Juliet Immortal

wonder just how old Nurse and the other high Ambassadors and Mercenaries really are. Hundreds of years older than me? Thousands? Were they ever mortal? Or are they a completely different species from the converts they’ve each gathered throughout the centuries?
    There’s so much I don’t know about the beings I serve. I know only that they are magical and good, and that they want me to be good. Nurse insists that my ignorance of their world is something I’ll be grateful for someday, that it protects me from the Mercenaries in a way nothing else can, but sometimes … I wonder.
    Sometimes … I doubt.
    I doubt that lovers are worth fighting for. I’ve seen too many soul mates turn to darkness to believe that love conquers all.
    I doubt that my efforts matter—there are others like me who will keep fighting if I stop. It isn’t as if the fate of the world—or even true love—rests on my shoulders. Shakespeare made my story famous, but to the Ambassadors, I’m just one servant among many.
    I doubt that I’m really Ambassador material. I’ve taken vows to serve goodness and light, but in my heart I am filled with hate. I hate Romeo, I hate stealing other people’s bodies, and sometimes I even hate Nurse. For finding me on the floor of the tomb before it was too late, for giving a dying girl a chance at “life” that isn’t really life at all.
    Sometimes it seems wrong, what she’s done. Sometimes I dread seeing that golden light stream from a mirror as much as I long for it. Sometimes I wish it wouldn’t come, that the mirror would remain a mirror, that I would open my eyes and find that the madness of the past seven hundred years has been nothing but a dream.
    But then, there was a time when I wished for forever with Romeo Montague.
    I should have learned to be careful what I wish for.
    I haven’t.
    My eyes fly open, confirming my fears. There is no golden light; there is no comforting voice. There is only a frightened young girl in a room full of shabby twenty-first-century furniture.
    “No.” I jump when I realize I’ve spoken aloud. I press my fingers to my lips, lean closer to the mirror, staring into my strange new eyes, praying for the light to come.
    Please, please, please
. I promise not to doubt, I promise to be better, finer, stronger. I promise and focus until I can feel electricity dancing inside my borrowed skull. But still … nothing. For the first time in hundreds of years and over thirty shifts:
nothing
.
    “Nurse, please.” I lay my hands flat against the cold glass, as if I can will her into the reflection with my touch. “It’s Juliet. I’m here. Please.
Please.
”
    Outside, thunder rumbles, sending a tremor through my bones.
    Since the second I slipped into Ariel’s body, something has seemed off about this shift. I dismissed it as bad luck—or perhaps my instincts warning me that Romeo was closer than I expected during those first moments—but now there is no comfort to be had. My line to the Ambassadors of Light and their guidance and support has been severed.
    For the first time, I am completely alone on earth.

INTERMEZZO ONE

Romeo
    I run from Solvang’s town square, sprinting through the driving rain, imagining how the drops will needle my skin when I can feel them—a thousand bliss-filled stings, a million points of tiny, perfect pain. I open my mouth and let the cold stream inside, laughing until the water gurgles sickly in my throat—the sound of something dying.
    No, the sound of something being born.
    Alive, alive, alive
.
    The stories are true; the time has come. My time. Mine! Finally, after all these years, after an eternity of torture and a dozen lifetimes of lies, the mirrors are dark and the town emptyof others like me. I haven’t seen a single other Mercenary, and I would have. If they were here,
I would know
.
    I will look for the black auras again tomorrow in the daylight, when more humans crawl across this precious town with its windmills and gingerbread roofs and endless string of pancake houses. But I am already certain, already sure. I am
alone
.
    We
are alone, my lady and I.
    Juliet
.
    Her name still cuts at things inside me, brings phantoms of human emotion to haunt my stolen flesh. Some part of me remembers the exquisite ache of love, the crushing pain of loss.
    I cling to the flutter in my chest, relishing the agony. It is terrible, beautiful. It spreads like the sweetest poison. The ghost of misery is a welcome friend. I crave