Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter by Nancy Atherton

Author:Nancy Atherton
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2008-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

The kitchen entrance was down a short flight of stone steps toward the rear of Aldercot Hall. The kitchen windows were the only ones I’d seen so far that weren’t covered by drapes or plywood, but since the kitchen was practically underground, I suspected that the extra light was both needed and welcomed by those who worked there.

Kit had barely withdrawn his finger from the doorbell when the door was flung open by a middle-aged woman of such imposing stature that we both fell back a step. She wasn’t fat, exactly, but she was several inches taller than Kit and at least twice his width, and her bosom was simply massive. If ever a woman were a bloodsucking fiend’s dream-date, it was this one, but as I scanned her neck for bite marks, it occurred to me that she could probably hold her own in a fight with a vampire, however supernatural his strength.

It wasn’t the woman’s size alone that startled us. She was also as brightly colored as a parrot. Her vermilion hair was quite short and stylishly spiky, and her vivid green eyes were set off by her florid face. She wore a floaty lemon-yellow cotton top with short sleeves and a deep V neckline over the kind of loose-fitting lavender trousers usually worn to yoga classes. A pair of dazzling turquoise socks showed through the straps of the orange huaraches that graced her astonishingly large feet.

She was, in fact, dressed as though it were high summer instead of mid-October, and when the blast of heat from the kitchen hit us, I understood why.

“Well, if ever there was a pair of drowned rats,” she said, planting her hands on her hips and looking us up and down.

“We’re—” Kit began, but he didn’t get any further.

“I know, I know,” boomed the woman. “Mr. Bellamy rang to warn me. Whatever were you thinking, going out on a day like this? Come in, come in, before I’m as wet as you are.”

She didn’t wait for us to step over the threshold but grabbed each of us by a shoulder and hauled us effortlessly into a small foyer with a door in every wall. Once we were all inside, she gestured to an enameled pan sitting on the flagstone floor.

“Bung your boots in there and give me your socks and your jackets,” she said. “I’ll put them near the Aga to dry. I’d ask for your trousers, too, but we don’t run that kind of house.” Her eyes crinkled to slits, and her whole body shook as she laughed at her own risqué joke.

“We have dry socks,” Kit offered timidly.

“Dry socks won’t do much good on wet feet,” she declared. “You can leave your packs in the scullery to drip, and you can wash your hands and faces in there, too.” She looked askance at us, then barked, “Well? What are you waiting for?”

“Where’s the scullery?” I asked in a small voice, looking desperately from door to door.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said, and grabbed each of us by a wrist.

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