LITMIR.BIZ

      This book is for my son,

       who has taught me more than I thought it was possible to learn.

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      CHAPTER 8

      CHAPTER 9

      CHAPTER 10

      CHAPTER 11

      CHAPTER 12

      CHAPTER 13

      CHAPTER 14

      CHAPTER 15

      CHAPTER 16

      CHAPTER 17

      CHAPTER 18

      CHAPTER 19

      CHAPTER 20

      CHAPTER 21

      CHAPTER 22

      CHAPTER 23

      CHAPTER 24

      CHAPTER 25

      CHAPTER 26

      CHAPTER 27

      PROLOGUE

      I DIDN’T ALWAYS BELIEVE IN GHOSTS. MY SKEPTICISM WAS BASED ON MY religious and philosophical beliefs. I believe that there are only three things that we can count on to make this world bearable: good friends, a loving family (even when they’re as crazy as mine) and certain mood-altering substances, mainly caffeine and vodka. I also believe that God is good. So why would a good God force the souls of the dead to stick around in a world where they can no longer talk to their friends, be comforted by their families or drink espressotinis? That just doesn’t seem right.

      But now I’m beginning to question myself. What if the souls of the dead don’t need to exchange words with those they love in order to be comforted? What if ghosts have access to better drugs, ones that don’t lead to insomnia or hangovers? And ghosts don’t have to deal with mortgage payments. Perhaps heaven is free quality housing.

      Then again maybe good people get to move to a more celestial address and it’s only the bad people who become ghosts. Is it possible that it’s the souls of the evil that are forced to stay here, doomed to an eternity of loneliness?

      If that’s true then I have a problem because I think the house I just bought might be haunted. That’s what I get for making a deal with the devil, aka my ex-husband, Scott Colvin. He’s the Realtor who sold me my beautiful San Francisco Victorian.

      But whether this place is haunted or not, I’m not leaving. I love my house. It has oak floors, crown moldings and, most importantly, two-car parking. This is my home now and I’m willing to fight to the death to keep it.

      Unfortunately, I think it might come down to that.

      1

      There are men worth dying for and others who really just need to die.

      —The Lighter Side of Death

      WHEN OUR MARRIAGE ENDED TEN YEARS AGO, I FIGURED THAT WAS IT. I would never see Scott Colvin again. I certainly didn’t expect him to be at the open house for this Marina District $1.4-million fixer-upper. But there he was, standing right in the middle of the living room, making it impossible for me to concentrate on the water-stained ceiling or broken light fixture. His body was angled away, so I could only make out a partial profile, but I had no doubt about his identity; that was Scott and the very sight of him brought on a slew of conflicting emotions. One of them was hope. Hope that someone had secretly dropped acid in my Frappuccino and that the thing that looked like Scott was nothing more than a messed-up hallucination.

      I had taken hallucinogenics once before, during my freshman year in college. Perhaps if I hadn’t allowed a magic mushroom to trample all over my brain cells I might have had the presence of mind not to get married at nineteen. Fortunately my brain cells were working again by my twenty-first birthday and I celebrated their recovery by getting a divorce.

      But this moment didn’t have the feel of a hallucination. The Frappuccino in my hand tasted real. The hopelessly out-of-date faux-wood paneling looked real. The mildew on the windows smelled real. And Scott looked like a real real-estate agent trying to convince a real middle-aged Japanese couple that the house we were all here to see really wasn’t contaminated with asbestos. People on drugs see diamonds in the sky and riders on the storm; they don’t see real-estate agents and overpriced four-bedroom houses that need new flooring. That meant that what I was hearing, seeing and smelling was all horribly real.

      But the good news was that he hadn’t seen me yet. I pivoted and tried to lift my wedge heel off the floor so I could quietly tiptoe out.

      “Are my eyes deceiving me or is that the beautiful and talented Sophie Katz?”

      Shit! I turned around again and was confronted by Scott’s teasing smile. “What do you know, it is you!” he continued. The Japanese couple was now climbing the creaking staircase to check out the second floor. “Of all the open houses in the world you had to walk into mine.”

      I grimaced and made a sweeping gesture with my hand. “You’re the agent representing this mess?”

      “Apparently you didn’t read the ad I ran in the paper.” He handed me a promotional flyer detailing the house’s few saving graces. “It’s not a mess, it’s an opportunity.”

      I almost smiled. Almost. “Save your BS for the couple upstairs. I’m out of here.”

      Once again I turned to leave, but Scott quickly jogged in front of me so that I had to stop to keep myself from slamming into his chest. “Sophie, we haven’t seen each other in over ten years. You can’t still be angry at me.”

      “I’m pretty sure I can be.”

      “Nah, you just

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