Page 31 of Real Fake Hauntings

“Duh.” Dru dug her elbow into my side, and I tried not to wince. “Who else works here?”

“There’s Laurie and Cathy and Hiro. Why?”

I made a mental note of the names to send Ian later. Maybe one of them was a paranormal. “Maybe they saw something.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you’ll never know until you ask, right?”

“I guess?”

“Can we have two adult tickets?”

“Sure. That’ll be twenty.”

I paid, gave Sarah our thanks, and dragged Dru into the black maw of horrors.

“Why are we going inside?” she asked in a whisper.

“I want to check the collection. See if there are any traces of magic.”

“Are you going to test every surface? ’Cause I don’t see any chairs for your post-magic noodle legs.”

“Ha-ha. No, I just want to see if anything gives me a bad feeling, or if it’s changed from the last time I visited.”

“You’ve visited before?”

I looked at her in surprise. “You’ve never been here?”

“What exactly makes you think I’d visit this place?”

“You did visit my tea shop, and that’s not your style either.”

“Under duress.”

I blew her a kiss, although I wasn’t sure if she saw it in the complete darkness surrounding us. “I love you too.”

Tiny yellow markers on the floor led us around a sharp corner and into a small room filled with illuminated shelves behind glass displays. A human brain floated in a yellowed jar next to a huge tarantula pinned inside a frame. Ugh.

“What do you think about Sarah and Laurence?” I asked. “You think they’re involved?”

“Nope. Strictly business. She’s not that desperate.”

“In the pentagrams!”

Dru grinned. “Nah. They looked normal.”

But then, everyone looked normal until they dragged you into an empty street and attempted to kidnap and murder you, didn’t they?

“Look,” Dru said. “Your clone!”

I followed her pointing finger to find a golden chicken with a green head sewed on.

“Hah. You’re hilarious today.”

“It comes naturally.”

We crossed the room, took another dark corner, and entered a long space with bigger items lining the sides and hanging on the walls, mostly consisting of taxidermy horrors and a few weapons marred with dark-red splatter. A big wooden spear supposedly still carrying the blood of Vlad Dracula’s first victim had a place of honor on top of the world’s first two-headed goat and the head of the alligator that ate Elvis. A trio of visitors hovered near the room’s exit, reading items’ labels aloud and shivering theatrically.

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