“It appears so.” He peered at the blank computer screen and my phone open on my notes app. “I hope you didn’t lose anything important.”
“Just my novel.” I sighed. “It’s fine. It wasn’t exactly good, anyway.”
“Don’t talk like that. Do you think if I stopped the first time I tried to stitch a monster from bits of dead humans, I’d have gotten to where I am today?” Victor beat his chest with pride. “If I’d quit, I wouldn’t be Victor Frankenstein, the most celebrated doctor in literature.”
“Um, yes, I’m not surecelebratedis the right word—”
“Mina, you can’t give up every time the answers don’t line up perfectly. Art isn’t like that. Art is like the human body – it starts with a skeleton to hold everything together. Don’t concern yourself with the skin and organs and gristle until you’ve got the bones in the right places first.”
“That’s…surprisingly helpful, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Victor dripped freezing water over the keyboard. “So, can you get me the power back on?”
“I hope so. We need it to run the shop and power my hair straightener.” I picked up my phone. “I’ll call Handy Andy.”
“Please do, and remind him to fix the plumbing while he’s here. Things are getting awfully damp in the cellar.” He held up his leg. I couldn’t see the fabric, but I heard thesquelchof soaking cloth. “And sometimes I fancy I see…things in the water. It might be dangerous down there—”
“Hey, Mina! Are you in here? All the lamps have gone out—ow.”
I held up the flashlight function on my phone and shined it at the doorway. “Jo. Yes, we’re having a wee problem with the power.”
“I’ll say,” an annoyed voice called from the top of the stairs. “We were filming a Facebook live and all the lights went out.”
“Hi, Socrates.” Jo gave the Greek philosopher a fistbump on the way past. “I saw Peter Jordanson mentioned you in his latest video. Awesome stuff.”
“You just fist-bumped the father of philosophy.” I grinned as she lowered herself into the velvet chair. “You really are okay with all this…bookshop stuff.”
“Mina, you’re my friend. Everything else is window-dressing.” Jo peered at the stairs. “How’s Fiona?”
“The same. She isn’t screaming as much today. Morrie found some more garlic, and we strung that up and that seems to have helped, but now she’s in some kind of Dracula-induced delirium. She hasn’t eaten anything we’ve tried to feed her. I don’t know if we should be feeding her blood, or garlic, or what. I wish there was a manual on how to de-vampire someone.”
“You and me both.” Jo crossed her legs beneath her. “Do you want to hear the results of my tests?”
“Hell yes.”
“The plank isdefinitelythe murder weapon. The blood matches the victim, and the shape of the wood is a perfect match to the head wound. But that doesn’t tell us why the victim was in the cemetery that night or how she came into possession of some graveyard dirt, and where it is now.” Jo patted my leg. “So, I invited her husband out for a drink. You want to come with me?”
I held out my phone to view her outfit – a low-cut red wrap dress and blood-red lipstick to match. “Is this official police business or do you intend to seduce this guy into giving you information?”
She flashed me a wild grin. “Three guesses?”
I sighed. “Just give me a second to change. Two wanton harlots always work better than one.”
“That’s my motto,” Morrie called from behind the poetry shelves.
“Arf.”
“And Oscar agrees.”
* * *
“You didn’t have to come with us,” Jo said to Morrie.
“There’s a bloodthirsty vampire on the loose. I’m not leaving you ladies unprotected. Besides,” Morrie straightened his lapels. “If we’re going to seduce this man, we need to cover all our bases. We don’t know which way he swings.”
“Thirteen complaints of sexual harassment from women in his workplace suggest that we do,” Jo said. “He’s at the table in the corner. Morrie, you sit at the table behind us. If things don’t go well, do something creative.”
Morrie snapped his fingers. “One wrong move and his insides move to the outside of his body.”
