“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.”