Chapter 1

Ethan and I had a rule.

Five years of marriage, and the rule was simple: you can have your affairs, I can have mine, but no one comes home to the Garden District mansion. It was our only sanctuary, the one place we didn't have to perform our roles for the public.

Tonight, on my birthday, Ethan broke that rule.

He walked in with her, a girl named Tara. She was young, with wide, innocent eyes and a guitar slung over her back. She looked exactly like my sister, Gabrielle. The same long, dark hair, the same way she held her head, even the same style of folk music she played. Gabrielle, the jazz prodigy Ethan was supposed to marry before she died. Gabrielle, the ghost that lived in our marriage.

"Jocelyn," Ethan said, his voice cold and final. He didn't even look at me. "I want a divorce."

He gestured to Tara, who was looking around our home with a proprietary air.

"I'm going to be with her."

I felt a strange calm settle over me. I should have been screaming, throwing things, feeling the familiar sting of betrayal. But I felt nothing.

Maybe because I was already dead.

Two days ago, on our fifth wedding anniversary, I was driving to Ethan' s office. I had a gift for him, a vintage Gibson guitar, one he' d loved and thought was lost forever in a fire years ago. I' d spent months finding it, getting it restored to perfection. I was on the interstate when a truck swerved into my lane. There was a crush of metal, a flash of light, and then... nothing.

I died on impact.

But my soul refused to leave. My love, my obsession with Ethan, was a chain that held me to this world. That' s when he appeared.

He called himself Papa Legba, a spirit from the crossroads, a gatekeeper. He was drawn by the sheer force of my refusal to pass on. He looked at me, a shimmer of a man in the wreckage, and made me an offer.

"You love him that much, child?" his voice echoed in my soul.

I couldn't speak, only feel.

"Alright," he said, a slow smile spreading across his spectral face. "I'll give you a deal. Seven days. You have seven days to get that man to kiss you. A real kiss, one with feeling. You succeed, you get your life back. You fail... your soul is mine."

I knew Ethan. In five years, he had never once kissed me with any real emotion. It was always a duty, a peck on the cheek for the cameras. Getting a kiss with genuine feeling was impossible.

But I accepted.

Now, standing in my own living room, watching my husband replace me, I felt the clock ticking. I had seven days. And I was already on day two.

I looked at Ethan, my voice barely a whisper. "Ethan, please. Just one kiss. That's all I'm asking."

He scoffed, a look of pure disgust on his face. "Are you serious? After everything?"

"I feel like I'm dying," I said. It was the truest thing I'd ever told him.

He laughed, a cruel, sharp sound. "Don't be so dramatic, Jocelyn. I only kiss women I love."

Then, to prove his point, he turned to Tara. He cupped her face in his hands, looked into her eyes-my sister' s eyes-and kissed her. Deeply. Passionately. Right in front of me.

The pain was so sharp, so real, it felt like I was dying all over again.