He wasn’t the one I was worried about. “I know that.” It was four in the morning, and I was exhausted, so I curled up on the bench next to him and rested my head on the edge of his lap, not daring to touch any more of him than necessary.
I closed my eyes and wondered what Alex was doing.
Chapter 13
Heat prickled against my skin as I led the soul past Tony and Ethan and into the depths of Tartarus. He cowered behind me, not wanting to follow but unable to stop his legs from moving. I knew the feeling. Hades had done the same thing to me on several occasions.
“Please, don’t make me go. I’m sorry. For everything. Please.” He grabbed my hand, squeezing it with every sobbing heave of his body.
“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. Once the judges make their decision, I have to follow their judgment. They said to bring you here. I’m powerless to change your fate.” Even as the words left my mouth, they felt foreign. I was going through the motions down here. The only reason I was aware of what my body and Ophi soul were doing in the underworld was because my human soul was asleep. When I tuned out one soul, the other took over.
The man, Henry Something-or-Other, continued to wail. Knowing what awaited him in Tartarus, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the guy, even if he had done terrible things in his life. I wasn’t really one to judge.
“Oh, good. Another one.” Abby smirked. “Who knew there were so many damned sinners in the world?”
“You’re one to talk. Your punishment didn’t end too long ago.”
Her eyes burned into mine. “And it will be time for yours again soon.”
I turned away, not wanting to see Henry’s horror or the look of pleasure on Abby’s face, and headed back to the palace. As I passed the Fields of Asphodel, I felt a pull in that direction.
“Jodi.”
Alex. I fought the urge to run into his arms. I had to be careful in case Hades was watching us. We never really knew where he was. Ever since we’d made the deal with him, we’d seen him less and less. It was strange, but the second I tuned in to my Ophi soul, I had access to all my memories in the underworld. I just had to be careful not to access them all at once. Between the torture and bringing souls to their own personal forms of Hell, it got overwhelming really quickly.
I walked slowly to Alex, looking around for signs of Hades. “Hey.”
“You came.” He looked deep into my eyes. “It’s you. How? Did you release your soul already?”
“No. My human soul is sleeping, and that brought my focus back here. It’s happened before, though. When we were in Tartarus. The pain yanked my focus back to my body.” Just in time to see my dad. That image was hard to get past.
“The double vision thing is tough, huh? Tony said it would be, but I’ve been hoping he was wrong.” He reached for my hand, lacing my fingers through his. God, I missed him.
“Is it okay to be holding hands like this? I mean, will Hades—”
“He’s been leaving the underworld a lot. No clue where he’s going, but we end up unsupervised. He thinks we’re all still under his control, but when he’s gone we can do whatever we want. Our powers are too strong for him to keep a hold on.”
“He doesn’t have a clue, does he?”
“Not at all. Something’s going on. He’s too busy to notice us.”
“That can’t be good. What could he be looking for?” The thought hit me like a speeding Mack truck. “Do you think he knows what I’ve done?” I clutched Alex’s hand, squeezing it so hard he looked down at it.
“Easy, Jodi. I don’t think he suspects anything, but you have been different since you left.”
“Different how?”
“Every time you go by the Fields, I call out to you, but this is the first time you’ve responded.”
I’d been ignoring him. “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head, dismissing it. “You’re not all here. I get it.” He got quiet for a moment, which could only mean he was thinking of how to ask about Matt.
“Things aren’t going so well for the human me, either. Matt had a tough time adjusting at first, but after I showed him his reflection—Brian’s reflection—he was pretty much up for believing anything I said. I left out some things, though. I didn’t want to overload him.”
Alex’s head jerked up. “What kind of things?”
“The whole ‘I brought him back wrong’ thing. You know, the bunny-eating incident.”
“Anything else?”
“He knows about us. I told him.”
He nodded and started breathing normally again. “Good. If he does anything, tries anything—”
“Matt’s not like that. He knows how I feel about you.” I didn’t want to tell him about the kiss—kisses. Or that Matt had said he still loved me. It wasn’t the right time to tell him. I didn’t know how much time I had left before I woke up and my focus shifted back to my human soul.
“I don’t want to, but I should go. I only have a couple hours to rest before the bus comes to take Matt and me back to the school.”
“He agreed to go with you?”
“Yeah. He needs to get used to his new body and decide how he’s going to start his life over.”
“Wait, you’re not ever going to release his soul? I thought this was just a temporary thing, to give him a break from his afterlife.”
“No. He deserves to live, Alex. I can’t let him die again.”
“Jodi, he’s a zombie. Maybe you gave him permission to act like himself, but he’s still not alive. He’s been dead too long.”
I hadn’t thought about that, but Matt seemed so different. He wasn’t like the other souls I’d brought back. He seemed so alive.
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. There’s still time for me to decide what to do about him.”
“Please think about this…”
Alex’s image faded as Matt gently shook my shoulder. “The bus is here.”
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Alex was gone. I was with my human soul again. With Matt. I hadn’t gotten the chance to say goodbye or tell Alex I loved him.
“You okay?” Matt rubbed my arm, concern all over his face.
“Bad dream.” This going back and forth between souls was too much for me to handle. Matt wouldn’t be able to understand.
“I know what you mean. My dream was really strange.”
We got on the bus and found seats in the back, away from everyone else. Not many people were on the bus this early in the morning.
“What was it about?” I kept my voice barely above a whisper in case Matt’s dream had been of the underworld, too.
“You. Me. That Alex guy and some other people I don’t know. We were in a cemetery, and this guy was telling you to choose your dad and me. He must have meant over Alex. At first, I thought the dream was just my mind trying to process you being with Alex now, but then something weird happened. The guy said you weren’t allowed to have any kids. Strange, right?”
Not strange. Matt’s dream was exactly what had happened in the cemetery the night Hades brought him back to life.
“Then you and I talked, but you were crying, so I wiped a tear from your cheek. I don’t remember anything else, so that must be when I woke up.”
No, that was when he’d died…again. My mouth couldn’t form words. I couldn’t tell him the truth, could I? How would he react to knowing I’d killed him again? That he’d once been in Heaven, and because of me Hades had sentenced him to eternity in the Fields of Asphodel, where he barely knew his own name?
“Matt, how much about me do you really want to know?” Letting him decide for himself was the only fair thing to do.
“What do you mean? You told me about what you can do.” He looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, even though we hadn’t said anything too bizarre. Yet.