Chapter 1It was a dark and stormy Tuesday night. All right, not stormy. If it had been, Van thought, he and Gene probably wouldn’t be standing in the entryway of a shop, looking at their dead bodies sprawled on the pavement. They’d be at home, where it was warm and dry.
“We’re really dead. It isn’t a nightmare,” Gene said, sounding both horrified and interested. Interested because, as a writer, it gave him new insight into what being murdered involved—like the shock and pain as bullets tore through him, for starters.
Or so Van figured as he replied, “Nope, it’s real.” He put his arm around Gene’s shoulders, or tried to, as they watched the police and an ambulance arrive at the scene. Instead, his arm went through Gene as if he had no substance. It took Van less than a second to realize t
