Gritting my teeth, I abandoned my work and stomped out of the lovely shelter of my workshop to deal with my least favorite activity in the world: social niceties.

The undead minion who stood shuffling in place in the doorway of our cottage wasn’t actually falling apart this time, thank goodness. I’d evened out and reattached most of her limbs a week ago, and I saw every one of her overly long, sharp, yellow teeth now as her mouth stretched wide into a grin at my appearance.

“It is nice to see you too,” I sighed, “but—”

“Note! For youuuu!”

It was nice to hear her voice box finally working. I was rather proud of what I had accomplished with that. But I winced at the sight of the elegant note that she was waving, which had Leander’s distinctive, looping crimson handwriting all over it.

“If I’ve told your master once, I’ve told him a dozen times,” I said, “I am not interested in pointless socializing or—”

“Note! For youuu!” Her voice rose to a hoot of real anguish. “Nooooote!”

“Oh, very well!” Those big yellow eyes in that sickly green face were far too pitiful to resist. I snatched the note from her hand and leaned in close, lowering my voice to a consoling whisper in her half-gnawed ear. “There’s a dead mouse around the back of the cottage, if you want to stop for a snack on your way home.”

“Mouse! Mouse! Moooooouuuuse!” Carolling loudly and happily, she shuffled away into the dark.

“You’re saving treats for them now?” Dad inquired mildly, from the depths of his armchair by the fire.

Drat. I knew he’d been listening. “It’s not their fault that their master is a menace.”

Dad flipped to the next page of his puzzle book, his eyes studiously lowered but his lips quirking suspiciously upwards. “And what does your particular menace need from you now?”

“Nothing,” I assured my father as I unfolded the note. “He never does. I expect he’s only bored and in want of entertainment. Just because I’m not petrified of those poor creatures he looks after, he seems to think I…”

My voice trailed off as I absorbed the first few words of Leander’s message. I could actually feel the color draining out of my face as my legs went weak with horror. Then rage surged upwards to take its place.

“Mia? Mia!” Metal clanked from Dad’s leg supports as he rose to his feet. “What’s happened?”

What’s happened?

I was already lunging for the coatrack in the corner, thick, creamy paper crumpling in my fist as rage turned my vision every bit as red as those arrogantly swooping crimson letters in the note.

“He has finally gone too far,” I snarled, “and I’m going to make sure that he knows it!”