Fatal Bargain Read Free Page B

in a haunted house. Bobby and Zach would be there, too.
    “A haunted house?” said Sherree. “Give me a break, Randy.” Randy plowed on. The house, he insisted, really was haunted. That was why they were ripping it down. Not because they were going to build a mall there but because of the terrible things that had happened to the human beings who had lived in that house, listened to those banging shutters, climbed those creaking stairs.
    “Well…” said Sherree.
    “We’ll have fun,” said Randy. “I’ll bring the food.”
    “And movies?” said Sherree. “I love movies.”
    (Randy had just told Sherree that the house didn’t have electricity anymore, but apparently Sherree had drawn no conclusion from this. Perhaps she thought Randy traveled with his own generator.) He said they would have so much fun that they wouldn’t need movies. “In fact,” Randy said, “I’ll bring along a video camera and film us! We’ll be the movie!”
    “Well…” said Sherree. “Are there going to be other girls?”
    “Of course. Lacey’s coming, for one.”
    Sherree couldn’t remember Lacey, either. Randy patiently described Lacey and after she had heard the description three times, Sherree felt as if she knew Lacey after all. “Oh, right,” said Sherree. “Sure. Lacey. Great.”
    “Now we don’t want lots of people there,” warned Randy. “Spoil the fun, you know. So don’t tell anybody.”
    “I won’t tell anybody,” promised Sherree. She hung up feeling confused. She did not know why they were going to the haunted house, nor quite what they would do once they sneaked in, but Randy seemed very sure of himself.
    Sherree wondered what to wear to an event like this. She stood quite happily in front of her closets and bureau drawers, matching and re-matching, thinking maybe she would call this Lacey to see what she was wearing.
    The only kind of movie for which Sherree did not have a taste was horror. She never watched those. They were too scary. She could not sleep at night after a horror movie, and if she ever managed to get to bed she had to sleep in a fetal position because she was afraid of what would happen to her toes if they stuck out.
    Sherree was wearing sandals and her toes stuck out.
    But even without the information she might have gotten from late-night movies, Sherree knew that she did not have to worry about her toes.
    The vampire’s attention was elsewhere.
    And his teeth — his teeth seemed to be everywhere.
    They slid in and out of focus, as if lenses on cameras had fogged up.
    Sherree tightened herself into a ball, thinking: Lacey’s standing up. He’ll take her first. I’ll run. He can’t do two at once.
    When the phone rang that night, and it was Randy, Roxanne bit back a laugh. If there was anybody who did not make waves, who did not set trends, and who was not interesting, it was poor Randy. He was the classic case of the kid with the terrific car, the terrific media room, and unlimited use of credit cards. People hung out with him to use him, and Randy had no idea.
    Roxanne could not imagine what Randy was talking about, wanting to have a party in a deserted house. Roxanne being Roxanne, she pointed out the flaws in his planning: how they would have to break in, which was illegal; how the police might be called by neighbors; how very possibly the house was structurally unsound and they might fall through a stair tread or otherwise hurt themselves. How, assuming they did get in, a dark house might be interesting for a minute or two, but then what were they going to do?
    “Lighten up, Roxanne,” said Randy. “There are no neighbors, and back when they built that house, they built ʼem to last for centuries. Nothing’s broken in there.”
    “The shutters are,” Roxanne pointed out. “It gives me the creeps just to drive by. Especially now, with everything around the place leveled.”
    The house stuck out of the ground as if it were a growth or a mold. Strange twisted lightning