Touch Of Death: Face Of Death Part 8

He shook his head. "No. You don't look anything like Jodi."

"Please, just let me help you out of there. I promise I'll explain everything." I reached for him again, but he sat up on his own and looked around.

"Did you put me here? Is this a-"

"Morgue, yes. And I did put you here, but it's not what you think." He'd never guess this on his own, and unfortunately the truth was probably much worse than whatever he was thinking.

"Is this some sort of prank? Did you knock me out and..." His eyes widened as he ran his hands along the bag. "You put me in a body bag?"

"No. Not really. I mean, yes, technically I put you in here, but-" This was coming out all wrong. How the h.e.l.l did I tell my ex-boyfriend-no wait, we'd never officially broken up-that I had brought him back to life?

He used the sides of the metal slab to stand up, and he stared at me, looking like he was seeing a ghost, or worse, a monster. "Where's Jodi? What did you do to her? We were together in her backyard, and then I don't remember anything. You knocked me out, didn't you?"

"No." What I'd done to him that day in my backyard was much worse. I'd stopped his heart forever. I s.h.i.+vered, partly at the memory and partly at how cold it was in the morgue. I guess I should at least be thankful that he didn't remember Hades raising him in the graveyard at the school. "Please, Matt. I am Jodi. I know I look different, but it's me. It's really me."

He turned and headed for the door, his movements jerky in the unfamiliar body. "Jodi!" he yelled.

"Matt!" I grabbed his arm and raised a finger to my lips to quiet him before someone came to see what was going on in the morgue. "It's me. I'm in someone else's body, but it's me."

"Are you crazy? Did someone do something to you, too? Is that what you're trying to tell me? It wasn't you who hurt me and Jodi? Someone else did it, and they hurt you, too?"

I shook my head, not knowing how to make him believe me. I should've known this would happen. But he was Matt. He knew me that night in the cemetery at school when Hades brought him back. He'd even recognized me in the Fields of Asphodel when every other part of his memory had faded away. He didn't know himself, but he still knew me. I'd just a.s.sumed he'd know me now.

"Ask me anything. I'll do anything to prove to you that I'm Jodi."

"Listen, I'm sorry if you're hurt, but you have to understand you're not Jodi. Jodi is my girlfriend. She has brown, wavy hair and the most amazing green eyes. She looks nothing like you." His voice was soft and sympathetic.

This wasn't working. He thought I was some poor girl who'd wound up at the end of a prank gone wrong.

"Matt, my name is Jodi Marshall. My birthday is December eighth. My best friend is Melodie. She's your best friend, too. She introduced us. You and I have been dating-or at least we were until-"

"Until that guy came along. Alec or something." His face looked strained as he struggled with the memory.

"Alex. His name is Alex."

"I hate that guy. He tried to hurt Jodi."

d.a.m.n it. He still didn't believe I was me. Not even after I'd spouted all that off. "How would I know all this if I wasn't Jodi?"

"Are you friends with Alex? Did he put you up to this?" Matt's head turned from side to side as he scanned the morgue. "Where is he? Does he have Jodi?"

"No!" I was more frustrated with myself than Matt. None of this was his fault. I looked around helplessly for an answer. My eyes fell on the steel walls. Matt would be able to see his reflection in them if I could just get him to focus on that instead of trying to find me-or what I usually looked like at least. "Come look at this."

He put his hands up in defense. "Listen, I get that you're upset, but-"

"Look at your reflection." I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice, but he wasn't listening to me.

"My reflection?" He stared down at his hospital gown. "Where are my clothes?"

"Look at your hand, Matt. You have a birthmark on the side of your left palm, right? Or you did, but it's not there now."

Matt stared in horror at his hand. "What's going on?"

"Look." I pulled him closer to the steel wall and under the lights. He held his eyes on me for a moment before looking into it. The second he saw his reflection, he gasped. "That's not me."

Chapter 11.

I didn't know where to start, but at least he'd be more open to hearing the crazy things that had happened now that he saw he wasn't in his own body.

"Am I dreaming?" Matt shook his head, still staring at his reflection-well, at Brian's reflection. "That's the only explanation. That's not me. Not my face."

"Okay, Matt, please listen to me. I am Jodi. I look different, just like you. And, no, you're not dreaming. This is all real. It's going to sound unbelievable, but I need you to trust me."

He raised his eyes to me. "Jodi? It's really you?"

I nodded, tears forming in my eyes.

He rushed over to me, pressing his lips against mine. I froze, not knowing what to do. He thought we were still together. Matt didn't know anything about me and Alex. To him, I was still his girlfriend. I was human now, which meant that he and I could be together. That fact wasn't lost on me, but neither was the fact that I loved Alex. Still, my unresolved feelings for Matt were lingering, keeping me from pulling out of the kiss.

My lips gently parted, and without really meaning to, I was kissing him back. This was how our first kiss should've been. I wouldn't stop his heart this time. Being with him felt right. In this moment, being with Matt was what made sense.

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 rea.s.suring 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. c.r.a.p! 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 relations.h.i.+p, 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. G.o.d, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.ked 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 wis.h.i.+ng you'd look at me the way I looked at you."

Oh, G.o.d, 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.

d.a.m.n 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 cla.s.s. 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 G.o.d, 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 p.i.s.sed 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 a.s.saulted me."

"I know, but there's an explanation for all that."