A Novel Way to Die: Luxe paperback

“Oh, great.” Morrie rolled his eyes at the architectural monstrosity towering over us. “Another human
fishbowl. Why can’t our favorite bloodsucker’s assistant buy blocks of pokey terraced houses where no one will notice us breaking and entering?”

“It does look like Grand Designs had a baby with Alcatraz,” I ventured. In the gloom, all I could discern were vague shapes, which made the house seem even more sinister. Who wanted to live in a place like this, all sharp corners and jutting steel? Give me a homely
fire in a pokey upstairs flat with a cat on my lap, a book in my hand, and ghosts in the walls, and I was perfectly happy.

Especially if the chair opposite me contained the brooding fi
gure of Heathcliff Earnshaw, and a lanky Moriarty bent down to hand me a plate of roast beef with lust in his eyes, while the kind fi
re-rimmed eyes of Quoth the raven burned into me from the shadows.

That was exactly where I wanted to be right now – back at Nevermore Bookshop, tucked up in front of the fi
re with a mug of Quoth’s amazing hot chocolate warming my
fingers. Not freezing my arse off in the crisp October air, about to commit yet another crime, all in the name of freeing the world from a bloodthirsty vampire.

How is this my life?

It had been nearly a year since I came back to Argleton from New York City to lick my wounds and
figure out the person I’d be after I lost my eyesight. I never expected that person to be the vampire-hunting, murder mystery-solving, book-slinging daughter of Homer with three gorgeous boyfriends and a cat for a grandmother. Nevermore Bookshop had the last laugh on that one.

Over the last few months, I’d added ‘cat burglar’ to the list as Morrie and I sought out the boxes of Romanian dirt Dracula hid to ensure his immortality. If he was killed and his servant buried him in dirt from his homeland, he would regenerate. We couldn’t go after him until we’d made sure every last one of those dirt boxes was destroyed.

I drummed my
fingers nervously on the skintight black
catsuit I wore. At least cat-burgling out
ts were
fierce.

We rounded the edge of the building. All was in darkness, save for the bright moon that hung over us, reflecting dappled light from the steel front door. To be fair, most things were in darkness for me these days. In the months since I cleared Morrie of murder charges, my eyesight deteriorated to the point where my night vision was now only shapes and shadows.

I was basically the worst cat burglar in the world. Luckily I had the Napoleon of Crime at my side.

Morrie pulled out his lock-picking kit and got to work on the door while I stared over my shoulder at the bright moon, letting my eyes adjust to make out the rough shapes of the minimalist front garden, the street beyond, and the woods of King’s Copse edging the property. My guide dog Oscar sat at my heels, his ears pricked for movement. He’d gotten awfully good at navigating in the dead of night, thanks to our recent nocturnal adventures.

Poor Oscar. I’m sorry I made you into a criminal. I should probably start calling myself a dog burglar.

“We’re in, gorgeous.” Morrie’s rich voice broke the silence.

I heard the door click open. Morrie went inside
first, using an app on his phone to disable the alarm. I waved Oscar in after him, hoping he didn’t have mud on his paws that would leave prints behind. Not that it mattered – the man who owned this house, Grey Lachlan, rarely spent any time at his properties. He was too busy renovating the flat across the street from the bookshop and making our lives miserable.

“What’s the layout of—ow.” Something hard and metal slammed into my forehead, sending me sprawling backward. My tailbone cracked against the hard tiles. Oscar barked with distress. He was supposed to lead me around obstacles, but he was a dog and he was not perfect and he probably got lost in the dark, which was something I could relate to.

“Ssssh, boy.” I wrapped my arms around Oscar, nuzzling his neck until he licked my face. Morrie helped me to my feet. He flicked on the light, revealing the shape of a random steel sculpture with eight spindly arms like spider’s legs that attached to the walls with bungee cords.

“Who puts a medieval torture device in their bloody entrance hall?” I growled, giving the thing a kick with my cherry-red Doc. The steel arms wobbled, and Oscar shied away.

“Someone who wants to impale a blind burglar.” Morrie rubbed his chin. “Come on, gorgeous. The sooner we fi
nd the dirt, the sooner we can get out of here before you accidentally put your head through a Constable.”

“Urgh, don’t remind me.” Three houses ago, I tripped over the edge of a rug. Only instead of landing on said rug, which was quite soft and snuggly, I slammed into the wall and knocked a priceless artwork onto my head. Now, we turn the lights on and Morrie inspects carefully for trip hazards.

Once Morrie declared the property Mina-proof, we spread out. Morrie took the living room while I hunted through the kitchen cupboards, feeling over the empty shelves and pushing my
fingers into the show-home designer teacups. I pulled the back off the coffee machine, but it wasn’t
filled with dirt. In the book, Dracula had large wooden crates
filled with Transylvanian earth, but all the stashes we’ve found have been relatively small – he must only need a little for his regeneration.

“Ah-hah,” Morrie yelled.

I spun around. Morrie barreled into the kitchen. I could just make out a rectangular object in his hands and the long cord dragging across the carpet behind him.

“What’s that?”

“I have no idea. It was plugged into the telly. It might be some kind of DVD player, but look at the size of this hole.” Morrie poked his
fingers into a wide slot. When he removed them and held them up to my nose, I saw they were covered in dirt.

Transylvanian dirt.

“I think that’s a VCR.” I fumbled in my bag for my vial of holy water. We were running low, which meant we’d need to add ‘stealing from a Catholic church…again’ to our long list of indiscretions. “Mum used to have one when I was little. You watch videos, which are on spools of magnetic tape. You have to hold down a button to fast forward or rewind, and you couldn’t skip around scenes. But you could use them to record programs off the telly so you didn’t miss anything.”

Morrie looked confused. “You mean, you couldn’t just select a show and push play?”

“Nope. The newspaper published a list of what programs were and their times, and you had to show up at that time or miss out. Unless you had a VCR, of course.”

“How quaint.” Morrie looked at the machine with such unrivaled disgust I fell in love with him a tiny bit more. James Moriarty needed the best of everything in life, and that included the latest technology.

And he needs me. The thought sent a thrill racing through my veins. There was a reason I came with Morrie on these burglaries. He could probably do them on his own, and sometimes, like the time with the Constable, I was more of a liability. But the way he smiled at me when I pulled on my catsuit and snuck through the countryside with him did delicious things to my insides. Morrie tended to view most interactions with humans as exercises in lower-brain functions, but he was never afraid to be completely himself around me, even when his true self was manipulating an innocent with his charms or gleefully committing property damage.

If I had to be truly honest, I got a thrill out of every moment we spent together, walking a tightrope edge of being caught. My master criminal had rubbed off on me more than I’d like to admit.

Morrie held the flap of the VCR open while I sprinkled the dirt inside with holy water. For good measure, I tossed in a broken piece of communion wafer. If my life was a movie, something magical would happen to indicate the dirt was no longer useable by Dracula, but this wasn’t a movie, so nothing sparkled and there were no shimmering sound effects.

We just had to hope like hell we’d done the job.

Far too much of our plan revolved around ‘hope like hell’ for my liking.

Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries
Book 1 - A Dead and Stormy Night
Book 2 - Of Mice and Murder
Book 3 - Pride and Premeditation
Book 4 - Memoirs of a Garroter
Book 5 - Prose and Cons
Book 6 - A Novel Way to Die
Book 7 - Much Ado About Murder
Book 8 - Crime and Publishing
Book 9 - Plot and Bothered
Novella - How Heathcliff Stole Christmas