Something brushed the back of his head. Danner leaped away and turned with a snarl while the other just swayed back and forth like a pendulum and gave off a soft shushing sound as his cotton garment scraped the wall. The man was wearing the same plumber’s uniform that Danner had left him in the night before; the embroidered stitching said STEVE over the left breast, just above the heavy dowel that pinned him to the wall. The stake must have been driven solidly into one of the wall studs, for it alone held the body, a good six inches off the carpet, arms hanging limp, legs swaying.

Danner was livid. He held no special regard for the plumber—indeed, he would never have known his name had it not been emblazoned there on his chest. But to leave him hanging there as a warning . . . what gall! He grasped the stake and yanked it loose, tilting it so the body could slide off and crumple on the floor like a limp dishrag. A piece of paper that had been pinned to his chest fluttered to the carpet as well. Danner bent to pick it up.

It was a scrap of Garfield stationery, folded in the middle with a smiling happy face drawn on the outside. Inside, it carried a one-word message: Boom.

Steve the vampire-plumber was just struggling to his feet when Danner looked up at him anxiously. There were lumps under his coveralls, two just beneath the rib cage, two across the waist, two more in the side pockets on his thighs. And wire veins ran to each just beneath the cotton skin.

“Thank you, Master,” Steve said, reaching out to fawn over him. Danner backed away, unable to identify the threat wired to his servant but recognizing it as danger and reacting by instinct. He was halfway across the dining room, almost to the windows, when his hypersensitive ears picked up the distant click of a toggle switch.

The room erupted like a toppled volcano, blasting out a cone of lateral fire. Steve, for all intent and purpose, disintegrated in the blink of an eye. The concussive force of the blast shot Danner through a window and didn’t drop him for at least twelve feet. When he did come down, he sprawled end over end and rolled for another few yards, enough to snuff out the flames that danced along his back and shoulders.