Les jeux sont faits

Ève and Pierre have never met each other in their respective lives. At the beginning of the book, Ève is very sick, and unknown to her, her husband André is poisoning her in order to marry her sister Lucette and keep the dowry. Pierre, on the other hand, is planning a revolution, but is killed by his friend Lucien. Both Pierre and Ève do not realize that they have been dead for a while. Pierre and Ève realize different truths about their own lives as they walk invisibly as ghosts amongst the living, with the power to interact only with other deceased souls. Pierre and Ève have difficulty adjusting to this powerless condition. They meet each other in line to register at a bureaucratic clearing house for the recently deceased where both of them slowly find out that there has been a mistake in the paperwork. They are surprised to learn that according to article 140, they were predestined to be soulmates. Successfully appealing their case, Pierre and Ève are brought back to life and given twenty-four hours to show their love to each other, or their second chance at living will be revoked. However, they are each distracted by unfinished business from their previous lives. Because Ève was poisoned by her husband, she wants to convince her sister that he is not a good man. Pierre wants to stop the revolution to overthrow the Regency that he had planned, because in death he discovered the Regent knew about it, and realizes that if carried out, it will result in the massacre of his friends and the end of the resistance. Unable to explain the unique circumstances in which they acquired their knowledge, they both have difficulty convincing their friends that they know what is the right thing to do. Neither is able to completely dissociate themselves from the things that were once important to them, and they realize that by not concentrating on their love they might be sacrificing their second chance at life.