Juliet Immortal

His eyes dart to the side and back to me, mouth trembling as if he can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “We can go now. Immediately.”
    I wince as his fingers dig deeper, regretting the decision to meet him more with every passing second. He’s finally lost what’s left of his mind. “Why don’t we go outside? I can’t see y—”
    “It is not necessary that you see. It is necessary that you
take action
,” he says, shaking me once, as if that sharp motion will force my brain to make sense of his rambling. “What more do you need?”
    I shrug him off, breaking his hold before he can shake me again. “I need you to make sense, or I’m going to leave.”
    His clawed fingers fist in the air before falling to his side. He takes a deep breath, visibly forcing himself to calm down. “You’re right.” He crosses his arms, licks his lips. “You have to know everything about the spell. I’ll tell you, but you have to promise we’ll go right after. Promise.
Swear
it.” He reaches for me, but I lift a hand, warning him not to touch me again.
    “I won’t promise anything until I understand what I’m promising.”
    Romeo laughs, a hysterical sound that’s smothered by the curtains. “Like the first time? When you swore to serve a cause you
still
don’t understand seven hundred years later?”
    I press my lips together, keenly aware of the passage of time. Ben will have to get to class soon. He seems to be skipping homeroom, but first period starts in twenty minutes. He’llpass right by these curtains on his way out. I have to be finished with Romeo before that happens. “Then educate me. Quickly, if time is so precious.”
    “Not every Ambassador or Mercenary gets a chance like this, but we were once bound by love, a force that has its own magic,” he says. “If we love again, speak the words of the spell I’ve stolen, and seal our promises with blood—the way the Ambassadors and Mercenaries did thousands of years ago—then we can take their magic for ourselves. We can heal our souls, make real those spectral bodies, and live forever. All we have to do is love again, the way the specters have told us.”
    “But why would they help us?” I ask, his words not ringing true. “If their purpose is to take us to the mist and end this imbalance you say was created, then—”
    “I don’t think they want to do the job they were sent for,” he says. “I think they want us to claim them again, to make them—”
    “But won’t magic like you’re proposing create more imbalance? Won’t we be in the same—”
    “I don’t know, Juliet,” he snaps. “And I don’t
care
. Whatever awaits us after the spell can’t be worse than staying here, waiting for a monster to drag me to hell or a Mercenary to find out what I’ve been talking about with you and do worse.”
    I bite my lip. The bell signaling the end of homeroom is about to ring, and I don’t intend to be in the theater when it does. “You said you’d give me a day to think.”
    “There is no time to spare,” he says, voice rising. “I love you. Just love me in return, and let’s get on with it.” He tosses out the word as if it’s an ingredient in a recipe, as if he isn’t asking for the moon.
    Love. Love
him
. It’s impossible. Even if this spell is ouronly way out. Even if I risk my soul, betray my vows, and spill my blood, it’s impossible. I’m in love with Ben. “I can’t.”
    “We’re soul mates,” he says. “We are forever. Our kind of love cannot be destroyed.”
    “It can. It was. You destroyed it the day you bartered my life to the Mercenaries.”
    “What was I supposed to do, Juliet?” he shouts, so loud I worry Ben will hear him through the door of the dressing room.
    “Quiet!” I hiss. “I thought you said—”
    “Please, tell me.” His voice drops to a harsh whisper. “What other option did I have?”
    “What other option?” I clench my hands at my side, frustration making my arms vibrate. “You had a
hundred
other options, a thousand—”
    “I was
banished
from the city, never to return upon penalty of death,” he says. “My father had disowned me and my new wife’s family were my mortal enemies. I was sixteen years old, with no money, no friends outside Verona, and no skills with which to earn a living. I was a rich man’s son. How was I to feed
myself
, let alone a wife and the inevitable children?
How
?”
    I shake my head, refusing to try to understand his motives for the ultimate