Juliet Immortal

all.
    “We’ll talk again soon. We have some time.” He glances over his shoulder. “But think about what I’ve said, and don’t be surprised if you have an unexpected visitor.”
    “You’re not a visitor. You’re a menace.”
    “I wasn’t talking about me,” Romeo says, a haunted note in his voice that makes the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end.
    Is he having visions too? Of
his
corpse?
Mine?
Both? When I saw myself I wasn’t rotted, but maybe he’s seen something different. I’m dying to ask, but I bite my lip. I can’t trust him. The past few minutes have made that clear. He’s been pumping me for information, prepared to tell whatever lies it takes to get what he needs.
    “If you have any questions, you can shoot me an email,” he continues. “My contact information is on the cast sheet.”
    I shake my head numbly. He
has
to be joking. He can’t really expect me to send him an
email
. About whether or not I can love him again, or am interested in an eternity apart from the Ambassadors. You don’t
email
someone about something like that. You don’t
email
a fiend who promised to love you, then locked you away in the dark and
murdered
you in cold blood.
    But he doesn’t understand. And he’s not joking.
    The hand holding the knife falls to my side. “You’re insane. I won’t work with you. Ever.”
    “Oh, I think you will. If you don’t”—Romeo’s eyebrows arch—“then I’ll have to do what I’ve been sent here to do. If I’m not free by the end of this shift, I’ll be renegotiating another term of service with the Mercenaries. I’m certain they’ll be more
generous
if I bring a soul to our side while I’m here. It shouldn’t be difficult. The girl is a train wreck. I’ll have her turned against Ben before the week is out.”
    My hand clenches around the handle of the knife.
    “Eternity, spent away from all those people she hates …” Romeo lingers, his fingers thrumming on the door. “It’s not the worst carrot to dangle.”
    “Eternity in a prison of dead flesh,” I say. “Doesn’t sound that tempting.”
    “But she won’t know the truth. She’ll believe what I tell her. They always do, especially the young ones.” He’s calm, stating the facts, and I know Gemma well enough to worry he might be right. She loathes Dylan, but Romeo might be able to reach her if he tells the right lies, plays to the right fears.
    “Take care, sweet.” Romeo opens the door just as a bolt of lightning rips across the sky. The storm has progressed from threatening to raging, complete with thunder that booms out a warning for all living things to remain hidden away. I wince but don’t close my eyes. I’ve learned the hard way not to take my attention off my former love. Not for a second. “Let me know when you’re ready to move forward. I swear to you, we can have that happiness you’ve given so many lucky people.”
    “I’d rather die than make you happy.”
    Romeo stills, and an emotion remarkably like grief flits across his face. “I hope you’ll change your mind. Soon.” He inclines his head. “Good-bye, Juliet.”
    I grit my teeth and watch him go, refusing to wish him a good anything, even something as small as a farewell.

ELEVEN
    T hirty minutes later—after failing to reach Nurse in the mirror yet again—I’m back in the kitchen with a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Melanie went to the store while I was at school, and the refrigerator is filled with more vaguely edible food. Just looking at the piles of slimy gray lunch meat wrapped in plastic makes me ill, but at least there is milk and fresh bread.
    Milk. Bread. Peanut butter.
    I chew, examining each taste as it evolves in my mouth. It’s hardly a lavish dinner, but at least I can
taste
it. What would it be like to have that taken away? What would it be like not to feel the chill of the glass in my hand, or smell the wheat androasted nuts? What would it be like not to have felt another person’s touch in over seven hundred years?
    It is … unimaginable, almost enough to summon a spark of pity.
    “He could be lying,” I remind myself, voice soft beneath the patter of the rain.
    He could be, but he isn’t. Not about that
.
    Maybe not about any of it. The more I turn things over in my head, the more I wonder things that are dangerous to wonder. What does Romeo know? Is there really some magic that can give me back my life? Do I dare to hear him out? Do I dare to