A Novel Way to Die - Steffanie Holmes Page 0,1

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 find 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 was 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.

Morrie tossed the VCR down on the table. “While we’re here, I want to have a peek around this place. I wonder if it’s as ghastly as that last flat, with the gold bathtub? I’ve been thinking about getting a place of my own, and I wouldn’t mind something modern and elegant like this. My temporary bedroom doesn’t have room for my toys.”

I could see Morrie living here, creepy modern sculptures and all. It