by Stacey Jay
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Stacey Jay
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jay, Stacey.
Juliet immortal / Stacey Jay. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: For seven hundred years the souls of Romeo and Juliet have repeatedly inhabited the bodies of newly deceased people to battle to the death as sworn enemies, until they meet for the last time as two Southern California high school students.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89893-8
[1. Characters in literature—Fiction.
2. Love—Fiction. 3. Good and evil—Fiction. 4. Revenge—Fiction.
5. Supernatural—Fiction. 6. California, Southern—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.J344Ju 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010049563
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For Julie Linker,
who always believed in Juliet
SHE WILL FIGHT FOR LIGHT, AND HE FOR DARK,
BATTLING THROUGH THE AGES FOR LOVE’S SWEET SPARK.
WHEREVER TWO SOULS ADORE TRULY, YOU WILL FIND THEM, LO,
THE BRAVE JULIET AND THE WICKED ROMEO.
—MEDIEVAL ITALIAN BALLAD, AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Intermezzo One: Romeo
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Intermezzo Two: Romeo
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Coda: Romeo
Acknowledgments
About the Author
ONE
VERONA, ITALY, 1304
Tonight, he could have come through the door—the castello is quiet, even the servants asleep in their beds, and Nurse would have let him in—but he chooses the window, climbing through the tangle of night flowers, carrying petals in on his clothes.
He stumbles on a loose stone and falls to the floor, grinning as I rush to meet him.
He is a romantic, a dreamer, and never afraid to play the fool. He is fearless and reckless and brave and I love him for it. Desperately. Love for him steals my breath away, makes me feel I am dying and being reborn every time I look into his eyes or run trembling fingers through his brown curls.
I love him for the way he sprawls on the freshly scrubbed stones, strong legs flexing beneath his hose, as if there is no cause for worry, as if we have not broken every rule and do not face banishment from the only homes we have ever known. I love him for the way he finds my hand, presses it to his smooth cheek, inhaling as if my skin smells sweeter than the petals clinging to his coat. I love him for the way he whispers my name, “Juliet”—a prayer for deliverance, a promise of pleasure, a vow that all this sweet everything he is to me will be forever.
Forever and always.
Despite our parents, and our prince, and the blood spilled in the plaza. Despite the fact that we have little money and fewer friends and our once-shining futures are clouded and dim.
“Tell me that tomorrow will never come.” He pulls me to the floor beside him, cradling me on his lap, hand curling over my hip in a way it has not before. Heat flares from the tips of his fingers, spreading through me, reminding me I will soon be his wife in every way. Every touch is sanctified. Everything we will do tonight is meant to be, a celebration of the vows we have made and the love that consumes us.
I drop my lips to his. Joy bleeds from his mouth to mine and I sigh the lie into the fire of him. “It will never come.”
“Tell me that I will always be here in this room. Alone with you. And that you will always be the most beautiful girl in the world.” His hands are at the ties on the back of my dress, slow and patient, slipping each ribbon through its loop with a deliberate flick of his fingers.
No urgent, shame-filled fumbling in the dark for us. He is steady and sure, and every candle shines bright, the better to see the tenderness in his eyes, to be more certain with every passing moment that this is no youthful mistake. This is love. Real. Magnificent. Eternal.
“Always,” I whisper, so full of adoration the emotion borders on worship. A part of me feels that to love so is sacrilege, but I do not care. There is nothing in the world but Romeo. For the rest of my life, he is the god at whose feet I will kneel.
His cheek presses to mine, his warm breath in my ear making mine come faster. “Juliet … you are …”
I am his goddess. I can feel it in the way he shudders as my fingers come to the buttons of his cotehardie and pluck them from their holes, one by one, revealing the thin linen of the shirt beneath.
“You are everything,” he says, eyes shining. “Everything.”
And I know that I am. I am his moon, and his brightly shining star. I am his life, his heart. I am all that and the answer to every unspoken question, the comfort for every hurt, the companion who will walk beside him from now until the end of our lives, reveling in the bliss of each simple chore done in his name, overflowing with beauty because I am blessed to spend my life with my love.
My love, my love, my love. I could hear the words a thousand times and never grow tired of them. Not ever.
“Forever,” I whisper into the hot skin at his neck, sighing as the last tie holding my dress to my body falls away.
TWO
SOLVANG, CALIFORNIA, PRESENT DAY
Dying is easy. It’s coming back that hurts like hell.
“Oh …” I press my hands to my forehead, where hot, tacky liquid pours from a cut above my eyebrow.
There is a lot of blood this time. Blood on my hands, smeared onto the dashboard, dripping through my fingers onto my jeans, leaving black spots I can see in the dim moonlight shining through the car’s glass sunroof. It’s messy, frightening, but, amazingly, the accident hasn’t killed her. Killed me.
Me, now. Her, sometime again soon, depending on how long it takes to ensure the safety of the soul mates I’ve been sent to protect. Or how long it takes Romeo to convince one lover to sacrifice the other for the boon of eternal life.
It might not be long. He excels at his work.
Either way, Ariel Dragland will wear this shell again. Until then she’ll wait in the realm where I’ve spent most of my eternity, in the mists of forgetting, that place outside of time where the gray stretches on forever.
I’ve been assured by my contact in the Ambassadors of Light that
there are worse places, realms of torment where the boy who bartered our love for immortality will suffer someday. Nurse never uses the word hell, but I like to imagine that Romeo will number among hell’s inhabitants. Of course, she never mentions heaven, either, or whether I might go there when my work is finished … if it is ever finished.
There are a lot of things Nurse sees fit not to mention. Including the exact workings of the magic that pulls me from the mist again and again, now more than thirty times in seven centuries. All I know is life comes suddenly. One moment I’m numb and bodiless, the next I’m slipping into another’s skin, another’s life—the ultimate, dreadful disguise.
I shiver as the memory of Ariel’s last moments sweeps through me. I watch her snatch the wheel from the driver’s hands before a deadly turn in the road and pull hard to the right, hoping the dive into the ravine will kill them both—her and the boy who hurt her. My eyes flick to the driver’s seat. The boy—Dylan—slumps forward, the downward tilt of the car making his limp body curl around the wheel. He is still, not a puff of breath escaping his parted lips.
It seems one half of Ariel’s wish has been granted.
I shiver again, but I can’t say I’m sorry. I know what he did, can feel Ariel’s shame and rage rush inside me as the rest of her life pours in to fill the empty corners in my mind.
Behind my eyes flash images from her eighteen years. I focus, sucking in every detail, taking her memories as my own.
Tiptoe, tiptoe, always on tiptoe. Up the stairs, across the kitchen, down the hall to the room where the crayons live and I can breathe. Where she isn’t watching. My mother, with her sad, sad eyes.
Seven, ten, fifteen, eighteen years old and still there is nothing finer than a blank sheet of paper, the white promise that the world can be what I make it. A magical place, an adventurous place, a possible place. Erasers take away the mistakes. Another coat of paint to cover them up. Black and red and purple and blue. Always blue.
Mom sees in blue. She sees the scars she made. I was six. She sees Gemma, my one friend, as a mistake, not a lifeline. She sees my hours alone and feels more powerfully every hour she’s wasted. I am the waste, the thing that’s eaten her youth alive. Refused to cough up the bones.
Sometimes it seems all I have are bones, scraps, a frame with nothing to fill in the empty space. Sometimes I hate her for it, sometimes I hate myself, sometimes I hate everyone and everything and imagine the world melting the way the grease melted my skin.
Skin and bones. Mom and I are both so thin. Hugs hurt, but there aren’t many. Not for years. There are surgeries and pain and bright lights and then days trapped in the house with the shades drawn on our shame. There is the darkness inside, that baleful intruder that comes just when I dare to believe I might one day be whole.
There is school and the misery of being a person unseen, the jealousy that I can’t be wild and beautiful like Gemma, that I am always an audience, never a player. There is the frustration of words that won’t come out of my mouth no matter how hard I try. A D in public speaking. The one step up to the podium is an impossible climb. Everest. Higher. I hate Mr. Stark for his frustrated sighs, hate the class for their muffled laughter. I want to hurt them, to show them how it feels to have your insides twisted into knots you can’t unravel.
Gemma doesn’t care, tells me to get over it, stops sharing her adventures, closes the window into her vibrant world, forgets to pick me up for school at least twice a week. I’m losing everything. My only friend, my perfect GPA, my mind. How much longer can I live like this? Can I make it four more years, sleeping in that room, commuting to the nursing college in Santa Barbara, learning to live with more sickness and pain, when all I want to do is escape?
But then … there is him. His smile, his voice singing so strong, cutting through the curtains where I hide with my paints, curling into my ear, spinning dreams I want to come true.
They don’t.
It’s a joke.
We’re kissing—slow, perfect kisses that make my heart race—when the text comes, asking if he’s taken the Freak’s virginity yet. He tries to hide the phone, but I see it. I start to cry, even though I’m not sad. I’m angry, so angry. He offers me fifty dollars—a piece of the bet—if I let him have what he’s come for. I explode. I try to run from the car, but he grabs my hand, squeezing as he pulls back onto the road, telling me to “chill the hell out,” promising to take me to a better place.
But there is no better place. I know that by now. There are only mirrors reflecting disappointment, shattering it in a million different directions, filling the world until there is no way out. It will always be this way. Always, even when I finally leave the house on El Camino Road.
The road, the road is … impossible. I won’t let him drive it a second longer. I won’t let him steer through the hole in the mountain down to the beach, where the cold, dark ocean waits like a nightmare creeping. I won’t let him.
Not now. Not ever again.
* * *
My eyes fly open, my body humming with adrenaline, drowning in the fear and anger and hopelessness Ariel felt as the car burst through the guardrail and flew over the edge into the ravine.
They fell so fast—distance consumed by time in one awful gulp. She barely had time to scream before the car made impact and her head smashed against the passenger’s window, hard enough to burst the skin at her temple and knock her unconscious, but not hard enough to kill.
Despite the damage, she will live … eventually. Whether she likes it or not.
“You will. You’ll see,” I say aloud, though I know she can’t hear me.
I’ll do something to improve her life before she returns to it, make it bearable, if not beautiful. The Ambassadors encourage their converts to spread love and light, but even if they didn’t, I couldn’t have resisted Ariel. She’s just so … sad. I want to help her, keep her safe from the darkness, from the Mercenaries who prey on people like her.
Especially one Mercenary, the one who does his best to make my borrowed lives as miserable as he made the original.
Somewhere out there, in the cool spring night, he is finding a body too, summoned by the same energy that pulled me from the mist. In some long-forgotten cemetery, Romeo is seeking a corpse old enough not to be recognized in this small town, finding a place his soul can hide. The Mercenaries of the Apocalypse live inside the dead, restoring rotted flesh to its former glory so long as they lurk within.
For a moment, I wonder what Romeo will look like this time, then decide it doesn’t matter. Old or young, fat or thin, black, white, or green—the enemy is always the enemy.
“Unhh, awww.” The groan comes from beside me, from the boy who was driving the car.
I wrinkle my nose, disappointment that he’s alive leaving a bad taste in my mouth. As an Ambassador of Light I’m supposed to be above such feelings. But I am not, never have been—not when I was a living girl, and not as an immortal warrior for love.
Love. Sometimes the thought of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth too.
Still, it’s for the best. It will be easier to avoid police scrutiny if we both emerge from this car alive. And though I might feel the world would be a safer place without Dylan, Ambassadors aren’t allowed to kill human beings … or anything else. Murder feeds the cause of the Mercenaries. I am forbidden to take a life, even the one I have every justification to end.
“But it is never right to do wrong,” I whisper, even as I silently wish Dylan a few broken bones or—at the very least—a generous helping of pain. I might be forbidden my revenge, but at least Ariel can have a bit of hers.
“Unh …” Dylan moans again, drawing my attention to his face—his full lips, dark eyelashes, and brown hair that waves softly over his forehead. The hair is matted to his skin on one side and a nasty bruise is forming on his cheekbone, but there’s no denying he’s beautiful. And a very bad man in the making.
There’s something cruel in the set of his features—even when he’s unc
onscious—but I can’t fault Ariel for not seeing beyond the appealing facade. It doesn’t seem like that long ago that I was the same way—young and naïve and ready to believe in pretty boys and love that lasts forever.
But I learned my lesson. For me, only vengeance is eternal.
The need to punish his betrayal keeps me fighting. I am on the side of good, working to prevent the Mercenaries of the Apocalypse from destroying what beauty and goodness remains in humankind. Of all the duties an Ambassador can have, protecting soul mates and preserving the future of romantic love is one of the most well-respected, and that’s … nice. But ruining his existence, knowing he’ll go back to the people who rule him without a soul to show for his work, is better. Much, much better.
It helps banish pain to the edge of my awareness as I set about finding a way out of the car. Unfortunately, it won’t be an easy escape. The front end is smashed, the door on the passenger’s side can’t be opened, and the electric buttons that lower the windows make a sick buzzing sound when I tug them with my fingers.
Buttons. They’re similar to the ones I used in my last body in … 1998? 1999? The years blur together, but still, the buttons and the relatively new look of the car’s interior make me wonder what time I’m in. I close my eyes, pawing through Ariel’s memories.
Less than fifteen years have passed since my last shift. Troubling …
I rarely come back to the earth more than once every fifty years. Despite the love songs humankind churns out like butter, true lovers don’t come together every day. As the Mercenaries ply their trade—destroying hope, crushing compassion, inciting war and violence—soul-mated pairs are becoming an endangered species.
Real love has little to do with falling. It’s a climb up the rocky face of a mountain, hard work, and most people are too selfish or scared to bother. Very few reach the critical point in their relationship that summons the attention of the light and the dark, that place where they will make a commitment to love no matter what obstacles—or temptations—appear in their path.
And there are others like Romeo and me, two halves of the same whole drafted to opposing sides. The others have their turns in the rotation, I suppose, though I’ve never met any on earth, or in the places outside of time. I’m not aware of other souls in the mist. There is only the endless gray and wisps of consciousness I can’t quite hold on to.
