Sylvana sat next to Adja and closed her eyes.

'I was eighteen. You can consider it last year, in terms of... of my death. What I will tell you happened before my grandfather fell ill. I had gone to Toulon for the wedding of a childhood friend. Her name was Lucie, Lucie Tressande. She was as young as me, eighteen, but she had found a beautiful husband to marry. I did not find him that beautiful, though. Not really my type.'

I bet so.

'I had come to help her with some needlework, her lace shawl in particular. It was finely designed, let me show you...'

Sylvana made the shawl appear on Adja's shoulders. She examined it, mesmerized.

'Beautiful. Did you really make it yourself?'

'Obviously, my dress too. But it is not the topic! So, I was in Lucie's bedroom, in her parents' apartment. She had to stay there until her wedding, it is not normal for future spouses to live together. She told me she was slightly afraid, that nothing would be like before, and that she was terrified to lose me when she would leave for Paris. Then, she told me...'

Sylvana straightened up on her knees, her head above Adja's.

'She told me... Sylvana, if you knew the feelings I have had for you for all these years! I have never stopped seeing you in my dreams, but it is not natural...'

Adja was torn between curiosity and anger. Am I forced to listen to her affair with someone else in great detail? She knew she was going to hear something a bit torrid, but reality was even more irritating. She hasn't said anything, and I'm already mad!

'So, I replied... No, Lucie, you should not blame yourself, these things happen and you should not fight them! Tomorrow, you will get married, but you will keep my memory as a sparkle of purity in your life. You will love your husband, and every Christmas morning you will think of me. Lucie was not satisfied by my answer, so I wanted to show her what I meant by sparkle of purity.'

Sylvana got closer to her face, and Adja shut her eyes. She's going to kiss me... she's going to kiss me! She waited impatiently for Sylvana's lips to touch hers, even if imagining this show-off of a Lucie Tressande in her place was annoying her to no end.

'And here is what I did,' Sylvana went on, kissing her in the neck.

Adja held a gasp. She put a hand on her mouth not to emit a single sound, petrified. No one had ever kissed her in the neck, and even less someone that she desired more and more. She felt Sylvana's lips going down, towards her shoulder.

'I... I think I get it...,' Adja choked, without pushing her away.

'And at this moment,' Sylvana went on, talking against her shoulder, 'Lucie fought and asked me to leave immediately. Which I did,' she said, moving away from Adja.

'Oh... Yes, I mean, it's normal,' she breathed heavily. 'And, that's it? It's the end of the story?'

'Absolutely not! The next day, Lucie was ready for her wedding, but her future husband was a little late. She came to freshen up in the empty sacristy, the only place in the church where she could find some peace of mind. Lucie was beautiful in her wedding gown, and I joined her to give her her shawl. I had finished it at home, after she threw me out.'

'But it was really far, wasn't it? It takes one hour by car...'

'Yes, it was really far,' Sylvana confirmed with a shrug.

What a waste of time and feet... I would have paid a hotel near the church, for sure. Sylvana was glaring at her, unhappy that she had changed the conversation topic.

'So, I arrived discreetly in the sacristy to give her her shawl, and she told me... Oh, Sylvana, you should not be here! Only the spouses and the priest can come here! I replied that I did not care at all, and I put the shawl on her shoulders. Then, Lucie told me...'

Sylvana approached Adja again and took her hands.

'You know, I thought about what you did yesterday, and I would like to thank you. I was glad, because I had some feelings for Lucie, I will not hide it from you...'

'Uh uh,' Adja muttered, frowning.

'Lucie put me against the wall, between two paintings of Pope Leon XIII, like this...'

Sylvana let go of her hands and threw her against the headboard, which would have broken her spine had she been alive.

'Ouch!' she yelled automatically, although she didn't feel anything.

'And then...'

Sylvana's eyes were shining with desire, her pupils as dilated as a cat's in the dead of night. Adja didn't move, paralyzed, her arms weakly placed on the pillows.

'W-w-w-what are you d-doing?' she stuttered.

'I am telling you a story,' Sylvana whispered, getting closer to her face.

Her breath was strangely cold. Adja was boiling with rage imagining this Lucie rascal pinning Sylvana against the wall, in the middle of a church. It's really... it's really... It's blasphemy, and on her wedding day!

'You were letting it happen...,' Adja mumbled, her heart falsely beating hard in her chest. 'You were letting this mischiev–'

'She leaned on me, and this is what she did.'

When Sylvana kissed her, Adja thought her mind would separate in two parts – an overexcited side, and another one that wanted to strangle Lucie Tressande until the light would leave her eyes. She tried to enjoy the kiss, closed her eyes and sighed.

'And, do you know,' Sylvana went on against her lips, 'do you know what she did, afterwards?'

'N-no, go on?' Adja replied between gritted teeth.

'She started putting her hands on my hips, but it will not be the same because you are sitting and I was standing. She was wearing her white silk gloves, and she went down, went down, went down...'

'In a church,' Adja muttered. She gasped when Sylvana caressed her left thigh. 'You... you said you were very religious, but you were celibate, touched by a girl, in a church... That's triple nonsense for you!'

'Listen, Adja, there is a rationale to this behavior.'

She kissed him in the neck and put her hand in a place Adja would have never brushed in public. Sylvana! she screamed in her head, unable to say it out loud. Suddenly, Sylvana blushed and whispered:

'You are smart, I would have never done such a thing. Lucie Tressande does not exist, she has never existed, I had no friends as a teenager.'

'But...,' Adja stuttered, short-breathed and red as an apple. 'Why... Why are you telling me his, then?'

'So you can think about something else, instead of being such a prude,' Sylvana said, crushing her lips against her mouth, way less sensually than the first time.

Adja wanted to feel upset about her lie, but she was too relieved to care. When Sylvana moved back, leaving her breathless and flushed, she asked her:

'So, all of this... You've never done it to anybody else? Just me?'

'I cannot believe you took me for a jealous person,' Sylvana laughed. 'You want to know everything about my past, although I was angry about the present!'

'I'm doing what I want, it's my turn now. Come back, you can't stop like this...'

'Are you frustrated?' she taunted her.

'Call it as you want.'

She crossed her arms, trying to make her artificial pulse go down, but in vain. I think I still don't really know how to do it. A few centimeters away from her, Sylvana was staring. Wait.

'Are you making my pulse go faster?'

'Maybe. Maybe you just find me irresistible. Who know?'

'So, I'm going to spend my death with such a tease, right? Do you think I'm Lucie Tressande?'

'Even if I had tried to imagine a Lucie Tressande to satisfy my fantasies, she would have never been as beautiful as you.'

Adja was moved by her kindness, even if it was obvious that she had read this sentence in a romance novel.

'You're not disgusting yourself, Sylvana, if you want the truth.'

'You are blushing!' she exclaimed, so loudly that Adja was embarrassed, as if anyone could hear them. 'You blush when you give me compliments!'

'It's cringy!' she replied. 'I have never done this!'

Sylvana laughed heartily, and the heated atmosphere changed instantly. Adja felt frustrated of being abandoned against the headboard, her fake heart threatening to explode, her inexperienced body longing for more. She wanted those pale cold hands back where they were a minute ago, and to go further. Adja closed her legs to calm down, the arousal making room for melancholia. My body is in another room, and we're waiting for the police. This is what's happening, right now, and not your unresolved little game.

'Are you thinking about horrible things?' Sylvana guessed, sitting back next to her.

'I'm trying not to dwell on it too much, but...'

'I thought I had refreshed your mind.'

'It worked, but you stopped!'

Sylvana shrugged with a huge grin.

'I have the rest of eternity to learn about you... and vice versa.'

'Had you done something like this, if that Lucie Tressande didn't exist?' Adja asked, trying to repel the vision of her rotting corpse away from her. 'Your experience...'

'I had never done anything before today,' Sylvana admitted, gathering nervously her hair between her fingers.

'So, you still haven't done anything. This was not what I call a physical relationship, sorry.'

'But... kissing?'

Sylvana looked pained.

'You had never kissed anyone?' Adja asked.

'No, of course.'

'Ah.'

'But you did!' she shouted, her eyes sending lightning bolts. 'Who? I want to know who it was!'

'It was a bo–'

'It was Léon!'

'No! I was in school, it was a long time ago... It's not important, I don't even remember it.'

'I hope so,' Sylvana mouthed with a smug expression.

Adja was still annoyed at her jealousy tantrums. When she was alive, she would have never tolerated this kind of behavior. Now that she was in another situation, she had enough time to reflect on it. Sylvana felt miserable about her lack of experience. She would stop being irritating after some time together, without a doubt. Anyway, if she's too much, I'll make her sleep. She felt guilty almost immediately. Stop, Adja, it's really vile.

Sylvana snuggled against her, her pale eyes lost.

'I will change the room when they will come. This bedroom will be peace on Earth, you will not even see them enter it in the real world.'

'Will you go with me, if I'm allowed to communicate with my family?'

Sylvana raised her eyes, visibly moved.

'Would you want me to meet your family?'

'I saw your on a picture, and somewhat in real life too, so it would be fair. Also... I don't know if I'll be able to do it by myself.'

She let Sylvana take her hand to comfort her.

'My parents will surely cry a lot, and maybe they won't believe the Ouija board...'

'I am sure they will understand,' Sylvana reassured her gently. 'They will want to know the truth!'

'I won't be able to tell them everything, especially how it really happened...'

'Would they be embarrassed that I am a woman?'

'No, I don't think so, but they would blame you. I don't want them to talk negatively about you.'

Sylvana scowled. I know you can't answer that, you know it's your fault... But I don't know if I would have lived such a story without you.