Timeshares

Timeshares

MOBI-011206
Jean Rabe
2

Details

The man in the shadows calls his name.

Something hits him hard from behind. He hears two quick pops—some part of his brain tells him it is gunfire, but it doesn’t sound nearly as loud as he’d imagined—and glass breaking. Yoko whips around, screaming.

“I’m shot,” he gasps.

“No,” says a voice in his ear. “You’re not. Not this time.”

He realizes then that the thing that hit him was a man, another lurker who mng tust have sprung out of the darkness and tackled him like an American footballer, right before the gunshots started. The pain and breathlessness aren’t from bullets in his chest, but because this big man is lying on top of him, covering him with his body. Protecting him. “Who are you?” he grunts.

“A fan,” says the voice in his ear. “For forty years, ever since I was a boy. It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Lennon.”

John has just enough time to think: that doesn’t make sense. I’m only forty. Then blue lightning flashes and his mouth floods with acid and his stomach drops ten miles into the earth and all of it—the Dakota, the madman with the gun, Yoko—it all disappears.


—from “But I’m Not the Only One” by Chris Pearson

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Cities can be magical places to visit, with so many things to see and do. But what if there are true magic-workers and magical beings in the cities of our world—under bridges, lurking in alleyways, hiding in subway tunnels, or perhaps living in the apartment next door? So venture now where a troll may be your toll collector on the George Washington Bridge . . . Harry the Book will be happy to place your bets in a spellbinding alternate New York . . . while a gargoyle finds himself left to a lonely rooftop existence when he’s forced to live by his creator’s rules . . . and leprechauns must become bank robbers to keep up with the demand for their gold. And these are just a few of the denizens you’ll meet in a multitude of urban centers that have been touched by the fantastic, in stories by Timothy Zahn, Mike Resnick, C.J. Henderson, Linda P. Baker, Michael A. Stackpole, Brian M. Thomsen and more.