"Yes," I groaned. "It means he's cool. Does he speak English?"

"He has buns of steel, dear. Who cares what language he speaks?"

"Oh, I finally figured out the rating system on the rooms here and I need to call downstairs and ask to be taken off the super deluxe room list and placed on the standard room list. The standards are the good rooms."

"If it's all the same to you, dear, I'm gettin' more fond a this room all the time."

"You don't want to move?"

"Not really."

"Aw, that's so sweet." I gave her a little hug. "It's because the room reminds you of Grampa's ice shanty, isn't it? I bet when you look around, you can just feel his presence. Can you hear him saying anything to you?"

"You bet. He's sayin', 'You just got all your clothes hung up and put away, Marion. It'd be a pain in the ass to have to do it again.'"

Yup. That sounded just like Grampa.

We were in bed by nine. I fell asleep immediately and remained asleep until sometime in the middle of the night, when I came wide-awake. I grabbed my miniflashlight and shined it on my wristwatch, which I'd set out to dry on the built-in shelf above the headboard. The crystal was still fogged up. Nuts. I considered tiptoeing over to Nana's bed and checking the travel alarm, but since she was snoring like a trumpeter swan, I didn't want to chance waking her up. One of us deserved a decent night's sleep.

I began counting sheep. I hummed the theme songs from old TV Westerns. I made up naughty verses for the Oscar Mayer Weiner Song. An hour passed. I suspected this was a glaring example of my sleep pattern being thrown out of whack. I heard noises from the room next door. Groans. Loud groans.

Always respectful of other people's privacy, I pressed my ear to the wall.

Thrashing. Pounding. Moaning. Thumping. A couple of high-pitched cries of ecstacy. A gazillion rooms in this place and I get stuck next to the one where there's an ongoing reenactment of Debbie Does Dallas. Great. I flopped back onto my pillow, covered my ears, and went back to the Weiner Song.

That's the last thing I remember until I heard the scream.

It was a woman's scream. Loud. Shrill. Blood-chilling. I recognized it immediately because I'd let out the same scream my freshman year of college when I'd stepped onto the scale and discovered I'd gained ten pounds in two months.

"Good Lord!" Nana was up like a shot. "What's wrong? Emily? Are you all right? Who's screamin'?"

"Someone in the hall." I was across the room and fumbling with the doorknob in the dark. "You stay here." I flung the door open, expecting to find another guest who'd misinterpreted the room rating system.

Instead, I found Shirley Angowski, attired in a pink nylon peignoir edged with a profusion of pink boa feathers at the hem and cuffs. She was shaking with hysteria and clawing her cheeks with her Baby Flamingo fingernails. "He's dead. Look at him. He's dead. He's dead."