Chapter 1

My name is Gabrielle Johns, a junior architect in Chicago. I was on my way to my family's lake house in Wisconsin for a long weekend.

My best friend, Jen Chadwick, sat beside me, complaining about her dead-end retail job again.

"It's just not fair, Gabby. You get this amazing career, a great apartment, everything. And I'm stuck folding sweaters for Karens all day."

I gripped the steering wheel. I had heard this a thousand times. I loved Jen, we'd been friends since grade school, but her envy was a constant, heavy thing between us.

"It'll get better, Jen. You just need to find something you're passionate about."

She scoffed. "Easy for you to say."

I focused on the road, trying to let it go. My parents were waiting. They were so proud of me, working so hard, saving up to help me with a down payment on a condo. Thinking of them made me smile.

That's when I saw the headlights in my rearview mirror. A huge, black vintage hearse was coming up way too fast.

I braced for impact.

There was a loud crunch of metal. The car jolted forward. My head snapped back against the headrest, but I was okay. Jen was screaming.

I got out, my heart pounding. The driver of the hearse, an old man from the local historic funeral home, was incredibly apologetic. The damage was just a dented bumper.

"It's okay," I told him, waving him off. "No one's hurt. It's just a car." Making a scene over an accident with a hearse felt like asking for bad karma.

Jen stared at me like I was insane. "Are you kidding me? You're just letting him go? Sue him, Gabby! This is your lucky day!"

I just shook my head and got back in the car. But maybe she was right about the lucky part.

The next week, everything changed.

A notoriously difficult client, one I'd spent months trying to please, suddenly called and approved my entire design proposal without a single change. My boss was stunned. He called me into his office the next day.

"Gabrielle," he said, a wide smile on his face. "You're not a junior anymore. You're a project lead."

The promotion came with a massive raise. A few days later, my parents called, ecstatic. They had the final amount for the down payment, a hundred thousand dollars in cash, saved up over years.

I was overwhelmed. To explain my sudden good fortune without revealing my parents' generous gift, I posted a little white lie on social media. I held up a lottery scratch-off ticket and captioned it, "Guess it's my lucky day!"

Jen saw the post. She called me immediately, her voice tight with a strange excitement.

"The hearse, Gabby," she whispered. "It was the hearse. It brought you all this luck."

I laughed it off, but she was serious. A few days later, I saw on her Instagram that she had quit her job. Her bio now read: "Manifesting my own destiny."

I felt a knot of dread in my stomach. I drove past the historic funeral home that weekend. I saw Jen's beat-up car parked across the street. She was staking it out.

The next thing I knew, my phone was ringing. It was a mutual friend.

"Have you heard about Jen? She's in huge trouble."

Jen had deliberately gotten herself rear-ended by the same vintage hearse. But this wasn't just any old car. It was a priceless, one-of-a-kind antique, perfectly restored. The damages were astronomical. The funeral home's owners were suing her for a sum that would ruin her for life.

She spiraled. Her social media turned into a stream of angry, paranoid rants, all directed at me. She blamed me for her "stolen luck," for her debt, for everything wrong in her life.

The night it happened, I was in my new condo's parking garage. I had just gotten out of my car. Two large men stepped out from behind a concrete pillar. I didn't even have time to scream.

They beat me, viciously. As I lay on the cold concrete, bleeding, a familiar face appeared above me.

It was Jen. Her eyes were wide and empty.

"This was supposed to be mine," she hissed.

Then she plunged the knife into my chest.

My last thought was of my parents, their happy faces, their stolen future.

Then, darkness.