Free Pure Dead Wicked by Debi Gliori

Pandora. Leaving me with uncultured heathens like rats for company. . . .”
    The distant clatter of a diesel engine broke into Tarantella’s thoughts and she paused, arrested in mid-rant. Closer now it came, negotiating the moat and pulling up in front of the deserted StregaSchloss. Tarantella instantly relented. “I take it all back. Better late than never. . . . I wonder what she’s brought for me?”
    Far below, van doors opened and slammed. Tarantella scampered to the cobwebby attic window and peered out through the snowflakes. “Dubious company she’s keeping,” she observed, noting the four stocky men unloading ladders and ropes from the back of their van. Incorrectly assuming that Pandora was already inside the house, Tarantella leapt across the attic to stand in wait by the trapdoor. “Come on, come
on
,” she muttered impatiently.
    Clanking and banging came from the scaffold wrapped round the outside of StregaSchloss, and muffled thuds and gruff voices filtered up from the hallway. “This way,” came a shout, followed by the sound of boots clattering on the stone stairs.
    â€œIt’s a right pain in the backside, this. Christmas Eve, and here we are, working. What’s the boss up to?”
    â€œDon’t know, mate. Just get the roof off, lose the slates in the loch, and no questions asked.”
    Tarantella puzzled over this.
Get the roof off?
What was going on? The attic was quite cold enough, thank you, without taking the roof off. And
lose the slates in the loch?
That sounded a mite extravagant. . . . The spider crept behind an old cabin trunk and waited.
    Seconds later, the trapdoor creaked open, and a silhouetted figure swept a flashlight round the attic. “Pass me your crowbar, Malky,” it said, hauling itself inelegantly into the attic, “and the wrecking bar and angle grinder.”
    Thumps and crashes came from the roof above. Something’s gone horribly wrong, Tarantella decided. This is definitely
not
Santa Claus on my roof, and by the sound of things, this isn’t going to
be
my roof for much longer. . . . A distant series of shattering crashes confirmed her assumptions. Through the attic window, it appeared to be snowing slates. Hundreds of them, flying through the air and landing with a crash on the flagstones below. An arctic wind blew through centuries of cobwebs strung across the eaves, and snowflakes began to dust the attic floor. The wind picked Tarantella up and blew her across the floorboards. Oh, my word, she thought, woman the lifeboats, mayday, mayday, help, police. Then she looked up. She could see the night sky through the rafters now. It looked black and bleak and cheerless. Straddled across the pockmarked timbers, a man levered off slates with a crowbar and hurled them into space.
    Tarantella ran across the attic floor and skidded to a stop at a disused chimney stack that ran the full height of StregaSchloss, from the attic down to the kitchen. Peering through a hole in the chimney breast, she tutted mildly. “Dear, dear. Lift’s out of action.
Such
a nuisance. I suppose that means I’ll have to use the stairs.”
    With a backward glance at the rapidly vanishing roof, and using a flurry of snowflakes to camouflage her hasty exit, Tarantella headed for the trapdoor.

Getting Stuffed
    C hristmas Day dawned wet and sleety. Sensing that this day was extra special, Damp roused her parents from their champagne-drenched slumbers at five-thirty a.m. She dealt with the contents of her stocking in two seconds flat, and happily spent the next two hours trying to poke melting chocolate coins between the clamped lips of her parents.
    In their shared room, Pandora and Mrs. McLachlan woke at a more civilized hour, bid each other a sleepy good morning, and rolled over to go back to sleep again. On the foot of their beds, lumpy stockings lay unopened.
    Woken by Latch’s extended sneezing and nose-blowing session,