Face of Death (11 page)

But Alex. I slowly pulled away from Matt, leaning my head against his chest. Tears dripped onto his hospital gown. My tears. For once, I didn’t have to worry about what that would mean. I wasn’t a danger to him.

“Don’t cry. I’m here. I don’t know what happened to us, but it’ll be okay. I promise.” Great. Now he was the one reassuring me. This wasn’t at all what was supposed to happen.

“You don’t understand.” I stood up straight, trying to find the courage to break his heart. We couldn’t be together. No matter how right that kiss had felt, it couldn’t happen again. I wouldn’t do that to Alex. I wouldn’t cheat on him. Crap! Technically, I already had, but I was putting an end to it now. I wasn’t the kind of girl to kiss another guy behind her boyfriend’s back, but this was such a gray area. I was technically Matt’s girlfriend, so I’d technically cheated on him with Alex. Only Matt had died, and that sort of ended our relationship, whether he was aware of it or not. Now, I was Alex’s girlfriend, and here I was kissing Matt. Ugh! I hated technicalities. There wasn’t room for them when it came to human emotions.

“Jodi, what is it? Do you know what happened to us?” He was looking at me like he just wanted to make things better—for me. All he cared about was me. God, this was going to be so hard.

“We’re in other people’s bodies. I promise I’ll explain everything, but right now we need to get out of here without anyone seeing us.”

“How? We’re in hospital gowns, and we don’t have money to take a cab anywhere.”

He was right. I looked around, spotting the files at the ends of our gurneys. I pulled out Liz’s. “Elizabeth Roseman. It says she didn’t have any living relatives.”

Matt pulled Brian’s file. “Brian Gehris. That’s whose body I’m in?”

“Yes.”

Matt shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around everything I was telling him. “Personal belongings. He must have had a wallet on him when he died, right? The file says he was killed in a car accident.”

I looked around again, wondering if they’d have personal belongings stored in here to return to the families. Not likely. This place was empty, sterile. “There’s nothing here.”

“Okay, then how about…” Matt walked to the closet in the corner and pulled out some hospital scrubs and white sneakers.

“Perfect!” I motioned for Matt to turn around while I got dressed. Just like always, he was a perfect gentleman. My sneakers were big, but they’d do. Once we were both outfitted like hospital staff, we checked the hall and prepared to make our exit. We had to get out of there before someone came for the bodies. They wouldn’t leave them here for long, or they’d decay. That also meant we had to get out of this town quickly so no one recognized Liz and Brian suddenly walking around after being pronounced dead. I could see the back exit, and judging by the darkness on the other side of the window, it was night. That would help. We kept our heads down and walked out of the morgue as if we worked there. We even took Liz and Brian’s files and pretended to study them to avoid talking to anyone we passed on the way out.

Outside, we ditched the files in the dumpster and walked down the road and across the street to a cemetery, of all places. At least I felt at home in one of those.

“I can’t believe we pulled that off,” Matt said.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and took Matt’s hands in mine. Yeah, Alex wouldn’t like this either. Still, I owed it to Matt to be gentle. He’d been nothing but good to me. “Matt, there’s something you don’t know about me. I’m not who you think I am.”

He raised his hand to my head. “Did you hurt yourself? Were we knocked out? You’re not making sense. I know you. I knew you the day I met you. When Melodie introduced us, I could tell you were an amazing person. You’re sweet and caring. Not to mention you’re smoking hot. I have to admit I don’t like this blonde look on you, though. It’s all wrong.”

I couldn’t have this conversation right now. “We need to get out of here.” I didn’t want to stick around the cemetery. It was too close to the hospital, and someone might see us.

“Where do you want to go?”

“We should find some other clothes so we don’t stick out in a crowd.”

“Where are we?” Matt looked around. “This doesn’t look like the cemetery at home.”

“I don’t really know. We’ll have to figure that out.” I scouted out the road. “For now, let’s just get out of here. We can talk on the way.”

He took my hand, lacing his fingers through mine as we walked. “I think someone did some sort of spell on us. You know, like witches or something. I never thought they were real, but how else do you explain this?”

A nervous laugh escaped my lips. “How about a group of necromancers called the Ophi raised our souls and put us in the bodies of two recently killed teenagers?”

He cocked his head at me. “Is this some prank? Are you in on it? Should I be looking for Melodie lurking in the shadows?”

“No.” I squeezed his hand. “Do you trust me? Really trust me?”

The smile left his face. “Jodi, look. There’s something I want to say. I know it’s early, we’ve only been dating for a little while, but I meant what I said about when we first met. I felt like I knew you. The whole time we were friends, before we started dating, I kept wishing you’d look at me the way I looked at you.”

Oh, God, where was he going with this? Please, don’t let him say the L-word. I couldn’t handle it right now.

“I don’t want to scare you away, but I can’t hold this in any longer. Jodi—”

“Matt, don’t.”

“I love you.”

My insides felt like they’d turned to stone. My heart wasn’t able to pump blood to the rest of my body. I felt too heavy to hold myself up. Thankfully, we were at the gate at the other end of the cemetery, so I used it for support as we kept moving.

“It’s okay if you don’t love me back. I know it’s soon.” He brushed my hair off my shoulder. “But I do love you, Jodi. So, if you want to know if I trust you, the answer is yes. With all my heart.”

I lost it. I cried, big heaping sobs. This would’ve been easier if Matt remembered me killing him. If he remembered being a zombie and killing that bunny. If he remembered that I’d been the one responsible for his death, not once but twice. Instead, he loved me.

“Please, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He tugged my hand, making me stop, and raised my chin. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to mine.

Damn it! Why wasn’t I stopping him?

“You died,” I blurted out.

Matt pulled away, looking shocked. “I don’t know what’s going on, why we were in that morgue or these bodies, but we aren’t dead.” He reached for my hand, taking it in both of his.

“Not anymore, but we were.” I started walking again, preparing to let it all out. Everything from start to finish. “You remember being at my house and kissing me, right?”

“Yeah.” He dragged the word out, not sure where I was going with this. I wasn’t so sure either. How did I explain the next part?

“All right, well, something happened when we kissed.” The way he was staring at me was tearing me up inside. Here I was telling him unbelievable things, and he was just looking at me like he wanted to kiss me again. “You died that day, Matt. It was my fault. My blood isn’t like yours. It’s poisonous. I didn’t know it when we got together. Things started happening to people and animals around me. I was killing people with my tears and my blood, and I brought a deer, a squirrel, and a rat back to life with it, too.”

“Oh, Jodi, what happened to you?” He thought I’d lost my mind.

“I was born this way, but my powers didn’t kick in until just recently. I’m not human, Matt. I’m a necromancer.”

“A necromancer? Isn’t that someone who can raise the dead?” He was honestly trying to follow along with me, which just proved what a great guy he was. He should’ve been cursing and telling me I was crazy. But Matt was amazing. I’d forgotten how much I cared about him.

“Yes. I was born under the thirteenth sign of the zodiac, Ophiuchus. People like me have Gorgon blood in our veins. It’s poisonous to humans.”

“Whoa, this is sounding a lot like a lecture Mr. Quimby gave in lit class. Did he put you up to this?”

I sighed. “It’s not a joke, Matt. I’m being completely serious.”

Just like that he nodded, taking my word for it and waiting for me to continue.

“I’m a descendent of Medusa. When you kissed me, my blood poisoned you and stopped your heart.” The warmth running down my face was the only indication that I was crying. “I didn’t mean to kiss you. When I found out what I was—what I am—I was going to end it, stop seeing you. I didn’t want to hurt you. I cared about you so much. But before I could explain, you kissed me, and I couldn’t even think because I’d wanted to kiss you for weeks. I think I might have been falling in love with you, and I got so wrapped up in the moment that—”

He pulled me to him and kissed me again. My God, why wouldn’t he stop doing that? I pulled back, and he smiled. Not at all the reaction I was expecting. “If I wasn’t trapped in someone else’s body, I’d tell you you’re crazy.”

“Sometimes, I think I am.”

He brushed the tears from my cheek. It wasn’t fair. I could touch him now without hurting him. Now that I could be with him, I wasn’t available.

“What changed? Why can I kiss you now? And how am I alive and in this body?”

I started walking again. I had to keep us moving, no matter how much Matt wanted to stop and talk about all this. “I raised you…and myself. This isn’t really me, not all of me anyway. I sort of pissed off Hades, and he took me and the other Ophi to the underworld. I raised the human half of my soul. It sort of died a couple months back when I drank Medusa’s blood.”

“You drank blood?” His voice cracked. Finally, I’d freaked him out.

“It sounds worse than it was. I had to do it. I would’ve died if I didn’t. Alex would’ve died.”

“Alex?” He stiffened. “You mean that guy—”

“I-I’m with him.”

Matt’s eyes widened, and his jaw clenched. “That’s not funny, Jodi. I’m sorry if I freaked you out when I said ‘I love you,’ but don’t you think you’re going a little too far? I mean, that’s the guy who stalked you, who assaulted me.”

“I know, but there’s an explanation for all that.”

Matt’s face twisted in disgust. I reached for him, but he pulled away.

“Alex was only trying to help me. I just didn’t know it. He’s like me. He saved my mom. I killed her, Matt. It was an accident. We were cooking, and I cut my hand. I tried to stay away, to tell her the truth about me, but she grabbed my hand and then… If Alex hadn’t been there, she’d be dead. He saved her, and then I left. I went with him to a school to study with other Ophi. He’s really sweet.”

“How soon?”

“How soon what?”

“How soon after I died did you take off with him?”

I closed my eyes, feeling the threat of tears again. “Matt.”

“I have to know. I’m trying to be really patient and understanding right now, but I need to know this.”

“I don’t want you to hate me. I was crushed when you died.”

“How soon?”

Payback really was a bitch. This was proof. I was paying for everything I’d done wrong. This was supposed to be my way of making up for all the things I’d done to Matt. I’d saved him from the underworld, yet here he was with me and in more pain than he’d been in Hades’ hands.

I bit my lower lip and inhaled deeply. “I left the night of your funeral.”

A strange half-cough, half-laugh escaped Matt’s lips. “The night of my funeral? Wow.”

“My mom died. I couldn’t stick around and chance killing her again. What if Alex wasn’t there when it happened again? I couldn’t risk it.”

“And when did you and Alex…” He couldn’t even say the words.

“It sort of happened gradually. I didn’t plan on it. You have to understand it nearly killed me to lose you.” I didn’t want to tell him about me bringing him back wrong, about how I watched him rip apart a bunny with his teeth. He didn’t need to know that.

Refusing to look at me, Matt stared off at the open road as we kept in the cover of the trees. “Does he treat you well?”

“Do you really want to talk about him?” I didn’t want to rub his face in the fact that I’d moved on. He didn’t deserve that.

“No. How long has it been since I died, and why am I in the wrong body now?”

“A few months. I couldn’t bring you back. Not at first, anyway. When Hades took me and the others to the underworld, I found you. You were wandering around in this place called the Fields of Asphodel. I didn’t think you belonged there. You’re too good to be trapped in an afterlife where you felt nothing at all. And when you recognized me, I knew I had to free you, raise your soul. I found a young couple who’d just died, and I raised us both.”

He turned to me, meeting my eyes for the first time in minutes. “You wanted to be with me again? Is that why you did this?”

I could’ve lied, made him believe I did this all for us, but when I returned my soul, it would crush his heart all over again.

“I have to free my friends. They’re trapped and being tortured. My body is still being tortured, too. My soul can’t stay split like this.”

“So, we can’t be together, even though you’re human right now.”

“I won’t be human for long.” He was silent for a while, and I didn’t know what to say to make this easier on him.

“Do you need help finding a way to free your friends?”

I nodded. “But I understand if you don’t want to help me.”

He took my hand and squeezed it. “I’ll help you. I can’t change the way I feel about you, though.”

Did he hate me now? Was that what he was trying to tell me?

“I won’t try to pressure you into changing your mind about me, but I won’t hide my feelings either. I’m still in love with you.”

Pain tore through my insides. It was going to be torture for both of us to be this close and unable to act on all these unresolved feelings. My body felt like it was being hit by a thousand hammers at once.

“Jodi?” Matt squinted at me and grabbed me by my shoulders as my eyes rolled back into my head.

It wasn’t heartache I was feeling. My body was being tortured in Tartarus, and the pain was forcing me to tune into the Ophi half of my soul.