Excerpt
From Chapter 6, Mortimer
There had been a moment there, when Mortimer had knocked the window with his tail, when he'd frozen so completely that he'd thought he wasn't going to be able to move at all, that the sergeant was going to come into the room and find a living statue of a dragon crouched in the middle of the old green carpet, cycling sadly from frightened pink to grass green to stone grey to a strange, mottled purple-blue that wasn't even his normal colour, but a very stressed semblance of it.
Then he'd heard Alice's crisp voice from below the window, blaming the wind, and he'd bolted out of the room and straight into the one next door, which turned out to be a bathroom. He scrambled into the bath, turned around twice, realised that it not only offered him no protection at all, but that the tap was dripping on his tail, and fled, leaving a sparkle of water drops behind him. The next room was full of stacks of old parish newspapers and church magazines, dusty taped-up boxes and a sickly-looking fake Christmas tree, plus a mannequin by the window that scared Mortimer so much he almost tripped over his own paws turning around again.
He heard the front door open as he dived across the hall and pushed himself under the vicar's bed. The space was only just high enough for him to squeeze into, and his wings were jammed uncomfortably against the base. But he was in, and unless that officer, Graham, came right into the room and peered under the bed, he should be alright. He held his breath as he heard feet on the stairs.
"Anyone here?" Graham called. He sounded like he was trying for authoritative, but the words were a little shaky around the edges. Mortimer thought that maybe humans weren't entirely immune to the sense of houses, after all. This was a sad, tired house, and something quietly tragic had just occurred here. The whole place felt unhappy and restless, and when the sergeant walked carefully along the landing, his baton in one hand, the floorboards cried plaintively.
"Bloody old houses," the sergeant grumbled, and edged into the spare room, where Mortimer had entered the house so ungracefully. The dragon took his chance and started to wriggle out from under the bed, hearing Graham pulling the window shut. He had time, if he was quick. His nose and shoulders were out, then he was pulled to a halt by a sharp, biting pain in his left wing. He gave a little whimper of alarm, swallowing it quickly, and heard the sergeant say uncertainly, "Hello?"
Mortimer thought of about a dozen highly inventive curse words he'd like to use, and backed up as rapidly as the cramped quarters would let him. Only just in time, too. Graham appeared in the doorway and flicked the unshaded overhead light on, flooding the room with over-bright light.
"Anyone here?"
There was something tickling Mortimer's nose. The place was alive with spiderwebs and dust bunnies, and his eyes were starting to water. He wriggled his snout desperately.
The sergeant crossed to check the windows, and Mortimer heard him open the closet. Don't look under the bed, he thought. Please, please, please. Just go out. He was concentrating on being as faint as he could, but his heart was beating so hard he was surprised the bed wasn't shaking with it, and his wing hurt, and he wanted to scratch his nose, and this had been a really, really spectacularly bad idea. A millennium of being nothing more than myth, and it was all going to go to pot because they'd got caught up with the Toot Hansell Women's Institute. The historians were just going to love that. He squeezed his watering eyes closed, trying to ignore the persistent tickle in his nose, and hoped ostriches were actually onto something. There was nothing else he could do.
The man's footsteps paused at the side of the bed, and Mortimer held his breath.
"Old houses," Graham muttered again, then walked out of the room, switching the light off as he went.
