The girl’s voice, through some eerie trick of the tomb, followed us as we escaped into the night, with Balthasar quick behind us. “A cup, closed in my true love’s hand? Poison has been his end . . . and no friendly drop to help me after? I will kiss your lips, and hope some poison hangs on them. . . .” The frantic anguish in her voice twisted at me, slowed my steps, and I turned back to stop her, but Friar Lawrence’s hand grabbed for mine.

“You cannot,” he begged me. “A Montague, present at such a scene! Come; the watch will save her; they are moments away!”

From behind us, in that torchlit tomb, Juliet whispered, “Your lips are warm,” and I shuddered as if a ghost had riven straight through me. Now I plainly heard the clatter and calls of the watch as they closed in. “Noises sound. I must be brief—oh, happy dagger, this is your sheath. There rust, and let me die—”

Romeo’s dagger. She hadn’t waited for the poison on his lips to finish her.

I heard her cry out, just a little, as the dagger found its place.

Friar Lawrence let out a choked, desperate sound, and now it was my own turn to hold him away, push him forth.

Juliet Capulet was a suicide, and so was my cousin, and Count Paris murdered beside them. Mercutio’s curse, made flesh and evil intent.

I felt my body flush suddenly with an unnatural heat, and sweat began to pour from my body, dampening my clothes. I felt as I had always when facing my grandmother—roasting in discomfort, aching to be elsewhere . . . no, not elsewhere.

I knew where I needed to be. My body bent that way, like a compass to true north. In the blink of my eyelids I saw Rosaline’s face, and I felt the press of her lips on mine like a ghost’s promise, and I wanted . . . no, I needed her. Fire was a pleasant warmth in a hearth, but it could also burn down a house, and that was what I felt: a fire raging beyond control, beyond sanity.

I breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and behind us I heard the watch coming to discover the dead.

Balthasar hesitated, and then said, “I will delay them, sir,” and before I could think to stop him, he was scrambling back the way we’d come, and drawing away the pursuit.

“They cannot find you here, young Montague,” Friar Lawrence said. He pushed me on my way. “I will explain all that occurred here. Go.”