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Afterwards, when she dreams, Juliette finds herself in Eden.
Except- it’s nothing like the Eden she once knew; that green, beautiful place told through hundreds of stories and hundreds of dreams. Nothing like her secret garden, her place to hide. The leaves have withered, the flowers have wilted, the apple tree bears no fruit- nothing left but a gnarled trunk and branches like skeletal fingers, casting monstrous shadows that slice the lowlight in two.
Juliette’s fangs sit heavy in her mouth, the grass cracks brittle under her feet. If she hadn’t cried herself empty more times than she could count over the past few weeks, Juliette thinks she may have fallen to her knees and sobbed- because there’s no birds in the trees, no bees to visit the withered flowers, not even an emerald snake with its long body looped in coils around the ruined branches. The garden is completely devoid of life and Juliette knows the feeling well. She’s spent the weeks since the Argument with a hole carved into her chest, mirroring the place where a silver-tipped spear pressed against her sternum. It’s an emptiness that aches, like a steady pulse which tells nothing but the truth.
(A vampire can live without a heart. Juliette knows bone-deep that this is the only reason why she is still standing.)
“Shit.” A familiar voice splits the silence. Juliette’s heart is long gone but something races behind her ribs when she turns and sees Calliope- standing in the middle of her ruined Eden. Barefoot in the dead grass, eyes dark like she’s seen a monster. Her hand jumps for a stake that she cannot find, before settling for a fist instead. Then- she’s leaving before Juliette can figure out how to speak without flashing fang alongside her words.
“Cal-” The name barely sounds like a word, breaking in two halfway up Juliette’s throat. She tries again. “Calliope-”
Desperation is not just a human trait. Calliope leaves and Juliette chases like the monster she is, anything to apologize again, to see her face again, to remind that open, bleeding wound in her chest where it came from. She reaches out. Calls a name. Grabs a handful of pure silver from the rings that Calliope hasn’t worn since they started touching .
It burns like a bite wound, like teeth sunk into her palm. It still hurts less than when Calliope rips her hand free and tells her to get away.
When Juliette wakes in a cold sweat, her hand aches with phantom burns that take days to fade away.
-
The next time Juliette finds herself in the ruins of what once was Eden, Calliope is already there.
If anything, the garden looks worse than the time before; the sky thick with dark clouds, the dull colours sapping the life out of Calliope, making her look half-dead. She’s wearing day-clothes this time- a long coat that Juliette remembers shoving her cold hands in the pockets of to keep warm, paired with practical boots for running. The soles are caked in mud, like she’s just come in from the hunt.
(She looks tired, in a way that goes beyond a few sleepless nights. Juliette wants to hold her head in her hands and wipe away the shadows from under her eyes but she lost that chance the moment she stepped into the role of monster that her family always wanted her to play. That Calliope was maybe always waiting for her to fall into.)
“Get out of my head.” Calliope says, low like a warning.
“You were here first,” Juliette replies, before she can stop herself. “Maybe you’re in my head.”
Her jaw snaps shut; hard enough for her teeth to hurt, but still seconds too late. Across the garden, Calliope’s expression shifts from surprise to incredulity, before settling somewhere around fury. The next thing Juliette knows, there's a stake against her chest and she’s flat on her back against the dead, brittle grass. Above her, Calliope is ruthless and tired and beautiful , pushing wood against the curve of her ribs hard enough to draw blood.
“You’ve got some nerve,” Calliope hisses, the picture of the hunter her family raised her to be. If she was more like the monster she was taught to become, Juliette would struggle; thrash and kick and sink teeth into warm skin.
Juliette has never been good at living up to expectations.
Instead she lies dead-still in the grass, meets Calliope’s tired, furious eyes, and asks; “Do you want to kill me?”
“Yes.” Says Calliope. Yes says the steady beat beat beat of her heart.
If Juliette chooses to fix the hole in her chest with body-warm blood and ice-cold violence, then she will no longer be Juliette . If she leaves the wound open and raw and bloody, then she will not survive. From the moment first love struck her with a stake to the heart, there was only ever one way that this play could end.
“Then, when you find out how to kill me,” Juliette speaks, and it hangs over Eden like a promise. “I won’t do anything to stop you.”
In the half-second that Calliope’s grip falters, Juliette wakes up.
-
“If I figure out how to kill legacy vampires, and you don’t do anything to stop me,” Calliope announces, the next time they both dream of Eden. She’s sat on the grass with her head against the dying apple tree, and she doesn’t look at Juliette while she speaks. “Then I could kill your family too.”
Juliette knows this. A visceral truth that she first accepted by the side of a poorly lit road- pulled over because she could no longer see through her tears well enough to drive. Moths wheeled around the streetlamp overhead and she finally understood- that she is the one who brought family into this. That she is the one who has to live with those consequences.
She settles on the grass; far enough from Calliope to seem like respect, close enough to avoid the impression of fear.
“I did something terrible to your brother,” Juliette says. “I don’t have any right to tell you not to touch my family.”
There’s a long stretch of silence which should be filled with birdsong. Juliette considers talking about Elinor, about how Calliope cannot ruin the Fairmont family when they’ve already done it to themselves- but she catches the words before they can come spilling out. ( It’s not a real apology if all you do is try to explain yourself- Ben told her once. Teasingly, over a carton of ice cream they were meant to share- but it follows Juliette anyway. She’s learned, in the past few months more than ever, that she should always follow Ben’s advice when he offers it.)
The silence is shattered by Calliope’s laugh- an awful, humourless thing. “What, so you’ll throw your own family under the bus as well as mine?”
“No! No, that’s not what I-” Juliette protests- but Calliope is already gone.
-
Calliope is pacing over by the copse of dying cherry trees. Even from across the garden, Juliette can see the shadow of half-healed bruises across her knuckles, spilled blood beneath her skin. And Juliette wants - not for a taste, not for something to sink her fangs into- just to feel Calliope’s warm hands against her own again. To map out her new calluses, learn her new scars.
But, even in Eden, Calliope wears a pure-silver ring on each bruised finger.
“You look tired,” Juliette tells her, instead of touching.
It earns her another of Calliope’s terrible empty laughs. “And whose fault is that?”
“Mine,” Juliette admits without hesitation. “All mine.”
Catching Calliope off-guard isn’t the accomplishment it used to be. Instead it feels like cornering a wounded animal; reaching out an unwelcome hand and losing its trust forever. Under the cherry trees, Calliope runs a finger over her ruined knuckles, and doesn’t say another word.
-
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Calliope asks one night, when the sky is storm-heavy and Eden is dying. The garden has started to feel more like an open threat than a place to run away and hide.
Explanations are not real apologies- but if nothing else, Juliette owes Calliope honesty.
“You’ve ruined me,” she replies, as open as she can. Lies a hand against her chest where a spear once pressed, a stake once drove, a heart once lived before she let Calliope carve it loose. “There’s no healing from this- I couldn’t leave you even if I wanted to.”
I love you, she hopes it says, even if she can’t speak it out loud. I love you and it hurts more than anything I’ve ever known. I love you and it’s changed me in a way I can’t come back from.
“I wish I could go back to how things were before I ever met you,” Calliope tells her in return. In her chest, her heart beats true.
“Even if I could do that,” Juliette curls close to the apple tree, meets Calliope’s eyes to find something which is not fury-hurt-devastation for the first time. It sets her off-kilter. “Even if I could go back- I don’t think I could stop myself from falling for you again.”
(Juliette may have broken every rule- she was not calm and she was not prepared and she definitely did not finish what she started- but she knows with certainty that Calliope is her First. Just as she knows, with equal clarity, that Calliope will be her Last.)
“So you’re just going to keep showing up in my dreams until I kill you.” Calliope stares up at the storm clouds, and her words aren’t a question.
“ Our dreams,” The correction earns Juliette a glare that’s more exhausted than angry. “And- I don’t know why we keep ending up here. We just do .” She lies.
“I don’t know why either,” Calliope lies in return.
(Because I love you, is the truth that neither of them say. Because I love you and it hurts and I don’t know how to make it stop. Because if this is what love is like, then how does anyone survive it?)
“Nobody ever said that it would hurt this much.” When Juliette stares up through the skeleton branches, the sky overhead rolls with thunder- but it does not rain.
-
There’s a single bee humming between the dead flower heads when Calliope tells Juliette out loud that she’ll never forgive her. Her voice is an open wound as she says it; something terrible and torn-to-pieces that Juliette wants to hold together until her own hands are red with blood.
But Calliope’s raw edges are lined with pure silver, so all Juliette can do is nod and say; “I won’t ask you to.”
Forgiveness is for small things. Forgotten birthdays and petty disagreements and stupid misunderstandings. Forgiveness is not a hand you extend to the monster who ruined your family- not even when each finger is decorated in silver. In the front seat of a car with her heart freshly ripped from her chest, maybe Juliette demanded forgiveness- thought in foolish poetry about love overcoming all, about us against them, about just wanting to help. Now, as the bee searches for life between the withered petals, Juliette knows that family-love is just as consuming as this-love. That if someone turned Ben against his will, she would never forgive them, either. She cannot demand something that’s impossible to earn.
“I did something I know you won’t ever forgive,” Juliette says again, takes a step closer to Calliope with her hands in the air and her fangs in view. ( I am exactly the monster you think I am. I do not want to cause any more harm. ) “But, if there’s anything I can do to make it hurt less, then I need you to tell me. I won’t do something you haven’t asked me to, ever again.”
Time passes- minutes or hours or less than a second- before something behind Calliope’s eyes shatters and breaks. The noise that escapes her barely sounds human; all grief and anger and hurt and it’s the most vulnerable thing that Juliette has heard since the Argument, since Calliope called her a monster with a shaking spear pressed against her torn-out heart. The sound of it burns. Juliette understands how it feels for a turned vampire to step into the sun.
“I just want someone to fix this.” Calliope pleads.
(On the other side of Eden, a red flower unfolds its tired petals to face the sky, and the bee finally lands to drink its fill.)
-
The next time Juliette dreams of Eden, Calliope isn’t there.
Instead of waiting for her- she falls to her bare knees in the dirt and dust and begins to tear the dead leaves from the trees, the withered petals from the flowers.
( To make room for new growth, all that is dead must be cleaved away - she read, in a gardening book borrowed from the library. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Nobody said that bringing things back to life would be easy. )
When Juliette wakes the next morning- it’s with bruised knees, thorn-scratched hands, and an idea she cannot rest until she sees to the end.
-
Calliope is standing by the edge of the garden; has been doing so all night. Just watching, as Juliette wobbles on her tiptoes to clip dead leaves from the skeleton hand of the apple tree. The gardening shears feel clumsy in her grip- she feels clumsy under Calliope’s unmoving stare. Still thrown off-course by even a small glance, the slightest hint of attention.
“What’re you doing?” Calliope asks, then, voice loud as a gunshot in the silent garden. Juliette startles and drops the shears into the grass.
“I’m just-” she stumbles, hiding her scraped hands behind her back until they can heal. “Gardening. Trying to.”
Juliette has to turn and face the apple tree before she can continue. “I’m not that good at it, though,” a nervous laugh escapes before she can do anything about it, slipping past the fangs she still doesn’t know how to hide. “Never have been. I used to try and keep houseplants on my windowsill, but they always died, no matter what I did to help them.”
She keeps staring into the whorls of the apple tree’s branches- even as the sound of Calliope’s footsteps crack through the dead ferns behind her, even when she hears her heartbeat against her eardrums, even when she’s close enough to feel the warmth radiating off her. Instead Juliette waits, as Calliope picks up the gardening shears and moves to the other side of the apple tree, the branches dividing them like the bars of a cage. Watches, as Calliope reaches into the boughs and begins cutting away the dead parts with a gentleness that makes Juliette’s ribs ache down to the marrow.
“We had this huge garden, in one of the houses we lived in,” when Calliope speaks, she speaks to the apple tree. (Juliette listens, anyway). “I wasn’t allowed out on hunts yet so I spent a lot of time alone there, just looking after the plants.”
Each word is punctuated by the slice of the shears. Juliette wonders if Calliope will talk to her like this when she kills her.
“The mistake most people make with plants is that they forget that all of them need something different. What works for one will just hurt another.” Calliope continues, before finally lowering her eyes to meet Juliette’s own. Still just as piercing as before, still knocking the air from Juliette’s lungs even though she’s never truly needed to breathe. “Do you understand?”
And Juliette nods, because she does .
“Jules,” Calliope says, then. Stood in a halo of dead foliage, the gardening shears held in her silver-lined hands like a weapon. “I need you to look me in the eyes, and I need you to tell me that you never would’ve done what you did, if you knew how it would hurt my brother.”
Juliette levels her eyes to meet Calliope’s own, presses a hand to her chest, and swears it on the place where her heart once lived when she tells her; “I wouldn’t.”
(Like pouring too much water onto her windowsill plants and unknowingly leaving them to rot, like trying to fix a wound that wasn’t hers to mend- Juliette made a mistake. An irreparable one, something that cannot be brought back by cutting off the dead parts and leaving room for new leaves to grow- but a mistake nonetheless. Juliette Fairmont may be a monster in every sense of the word- but these wounds are not ones she intended to cause.)
Calliope nods, tells her okay- and then she’s gone.
In the space where she left, the apple tree doesn’t look quite so dead any more.
-
Nights later, while Juliette is pulling up weeds by their roots, Calliope looks at the soil beneath her blunt nails, and admits that her mom took Theo someplace far away. That she doesn’t know where or how- left with only the hasty promise he’s as alive as he can be, as safe as he can be. She sits by the pile of dead roots and admits in a too-quiet voice that she doesn’t know if she’s ever going to see her brother again.
Folding her muddied hands where Calliope can see them, Juliette offers; “I can look around, if you want. Only if you want.”
Calliope tells her firmly; “I want you to stay away from him.”
“I can do that.” Juliette assures- before unearthing another root system to make it a promise.
-
On a Monday night, Juliette tells Calliope about Elinor.
About looking up to her wide-eyed and awestruck from the moment she learned what being a Fairmont meant. About their one-sided game of Sweet Little, tell me everything. About why it’s always said that you should never meet your idols. Juliette guts dead foliage from the borders of Eden and admits that she wanted to kill her that night, stood over her sleeping, terrible sister with fangs wicked and bared. Confesses that the only reason she didn’t was because she knew she wasn’t strong enough. (If she were a fraction more ruthless, a half-step closer to the monster she was born to be, Juliette thinks she could’ve told Calliope how to kill a legacy.)
Instead she put her sister in jail. She put her sister in jail and there’s a part of her that hates herself for it; the part that’s still a little kid clinging to the dependable, brilliant figure of an older sister who knows everything. Elinor never needed to stare into Juliette’s eyes to make her follow. She carved her own dark hollow into Juliette’s ribcage, right alongside the gaping wound that Calliope left behind.
Juliette feels nothing but shame when she snags her arms on thorned branches and admits that holding onto her empathy is not something she could’ve done under Elinor’s watchful eye.
“You called me a monster,” Juliette turns to face Calliope, clinging to her armful of briars. “But I think it’s because I met you that I didn’t become one.”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Calliope tells her, before taking the brambles from Juliette’s bleeding hands.
-
On Tuesday, Juliette rips up the dead, brittle ferns, and throws wildflower seeds in their place.
On Wednesday, Calliope talks in short intervals about her new school, then buries tulip bulbs beneath the earth in her stretches of silence.
On Thursday, there’s a single nightingale singing from the branches of the apple tree.
On Friday, Juliette plants a row of willow saplings and does not water them until Calliope has told her how to.
On Saturday, the sunlight splinters through the clouds for the first time and sets the new foliage aglow.
(On Sunday, Eden begins to feel like a garden again.)
-
“Calliope-” Juliette starts from over by the saplings.
“It’s Cal,” Calliope- ( Cal - brilliant, beautiful Cal)- replies. “Remember?”
“Cal,” Juliette tries again, and finds that she cannot hide her fangs when she smiles. “Can you pass the gardening shears?”
(Somewhere, on the far side of Eden, another flower blooms.)
-
Juliette’s idea comes to fruition as a folder full of neatly-lined A4 paper, held close to her chest when she wakes up in Eden to find Cal waiting by the apple tree. The product of many sleepless nights, many secret visits to ancient family libraries, many lungfuls of dust and bad air and strange old magic. She places her idea in the wildflowers between them, then retreats to a safe distance under the shadow of the willow trees.
“A long while ago,” Juliette explains, as Cal glances between her and the folder. She wears her confusion openly, now. “My brother mentioned that it may be possible to turn a vampire into a human. He never ended up telling me how- I’m still not too sure either- but this is all the information I could find.”
By the apple tree, Cal’s spine is bowstring taut with distrust. Juliette puts her hands in the air where she can see them.
“I haven’t done anything with it. I’m not going to do anything with it. It’s just information- I’m not-” Juliette feels her breath catch in her throat and she almost has to laugh- because she’s been practicing these words for days and of course nothing ever goes as planned when Calliope Burns is involved. She takes a deep breath, tries again. “I’m not going to pretend I know how to protect your family again. I already made that mistake.”
There’s an unreadable expression on Cal’s face, and so Juliette barrels onwards.
“You don’t have to take it. You can leave it here, or you can do your own research, or you can even set fire to it, if you want,” this time, Juliette does laugh- a sad, watery sound that hangs over Eden. “You’ve always been the one with the best plans.”
“Jules-” Cal starts, and the conflicted beat of her heart has Juliette retreating further under the willow’s shadow.
“You don’t have to decide now!” She insists. “I’ll leave it right there. Think about it, for as long as you need.”
And- like a breath of fresh air, like clouds parting overhead, like the wildflowers blooming around that idea-turned-choice in the center of their garden- Cal’s expression softens into something familiar.
“I’ll sleep on it,” she says, and she could almost be smiling.
-
The Eden which Juliette dreams of nowadays is not perfect. It is new and changing, dead in parts and alive in others. It grows wilder than it ever did before, with tangles of thorns and a meadow in place of ferns and grass, willow trees guarding its edges with their branches bowed like an apology. Some corners of it are beyond saving, all scorched grass and withered petals, the earth damaged to the point that nothing will ever grow there again. Some corners of it look like winter, waiting for spring to come.
The night Cal picks up the folder from where wildflowers bloom waist-high all around it, the apple tree bears fruit for the first time since Eden began to die.
Cal tucks the folder- Juliette’s idea, her own choice- under her arm, and twists the apple free from its bough. Sinks her teeth in deep, wipes the juice from her chin, then crosses the garden to hand it to Juliette in person.
Their hands meet halfway- an electric shock of a touch that sends Juliette’s heartbeat spiraling, but does not burn. Calliope’s pure-silver rings lie between the tree roots, shed like snakeskin. Juliette leans into the split second of contact-warmth and knows she could live off that touch for the rest of her life.
“It’s yours,” Cal promises.
The apple in Juliette’s hand is the size of a fist, the size of a heart. She takes a bite.
-
“One day, I’m going to kill you,” Cal tells her later, lying on her back with the press of her ringless hand warm against Juliette’s arm. The way she says it sounds like a promise, like a connection, like I love you, somehow, even now . “That’s the only way this is going to end.”
And Juliette knows this, because Vampires and Hunters are worlds apart, but their most important rule is universal- always, always finish what you started.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Juliette replies- and the beat of her apple-sized heart makes it true.