“She’ll be okay. Let’s give her time to get settled in her new body, and then we’ll try calling her here.”
“If Hades suspects what Jodi’s done, he’ll bring her back himself.”
I was sure he’d find the most painful way possible, too. My head pounded as Alex and Arianna’s faces invaded my vision. I was seeing double—the body bag and the underworld at the same time.
“She’s opening her eyes,” Alex said.
Arianna grabbed Alex’s hand as he reached for me. “Don’t touch her. Just let her be for now. She must be going through a lot.”
Arianna was right. I had to focus on my human soul and getting out of this bag. I tried to block out the underworld completely by throwing myself into finding a way to bust out of this bag. Where was that zipper? I reached up by my head, but the bag was fully zipped—of course. Damn it! I jabbed my pointer finger at the end of the zipper, hoping to make it poke through. Trying to undo a zipper from the inside wasn’t going to be easy by any means. It took a few tries, but I finally forced my finger through, making a small opening at the top of the bag. Now I had to work the zipper down the rest of my body. I hooked my finger over the zipper and tugged. It was awkward, and the zipper snagged on my hair, so I had to tug at Liz’s blonde strands to get free. Little by little, I pried more of my body through.
When I got the bag open to just below my knees, I bent my leg and used my foot to unzip the bag the rest of the way. Using my elbows, I propped myself up and looked around to make sure no one was in the morgue. I felt like I was in a horror movie, because, just like those dead guys that rose from the slabs and walked out of the hospital, I was a zombie. We had to be inside one of those walk-in refrigerators because the room was freezing cold and the walls were silver, like they were made of steel or some other metal to keep the room cold enough to preserve the dead bodies.
I sat up and stretched my limbs, trying to get used to Liz’s body. It was completely foreign to me. Luckily, since I’d raised myself, I didn’t need to wait for anyone’s permission to speak or do anything else. My blood was controlling me, allowing me to be more than just a normal zombie. Matt would be a different story, though.
There was no sign of movement in the body bag next to me. Where was Matt? I slid off the metal table and unzipped Matt’s bag. “Come on, Matt. Open your eyes.” I couldn’t risk someone walking in here and finding us. It was bad enough we were going to leave the hospital with two missing corpses on their hands. Thankfully, we’d be going far away from here so the police wouldn’t be able to track us down.
Why wasn’t Matt moving? I looked down at Liz’s body. That was it! My human half was useless in this situation. I needed my Ophi powers to command him. I closed my eyes and tuned in to my body in the underworld. I was in the palace again. Chase was going on and on about another soul he’d taken to Tartarus. I ignored him and focused on sending a message to Matt’s soul. “Be free. Live out your life in Brian’s body.” As soon as the message was sent, I shifted my focus again.
I heard him stir and opened my eyes. “Matt.” I reached for him, but he pulled away. “It’s okay. You’re all right. Talk to me, Matt. Say something.”
“Stay back.” His voice was strained, and he swallowed hard. “Who are you? How do you know me?”
Of course he didn’t recognize me. I was in Liz’s body. How could I be so stupid? “Matt, it’s me, Jodi.”
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 hell 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 shivered, 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 assumed 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.”
Damn 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.”