he had more pride than sense—and this woman was two hundred years pregnant.

  Wait. Did were-vamps stay pregnant for two hundred years? Maybe that hadn’t been an exaggeration…

  Jesus. That was ridiculous. Straighten up and fly right, Oliver. That’s what his memaw would say, were she here.

  “Okay, here’s what I think is wrong with me.”

  The silence on the other end of the line felt pulsing—almost alive—as the women waited and he squirmed.

  He was about to revoke his man-card, for sure. Though, in this day and age of evolution and forward thinking, men could wear nail polish and mostly no one blinked an eye, right?