Peril in the Old Country

You've got to have rules. According to the good folk of the Old Country, they're all that's holding the dismal tide at bay. Start playing fast and loose with the rules, and it all comes tumbling down.First comes the goblins. Nothing entices them quite like minor breaches of etiquette. Cut in a line, say a swear word, or speak the proper name of the Old Country aloud, and your house will be infested with them before you know it.No one in the Old Country follows the rules half as well as Sloot Peril, who has never so much as given alms to a beggar without getting a certified receipt. He had his entire life planned out to the end and was so looking forward to making as faint a mark on the world as possible. Then he was asked to correct the worst financial report ever written.Had they called upon a lesser accountant, that report might have gone on to topple financial markets, drive honest people to utter ruin, or quite possibly acquire a taste for human blood and start terrorizing the countryside in bestial form.Sloot's corrections prevented that annihilation from coming to pass; however, if he'd known what he was setting in motion instead, he might have heard annihilation out.Sloot will have to set aside his affinity for the rules and go up against underworld kingpins, secret societies, the undead, bloodthirsty cannibals from Carpathia, and even the ruthless Vlad the Invader! If that weren't enough, the steely gaze of Mrs. Knife follows him wherever he goes. Does she really want to murder him, or does she just have one of those faces?At least Sloot's misadventures bring the lovely Myrtle into his life. She has the sort of smile that makes him want to stand up straighter and invest in some cologne. He's not even bothered by the fact that she's possessed by the laziest philosopher ever to have died.Will the events put in motion by the ghastly financial report end in Sloot's grisly death? Almost definitely. Is that the worst thing that could happen? Almost definitely not.