Juliet Immortal (31 page)

“What about … Ben?” I ask, fighting the tears that rise in my eyes. I don’t have the time to cry, or the strength. “Ben and …”

“Gemma and Mike were the soul mates you were sent for. What happened with you and Ben was …” She squeezes my hand again, a gesture I can tell is meant to be comforting, but isn’t. “Well, it was beautiful, for both of you, but it wasn’t meant to be. It’s time for you to leave this body, and Ben and Ariel aren’t soul mates. In the end, they wouldn’t have fueled our cause the way Gemma and Mike will.”

So that’s it. Ariel and Ben are secondary concerns because they aren’t suitable food for the light. Romeo was right. The Ambassadors might be a more refined breed of vampire, but that’s all they are. Vampires, masquerading as a worthwhile cause, as champions of goodness and defenders of true love.

They don’t know nearly as much about love as they assume. Love doesn’t want people to stay ignorant and frightened. Love doesn’t value obedience over all else. Love doesn’t judge and find some lives—or loves—more valuable than others. Love doesn’t use people and throw them away. Love stays, and makes you stronger, even when the person you love is gone.

“Don’t cry, dear. You will be one of us now,” she says, misunderstanding the reason for the sob that escapes my lips. “Come, we must hurry. Gemma won’t stay buried much longer, and the specter could return at any—”

“No.”

“No?” She shakes her head, a stirring of shadows in the night. I catch another whiff of Gemma’s perfume and then another, lighter smell. Rosemary and roses and dust from familiar roads. The wind blows harder, pushing the clouds away from the crescent moon.

“I don’t want to be one of you.” I turn my face toward the sweet wind, knowing
she
is coming. Ready to take her hand. Nurse said touching my old body would take me where the Ambassadors and Mercenaries can’t find me. It sounds like a place I’d like to be.

“Juliet, please, this isn’t the time for—”

“Go away,” I say, at the same moment the whisper threads its way through the darkness.
“Come. Come.”
I can see her now, a silhouette gliding across the damp grass, her long hair blowing
in the wind. It catches the moonlight and flashes in the dark, curled fingers urging me to find my way.

I pull my hand from Nurse’s and hold it out toward her. I can’t go to my other self, but I know she’ll come for me.

“What if I grant you and Ben another chance? Would your answer still be the same?”

My hand trembles, dips lower in the air. Is such a thing possible?

“If you renew your vows, I can send you back to the moment you entered Ariel’s body, just before you met Ben,” she says. “You’ll be able to keep him safe in another reality, while doing more good work for the Ambassador cause.”

“Another reality?”

“There are hundreds of realms where events play out differently than they have here. It is the greatest secret of Ambassador magic, so great that not even the Mercenaries know we possess it. But we have power over time and space that they do not.”

“So … I could really go back? And he’d be alive?”

“He would. And you can keep him safe. All you have to do is make sure he doesn’t fall in love.”

The thought gives me pause. The connection between us was so immediate, so undeniable. I would fall in love with Ben again in a hundred versions of reality. I can’t help but think it will be the same for him. And if so, Nurse’s offer doesn’t necessarily ensure that he won’t die again.

“You can bring Gemma and Mike together again, help Ariel find the peace she so desperately needs, and it will be as if this mistake never happened,” she says. “At least in one version of the world.”

As if this mistake never happened. Ben and I were not a
mistake
. Love is never a mistake. The fact that she can speak those words proves she was never the person I thought she was. I don’t trust her, and I won’t let her steal Ben from me. I’d rather go to hell than be her puppet for another day. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“But you could do good work for the cause,” she says. “Ariel needs you. I see darkness in her future without Ambassador intervention.”

“I see death in her future,” I whisper, knowing it’s true, knowing that there are worse things that could happen.

Nurse’s eyes grow cold. “Yes. So do I. In this reality, at least. And perhaps that’s best.”

“You … are … a monster.” I barely have the strength to force out the words. The end is nearly here. I can feel it.

“I am a god. There’s a difference.” If I could laugh, I would. Instead, I turn my face to the whisper on the wind. “Gemma will rise soon. I cannot hold her. This is your last chance. If you do this, you will never be one of us again,” Nurse says, voice tight. “Never. There are no second chances for people like you, Juliet.”

People like me. People who question? People who disobey? Disagree? Discuss? Distrust? People who make mistakes? People who love so hard it hurts and heals and then hurts all over again?

I don’t ask her what she means. I don’t care anymore. I only know that I am grateful when she pulls in a sharp breath and the real Gemma cries out my name. “Ariel? Oh my god. Oh my god! Is that Ben? Who did this? Oh my god!”

“Help,” I whisper, hoping she knows what to do.

“Oh god. You’re alive. Hold on. My phone’s dead, but I
can call nine-one-one from the car,” she says, smoothing a trembling hand over my hair. “Hang on. Don’t you dare die. I love you, and I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll make everything better if you’ll just live.” She sobs, a sound of such grief I know that her profession of love is true, and I wonder if maybe I’ve been seeing Gemma through warped glass as well. If maybe she isn’t as awful as I wanted to believe, as I needed to believe to make it okay for me to love the boy I assumed was hers.

“I’ll be right back.” I hear her footsteps hurry through the squishing grass and then, a few moments later, the voice of the specter comes again.

“Come. Now,”
she says, and I smile. Because I’m ready. And I’m not afraid.

I can see the change in her as she crosses the last few feet between us. Her dress is no longer torn, the hole in her chest has been replaced by smooth skin, and a scrap of lace is tucked in her collar. As she kneels by my side, a feeling of certainty and peace rises inside me and I know that Nurse and Romeo are wrong. I don’t know where this journey after death will take me, but it won’t be to the mist or to hell or anyplace dark or unnatural. She is pleased with me, smiling, her brown eyes steady and calm, though still not quite right. She needs something to make her whole, something only I can give.

And so I do. I slide my hand into hers, even as my other hand reaches up, finding Ben’s face. “I love you,” I whisper, wanting those to be the last words I ever speak.

And they are.

D
eath is a long, quiet sleep in a cool room. Cool and damp, with the scent of old stone and murder lingering in the air.

The thought makes me stir, helps me discover that I still have a body. One with which to feel the press of unforgiving marble, smell the oils they rubbed into Tybalt’s skin before interring him in the family tomb, in his own sarcophagus, only a few feet from where I now sleep.

Where I am
buried
.

My eyes fly open to more utter blackness. Open or closed, the sights are always the same in the tomb.
The tomb
. I am trapped inside it. Again. Trapped. Trapped.
Trapped
. I shake my head, whimpering as my skull rolls against more hard
stone. No, this isn’t real. This can’t be happening. It’s a dream, a nightmare, a hallucination.

My heart slams inside my chest even as my hands reach out, pounding against the roof of my prison, striking hard enough to make me cry out in pain as my knuckles hit and come away bruised. The sound leaps from my throat, strong and easy, helping slow my racing pulse.

I swallow. My throat doesn’t ache as it did at the end. I’m not thirsty; my mind doesn’t swim with confusion and fear. I shift again, feeling the clean linen of my skirts rub against my legs.

My thoughts hum inside my brain like dozens of angry bees. I’m back in my body—I can feel the rightness of being in my own skin with everything in me—but where am I?
Where?
Surely I can’t have gone back in time. Nurse said she had such power, but I refused her offer. This has to be a mistake, a trick of madness.

Or a curse
.

My breath comes faster. What if Nurse made this happen? What if this is the Ambassadors’ punishment for not joining them in their realm? Or what if Romeo was right and the universe has chosen this cruel method of elimination rather than the mist? Or what if we’ve all been wrong and there
is
such a thing as hell, and it is the place that terrified me above all others? What if I’ve been sent here to die, once and for all? Or worse, to be trapped here for all eternity?

“Help! Help me!” I scream, voice echoing in the tight stone.

“Hello?” The answer is faint, distant, but the voice is most certainly male. There is someone outside, someone who’s heard my cry.

I bite my lip, regretting my decision to call out. What if it’s the friar? What if I
have
traveled back in time, or perhaps to some alternate reality, and am now about to be pulled from the tomb a second time? What if Romeo is out there, playing dead on the floor? What will I do?

I
won’t
fall on that knife. That’s for certain. But what should I do instead? Should I run? Try to find someone to help me? To keep me safe from the boy I willingly married and from a seemingly kind and gentle man of the cloth? If this truly is the past, my parents will kill me for marrying without their consent. Or force me to live with the man I chose to avoid shame and ruin. At this point I don’t know which would be worse.

Ben. Ben. Ben
. I squeeze my eyes shut and cling to his name, to his face, to the smell of his skin and the feel of his arms warm and safe around me. I will never forget him, never forsake him. If I am married to someone else, I will …

I will run away. I will find a way to survive on my own. I’m not the same frightened girl I once was. I am strong enough to find my way, strong enough to escape whatever evil waits for me on the outside.

“Hello? Who’s there?” The voice comes again, closer. This time I find the strength to answer.

“I’m in here! It’s Juliet Capulet! I’m alive!”

“Jesus … dear god.” His words are muffled by stone, but so close now I know his voice is familiar. Very familiar. But not Romeo’s voice, not the friar’s. “Hold on, I’ll get you out.”

I brace myself as the stone above my head scrapes and shifts, slowly, slowly, inch by inch, shove by shove, until there is a space wide enough for a person to slip through. I blink against the sudden invasion of the light, so blinded by my time
in the darkness that I can’t make out the face attached to the hands that reach down and lift me out.

But I know those hands. I know the smell that swirls around me as he pulls me close, helping me stand with the strength of his body. I know that gentle voice telling me, “It’s okay. You don’t have to be scared.”

My heart lunges into my throat. I
know
where I’ve heard those words before. In the car. That first night, when Ben and I met. Ben. It has to be! Still, a part of me is terrified to believe until I’ve seen him, until I’ve looked into his eyes.

“Ben?” I ask, hands smoothing up his chest, finding his face with my fingers. I feel him flinch in surprise but relax quickly beneath my touch. Full lips, smooth cheeks with just the hint of stubble, and that perfectly crooked nose. It’s Ben! I know it, even before my eyes sting into focus, homing in on his face. I smile and a sound half laugh, half sob leaps from my throat. “You’re alive!”

His brow furrows, and his nod is the barest tilt of his chin. “More importantly,
you
are. When I found the note, I was sure he’d gone mad. I couldn’t fathom such a thing but … here you are.”

“And here you are.” He is. He really is. His hair is longer, covered by the hood of the green wool coat he wears, but it’s Ben. Sweet, perfect, impossible, undeniable Ben. I drink in the beauty of him, knowing I will never take the light in his eyes for granted, never let the heart inside him doubt how treasured he is.

“Ben.” I sigh his name, a promise, a prayer, an offer of thanksgiving to whatever force has brought us back to each other. God, magic, love, hope—it can use any name it wants. All I know is that I am grateful. So very grateful for “Ben.”

“My mother calls me Ben,” he says, voice soft, confused. As confused as the eyes staring into mine, as confused as the shake of his head a moment ago. “Did Romeo tell you?”

My heart skips a beat. “Romeo?” How does Ben know Romeo’s name? Why doesn’t he seem to know me? And why … why is he speaking in Medieval Italian? The language is so familiar that I didn’t notice at first, didn’t realize—

“I can’t imagine Romeo discussing anyone but himself in such depth, but I …” He swallows and relaxes his arms as if he will push me away. I cling to him, forcing him to stay. I can’t be away from him. I just can’t. “I’m sorry. I know he … and you …”

“He means nothing to me.”

Ben’s eyebrows arch. “Truly?”

“Truly, truly, truly.”

“Then I suppose this will be easier for you to hear than I’d thought,” he says, making me brace myself for the worst. “He’s left Verona. He’s run away with Rosaline.”

I blink. “Rosaline?”

“Yes, she … Apparently she’s not so resolutely chaste as we all assumed. She’s with child. Romeo’s child. They were married at her home this morning.” His words seem to remind him how close we are. Propriety demands he step away. This time, I let him. It’s obvious he has no memory of our past … our future … our life in another future’s reality. Whatever it was. He doesn’t know me; he doesn’t love me. In fact, he seems to think I’m out of my mind.

“Do you understand me?” he asks, speaking slowly. “He and Rosaline are married. They’ve gone to Mantua to live with her aunt and uncle. They have a sizeable estate there, and after his exile, Romeo thought—”