Draw One In The Dark(141)

She nodded. She didn't remember walking up to the table, but she was standing right next to it, now. She couldn't quite bring herself to reach out her hand and pull the sheet back.



Rafiel reached past her, and pulled the sheet back. Just enough to reveal Tom's face and neck.



He was right, Tom didn't look as he had at the time of his death. He also didn't look as other dead people that Kyrie had seen. She expected wax-dummy pallor. She expected the feeling she'd had when she'd seen other dead people—even when she'd seen Tom dead, in the parking lot. That feeling that all that mattered had fled the body and the only thing left there was . . . meat.



But there wasn't that sense. Instead, there was as much color as she'd seen on Tom when he was pale. Not the paper-white pallor of his anger, and not the sickly pale of the parking lot, when they'd discovered the corpse. Just, even, ivory white. His lips even had a faint color—pale pink. And his eyelids were closed, his quite indecently long eyelashes—how come she never had noticed?—resting against the white of his skin and giving the impression that at any minute his eyes would flutter open and he'd wake up.



She looked up to ask Rafiel if embalmers had worked on Tom, but Rafiel had left. Very decent of him. Giving her time alone with Tom.



She ran a hand down Tom's cheek. It felt . . . warm to the touch. She didn't know embalmers could do that. She caught at a bit of his hair. It felt silky soft in her hand. Clearly, they'd cleaned the body of blood.



Bending over him, she caught herself and thought this was insane. She couldn't, seriously, be meaning to kiss a dead man? But he didn't look dead. He didn't feel dead, and it wasn't as though she meant to French him. Just a quick peck on the lips. A good-bye.



She bent down all the way, and set her lips on him for a quick peck.



His lips were warm—warmer than she would expect, even from someone alive who was lying down in a refrigerated room—and she would swear they moved under hers.



And then she heard him draw a breath. She felt breath against her own lips. His eyes flew open. He looked very shocked. Then he smiled, under her lips. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He pulled her down onto him.



And he kissed her very thoroughly.



It should have been scary, but it was not. It was just . . . Tom. And his mouth tasted, a little, of blood, but it wasn't unpleasant. As soon as he allowed her to pull up, she said, "You're alive."



He frowned. "It would seem so. Shouldn't I be?"



She shook her head. "We're at the morgue."



He raised his eyebrows, but the mild curiosity didn't stop him from pulling her face down toward him, and kissing her again.



"Oh, hell," a voice said, startling them both; sending Kyrie flying back from Tom; and making Tom sit up and the sheet that covered him fall.



He pulled it back up, to make himself decent, but left his chest exposed, and Kyrie blinked, because where she was sure there had been a torso-long rip that exposed his insides, there was now only a very faint scar, as though he had only had a superficial cut.



They turned to the person who'd said, "Oh, hell."



It was Rafiel, and he was leaning against the wall, by the door, looking at them with wide-open eyes. "Shit," he said very softly. "It's nice to see you well, Tom, but how the hell do I explain to the coroner that his corpse with massive trauma is going to walk out of here?"



"Tell him reports of my death were greatly exaggerated?" Tom asked, raising an eyebrow and smiling.



"But we need to get him out of here soon," Kyrie said. "And get him some clothes. He's going to catch his death of cold."



"I doubt it," Rafiel said. "I very much doubt it. Unless cold is a silver bullet."





* * *




And life went on even when the best that could possibly happen had happened. The day that Tom was let out of the morgue—though the coroner had insisted he go to the hospital for X-rays and a full checkup before admitting that Tom might, just possibly, be alive—they'd bought a daybed and a dresser for the back room.



They'd been quite prepared to use the rest of Tom's money and get it from the Salvation Army, but Edward had insisted, and so Tom had a matching daybed and dresser in Southwestern style, as well as a bookcase and a bunch of books his father had bought him to replace the ones that had been destroyed in his apartment.



The back room was now his, and for the use of it, the kitchen and the other common areas, he would pay half of Kyrie's rent, and half the utilities. Kyrie's bathroom had acquired a bottle of something called Mane and Tail, which she'd told Tom seemed more appropriate for Rafiel, and shouldn't Tom's shampoo be Wing and Scale?