Chapter One

Sometimes Mira wondered how common it was to not know how you died.

In her experience, it was about 50/50. There were some deaths -illness, deprivation, and other slow endings- that she remembered in great detail and some where she’d only realized that she’d died until well after the fact.

As she opened her eyes in an unfamiliar bed with her heart in her throat, she realized that this was one of those occasions.

There were some bits that she remembered surrounding the incident that made her think that -whatever had happened- it was at least quick. She remembered being stopped in traffic, on her way to work, not really doing anything except trying to find a radio station that had music and no people talking. Then?

Nothing.

Whatever happened must have hurt because when she did wake up, she was so convinced that she was dying that it took several minutes for her to realize that she was somewhere else and that nothing hurt. It took a few more still before she realized she was someone else too.

Mira lay flat on her back, staring at a plasterwork ceiling rose overhead as she cataloged her circumstances. She was in a bed. That was good. She was dressed, even, in a high necked nightgown trimmed with (she lifted an arm to check) exquisite needle lace cuffs. The bed itself was a solid four poster canopy bed surrounded on all sides by heavy, light blocking and insulating drapes that hung from brass rods set into the ceiling. One side was parted slightly and gave a view of the room, which was small and well-appointed—albeit impersonal.

Something itched in the back of her head and whispered ‘hotel.’

She covered her face with both hands and fought the urge to groan, unable to deny it any longer. She’d died. Again.

The reason she couldn’t make any noise just yet was because someone was moving about the room, trying to stay quiet, but in the way a servant would as opposed to an assassin. In a perfect world, she wouldn’t have to worry about the latter, but she didn’t manifest in living bodies. She entered the body almost as soon as the former occupant left it, so whatever killed them, either accident or illness, was usually still around when she woke up.

Mira lay quietly and watched the gap in the bed drapes until a young woman passed by in a neat, yet practical blue dress with a peter pan collar and long cuffed sleeves under a loose charcoal-colored cross back apron that was designed for comfort and ease of movement.

She wore her light brown hair braided away from her face so there was no disguising the reddened rims of her eyes as she carried a tray to Mira’s bedside. On the tray was a pitcher of water, a small tureen of thin soup, and an invalid’s cup. The woman didn’t have the busy demeanor Mira tended to associate with nurses so this was a maid, or however they referred to domestic staff in this new place.

Sometimes Mira got very tired of learning how to live in new places. Her last life had been comparatively long, but had started in infancy. She’d woken up in the NICU that time. At least she was a bit older this time around. Being a baby might seem relaxing if you’d never been a fully conscious adult trapped in a body that couldn’t even roll over on its own, but the reality of the situation depended entirely on the circumstance you were born into and Mira hated feeling helpless above all things.

In any event, the maid seemed unhappy, but not like she resented her work so Mira didn’t bother with pretending to be asleep when the girl set her tray down and opened the drapes.

“Oh!” the girl chirped, surprised when she saw Mira’s eyes were open. “Miss, you’re awake!” It sounded like that came as a surprise. She crouched down at the bedside. “How are you feeling? Does anything hurt? You’ve been unconscious since yesterday. Do you think you can take some water?”

Mira was still settling into her body by degrees. She knew from experience that it took a little bit before she started to receive those usual bodily communications everyone takes for granted like hunger, thirst, and pain. Her tongue was dry in her mouth. It wasn’t very bad right now, but she was certain that she would feel much worse later if she didn’t drink something now. “Yes, water,” she rasped.

The girl filled the invalid cup and hitched her hip up on the edge of the mattress to help Mira sit up in bed. They took it slowly, letting Mira first wet her throat and then hold mouthfuls of water until her tongue stopped feeling like leather.

She’d been a little worried about having servants again, but her host body had either treated this girl well in the past or hadn’t treated her so badly that she took it personally.

“Do you think you can try to eat a little, miss?” the maid asked hesitantly. “I have a thin potage for you to try.”

“Was I nauseous before?” Mira asked. The one place where a person in her situation could get away with asking strange questions was the sick bed and she intended to make full use of this opportunity.

“You don’t remember?” the maid asked, sounding worried.

“It’s fuzzy,” Mira dropped her gaze so she didn’t have to guess at what the original owner of this body would have done. The women whose lives she inherited tended to follow a certain trend so she had a vague idea of what to do, but the devil liked to hide amongst seemingly inconsequential details. “What happened?”

“You had a seizure, miss,” the maid explained in a halting tone.