Read Haunted for Free Online Page B

said,”
    Anthony answered, inching the car along the narrow street.
    “And we should definitely be listening to some loser who pumps gas for a living,” Yana said from the backseat.
    She’d woken up cranky, Rae noticed. Like a little kid.
    “We definitely should,” Anthony told her. “Those guys always know how to hook you up with stuff.”
    “If that’s true, why didn’t they give you an actual address?” Yana complained. “I don’t know why we need fake IDs, anyway. We can all pass for eighteen.”
    “You probably can. And I can,” Anthony said.
    “But she-” He jerked his chin toward Rae. “She can’t.”
    “She does have kind of a baby face,” Yana agreed.
    “Hey,” Rae protested. Baby face sounded like code for round, fat chipmunk face. And she had cheekbones. Not amazing ones, like Lea’s, but they were there.
    Yana leaned over and patted her on the head. “A sweet little baby face,” she cooed. “I bet all the prep guys fall all over themselves when you walk by.”
    “You’re forgetting that they all think I’m insane,”
    Rae shot back. Yana smacked her on the shoulder.
    She always got pissed when Rae used words like insane about herself.
    “Okay, now, that looks like the home of somebody called the chicken man, don’t you think?”
    Anthony asked.
    “Oh my God. I didn’t think there would be actual chickens,” Rae said. But there were. About six of them crowded together in the tilting coop on the front porch.
    “Oh my God. I didn’t think there would be, like, actual chickens, ” Yana repeated, doing a decent Rae imitation. She and Anthony cracked up. They were doing that thing-that thing where there are three people and two of them don’t know each other, so they bond by making fun of the one they both do know.
    “I didn’t say ‘like,’ ” Rae muttered as Anthony maneuvered the Hyundai into a small spot between two parked cars.
    He opened his door and climbed out, Yana right behind him. Rae really didn’t want to go inside, but she wasn’t going to give the two of them something else to laugh about. She jumped out of the car and headed across the weed-choked lawn and up to the porch. The chickens went crazy as Anthony knocked on the door.
    “Why would anyone have chickens?” Rae mumbled. “I mean, hasn’t he heard of a grocery store?”
    “They’re for his sacrifices,” Yana whispered.
    “Didn’t you hear Anthony say he’s a voodoo guy?”
    Rae had an impulse to reach over and yank open the door of the coop. No animal deserved to be killed for such a ridiculous reason. Maybe on the way out, she thought. After we get the IDs.
    The door swung open, and her plans to free the chickens evaporated. It was all she could do not to stare at the chicken man. He was tall, definitely over six feet, and so thin, he seemed to be made mostly of bones, bones and the masses of matted hair that fell past his shoulders. “Well, don’t just stand there on my porch. Come in and tell me what you want.”
    Anthony, Yana, and Rae obediently followed him inside. Rae’s eyes flicked over the room, jumping from the row of crude dolls-voodoo dolls, she realized-to the jars of murky liquids, to a metal bowl with a small fire burning inside it, a fire that gave off the unmistakable smell of singed hair.
    “You looking for gris-gris? Something to protect you from the evil spirits?” the chicken man asked.
    “We were looking more for something to protect us from evil bouncers,” Anthony said, not seeming at all weirded out by the freaky stuff surrounding them.
    “Oh, man. I put on the wig for that?” The chicken man pulled off his matted hair, revealing a dark brown crew cut underneath. “Well, come on in the back.” He tossed the wig on a rattan chair with a back so high and wide, it could be a throne, then led the way through the door, which was painted a deep rich red and covered with purple symbols.
    When Rae stepped through the door, she felt like she’d entered another