Free Fangtabulous by Lucienne Diver Page A

stars.
    We sauntered through several streets, and a few twists and turns, over to the condos that had once been the Old Jail. We stopped in the exact spot where I’d been attacked the night before and waited to feel a ghostly presence. Unlike Rebecca earlier, we were completely sans religious symbols. Completely defenseless.
    Nothing . Not a tingle or a tweak, a sizzle or a strangle.
    “Anything?” I asked Bobby, knowing the answer.
    “Nada.”
    “Think you can get us inside the Old Jail?”
    “I don’t even need my mojo for that. Push enough buzzers, someone’s bound to let us in.”
    Second note to self: never buzz someone into a building without knowing exactly who they are . They might be some fearsome, fanged creatures of the night up to no good. Not in our case, of course, but you never know when someone might bust into your place to feng shui your furniture or rearrange your internal organs. Caution is just common sense.
    “Well then, let’s go,” I answered.
    We strolled right up to the front doors and, as it turned out, didn’t even have to wait to get buzzed in, because a guy—weaving a little, possibly from a trip to Brent and Marcy’s brew pub—held the door open for us when he let himself in. We thanked him. He nodded like a dashboard Elvis and went on his merry way, leaving us in the foyer to look around.
    It looked more like an high-class hotel than a former prison. The only thing that gave it away was the tasteful sign back on the walkway talking about how the building fit into Salem’s history. No mention of the conditions folks had found within or anyone who might have died there, of course.
    I wondered what Brent would make of the place, but with history as alive as it seemed to be in Salem, I wasn’t sure we dared find out.
    “Let’s go deeper,” Bobby suggested. We took a set of stairs down to the basement level, and found nothing but a laundry and a lounge. Still, my hair seemed to literally stand on end.
    “Static electricity?” I asked Bobby.
    “I don’t think so. Hush for a second,” he said, though I’d already stopped talking.
    Bobby closed his eyes and stood in absolute stillness. With no one else around, neither of us even pretended to breathe, so the only noise, the only motion, came from the single dryer still going in a corner, miraculously quiet for an industrial-grade machine.
    “Stop thinking so loudly,” Bobby whispered.
    “What? I wasn’t—”
    Okay, so he was in receiver-mode, listening with all his mental mojo. I did my best to blank my mind.
    Think nothing at all, nothing at all. Damn, he looks hot in those jeans; nothing at all. I wonder how soon someone’s coming back for those clothes in the dryer. There’s a nice couch in the lounge. Nothing at all, nothing at all.
    “Gah.”
    “Did you get anything?” I asked.
    “Nothing at all,” he answered.
    “Wanna move onto the couch?” I asked.
    Bobby grinned at me. “I thought we agreed with Brent and Marcy on no more public displays of affection.”
    “They’re not here.”
    Bobby closed in on me, his grin getting wickeder and wilder by the second. Those amazing blue eyes looked into mine with so much love, so much feeling, that I got happily lost in them, forgetting ghost hunts and other ghastliness.
    He backed me right into the dryer, which was humming along, until it vibrated against my back. Then he pulled himself to me, hands first spanning my waist, then moving down to hold my hips while he swooped in to kiss me. His lips closed on mine, firm and wonderful, and his tongue slipped into my mouth. I let mine duel with his, startling an intake of breath out of him. He was breathing in my air, but I didn’t need it. Anyway, I was too distracted by the press of those jeans I so admired. The motion of the dryer rocked me into him, but it might have had a little help.
    Then something went thump! It was like a sneaker being tumbled dry, suddenly thrown against the side of the machine. It threw me