Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter Read online

  Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter

  ALSO BY NANCY ATHERTON

  Aunt Dimity’s Death

  Aunt Dimity and the Duke

  Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed

  Aunt Dimity Digs In

  Aunt Dimity’s Christmas

  Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil

  Aunt Dimity: Detective

  Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday

  Aunt Dimity: Snowbound

  Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin

  Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea

  Aunt Dimity Goes West

  Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter

  NANCY ATHERTON

  VIKING

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2008 by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Nancy T. Atherton, 2008

  All rights reserved

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Atherton, Nancy.

  Aunt Dimity: vampire hunter / Nancy Atherton.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1890-7

  1. Dimity, Aunt (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—England—Cotswold Hills—Fiction. 3. Cotswold Hills (England)—Fiction. 4. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.T426A9349 2008

  813'.54—dc22

  2007042808

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For

  Dr. Craig Thornally,

  chiropractor,

  and

  Sarah Marron,

  licensed massage therapist,

  without whom this book

  would never have been finished

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Charlotte’s Jammy Biscuits

  Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter

  One

  Kit Smith hadn’t eloped with Nell Harris, which was a good thing, because it meant that I wouldn’t have to push my best friend, Emma Harris, off a cliff.

  Before I’d left England for a summerlong vacation in the Rocky Mountains, I’d given Emma strict instructions: While I was away, she was to do everything in her power to keep her stepdaughter, Nell, from marrying her stable master, Kit Smith. If she had to send Nell to a convent and lock Kit in the tack room for a couple of months, so be it. Emma was to prevent anything of a matrimonial nature from taking place between the two in my absence, or face dire consequences upon my return.

  It wasn’t that I opposed the marriage. To the contrary, I was rooting for it to happen. I’d been rooting for it for so long, in fact, that it would have killed me—and possibly Emma—if it had happened while I was three thousand miles away. Luckily for Emma, it hadn’t.

  “I told you they wouldn’t elope,” she said serenely.

  It was a raw and murky Tuesday afternoon in mid-October. My husband, Bill, was at work; our sons, Will and Rob, were at school; and their inestimable nanny, Annelise Sciaparelli, was in the dining room, humming softly to herself while she beaded the left sleeve of her exquisite, hand-sewn wedding dress. The wedding was still eight months away, but Annelise wasn’t the sort of person who left things until the last minute.

  Stanley, our black cat, had been banned from the dining room because of his unhealthy habit of pouncing on moving needles. I wasn’t sure where he’d gone, but I suspected that he’d retreated to Bill’s favorite armchair in the living room. Stanley had decided long ago that he was Bill’s cat.

  Emma Harris and I were seated at the kitchen table, sharing a pot of Earl Grey tea, a plate of fresh-baked macaroons, and the latest gossip. Although bullets of cold rain pelted the windows overlooking my waterlogged back garden, the warm oven kept the kitchen cozy.

  It had been ages since Emma and I had sat down together for a good old-fashioned natter, because Emma’s busy schedule usually kept her from sitting down at all. When she wasn’t giving lessons to aspiring equestrians at the Anscombe Riding Center, she was tending to her large vegetable garden, or bottling the fruits thereof, or designing Web sites for demanding clients, or supervising endless repairs and improvements at Anscombe Manor, the venerable home she shared with her husband, Derek.

  I’d been utterly delighted when the rotten weather and a burning desire to get away from her endless chores had driven her to my cottage for a cup of tea and a bucket of gossip. Talk of Annelise’s wedding had led naturally to speculation about Kit and Nell’s. The latter was, unfortunately, a very familiar topic, one we’d hashed and rehashed many times before.

  “I know you told me that they wouldn’t elope,” I said. “What I can’t figure out is why. Why hasn’t Kit proposed? Why hasn’t he thrown Nell over his saddle and run away with her? He and Nell are a match made in heaven. Everyone knows it, including Kit. What’s holding him back?”

  “He says it’s the age thing,” said Emma.

  “What’s age got to do with it?” I demanded impatiently. “Okay, so Kit’s a little older than Nell—”

  “Kit’s twice as old as Nell,” Emma interjected. “Nell’s eighteen and Kit’s thirty-six.”

  “So what?” I retorted. “You know as well as I do that Nell’s always been old for her age. The important thing is that she loves Kit and she’ll never
love anyone but Kit. Princes proposed to her when she was at the Sorbonne, but she turned them down because they weren’t Kit. You’d think he’d get the message.”

  “I think it’s none of our business,” Emma said quietly.

  I clucked my tongue disdainfully and wondered, not for the first time, how two such disparate personalities could get along so well. Where Emma was calm and analytical, I was hotheaded and intuitive. Her reserved approach to matters of the heart was as alien to me as my passionate approach was to her, but it never seemed to matter. Ours was a classic case of opposites attracting.

  “Of course it’s our business,” I protested. “Kit’s one of our dearest friends. He’ll be miserable for the rest of his life if he doesn’t marry Nell, and we can’t allow a friend to make himself miserable.” I thumped a fist on the kitchen table, rattling the teacups. “It’s up to us to see to it that he makes the right decision.”

  “No, Lori, it’s not up to us,” Emma said evenly. “It’s up to Kit.”

  I was about to accuse her—in a friendly way—of being cold-blooded, cowardly, and disgracefully rational when the telephone rang. I threw Emma a disgusted look as I got up to answer it, but all thoughts of her perfidy were driven from my mind when I heard the terrible voice on the other end.

  “Yes,” I said into the phone. “Yes, I understand…. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning?…Yes, we’ll both be there. Good-bye.”

  My hand trembled as I hung up the telephone, but a wave of protectiveness steadied me as I glanced at a framed photograph on the kitchen wall. It was a photograph of my sons.

  Will and Rob were identical twins, blessed with their father’s velvety dark brown eyes as well as his sweet nature. When asked their age, they proudly replied that they were “five-and-a-half-nearly six,” but they were so tall and strong that most strangers thought they were older. To me they were still babes in arms, far too young to face the rigors of the cold, uncaring world beyond the cottage.

  We never should have let them start school, I thought bitterly, scowling at my reflection in the photograph. We should have tutored them at home.

  Home was a honey-colored stone cottage near the tiny village of Finch, in the Cotswolds, a region of rolling hills and patchwork fields in England’s West Midlands. Although Bill and I were Americans, we’d lived in England long enough to feel like honorary natives. Bill ran the European branch of his family’s illustrious law firm from a high-tech office in Finch, I played an active role in village affairs, and we both believed firmly that we’d found the perfect place to raise our children. Finch was small, safe, and familiar. I couldn’t for the life of me remember why we’d sent the twins farther afield, but I knew exactly how to rectify our mistake.

  “Lori?” said Emma, looking up at me with concern. “What is it?”

  I brushed my fingertips across the photograph, returned to my seat at the kitchen table, and announced solemnly, “It’s the twins. Bill and I have to withdraw them from Morningside.”

  Emma didn’t seem to be shaken by the news. She paused to sip her tea before asking, “Why do you have to withdraw the boys from Morningside?”

  “Because I can’t allow our sons to attend a school run by such a creepy woman,” I replied.

  “Miss Archer isn’t creepy,” Emma said.

  “Yes, she is,” I insisted. “The pale skin, the slick red hair, the way she stares at you over those half-glasses…She looks as though she rolls out of her coffin every morning, looking for fresh blood to drink. She’s scary.”

  Emma nibbled delicately at the edge of a macaroon. “Remind me, Lori,” she said. “Why did you and Bill enroll your five-year-old sons in a school run by a creepy, scary woman who looks like she drinks blood and sleeps in a coffin?”

  “Because we were distracted,” I answered firmly. “We were so impressed by Morningside’s friendly teachers and cheerful classrooms that we forgot about its creepy headmistress.” I drummed my fingers nervously on the table. “I bet she comes from Transylvania.”

  “Of course she does,” Emma said dryly. “Penelope Elizabeth Archer is clearly an old Transylvanian name.”

  “She could have changed her name,” I pointed out.

  “As well as everything else in her CV?” Emma’s nostrils flared—a sure sign that she was losing patience—but her voice remained calm. “I give riding lessons to a half dozen Morningside students, Lori. Their parents talk about Miss Archer all the time. She was born in Warwickshire, she has multiple degrees from Oxford, and everyone agrees that she’s a marvelous headmistress—a highly intelligent woman who’s devoted her life to children.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “The children of the night.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” Emma said, her patience snapping. “Will you please stop tapping the table? I can’t talk to you when you’re fidgeting.”

  I folded my arms and eyed her pugnaciously.

  “You’ve been trying to withdraw the boys from Morningside ever since you and Bill enrolled them there,” she went on. “First you were afraid that they’d catch the flu from their classmates, then the measles, then head lice, then fleas. Last week you were worried about them running out of the school yard and being hit by a car. The week before that, you were afraid that a train carrying chlorine gas would derail in Upper Deeping and poison all the children. Now you tell me that your sons’ headmistress is a bloodsucking fiend! What’s next? Aliens? Leprosy? Unprovoked rhinoceros attacks?”

  “Is it wrong for a mother to worry about her children?” I asked.

  “You’re not worried,” said Emma. “You’re hysterical. You’re so obsessed with worst-case scenarios that you’re neglecting your volunteer activities. You haven’t been to the hospital in Oxford once since the boys started school. Why?”

  “It’s too far away,” I said. “If something happened at the school—”

  “You see?” said Emma. “You’re out of control. You’re also missing a very important point: The boys are flourishing at Morningside. They love their teacher and their classmates and all their little projects. They love going to school almost as much as they love spending time at the stables.”

  “I know,” I acknowledged gloomily.

  “Then why are you constantly looking for excuses to keep them at home?” Emma demanded. “I could understand it if you’d packed the twins off to boarding school, but you haven’t. They attend afternoon sessions for a few hours a day, five days a week, and they’re as happy as I’ve ever seen them. Why can’t you be happy for them?”

  “Will and Rob may be happy with the school,” I replied bleakly, “but evidently the school isn’t happy with them.”

  Emma squinted at me uncomprehendingly.

  “The telephone call was from Miss Archer,” I explained. “She wants me and Bill to meet with her at the school tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Why would she summon us to her office on a Wednesday morning if everything’s hunky-dory?”

  “To tell you how wonderful your sons are?” Emma ventured. “How well liked they are? What a credit they are to the school?”

  “She could have done that on parents’ day,” I said.

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to make the other parents jealous,” Emma suggested.

  “Maybe she can’t handle Will and Rob,” I countered. “You know how energetic they are, Emma. They’ve probably broken every rule in the book out of sheer exuberance.” I hunched forward and chewed a thumbnail anxiously. “Miss Archer probably wants to lecture us on the boys’ home life because she thinks we’ve spawned a pair of unteachable delinquents.”

  “Your sons are neither unteachable nor delinquent,” Emma said. “Rob and Will may be high-spirited, but they’re perfectly well behaved. Heaven knows you’ve worked hard enough to teach them good manners.”

  I snorted derisively. “Have you forgotten the incident at the village shop? When the boys read those racy tabloid headlines out loud to the visiting bishop? I thought the poor man would never stop blushing.”

&n
bsp; “Will and Rob were barely four years old at the time,” Emma reminded me. “The bishop was impressed by their reading skills.”

  “I’ll bet he’s still blushing,” I muttered.

  “In any case,” Emma continued, disregarding my comment, “I doubt that they leave tabloids lying around at Morningside for the children to read.”

  “All right,” I conceded, “but maybe the boys have been using the naughty language they learned when we were in Colorado last summer. Bill and I talked to them about it, but they could have slipped up.” I buried my face in my hands. “Miss Archer probably thinks Bill and I swear our heads off at home.”

  “Which you don’t,” said Emma. “You set a good example for the twins. They learned the naughty language by accident, and if they slip up once in a while, I’m sure their teacher can handle it without going to the headmistress.” She reached over to pull my hands away from my face and peered at me encouragingly. “You’ll see, Lori. Everything will be fine.”

  “Will it?” I asked hopelessly.

  “Of course it will,” Emma soothed. “I’m sure Miss Archer simply wants to give you a personal update on the boys’ progress, or ask you to volunteer for a committee, or explain how badly her school needs private donations. She’s just doing her job, Lori, and her job does not involve getting hysterical over a few swear words any more than it involves drinking her students’ blood.”

  I wanted Emma to be right. I wanted to believe that Miss Archer had called me and Bill in for a routine meeting about committees and donations, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that had filled me ever since I’d spoken with her on the telephone.

  “You didn’t take the call,” I said, shuddering. “You didn’t hear Miss Archer’s voice. She sounded…terrifying.”