A Novel Way to Die - Steffanie Holmes Page 0,3

was frightened, too. “Yup. He looks pretty headless to me.”

The rider inclined its torso stump toward me, then directed the horse to trot away into the trees. I buried my face in Oscar’s fur as a groan welled up inside me.

The Headless Horseman.

From Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

This isn’t good.

How’d he get all the way out here?

I was too annoyed to be scared anymore. A cranially-challenged rider jaunting around Argleton could only have come from one place, which made him the third new literature character who’d appeared in Nevermore Bookshop this week. We now had Socrates sleeping on a rollout bed in the Philosophy room, and Dr. Victor Frankenstein had taken over the cellar for his laboratory. Nevermore felt less like a bookshop and more like a halfway house for the literarily depraved.

I set Oscar down and gave him the signal to lead me through the trees after the horse.

“What are you doing?” Morrie jogged after me.

“We can’t just leave him wandering all over Argleton. Someone might see him.”

“So?”

“So…we have enough problems to deal with right now without the villagers discovering their favorite local bookshop brings literary characters to life.”

“Relax, gorgeous. They’ll think he’s part of the Halloween madness.”

Morrie did have a point. It was October, and in a country that didn’t officially celebrate the holiday, Argleton village had gone a little Halloween mad. My old neighbor, Mrs. Ellis, decided the village needed something fun to take our minds off the serial killer in our midst, so she organized a week-long Halloween festival. Seeing all the decorations in the shop windows and pumpkins lining the garden paths made me nostalgic about my four years in New York City. Every year, Ashley and I would spend months designing each other’s costumes as a kind of creative challenge. We’d reveal our creations to wear to Marcus Ribald’s epic Halloween party. America was one crazy-ass country, but they did Halloween up RIGHT.

Argleton couldn’t quite match Marcus’ gritty elegance, but they were more than making up for that with reckless enthusiasm. The festival didn’t officially begin for another few days, but so many people were wandering around in costume, I doubt our decapitated jockey would stir much fuss.

But still.

“I’m going after him. Are you coming or not?” I didn’t wait for Morrie’s reply. Oscar had picked up the horse’s scent. He trotted along at a decent clip, steering me around the trees and bushes in my way. He stopped at a low dry stone wall so I could clamber over, then took off again, his nose close to the ground.

Oscar and I had become quite a team in the few months we’d been together. He knew every corner of Nevermore Bookshop intimately, so much so that sometimes I attached a kiddie trailer filled with books to his harness and got him to wheel it to the appropriate shelf. I’d even caught him snuggled up in front of the fire with Heathcliff after a busy day. He’d become an intrinsic part of our strange little family.

And I was turning him into a criminal.

If I didn’t have Oscar with me on these dangerous midnight missions, I’d be going in completely blind (pun intended). And I wasn’t going to sit around at home and wait for Morrie and Heathcliff and Quoth to take out Dracula for me.

I was Mina Wilde, daughter of Homer. Somehow, I was responsible for what came out of Nevermore Bookshop. I wouldn’t shirk that responsibility, which was why I crashed and stumbled my way through the woods after the Headless Horseman.

We emerged into a clearing. Moonlight gleamed off a large, circular pool. We’d reached the duck pond at the edge of the council estate where I used to live with my mum. I came here as a kid sometimes to read under the gazebo and escape having to be slave labor for Helen Wilde’s latest get-rich-quick scheme.

Horse and rider circled the duck pond. The rider’s cloak billowed in the stiff breeze. The horse bent its neck to the water. At that moment my mind imagined all kinds of sinister and ghostly tricks – the water boiling, the ducks’ heads flying off, a demonic face rising from the depths…

“Oh, he’s having a drink.” I breathed in relief as loud slurps echoed through the trees.

“I guess even spectral horses of pure evil need to hydrate.” Morrie appeared beside me. “Maybe he—Mina, what are you doing?”

I squared my shoulders and stepped out of the trees, gripping Oscar’s harness tight between my fingers. I cleared