“Am I early?” Leticia came out of the bathroom.

“No.” I pushed Alex back. “Right on time.” I turned to Alex. “See you later.”

He smiled, said a quick hello to Leticia, and headed for his room.

“Do you have any idea how lucky you are?” Leticia followed me into my room.

Actually I did. At least when it came to Alex. The rest of my life? That I wasn’t so sure about.

“What movie did you pick?” I looked down at her hands, realizing she hadn’t brought a movie.

“I was wondering if we could just talk instead.”

“Okay.” We did need to talk, so maybe this was better. I sat down on my bed, leaning my back against the pillows. Leticia stood at the end of my bed. “Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”

She sat down on the edge, looking anything but comfortable.

“Was there something in particular you wanted to talk about?” I asked, since she wasn’t saying a word.

She nodded. “My parents.”

Good. She wanted to get right to what was bothering her. That was a good sign.

“Why did you hand them over to Hades like that, Jodi?”

What? I jerked back as if she’d slapped me across the face. I wasn’t expecting that.

“They were innocent. They weren’t like Victoria. She made them into zombies. Tortured them. And then, instead of helping them, you let Hades take them again. Why did you do that?”

She wasn’t yelling. It was worse. She was heartbroken, and it was because of me.

“Leticia, I’m sorry. I had no idea you felt this way. That you were angry with me.”

“I’m not angry. I know Victoria was controlling them. She made them do awful things, but that was her. You have to know that.”

“I do.”

“Then why did you give them over to Hades like that?” Her eyes were red and swollen from holding back tears.

“I didn’t know what else to do. I was trying to save us. Stop Hades from taking us all. I knew I had to make a deal with Hades. He responds to deals, and all I had to bargain with was Victoria and her army of—” I didn’t want to finish my sentence. I didn’t want to risk hurting Leticia’s feelings any more than I already had.

“I know, and you saved Randy and me. I’m grateful for that. But my parents didn’t deserve what happened to them.” She lowered her head, giving in to the tears. They poured down her face, falling onto my lavender bedspread.

I got a tissue from my bathroom and brought it to her, sitting down beside her. “I know your parents didn’t deserve what happened to them. Believe me, if I could fix it, I would.”

She lifted her head and looked at me. “Can you do something for me?”

“Sure. Name it. If there’s something I can do to make you feel at least a little better, I’ll be happy to do it.”

“You can bring Ophi back to life. I want you to bring my parents back. The right way.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Leticia, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. I saw you bring Alex back after Troy killed him. You have all this power. Please, Jodi, you’re the only one who can help them.” She started sobbing all over again.

I leaned her head against my shoulder, letting her cry on me. I wished I could do what she wanted, but the truth was, it was impossible. Alex had explained it all to me after I’d accidentally killed my human boyfriend, Matt, and turned him into a zombie.

“Leticia, when a soul is summoned correctly, it returns exactly as it was before it died. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She lifted her head, looking up at me.

“Victoria brought them back wrong. They were zombies. Hades took them to the underworld as zombies. If I brought them back now, they’d still be zombies. I can’t change that.”

“So, you’re saying there’s no way to make them the way they used to be?”

I couldn’t bear to answer her. My heart shattered for her and the pain she was feeling.

“Do you know anything about me? I mean, before I came here?”

Her body shook as she cried. I wasn’t even sure she was listening to me anymore, but I had to continue. I had to explain.

“I killed my boyfriend. He was human, and I kissed him. My blood brought him back to life. As a zombie. I watched him eat a bunny. I watched the guy I was crazy about lose all sense of who he was, and it was my fault.”

Leticia stopped crying and stared at me.

“You made him a zombie?”

“I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have control of my powers yet.”

“And your mom…” her voice trailed off, and I knew what she was going to say.

“I accidentally killed her.”

She nodded.

“I cut myself with a kitchen knife. She tried to help me.” I choked on the words.

“Alex saved her for you.”

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “I know what it’s like to miss your parents. To feel like you got cheated out of having parents. You met my dad that day in the cemetery when Victoria raised him. You know what they did to him.”

“I’m sorry,” Leticia said. “I shouldn’t have asked you.”

I bit my lip and blinked tears from my eyes. It was a lot to relive in one night.

Leticia blew her nose. “It’s just hard, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Believe me, if I could help you, bring your parents back the way they used to be, I’d do it in a second. But I know what happened to you when you saw what Victoria had made your parents become. I won’t do that to you. I will never bring a zombie back again.”

Someone pounded on the door. Not a normal knock. Not a “hurry up and open the door” kind of pounding either. It was clumsy, awkward. I got up to answer it when a fist slammed through the wood. The hand was bluish and covered in dirt, and that could only mean one thing. I’d found the corpse from the graveyard—or he’d found me. And he wasn’t dead anymore.

Chapter 3

I went for the door and opened it, not wanting to see how much this corpse was willing to destroy to get into my bedroom. His body probably would’ve crumbled to pieces before he got in, and I had no clue how to get dead guy out of the carpet. I swung the door open and faced the guy Leticia had raised in the cemetery. Normally, a corpse honed in on the person who had summoned them. It was a revenge thing, a desire to rip apart the one who pulled them out of wherever they were. But this guy was staring right at me.

Leticia whimpered on my bed. “What do we do?”

“We have to release him.”

“I thought you already did that. Did you leave him in the cemetery or something?”

“No. I released him, but when I went back to bury his body, he was gone.”

“Yeah, well, you found him. Now get rid of him.”

I knew I could easily send him back to Hell—I was quickly becoming convinced that’s where he’d come from—but I glanced back at Leticia. “You want to give it a try?”

“What? No! Get rid of him.” She squeezed my pillow in front of her, like that was going to stop a zombie from ripping her heart out.

“Come on, Leticia. You summoned him. You need to release him.”

“But I didn’t summon him. You said you released his soul. Someone else must have summoned him.”

I looked at the guy. He glared at me, waiting for a command.

“What’s he doing? Why is he just standing there?” Leticia’s voice cracked.

“I think he’s waiting for orders.” This had never happened before, but he was waiting for me to tell him what to do. How was I controlling him without knowing it?

“Then you raised him?” Leticia got up from the bed and walked over to me. “What’s going on, Jodi?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t raise him. At least, I don’t remember raising him.”

“You don’t remember?” Leticia looked back and forth between the corpse and me. “That’s impossible.”

“Jodi!” Alex rushed into the doorway, stopping short of the zombie. He looked at me with wide eyes. “Whoa, is that—”

“In the living dead flesh. The question is, how did he get here?”