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The first time Calliope sees her, she does a double take. Not because she’s pretty, or because her eyes sparkle with this glowing innocence and warmth, or because when she looks up and makes eye contact with Calliope a smile stretches across her face, slow and wide, almost like she can’t help herself. No, Calliope does a double take because she feels it. Feels a prickle on the back of her neck, like there’s eyes behind her, staring into her soul. Feels her throat go dry, like she’s staring into the eyes of something bigger, something darker. Feels her heart beat faster, almost imperceptibly, in the way it usually does when she looks at pretty girls, but this is different, because she has a feeling that something is very wrong, and at the same time a feeling that something is very right, and she’s really more scared of the second feeling than she is certain of the first.
When she makes her way to an empty seat in the middle of the classroom, the feeling of eyes boring into her does not abate. For maybe the second or third time in her life, Calliope feels like prey, and this feeling puts her off guard so much that she feels the need to dig her nails into her palm and remind herself that she is the hunter, she is the predator. She will never be the prey, not again, not ever. But the feeling that she is being watched still does not leave, and so she begins to think.
She learns her name—Juliette—later that day, and again thinks of how cruel it is for a monster to be so beautiful.
When she drops her silver bracelet on the ground in front of Juliette’s locker, she wants to be wrong almost as much as she wants to get that damned tattoo on her arm. Almost. She thinks of her family, of her failure, and of how proud they will be when she brings them Juliette’s head on a stake, and doesn’t flinch when Juliette drops the bracelet as if burned.
The first time she talks to Juliette, Calliope is struck by how unfair it is. Because Juliette is evil, she knows this, but she also knows that she is cute, and she is gentle, and that she holds a bee cupped in between her hands as if she’s more scared of hurting it than of it hurting her, and that’s not fair. It’s not fair because monsters should be ugly, they should hurt your eyes to look at, and the only thing that hurts when Calliope looks at Juliette is her heart.
Juliette invites Calliope to Noah Harrington’s party, and Calliope knows it’s a ploy to get her alone, to get her weak, to get her bleeding out at Juliette’s feet. She knows this, so why does her heart skip a beat when Juliette looks up at her, sunshine in her eyes, pleading with Calliope to go to the party? Why does she agree to go, knowing full well it could be the death of her? Why does she, for a moment, wish that this could end any other way?
Calliope knows how this ends. She’s a hunter, and Juliette is a monster. It ends with one of them dead, and it’s not going to be her. She won’t let it be her.
When Calliope follows Juliette into the pantry, she’s thinking of fangs and stakes. When Juliette kisses her, suddenly all she’s thinking of is summer nights and thunderstorms.
When civil blood makes civil hands unclean, Calliope has no one to blame but herself for ever allowing a monster so close to her heart.