by Stacey Jay
“It’s okay, Mom,” I say, adding the words I suspect both of the women in this family need to hear more often. “I love you.”
Her lips part before a smile slowly brightens her face. “I love you too.” She reaches out and pulls me close, crushing our thin frames together for a moment that is equal parts awkward and wondrous. There is love in this hug, no matter how clumsy.
Maybe there’s hope for this family. The realization helps me breathe a little easier … once Melanie releases her death grip. We pull apart and stand staring at each other—her hands fluttering back to her waist, mine clutching a hunk of rapidly warming cheese—until Melanie breaks the silence with a nervous laugh.
“Okay, I’ll let you get to bed,” she says. “I’m working the late shift tomorrow, so I’m going to sleep in. Is Gemma giving you a ride to school? Or do you need to take the car again?”
“I’m not sure.” Gemma hasn’t been picking Ariel up every day lately, but Ariel doesn’t know why. “I’ll try to call and ask,” I say, inspired by my small success with Melanie. I might as well contact Ariel’s friend and try to get that relationship back on track. The more put-together Ariel’s life, the more attention I’ll have to devote to my soul mates.
“Well, if you need to take the car, just go ahead and take it.” She moves to the fridge, pulling out a half-empty bottle of white wine and fetching a plastic cup from the cabinet above. Lady Capulet would have fainted at the idea of sipping wine from anything except the finest glass from Venice. At least Melanie doesn’t seem like an insufferable snob. Ariel could definitely have it worse. “I can get a ride to work with Wendy.”
“Okay,” I say, strangely touched by her concern for my transportation needs. “Good night, Mom.”
“Good night, honey.”
I return her smile before heading out of the kitchen, munching my cheese as I go. It’s disgusting, but at least I won’t starve to death before dawn.
Straight ahead is a shadowed living room and to my left a narrow hallway. I turn down the hall, find my new room, and shut myself inside. It’s small but bright and welcoming, with pale yellow walls and a white bedspread dripping with ruffles. It looks like a bed a younger girl would sleep in, and isn’t something Ariel picked out.
Her aesthetic is represented in the artwork filling every free inch of wall space, haunting paintings of fairies sleeping in fall leaves, lonely trees atop epic mountains, young men in dark clothes with sad eyes, and an aging unicorn dying at the edge of a silent pool.
The last one takes my breath away. I find myself on the other side of the room, running fingers across the animal’s detailed face. When I was a girl, everyone believed in unicorns. They’re mentioned in the Bible, and their existence was taken as fact. Finding out that the creatures are myth was more difficult than I like to admit.
But the death of magic, of hope, is never easy.
Ariel has captured that beautifully. The painting makes me ache to pick up a brush. I lived to paint as a girl. Maybe I can steal some time for it while I’m here. At the very least, I have to finish the sets for the school play.
Thankfully, my talent and Ariel’s seem to match up well. Certain skills—riding a horse, driving a car, performing other day-to-day tasks associated with life in a given era—seem to be physically ingrained and translate easily from one soul to the next. Talents, however, are a different story. A gift for mathematics or science, the ability to play an instrument or sing like an angel, are soul gifts, ones I’ve had difficulty emulating in the past. It will be nice to share a soul gift with my borrowed body.
The thought cheers me as I shove the last hunk of cheese into my mouth and step away from the painting, surveying the rest of my new domain. It isn’t nearly as bad as Ariel’s memories have led me to believe. The room is cramped but ordered, with a place for everything and everything in its place. A chest of drawers is wedged in tight against the bed and the opposite wall is filled by an empty easel and a white desk topped with a sleeping computer, a stack of textbooks, and a phone sitting in its cradle.
I’ll use it to call Gemma, but there’s one call I have to make first.
Above the desk hangs a mirror. It’s a light, flimsy thing, and covered with animal stickers Ariel pasted there when she was younger, but it will work. I shift the books to the side and lean close to the mirror’s surface, shutting my eyes, doing my best to clear my mind, to visualize the golden light Nurse and the other high Ambassadors inhabit when not on earth. Any moment I will hear her familiar voice. She’s bodiless in her realm, but her voice is always the murmur of the woman who raised me.
Nurse borrowed that woman’s body for only a few months, but somehow—through some trick of high Ambassador magic—she retained the voice. I suspect she knows I find it comforting, a piece of my past that travels with me through the years. I also suspect that’s why she encourages me to call her Nurse instead of by her true name, though she says it’s because her given name is too difficult for modern people to pronounce.
“Modern people” referring to the people of the fourteenth century.
For the hundredth time I 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 comf
ort 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 empty of 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 the wretchedness it will bring, the writhing of my soul inside my stone prison. Pain is so much easier to recall than pleasure. I can’t remember pleasure anymore, don’t know if I’m capable of taking joy in anything, even if the specters make their predicted appearance, even if the spell works, even if—someday very, very soon—I can feel again, taste again, live again.
But if anyone can summon goodness inside me, it is her. My love, my enemy, my other half, my Juliet. Perhaps she can coax the knots from my soul, melt my frozen heart, banish my demons. Perhaps I will wake the morning after the spell that frees us and no longer delight in the suffering of others, no longer take pleasure in pain.
“And then we shall share true love’s kiss, and live happily ever after.” The words make me laugh. And laugh and laugh.
I laugh all the way to the edge of town, to the row of brittle, peeling houses where my new body lives. I laugh through the dented door, into a dingy room I can guess smells of smoke and sadness and death. I laugh when a man’s voice yells from the room down the hall, threatening to “beat my ass” if I don’t “shut the hell up.”
I know the man will make good on his threat when he finds that his son has destroyed his car. I know Dylan’s father will be relieved when I leave this shell and his son’s corpse is all that remains. These thoughts make me laugh as well.
I laugh into my new room, where posters of other angry young men glare down at me from the walls. I laugh at this body’s pathetic dreams of becoming a rock star, of becoming famous and making everyone “sorry.” His dad for his loose fists, his mother for leaving, the entire stupid world sorry for daring to make him work for the things he desires.
I treasure his death, a warm stone in my fist, a bright, sparkling thing that keeps me smiling through yet another long, sleepless night. The two-hundred-thousandth such night or more. I’ve lost count. I could work the numbers, but I don’t. There’s no reason, not when the end is so very near.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will find her and teach her and she will love me and fear me and she will never be the same.
And neither, perhaps, will I.
SEVEN
I’m so cold I know I’ll never be warm again. My fingers press against the heat gushing from my chest—pushing, clinging—as if I can hold my life inside me with trembling hands. But my hands aren’t much larger than a child’s. I didn’t realize I was so small, so foolish.
Not until now, until it’s too late to make a difference.
Too late.
“It’s not too late, Juliet.” Nurse leans over me, cupping my face in her dry, papery hands. “If you want to live, I can help. I know you still have love in your heart.”
Do I? Do I have love in my heart? Can I hold anything inside me when I’ve been cut open and all my stupid little-girl dreams are spilling out onto the floor? I look into her soft gray eyes and say nothing. I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure, not sure enough to promise, sure enough to swear.
But then the cold grows even colder and fear rises, a tide that will drown me if I hesitate a moment more. I raise my hand. I repeat the words she whispers, taking the oath, committing myself to the Ambassadors. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to prove that my hands aren’t so small. To prove I can fight.
The final words of the spell burn through my veins, making me cry out, scalding my soul from my human flesh. Nurse urges me to sleep, to rest until I’m needed, but I fight to keep my eyes open. I fail. My lids close, and behind them there is only the mist. And it is cold and endless and my body is gone. Nurse warned me it would be like this, but I didn’t understand. I didn’t dream …
I realize I am nothing and scream, panic racing through my formless being, banishing hope in a great wave of—
“Wake up. Wake up, niña.” I awake to find … Ben. He lies beside me, hair rumpled from sleep, arms holding me tight, banishing the nightmare. With gentle hands he wipes the tears from my cheeks. “It’s all right. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” His lips are warm against my forehead, sealing the promise with skin upon skin.
Relief floods through me, gratitude so profound it makes me shake. It’s all been an awful dream. I sigh against his chest, finally protected, finally whole. “I love you.”
“I love you too, sweet.” The lips on my forehead grow hot … sticky. I pull back to see Ben’s face, to wipe the damp away, and scream.
It’s Romeo. And his mouth is full of blood.
He laughs as I scramble from his embrace, more red horror dripping from his lips. He’s lapped my blood from the floor of the tomb, but the terrible secret won’t stay inside him. “Soft, what light through yonder window breaks? Break. Break. Break!” His screeching reaches a torturous crescendo and his teeth shatter into tiny daggers. They fly into my eyes, blinding me.
I scream and scream and—
“Ariel! What’s going on?”
My eyes blink against the harsh light and my heart races even faster. Where am I? I blink again. An angry woman stands at the door, blond hair sticking up on one side, eyes swollen from sleep. Who is she? What’s happening? What—
“Answer me, honey.” She crosses her arms and furrows her brow. “What’s wrong? I thought you were hurt. Why were you screaming like that, Ariel?”
Ariel. That’s right. The twenty-first century, California, the girl with the white-blond hair. Romeo in the car, and nothing in the mirror.
Nothing. Late, late into the night, using a dozen different mirrors, and still nothing. Nothing and more nothing until the absence of the golden light brought tears of frustration and fear, until I curled into bed in my bloody clothes, too tired to bother with the shower down the hall.
I pull the sheets to my chin, not wanting Melanie to see me in the clothes I wore last night. “I was just … I was having a bad dream.”
She lets out a long, tired breath. “God. Some dream. I thought—”
The honk of a horn makes her turn to look over her shoulder, then back at me with a puzzled expression. “Is that Gemma already? What time is it? Why aren’t you ready for school?”
Oh no. I forgot to set an alarm! I allowed my focus to be eaten alive by worry, and now I’m going to be late for my first day of school. Unless …
“I’ll be ready in five minutes. Will you tell her that I’ll be right out?”
“I’m supposed to be sleeping,” Melanie says. “I have to work until two a.m. tonight, Ariel.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But
please, Mom? Will you—”
“Fine.” She sighs again and recrosses her arms, huddling against the morning. “But then I’m going back to bed and you need to get your act together. Senior year isn’t over yet.”
As soon as she turns to leave I leap from the bed, pulling off clothes and hurling them into the air, stumbling over my feet as I grab clean underwear and a pair of jeans from the drawers. Socks of two different colors come next, and then a white camisole. I spin, scramble over the bed, grab the first sweater my hands brush against from the closet and pull it over my head. It’s pink, with brown yarn knots on the front. I grab brown shoes to match the knots, making some effort to look as if I’m not falling apart. Romeo could be at school today.
I swallow, my throat tight, the memory of my dream making me shiver. I can’t let him know I’m afraid, can’t let him see that I’m lost, abandoned. I hurry to the vanity, pull my brush through hair that still smells of baby wipes. Ben was right; they really do clean up everything.
Ben. My cheeks burn. I dreamt about him, too, about the way it would feel to … love him. I’ve never loved anyone but Romeo; I know I will never love anyone again, but still the dream felt so real.
“Ariel!” Melanie’s shout startles me from my thoughts. “Move it! Gemma’s waiting.”
I throw the brush back onto the vanity, grateful that Ariel’s hair is stick straight. It doesn’t look as if I bled on it, wiped it clean with baby wipes, then slept on it while it was damp. I look pretty, considering I’ve dressed in less time than it takes most people to roll out of bed. I know Melanie won’t be pleased to see me leaving the house without makeup, but what she doesn’t know …
I wait until I hear her bedroom door slam before slipping out of my room and hurrying down the hall to the bathroom. I brush my teeth and smear on sunscreen, remembering that Ariel has to be careful to protect her skin, and am running through the kitchen less than five minutes from when I woke.