Juliet Immortal

tucked in her collar. As she kneels by my side, a feeling of certainty and peace rises inside me and I know that Nurse and Romeo are wrong. I don’t know where this journey after death will take me, but it won’t be to the mist or to hell or anyplace dark or unnatural. She is pleased with me, smiling, her brown eyes steady and calm, though still not quite right. She needs something to make her whole, something only I can give.
    And so I do. I slide my hand into hers, even as my other hand reaches up, finding Ben’s face. “I love you,” I whisper, wanting those to be the last words I ever speak.
    And they are.

TWENTY-FOUR
    D eath is a long, quiet sleep in a cool room. Cool and damp, with the scent of old stone and murder lingering in the air.
    The thought makes me stir, helps me discover that I still have a body. One with which to feel the press of unforgiving marble, smell the oils they rubbed into Tybalt’s skin before interring him in the family tomb, in his own sarcophagus, only a few feet from where I now sleep.
    Where I am
buried
.
    My eyes fly open to more utter blackness. Open or closed, the sights are always the same in the tomb.
The tomb
. I am trapped inside it. Again. Trapped. Trapped.
Trapped
. I shake my head, whimpering as my skull rolls against more hardstone. No, this isn’t real. This can’t be happening. It’s a dream, a nightmare, a hallucination.
    My heart slams inside my chest even as my hands reach out, pounding against the roof of my prison, striking hard enough to make me cry out in pain as my knuckles hit and come away bruised. The sound leaps from my throat, strong and easy, helping slow my racing pulse.
    I swallow. My throat doesn’t ache as it did at the end. I’m not thirsty; my mind doesn’t swim with confusion and fear. I shift again, feeling the clean linen of my skirts rub against my legs.
    My thoughts hum inside my brain like dozens of angry bees. I’m back in my body—I can feel the rightness of being in my own skin with everything in me—but where am I?
Where?
Surely I can’t have gone back in time. Nurse said she had such power, but I refused her offer. This has to be a mistake, a trick of madness.
    Or a curse
.
    My breath comes faster. What if Nurse made this happen? What if this is the Ambassadors’ punishment for not joining them in their realm? Or what if Romeo was right and the universe has chosen this cruel method of elimination rather than the mist? Or what if we’ve all been wrong and there
is
such a thing as hell, and it is the place that terrified me above all others? What if I’ve been sent here to die, once and for all? Or worse, to be trapped here for all eternity?
    “Help! Help me!” I scream, voice echoing in the tight stone.
    “Hello?” The answer is faint, distant, but the voice is most certainly male. There is someone outside, someone who’s heard my cry.
    I bite my lip, regretting my decision to call out. What if it’s the friar? What if I
have
traveled back in time, or perhaps to some alternate reality, and am now about to be pulled from the tomb a second time? What if Romeo is out there, playing dead on the floor? What will I do?
    I
won’t
fall on that knife. That’s for certain. But what should I do instead? Should I run? Try to find someone to help me? To keep me safe from the boy I willingly married and from a seemingly kind and gentle man of the cloth? If this truly is the past, my parents will kill me for marrying without their consent. Or force me to live with the man I chose to avoid shame and ruin. At this point I don’t know which would be worse.
    Ben. Ben. Ben
. I squeeze my eyes shut and cling to his name, to his face, to the smell of his skin and the feel of his arms warm and safe around me. I will never forget him, never forsake him. If I am married to someone else, I will …
    I will run away. I will find a way to survive on my own. I’m not the same frightened girl I once was. I am strong enough to find my way, strong enough to escape whatever evil waits for me on the outside.
    “Hello? Who’s there?” The voice comes again, closer. This time I find the strength to answer.
    “I’m in here! It’s Juliet Capulet! I’m alive!”
    “Jesus … dear god.” His words are muffled by stone, but so close now I know his voice is familiar. Very familiar. But not Romeo’s voice, not the friar’s. “Hold on, I’ll get you out.”
    I brace myself as the stone above my head scrapes and shifts, slowly, slowly, inch