"I bought a long-abandoned manor," Nikolai grates, "place called Elancourt."

Chills course through him even through his fury; pain erupts from the injury on his arm. A dream. His doom. He can never go to this Elancourt—knows this with a savage certainty. He's too strong for them to trace him—there's still time to escape.

If they take him there, they won't take him alive... .

Under a clouded nighttime sky, the spirit of Néomi Laress knelt in the drive at the very edge of her property line, gazing hungrily at the newspaper, lying wrapped in wet plastic.

Today the deliveryman—that capricious fiend—had missed the drive again, this time tossing the bundle squarely onto the desolate county road.

Néomi was starving for that paper, desperate for the news, reviews, and commentary that would break up the monotony of her life—or her eighty-year-long afterlife.

But she couldn't leave the estate to seize it. As a ghost, Néomi could manipulate matter telekinetically, and her power was nearly absolute at Elancourt—she could rattle all the windows or tear off the roof if she wanted to, and the weather often changed with her emotions—but not outside the property.

Her beloved home had become her prison, her eternal cell of fifteen acres and a slowly dying manor. Among fate's other curses, each seemingly designed to torture her in personal and specific ways, Néomi could never leave this place.

She didn't know why this was so—only that it was, and had been since she'd awakened the morning after her murder. She recalled seeing her haunting reflection for the first time. Néomi remembered that exact moment when she'd realized that she'd died—when she'd first comprehended what she'd become.

A ghost. She'd become something that frightened even her. Something unnatural. Never again to be a lover or friend. Never to be a mother, like she'd always planned after her dancing career. As a storm had boiled outside, she'd silently screamed for hours.