Fangtabulous Read Online Free PDF

And Ulric had just the right voice for it, smooth and rich like dark chocolate, but sliding right over you like silk. For a standard-issue human, he definitely knew how to weave a spell.
    “Follow me, if you dare,” he continued, “to some of the historical hot spots of the most haunted town in America. But keep your wits close and your loved ones closer.”
    He leapt off his soapbox to a collective gasp from some of the girls up front. His half-cloak flapped and settled dramatically about him. Oh, Ulric had it all right. Stage presence, sex appeal, it . I caught Bobby checking me out for my reaction and so crossed my eyes and stuck my tongue out at him. His eyes crinkled cutely at the corners before he turned to follow the crowd. It was like Ulric was the pied piper and we were all his rats. No, wait, I didn’t like that analogy at all .
    He led us out through the back doors of the mall and off to the right, and then left, where we stopped in front of a bunch of buildings that had been, I deduced from Ulric’s talk, lifted from various places about town and plunked down together to form the Peabody Essex Museum complex. I tried not to snort when he got to the part in his spiel about how people should aim their cameras here or there, where paranormal activity had been spotted. Still, Ulric managed to catch my gaze across the crowd, as if he read my mind. He shot me a wink, and I could feel Bobby bristle beside me.
    “When you check your pictures,” Ulric continued, “you might spot what we call orbs. Look for floating lights where there are no light sources. These orbs are the spectral energies left behind, particularly in the cases of traumatic or sudden death.”
    “Like that girl who died the other night?” someone called. “Has she been spotted?”
    At the interruption, Ulric looked like he’d like to trigger a traumatic event on the spot, but he gave the man a smile halfway between charming and predatory and said, “It often takes such spirits time to pull themselves together. But once they do, they seem unwilling to disperse again. I have some examples here”—he held up a flexible binder I’d only just noticed he was carrying—“of orbs that have been captured on film.” He flipped to the first page and held the book over his head for everyone to see. “In some cases, you can begin to make out faces in the enlarged orbs.” He flipped to another page to demonstrate his point.
    I could see pretty well from where I stood, given my super-enhanced vampire vision, but it took a better imagination than I had to make out features within the glowing ball in the picture. Or, wait, was that a girl?
    “I think my mind’s playing tricks on me,” I whispered to Bobby, low enough to be sure that no normal human could hear.
    “Hey, we’re vampires,” he whispered back. “Who’s to say what’s possible? Donato certainly seemed to believe there was something haunting our apartment, and Brent was spooked.”
    I gave him a look, but didn’t say anything else because we were moving on, down a walkway just past the museum and over to the Witch Trials Memorial and the Old Burying Point cemetery.
    “I bet Brent would pick something up here,” I said when we stopped again.
    Ulric was talking about how the various stones of the memorial represented people who’d been killed in the witch trials—nineteen people hanged, one pressed to death, and over a hundred accused and imprisoned, the youngest being little Dorcas Good, who was only four, but the daughter of an accused witch and seen to carry a small snake in her pocket, a sure sign of conspiring with the devil. He went on about the historical figures buried in the cemetery and more about orbs.
    This time, his spiel was interrupted by a gasp up front
—a teenaged girl swore she’d captured a picture of one of the orbs. An older friend with her swore that her camera had gone dead, refusing even to open though she’d charged the battery earlier that