Juliet Immortal

only race faster as I punch the remote to open the gate and guide us back toward Solvang. Using that much strength, I should have broken the wheel, but I didn’t, a reminder of my uncommon weakness.
    Romeo is right. I’m different,
we
’re different, and he may be my only chance at a tomorrow. But do I dare? Do I dare reach out to the enemy for help? Do I dare even ask him more about this spell?
    “Are you ready now?” Romeo asks, as haunted as I’ve ever heard him. Even more than on the day he killed my cousin and learned he would be exiled from our home forever. “We can do this. Tonight.”
    He killed my cousin. He killed
me
. And over the centuries he’s wrecked the lives and hearts of so many people. I cannot forget that. I
cannot
. He is a liar and a fiend and a monster.
    “I know you hate me,” he says. “But please … think onthis tonight. Sleep and see if you can dream of a life where I am not your enemy, where I am the man who loves you. You heard the specters. We must love each other, or we are doomed.”
    I laugh, a choked, desperate sound that makes me bite my lip.
    “Leave me here,” Romeo says, motioning to an empty produce stand at the edge of town. I pull in to the parking lot but don’t turn off the car, don’t look over at Romeo. Just driving him to safety feels wrong; how could it ever feel right to join forces with him in magic? “I’ll walk home.”
    I nod. “You do that.”
    He sighs. “You have to try, Juliet, or it will be the death of us both. I’ll give you a day to think,” he says, catching my eye. “One day, without my interference with you or our young lovers. One day for you to spend in contemplation, as a show of my good faith. And then we act, before it’s too late.”
    One day. It’s more than he’s ever given me before, but I already know it won’t be enough. I will never love him or trust him, certainly not in twenty-four hours, but maybe … just maybe …
    “One day.”
    Romeo beams as if I’ve handed him his life. “You won’t regret this, Juliet. You are still the light in my darkness, the only beauty I’ve—”
    “Stop.”
    He laughs. “A man has to try.”
    “You’re not a man.”
    “But I could be again. Believe it.” He clasps my hand, holds on even when I try to pull away. “
I
do. I believe.” I meet his mad eyes and for a moment I see the spark of somethinghuman there. “Think, we could still make the story true, find our happiness. Even after death.”
    “Please, just go.”
    “Good-bye, my love, parting is such sweet sorrow, that I must say—”
    “Leave,” I say, then force myself to soften my voice. “Give me the day and I’ll try. I promise.”
    “It’s all that I ask.” He slips out into the rain and heads across the parking lot with a slow, seductive stroll, oblivious to the cold and wet. I watch him go, and think maybe I should feel guilty for lying. But I don’t.
    I pull out without a backward glance, wheels spinning in my mind. If he keeps his word, I have twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours to help Ben and Gemma finish the business of falling in love and put them safely beyond Romeo’s reach. And when they are finished, we will be finished. Perhaps the Ambassadors will send me to the mist, or perhaps my old body will drag me there never to return. Either way, it will be over.
    Maybe before sundown tomorrow.

FOURTEEN
    T he next morning I sit in the coffee shop, clutching a mug of tea and trying not to panic.
    It looks like Gemma isn’t going to show. I don’t know why I’m surprised. She was so angry last night. I should have known that the text she sent me at two in the morning—promising she’d meet me at the bakery at seven—was simply to get me to stop calling.
    I check the clock. Seven-thirty.
    I try to tell myself it’s okay, I can talk to her at school, but it makes me sick to waste a second of my day without Romeo. The pancake ball I ate churns in my stomach, a rock that refuses to be digested. It tastes different than Ariel remembers. Atleast, I think it does. Ariel’s memories are thready today, a fog I can’t see through, a scent I can’t name. I’m too full of my own worries and fears, the Juliet inside me crowding out the girl I’m pretending to be.
    My dreams were horrific again last night. Corpses come to life, blood on a blue dress, and the cold, immovable walls of the tomb where I once screamed for help until blood ran down my parched throat. And then … the mist,