Animal Attraction Read Online Free Page B

about a classic vehicle that
delighted me to no end. The Cougar’s V-8 rumbled like a contented
... well, what I imagine a contented werepanther’s purr might sound
like. Not that Gerald ever purred. At least, not to my knowledge.
It felt like pure strength because he’d put the most powerful
engine in it the model had ever originally boasted. I couldn’t
remember the particulars and I didn’t want to ask. Once Gerald
started talking cars, he never stopped.
    The wood-look of the dash gleamed and not a
speck of dust marred anything in the mostly black interior. It made
me think of happier days when I’d been a teenager cruising the
streets with whatever boyfriend I’d had at the moment. Most of them
had driven older cars too. Even the well-heeled parents who boasted
status above all other things knew better than to buy new vehicles
for teenage showoffs.
    If not for constant hunger and cold riding
me, I could pretend to back to that more innocent time. Oh, the
warnings I would give younger me!
    Filled with the sustenance of bottled blood,
dancing werepanther, and cool car, I tripped my way from the
downtown district’s parking lot to the King George Hotel.
    There was no sign of the King George above
ground. Way back in the 1930’s, most of Fulton Falls burned in a
huge fire. With so much devastation, the residents of the town
opted to bury the old and build a new Fulton Falls on top of it.
The first floor of the King George ... all that materially remained
of that once regal playground for the rich and famous ... laid
beneath a big brick building with the original sign that identified
it as the T. I. Griss Department Store. Griss went out of business
in the ‘80s. The building now housed an antique mall.
    Access to the underground was found in the
rear of Griss, as locals still referred to it. Tristan owned the
building, and Gerald and I both had keys. We let ourselves into a
small, empty room. Another door opened to a flight of concrete
stairs lit by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I knew a
security camera trained on us as we descended. Though the King
George is buried, everyone knew it was far from dead. They also
knew it was a hive of activity for the paras, who had far too many
enemies among the norms to not have safety measures in place.
    At the bottom of the stairs we came to yet
another door. This one opened to a place of forgotten grandeur, of
a time when mankind’s stupidity and ills were kept hidden under a
pretty veneer of fashion and luxury.
    We were in the restored office portion of the
hotel, not even in the grand lobby or converted ballroom. Yet there
was no mistaking the craftsmanship of the moldings, the fineness of
the wallpaper, or the richness of the carpeting. Tristan had made
restoring the King George’s remaining floor as much a personal
project as the Cougar was for Gerald. There were subtle differences
between the past and present versions of the hotel, but they could
only be detected by someone who saw both the world of the living
and the realm of the dead.
    I was such a person at night with Patricia’s
eyes and my ghostly senses working at once. Some of the artwork
hanging on the walls was different because reproductions of the
originals were not always to be had. Plus the offices and
conference rooms we passed the open doors of could hardly be
expected to boast the same furnishings. It was close enough however
that I didn’t get a sense of dizziness that could hit me in the
‘thin’ places where the netherworld encroached on modern
reality.
    I could even hear the spirited (ha-ha)
strains of a Dixieland band playing in some part of the hotel.
That’s the music of the hotel, inaudible to the living’s ears.
    Gerald and I went our separate ways when we
reached Para Central. I had dubbed the former ballroom turned
office space with the name when I first came here as a ghost.
Somehow it had stuck, and everyone called it Para Central now.
Trendsetter, that’s me.
    Gerald went in