Fangtabulous (4 page)

“This place always gives me the creeps,” Ulric said, echoing my thoughts. “It’s as if Old Sheriff Corwin is still out looking for rowdies and rule-breakers.”

“Have you ever experienced anything yoursel
f
?” a man asked. It seemed to be the same one who’d spoken up earlier about the murdered girl. Now that the group had shifted over the course of the walk, I could see him—deeply weathered skin, a dark close-cut beard, baseball cap, navy blue wool jacket with brown leather sleeves, and a matching navy ball cap pulled low with a fighting turtle logo front and center.

He could have been anyone, but he wasn’t. He was someone specific … someone I recognized. I just didn’t know who. I half-hoped he’d look straight at me and half-hoped that he wouldn’t, in case I was just as familiar to him.

Who’s that?
I mind-spoke to Bobby, afraid that even a whisper might draw the man’s attention.

Bobby looked quickly over to me and back.
Why? Who do you think he is?

I huffed.
Do you recognize him or not?

Not.

I relaxed. It was probably just one of those cases where someone reminds you of someone else, like an actor or your Uncle John. And then it hit. I knew where I’d seen this guy before. The weight on my chest was probably dread. He was from that ghostbuster-type reality show,
Ghouligans
.

Crap. We weren’t in danger of exposure from recognition. We were in danger of a lot worse.
If
he noticed us. He didn’t have a camera or crew with him, so maybe he was just scouting things out, like for some future episode. No instruments meant he’d have no way to tell we weren’t your garden-variety tour guides. By the time
Ghouligans
got around to filming, we’d be long gone. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully?

Ulric was winding up, and I tapped Bobby’s arm to pull him into the shadows with me as I mentally gave him the bad news.

Never seen the show
, he told me.
Do they ever find anything? Like hard evidence?

My old friend Becca had been the
Ghouligans
addict, but the couple of times she’d convinced me to watch with her, their sightings had been pretty sketchy, I thought. Heat signatures and noises you could just barely make out if they were magnified, like, a thousand times and slowed down or sped up or filtered for effect, but if you were a true believer you’d find it totally convincing. Becca had. I told him as much.

Nothing to worry about then
, he replied. He sounded soothing, which so had the opposite effect on me.

He was right, though, right? Why was I so on edge? Maybe Brent had nailed it and there was just something about Salem. Or maybe Ulric’s tour of terror was psyching me out.

We hit a few more landmarks—the Witch House, the Witch Dungeon, witch, witch, whatever … and then the Old Jail. The way Ulric said it, each word got its own capital letter, probably even in some big fancy font called Thriller or Chiller or just Boo.

“The Old Salem Jail,” he repeated. “This is as close as we’re allowed to get to the site of the murder. You’ll note the
crime scene tape.” Ulric pointed off into the distance. “Years ago, the Old Jail was turned into upscale housing. They, of course, tore out the old cells, and in doing so found an old passage underneath and the skeleton of a prisoner who’d tried and failed to escape. It was said that he’d fallen down a shaft and broken half his bones. He died trying to crawl to freedom. But it’s not
his
ghost you have to be afraid of. Remember Sheriff Corwin? Well, behind the jail, an old man named Giles Corey was pressed to death during the witch hysteria. If you were accused back then, the officials could seize all of your worldly goods, as they did with mine.” Oh right, he was supposed to be Philip English, wronged man and corpse-kidnapper.

“But, you see, Giles was a smart man,” Ulric continued. “He found a loophole in the law that said his property, which he wanted to preserve for his heirs, couldn’t be forfeit until he entered a plea. Thus, he refused to enter one. Sheriff Corwin, not to be thwarted, ordered Mr. Corey staked out in the courtyard and weight to be piled atop him until he should rethink his decision. Three days he lay baking in the sun. Nothing to eat or drink, his ribs and lungs collapsing under the stones heaped upon him. Corwin came out to check on Corey’s progress and had to poke the near-dead man’s tongue back into his mouth with his cane in order to ask again for his plea, to which Corey, a tough old bird, responded only ‘More weight.’ He died very shortly thereafter, pressed to death.”

The hair on the back of my neck and all along my arms actually stood on end.

“It’s said that Sheriff Corwin, whose rest I, Philip English, so gleefully disturbed, wanders here, looking for innocent victims, unsatisfied with his inability to break old man Corey. People have reported necklaces and scarves twisted up about their necks, the air being choked out of them just as it was pressed out of Giles Corey.”

“And the girl who died?” the aptly named Ghouligan asked.

“Strangled with her own golden chain,” Ulric admitted. I liked him for sounding more sad than dramatic at this.

“Do you think—?” the man started to ask.

“What I think,” Ulric cut in, “is that, sadly, our time together has come to an end. It’s an easy trek back to the mall, and if you’d like, you’re all welcome to walk back with me. If you need directions to somewhere else, I will happily supply them. Otherwise, I bid you a fair and pleasant evening.” He swept his hat from his head as he said it, and I felt chill, ghostly hands at my throat.

4

I
nstinctively, panic welled up in me. I didn’t have to breathe, but the idea that I
couldn’t
… it hadn’t been so long since I’d been human. Not long enough to forget vulnerability.

I kicked and hit nothing. The awful costume’s collar twisted up around my neck as I struggled. The hands continued to tighten.

A woman toward the back of the group shrieked at my obvious distress, and the reaction rippled through the crowd as the sound made everyone else turn.

Bobby rushed to me and tried to get his hands up under the ghostly grasp choking the afterlife out of me, but it was no good. The shrieking woman recovered and dashed in to help. A gold crucifix swung from her neck, and for a minute I forgot the hands in the face of true terror. I still wasn’t sure whether Bobby and I were actually damned, like fiction
suggested, but I wasn’t eager to find out. I didn’t recoil in instinctive revulsion, which was a point in our favor, but my gaze stayed riveted on that cross as the woman leaned in, trying to loosen the collar she could see twisted up like a tourniquet around my neck.

As she leaned, the crucifix swung toward me. I flinched as it brushed across my hair. Did I smell something burning? I couldn’t be sure without a deep breath, which I had no opportunity to take. Fear threatened to restart my heart, which by human reckoning should be
pounding
, but even the adrenaline jolt of sheer terror couldn’t quite raise the dead.

But it did make it hard to think. How long had it been since I’d been seen to draw a breath? If I were still alive, would I even be conscious after so long? Just in case, I let my hands flop uselessly to my sides and let my knees soften, as if I were about to pass out. Bobby still clawed uselessly at my neck.

The tourist lady got in closer, trying for a better angle on the problem, and this time her crucifix struck with a sizzle like meat hitting a hot grill. A howl sounded in my ear, unearthly with rage and pain, and then the hands were gone and nothing separated me from the crucifix. Sudden searing pain rolled my eyes back into my head. There was no air left in my lungs to scream and no strength left in my legs. They went out from under me.

The world tilted and I crumpled, past looks of horror, fear, and fascination. It was no act, no graceful fall for the tourists. I was a rag doll in a fiery inferno.

The last thing I saw before my light extinguished was a pair of glowing eyes—eyes I recognized but was too far gone to place.

• • •

I came to on an honest-to-God fainting couch, with four walls and retro family photos surrounding me. Bobby hovered anxiously and Kari-with-a-K flitted across my vision, asking herself where she’d put the damned first aid kit.

Ulric sat at my feet, which I noticed were bare. He was rubbing them, but since I’d been in no condition to appreciate it, I’d have bet money it was more for Bobby’s benefit than mine. I almost wished one of them would just plant a flag in me and be done with it.

“She’s awake,” Bobby announced needlessly.

“Aha!” Kari said, from somewhere out of sight. She rushed back holding a big red case with a large white cross on the front. It was all I could do not to flinch. I had to remind myself that the lady’s crucifix hadn’t hurt me until it touched flesh, and that this cross was more a medicinal than religious symbol, but still … did the fact that the cross hadn’t burned me on sight mean that I was only slightly damned? Was that like being only
slightly
preggers?

I gingerly touched a hand to the still-searing pain on my neck, but even that hurt so badly I snatched my hand away before I could test out the wound. I prayed it wouldn’t leave a permanent mark. I didn’t want to try accessorizing a scar, and there was no way I was going all Daphne from
Scooby-Doo
. Seriously, whoever had costumed those cartoons needed a fashion intervention. An orange scarf with a purple dress … as if! And the others—ascots, page boy haircuts …
knee socks
!

I knew I was thinking crazy to avoid
going
crazy.

“Let’s see,” Kari was saying. “I know I have burn cream in here somewhere. How did you say it happened again?”

Bobby and I made eye contact, but he looked as lost as I felt. How exactly did you explain being branded by a crucifix without throwing in talk of eternal damnation? And Salem was just the kind of place where someone might take us seriously on that point.

“Friction,” Ulric piped up.

We all looked at him.

“Huh?” Bobby asked.

“The ghost of Sheriff Corwin—sadistic bastard—was throttling the life out of Gia here,” Ulric said, remembering to use my fake name. “Benjy and the customer rushed in to help. It was a freak thing—the friction of playing tug of war with a ghost and trying to untwist Gia’s collar heated up the customer’s cross pendant to where it was, like, scalding.”

We all continued to stare.

Finally, Kari said, “
Really
?” Bobby and I real-held our pretend-breaths as we waited to see if she’d buy the ridiculous explanation. “The ghost of Sheriff Corwin? You
saw
it?”

She sounded way too excited by the concept.

“Did anyone get pictures?” she continued. “This could be great for business.”

Bobby cleared his throat. “Uh, Kari, you do realize that he almost
killed
Gia, right? Something tried to, anyway. I’m not so sold on it being a ghost.”

“But what else could it be?” she asked. “Anyway, ‘almost’ is the key word. She’s still here, and now we know the ghost is allergic to crucifixes. All we have to do is get all our tour guides to wear them.”

“Shanti’s Jewish,” Ulric cut in.

“Religious symbols, then,” Kari said with a huff, as though it should have been understood. “Stars of David, sacred circles, whatever.”

“Um,” I started, not really sure where I was going. I couldn’t point out that religious symbols weren’t really an option for Bobby and me. Of course, neither was suffocation. If the ghost twigged to that and started throwing around stakes … well, we’d be in a world of trouble. “Maybe we should avoid Corwin’s haunts altogether? You know, until someone performs an exorcism or something.”

Kari was already shaking her head … vehemently. “Not an option. Those are prime spots. Every single tour in town is going to hit them. If we don’t, people will just go elsewhere. Besides, Bryson Seacroft wants to do a special segment on us. He talked to me before he left.
Bryson Seacroft
. We’ll be famous! The tour to beat all tours. In your face, Gaslit Ghosts!”

I looked at Ulric in panic, hoping he could pull another crazy explanation out of his butt.

“Oh, and the best part!” Kari added, looking at me like I was some kind of Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Britney all rolled into one. “He wants you to recreate your experience for the camera. Isn’t that great? You’ll be famous!”

I nearly wept blood. All my natural life I’d dreamed of fame, walking the runways or red carpets. Now …
now
that it was so close I could taste it, I had to turn away. Vamps didn’t show up on film, or even in mirrors. I was doomed to an eternity of avoiding sun and stage lights, of living in the shadows. Basically, I was nothing more than a good-looking corpse.

The devastation must have shown on my face.

“What?” Kari asked. “Don’t you want to be famous?”

“Stage fright,” Bobby said, rubbing my shoulders. “Gia’s okay in groups, but put her on a stage or in front of a camera and she freezes.”

“Oh.” Kari looked completely crestfallen for all of a second. “I know—I’ll just get one of the other girls to play you. Problem solved!”

Good to see I was so easily replaceable
, I thought with a twinge. That was too close a call.

With at least one of the Ghouligans in town poking into the paranormal, and Ulric already able to blow my cover if he wanted to, I didn’t see how we could stay in Salem. On the other hand, with a supernatural strangler running loose, I didn’t see how we could go.

• • •

Bobby and I caught a ride back to the apartment with one of the other Haunts in History guides. We were the first ones home, and made really good use of the couch before the others arrived. My boy could kiss, and he’d totally mastered running his fingers over sensitive spots with a feather-light touch that left me wanting … so much more.

If it wasn’t for Bobby pulling my shirt quickly into place as the doorknob turned the first time, I might have treated everyone to a show.

Marcy and Brent came in, apparently having gotten a ride of their own. Marcy practically glowed in skin-tight jeans and a black scoop-necked shirt that said “Salem Stout” in screaming red letters. She looked smokin’.

“No fair,” I said immediately. “You get to wear a cute little T-shirt and I have to dress up like something from
Little House on the Prairie
.”

Bobby opened his mouth, probably to correct me, but Brent shut it with, “Dude, your fly’s open.”

Bobby blushed right up and fixed it in a flash.

“You like it?” Marcy asked, modeling—left side, right side and straight on, chest out, stomach in. “Salem Stout’s their trademark draft. Brent and I got jobs at the brew pub.”

“I do like it. Totally beats the heinous garb Bobby and I have to wear for the ghost tours. You’ll never believe—”

“What’s that on your neck?” Marcy asked, dashing to sit beside me on the couch, edging Bobby out of the way. “Hickey?”

She brushed the hair aside and drew back in horror. “Gina, you’ve been branded! What happened to you? Tell me everything.”

“Maybe we should save the updates until everyone’s back,” Bobby cut in.

Annoyed, I stuck my tongue out at him. He stuck his out right back, which made me think of what we’d been doing right before Brent and Marcy walked in. A burst of heat raced through me and Bobby picked up on it, his gaze promising that as soon as the opportunity presented itself, we’d pick up where we’d left off.

“Okay, you two—cold shower. Seriously. You’re making
me
blush,” Brent said.

“Oh, right, like you have any shame after your liplock back in the van,” I countered.

“Fine,” Marcy said, giving me a
let’s get the guys under control
look. “We can all agree to no more public displays of affection.”

“Easy for you to say,” Bobby grumbled. “
You
have a room.”

“You two boys fight it out then. Gina and I need to talk concealer.” Marcy pulled me off toward the bathroom and our limited cosmetic supplies to see what could be done with my crucifix-shaped scar. But it turned out to be too tender yet for any kind of cover-up. The slightest touch brought back the burn. Marcy had to settle for interrogating me on how I got it.

It was about an hour before Eric and Nelson rolled in, clutching two large paper bags full of groceries. Brent abandoned us to help put the food away and came back with a raspberry yogurt, already half-eaten. Curse him and his human digestion. The thing I missed most—after the ability to feel the sun on my face and see myself in the mirror—was flavor. Blood just didn’t cut it, especially not when we’d only had time since our flight from the Feds to nip and run. There’d been no time to savor, no lingering until we were flush with new blood racing through our veins. And even the best blood didn’t tantalize the taste buds like, say, chocolate. The variations were subtle, without the tang of Tabasco or the melt-in-your-mouth of a meringue.

I didn’t mean to, but I glared.

“What?” Brent asked. “Want some?”

“Now that’s just mean.”

Marcy kicked at him, but he caught the foot before it connected, and anyway, she hadn’t really been trying. “Play nice,” she ordered.

He stroked the foot he’d caught. “Always do,” he said.

I snorted.

Luckily, he had to abandon the foot in order to eat his yogurt.

Eric was more substantially armed, with a twelve-inch sub and a soda. The former I didn’t miss so much—all those carbs!—but the latter … I was a Cherry Coke fiend all the way.

“I’m almost embarrassed, the way you’re eying that soda,” Nelson said.

“How am I eying it?”

“Like you want to be alone together.”

I shrugged. “It wouldn’t last five minutes with me.”

“I believe that,” he said with a smile.

It was hard to remember that he was my age. The body he sported now was, like, Neander-tall. He looked like a star basketball player, with his muscley limbs. His russet hair, close-shaven on top, led into narrow sideburns and a chinstrap beard that skirted a square jaw. Deep brown eyes stared out of a nicely featured face. The only things not hard about the whole body were those eyes. Yup, he’d gotten the better end of his bodyswap with the vamp … except for the whole light-allergy thing and the all-liquid diet. Of course, considering the fact that he’d been a lifestyler before the exchange, playing vamp in the club scene of Tampa, Florida, maybe he didn’t mind the reality all that much.