Читать онлайн «Juliet Immortal»
Автор Stacey Jay
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Stacey Jay
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc. , New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Jay, Stacey.
Juliet immortal / Stacey Jay. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: For seven hundred years the souls of Romeo and Juliet have repeatedly inhabited the bodies of newly deceased people to battle to the death as sworn enemies, until they meet for the last time as two Southern California high school students.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89893-8
[1. Characters in literature—Fiction.
2. Love—Fiction. 3. Good and evil—Fiction. 4. Revenge—Fiction.
5.
Supernatural—Fiction. 6. California, Southern—Fiction. ] I. Title.PZ7. J344Ju 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010049563
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3. 1
SHE WILL FIGHT FOR LIGHT, AND HE FOR DARK,
BATTLING THROUGH THE AGES FOR LOVE’S SWEET SPARK.
WHEREVER TWO SOULS ADORE TRULY, YOU WILL FIND THEM, LO,
THE BRAVE JULIET AND THE WICKED ROMEO.
—MEDIEVAL ITALIAN BALLAD, AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Intermezzo One: Romeo
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Intermezzo Two: Romeo
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Coda: Romeo
Acknowledgments
ONE
VERONA, ITALY, 1304
Tonight, he could have come through the door—the castello is quiet, even the servants asleep in their beds, and Nurse would have let him in—but he chooses the window, climbing through the tangle of night flowers, carrying petals in on his clothes.
He stumbles on a loose stone and falls to the floor, grinning as I rush to meet him.
He is a romantic, a dreamer, and never afraid to play the fool. He is fearless and reckless and brave and I love him for it.
I love him for the way he sprawls on the freshly scrubbed stones, strong legs flexing beneath his hose, as if there is no cause for worry, as if we have not broken every rule and do not face banishment from the only homes we have ever known. I love him for the way he finds my hand, presses it to his smooth cheek, inhaling as if my skin smells sweeter than the petals clinging to his coat. I love him for the way he whispers my name, “Juliet”—a prayer for deliverance, a promise of pleasure, a vow that all this sweet
