Before I Wake

should try to have fun whenever and wherever we can. Even if all we have is a few stolen moments in an empty hospital room. Does that sound stupid?”

“I think it sounds beautiful.” She frowned. “What do you think that says about me?”

“That you spend too much time with me.” I studied the costume critically, eyeing the short red-and-white- striped skirt and the very low, heart-shaped neckline. “I’m going to look like an idiot in that.”

“You’re gonna look great. If living dead boy doesn’t have a pulse already, he will when he sees you in this.”

“Thanks, Em.”

“No problem. Now get out of here so I can get some sleep,” she said. I took the hanger from her, but before I could blink out, her eyes widened. “Oh, don’t forget the tights!” She pulled open the top drawer of her dresser and started rooting in it, and when she turned around again, she held a pair of lacy white costume tights with tiny red crosses embroidered all over. Then she looked at me and frowned. “On second thought, tights get in the way and they’re too easy to rip. I’ll just keep them.”

“Em, your tights are safe. I’m not planning to…go that far. Tonight.” Nor was I entirely clear on how that possibility would be a threat to her tights.

She rolled her eyes. “As the poster child for unplanned sex, I wholly recommend spontaneity. As the product of unplanned sex, I wholly recommend protection. Not that that’s a problem for you. Either way, the tights stay here.”

“Wait, does that mean you’re planning my spontaneous sex?”

“Someone has to.”

“But if you plan it, how is it spontaneous?”

“You’re already overthinking it. You’re not supposed to do that until afterward.”

“I wish someone would give me a list of the rules…” I mumbled.

“There are no rules. Except the one that says you have to go away so I can get some sleep.” She climbed into her bed, rolled onto one side, then pulled the covers over her shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll overthink the whole thing together. In great detail.”

“No! No detail. There won’t be anything to talk about!” I insisted. But she was already asleep. And for just a second, I envied Emma more than anyone else in the world.

8

I MET TOD in the lobby of the E.R., where he eyed my button-up pj top and shorts with exaggerated disappointment. “Business first,” I said.

“What if my business is love? I could be—”

I put one hand over his mouth. “If you call yourself the love doctor, I’m outta here.”

He pulled my hand away and held it. “I was going to say ‘Doctor of Love,’ but I guess that’s close enough.”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, let’s get this over with before I chicken out.” The last time I was in the morgue, I was the body on the table.

We blinked into the viewing area downstairs and chill bumps popped up all over my skin before we even stepped into the back rooms. The morgue is a creepy place to be, even for a dead girl. Maybe especially for a dead girl.

Tod studied a chart on an empty desk in the front office while I hung back, trying not to remember waking up on a cold steel table in the next room, half-covered by only a white sheet. “He’s scheduled to be autopsied tomorrow. Drawer three,” Tod said. “You sure you want to do this? I could just check for you.”

I shook my head. “How am I supposed to walk up to some horrible Netherworld creature I’ve never faced before and say, ‘Hand over your soul,’ when I can’t even work up the nerve to look at a dead body?”

“You’ve seen dead people before, Kaylee.”

“Yeah.” Several of them, including a few who got up and walked around after the fact. “But never here. It seems so much more final here.”

“Let’s hope that’s true for Scott.”

There was one employee on duty, so we had to wait for him to take a bathroom break, after I vetoed Tod’s alternate plan. He wanted to scare the crap out of the poor man by opening and closing all the refrigerated drawers until he ran out screaming.

When we finally had the place to ourselves, Tod pulled open drawer number three, and I closed my eyes, mentally steeling myself for the worst. “Kaylee, look,” he said. So I looked.

It was Scott. And he was really dead. Peacefully, permanently, truly dead.

I exhaled slowly and spent a moment staring at him in profound relief. Scott and I had never been close, but I wouldn’t wish what he’d suffered on my worst enemy. Except maybe Avari. And Mr. Beck.

Okay, there were a couple of enemies I’d wish insanity, possession, and brain damage on, but Scott wasn’t one of them and I was glad his suffering had ended, even if it ended in death.

But then the confusion set in. “So, if he’s really dead, what did we see in his room at the hospital?”

“No clue.” Tod slid the drawer closed and leaned against it, arms crossed over his chest, like he was perfectly comfortable in the morgue. “Doppelganger? Clone? Bodysnatcher? Name your horror movie cliché.”

“You forgot the evil twin.”

“What was I thinking? Maybe I’m getting a fever. Why is there never a naughty nurse around when you need one?”

“Naughty nurse? Damn. I brought the wrong costume.”

“A candy striper will work in a pinch. Did you really bring it?”

“Yeah.” But I hadn’t yet convinced myself to actually put it on. “Let’s get out of here.” I took his hand and blinked us into the empty fourth-floor room I’d already scouted out and stashed the costume in. We were at the end of the hall and around the corner from the nurses’ station, to minimize our chances of getting caught.

Tod glanced around the room, his hand warm in mine as his gaze skipped over the armchair, the narrow hospital bed, and Em’s costume hanging on the shower rod, visible through the open bathroom door. “What’s all this?”

“This is what passes for privacy, in the social disaster that is my afterlife. No parents, no classmates, no E.R. waiting-room patients…”

“They wouldn’t be able to see us, anyway.”

“I know, but I’m still having trouble controlling my own corporeality, and even if I weren’t, it feels like people are watching us, even when they can’t possibly be, and I’m not into exhibitionism, so…” I spread my arms to take in the entire unused hospital room. “Privacy.”

Instead of glancing around the room, Tod looked straight into my eyes. “You’re the best girlfriend ever. Seriously. If I had a trophy, I’d give it to you.”

“For appropriating a hospital room and borrowing a Halloween costume?”

He shook his head and pulled me close. “For being here. For saving my afterlife and my sanity. For making me look forward to every single day, instead of dreading eternity. And for the record, I don’t care whether you’re wearing jeans, or the hottest, most workplace-inappropriate candy-striper uniform to ever grace the sterile white halls of this humble public death trap. I’m just glad you’re here.”

My stomach flip-flopped, and I let his words play over in my head. “So, no costume?”

Tod shrugged. “Nah. Don’t get me wrong—it’s hot. But it’s hot in an obvious kind of way. It’s not really you.”

I frowned. “Because I’m not obviously sexy?”

“Because you are obviously sexy. Some girls may need costumes to make guys want them, but I couldn’t possibly want you more than I do right now, no matter what you were wearing. Or not wearing.”

I stared up at him. “How is it possible that every time you open your mouth, I—” fall more in love with you “—melt a little more? Seriously. There’s nothing in here but mush.” I waved one hand over