CHAPTER ONE : LIVING IN THE CROSSHAIRS

"To all of life there is a shadow. The shadow of sadness, doubt, despair. Still it is but an echo of a heart moving forward."
-Roland Yeomans

{Now, the truth can be told. This is what really happened during the weekend.}

Something was tickling my ear. "Schatz! Schatz!"

Someone shook my shoulder. "Oh, Liebling, wake up. Wake up! You are in danger."

Fire.

My apartment was on fire. Ever since I had awakened long years ago to see flames rolling across my ceiling, I had lived in dread of it happening again.

My eyes flew open. I sat up straight in bed. Darkness. No flames. Only a naked blonde in the bed beside me.

Naked blonde?

It was Marlene Dietrich. And she wasn't exactly naked, but heavily clothed she wasn't. She was in a black silk nightgown seemingly made of flimsy spiderwebs.

"Ah, Marlene ..."

"Hush, Liebling. Look down beside your bed."

"Really ...."

"Do it!"

Marlene had never shouted at me before. This was obviously important. I looked down.

"Shit."

Sometimes "Oh, darn" just doesn't cover it. Gypsy was nudging the unmoving body of Ernest Hemingway sprawled beside my bed. His smoldering cigar was just going out.

"Damn, Marlene. I know he's a ghost and all. But ... he looks ... dead."

"He is, Schatz. He is."

I turned to her. "Ghosts can be killed?"

Her finely etched eyebrow rose dangerously, and I said, "All right, dumb question. Obviously ghosts can be killed. But I never knew that."

"Neither did I or any other ghost I have ever met. Which means you are in terrible danger."

"Danger? Why?"

"All through the Shadowlands it is known Papa was jealous of how I felt for you."

"But ..." She placed fingertips I almost felt on my lips.

"He is here. Dead. I am here. In your bed. It will be thought he attacked you, and you killed him out of self-defense."

"Yeah, self-defense. You're right. It will look like self-defense. I mean, I didn't kill him. You know that. But if they think I just defended myself, I'll be in the clear with the other ghosts, right?"

Marlene turned her head so that her waterfall of hair hid her eyes from me. "Wrong, Liebling. All they will care about is that you know how to kill them. And so to protect themselves, they will kill you."

"Ghosts can kill the living?"

Again the eyebrow arched. "O.K. Another dumb question. So all the ghosts are going to come gunning for me?"

"And the others."

My voice rose so that the dogs in the next block must have been awakened. "What others?"

"All the others in the Shadowlands, Liebling. They will want you alive just long enough to tear from you the terrible secret of how to kill ghosts."

"But I don't know how!"

"They will not believe you with the 'proof' of poor Papa's body beside your bed. And it is even worse than you fear."

"Worse? How can it be worse?"

"They are coming now."

"They who?"

Marlene's eyes sank into her pale face. "All of them."
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