Thirteen

Thirteen

In the weeks that passed, the dance that Roma and Juliette settled into grew almost predictable. In the most literal sense too, given how often they were dropping into the various dance halls across the Concessions. Show up, target a foreigner, get answers.

Juliette didn’t mind. Navigating a wǔtīng was far more palatable than navigating places like the Grand Theatre and the racecourse. Here, although it still required the same sharp tongue, although they remained surrounded by pearls and champagne and the knowledge that this was foreign-owned land, there were still Chinese tycoons and gangsters dancing the night away, blowing their cigarette smoke out without caring that it might bother the Frenchman at the next table. A dance hall was no different from a burlesque club in practice. Same showgirls onstage, same smoky interiors, same lowlifes lurking by the doors. The only reason they seemed so much fancier was because they ran on foreign money.

Juliette returned from the bar, offering Roma the second drink in her hand. Meanwhile, the French merchant who had approached them earlier in the evening continued chattering on, following right on her tail. Roma took the drink absently, his gaze remaining elsewhere in inspection. They had spent long enough here at Bailemen—or Paramount, to the foreigners—to have spoken with almost every wealthy elite present tonight. By now it was obvious that the flyers were not limited to those in the French Concession but the International Settlement, too, all the occupants of Bubbling Well Road gasping in confirmation when Juliette asked about them.

Funnily enough, though these flyers were the only thing people reported regarding the new monster business, nobody had actually gone to the address. Many had already been vaccinated by the Larkspur and thought it unnecessary, or they didn’t believe the flyers to be real. The blackmailer wasn’t smarter than Paul Dexter after all. Because they hadn’t built any of the reputation that the Larkspur dove into Shanghai with, and now nobody trusted the idea of a new vaccine enough to actually go get it.

“And besides,” the merchant behind her was saying once Juliette tuned in again. “Your cousin has said that the Scarlets are close to a breakthrough on their own vaccine. What use is another?”

At this, Roma choked on his drink, managing to suppress his cough before it was too obvious. The man prattling on did not notice because he was Scarlet-affiliated and had been pretending that Roma did not exist. Even if the merchant was happy to speak as if the White Flower heir was not two steps away, he was, and he could hear everything that the man did not even realize was sensitive information. Juliette’s eyes slid to Roma as the last of his cough died, checking only that he did not need a great big thump on the back. He seemed to recover. A shame.

“My cousin is not to be trusted,” Juliette said. She traced her finger around the cool edge of her glass. There was no one that the man could be referring to save for Tyler. She highly doubted Rosalind or Kathleen was going around gossiping with Scarlet-affiliated French merchants. They could—they had the linguistic ability, but not the stomach.

The merchant leaned one shoulder against the wall. This corner of Bailemen was rather empty, hosting one or two tables that had a poor view of the stage. Of course, Roma and Juliette weren’t standing here to watch the show; they were here to peruse the crowd and see if there were any more people worthy of approaching.

“Oh?” the merchant said. “If I’m not overstepping, Miss Cai, the city seems to trust your cousin more than they trust you.”

Juliette turned around, fixing her eyes on him. The merchant flinched a little, but he did not back down.

“I’ll give you two seconds to take that back.”

The merchant forced an awkward laugh. He feigned deference, but a certain note of amusement colored his stare. “It is merely an observation,” he said. “One that notes how daughters will always have their attention elsewhere. Who could blame you, Miss Cai? You were not born for this like your cousin was, after all.”

How dare he—

“Juliette, let it go.”

Juliette cast Roma a glare. “Stay out of this.”

“Do you even know this merchant’s name?” Roma looked the Frenchman once over. Apathy oozed from the gesture. “On any other day, you’d have walked away. He’s irrelevant. Let it go.”

Her grip tightened on her drink. By all means, it was foolish to make a scene in a dance hall, especially among so many foreigners—among those she needed to respect her if she was going to get any information out of them.

Then the merchant grinned and said, “You take instructions from White Flowers now, do you? Miss Cai, what would your fallen Scarlets say?”

Juliette threw her drink down, the glass shattering into a thousand pieces. “Try me one more time.” She lunged, pushing the merchant into the wall, so fiercely that his head made a crack! against the marble. Juliette reared back, her fist closing for another strike. Only then an iron grip came around her waist, hauling her two steps away.

“Calm down,” Roma hissed, his mouth so close to her ear that she could feel the heat of his lips, “before I throw you into the wall.”

A chill swept down Juliette’s neck. In anger or attraction, she wasn’t quite sure. It seemed unnecessarily cruel that each time Roma Montagov decided to get so close, it was to make threats, especially when Juliette was hardly in the wrong here.

Anger won out. It always did.

“So do it,” she said through her teeth.

Roma didn’t move. He wouldn’t—Juliette had expected that. Threats were easy to make, but they could not be seen fighting with each other, not when their collaboration was supposed to be some big stand against the blackmailer.

“That’s what I thought.”

By then the merchant had regained his bearings and, without sparing Juliette a second glance, hurried toward the back of the hall, scampering off like a frightened animal. Roma let go, slowly, his arm winding away bit by bit, as if he was afraid the merchant was only going to come running back and Juliette would need to be reined in again.

Juliette eyed the broken glass on the floor.

“Go sit down, would you?” Roma suggested. There was no sympathy in his voice. All his words were level, betraying no emotion. “I’ll get you another drink.”

Without waiting for her response, he turned and left, and Juliette frowned, supposing she had no choice except to slink up to a table and drop into a chair, putting her head in her hands.

“So—” Roma returned, setting a glass in front of Juliette as he sat down too.

Juliette suppressed a sigh. She knew what was coming.

“—you are working on a vaccine?”

“Yes.” Juliette rubbed her forehead, then winced, knowing she was smearing product all over her fingers. She should have snapped for him to mind his business, but she was bone-weary of this dance, this routine of dead ends and useless information. It hardly occurred to her that she needed to stop before she was saying, “We have some papers that Paul left behind.”

This was exactly why Lord Montagov had given Roma his task. To pick up all the information Juliette let slip.

“And what will you do,” Roma asked, seeming not to notice as Juliette reached right into her drink and took out an ice cube, rubbing it along her fingers to clean the makeup off, “when you re-create the vaccine?”

Juliette barked a harsh laugh. Suddenly she was glad for the darkness of the hall, each bulb of the chandeliers above twinkling dimly, not only to hide the mess she had made of her makeup, but the mania she was sure had entered her expression.

“If it were up to me,” she said roughly, “I’d send it through the whole city, put a protective casing on everyone so the blackmailer loses power.” A knife materialized between her fingers, and she stabbed the blade into the table, crushing the ice cube into fractions. “But . . . my father may listen to Tyler instead. We may give it only to the Scarlets, then sell it to everyone else, and it will merely be a pity for those who cannot afford it. It is the smart option, after all. The profit-making option.”

Roma said nothing.

“You don’t have a lot of time left,” Juliette went on, only because she knew she had his full attention now. “You should begin a campaign to capture our information so that the White Flowers distribute the vaccine into the market first.”

Juliette yanked the knife out of the table, and ice shards flew in all directions, scattering on the small wooden tabletop. It was always going to be hope that ruined her. Hope that she had presented a terrible thing to him on a platter, and he would not do it, hope that he might care enough to keep the information to himself.

Why would he? He had no reason to care for her when she had given him so many reasons to hate her. And yet she was foolish enough to test him anyway.

“It’s time,” Roma finally said. Juliette looked at him quickly, but he had long moved past the topic at hand. “We need to go to the facility in Kunshan. It may be our very blackmailer.”

“Somehow, I doubt it,” Juliette muttered. She put her knife away and stood, dropping into a mocking curtsy as if they were nothing more than dance partners taking leave for the night. “I’ll see you at the railway station tomorrow.”

Without waiting for further retort, Juliette grabbed her coat and exited the dance hall, plunging back out into the night.

From the roof of Bailemen, Marshall leaned into the cold breeze, letting his hair flutter with the wind. It was a precarious drop down to the pavement—one slip of his shoes and he’d plummet over the edge, falling along the straight wall of the dance hall with nothing to grab on his way down. Just at the thought, his grip tightened on the pole beside him, and he clung a little closer to the towered peak at the center of the building.

Movement flashed below. The glimmering lights of Bailemen reflected off the rain puddles that had collected on the streets earlier, spelling PARAMOUNT BALLROOM backward in red and yellow. Marshall was hardly surprised when he watched Juliette storm out from the dance hall and stomp right into one of the puddles, as if ruining her shoes might improve her mood.

“I wonder what Roma did,” Marshall said aloud.

He got his answer—in a roundabout way—when Roma emerged from Bailemen a minute later and stopped some distance into the road, ignoring the rickshaw runners calling for his business. Instead, he turned his head skyward and emitted one short yell. Marshall ducked out of view, just in case Roma caught sight of him, but he shouldn’t have worried. In seconds, Roma had stormed off too, in the opposite direction of Juliette.

“Tragic,” Marshall muttered into the wind. Montagovs were so dramatic.

Yet he missed the dramatics, missed being right in the heart of the city, at the heart of the feud that kept it in halves. If Benedikt were here, he would probably tell Marshall to stop being thickheaded. There was nothing good about a feud. Nothing other than loss. But if nothing else, it was a singular purpose in a place that seemed to ask for too much.

Another gust of wind blew hard into his face, and Marshall shrank back, searching for a better place to sit. He had come out tonight for a breath of fresh air; only then he had sighted Roma and Juliette walking along Avenue Foch and wasted no time following on their tail. They hadn’t noticed him trekking a few steps behind, nor when he hurried ahead to get onto the scaffolding at the back of Bailemen when Roma and Juliette disappeared within. Marshall was almost surprised. He expected more from two heirs who could probably hit a fly with a needle if they threw hard enough.

“What have you two descended into?”

There was no reply to come, not unless the night itself had an answer. Marshall needed to stop speaking out loud, but it was the only thing keeping him less lonely. He missed conversation. He missed people.

He missed Benedikt.

The wail of a siren swept the streets some distance away, then the echo of what might have been a gunshot. Marshall pulled his legs up to his chest, resting his chin on his knees. When he first joined the White Flowers, he was just another scrappy kid picked off the streets, thin and hungry and constantly dirty. That was how Benedikt found him that day. Curled up in the alley behind the Montagov house, legs pulled close, arms wrapped in a fetal position. He hadn’t yet learned how to fight, how to smile so sharply that it would cut as fast as any blade. And when Benedikt crouched in front of him—looking like a shining cherub with his pressed white shirt and curly combed hair—he didn’t remark on any of that. All he did was extend a hand, asking, “Do you have somewhere to go?”

“I do have somewhere to go now,” Marshall muttered. “But it was better when you were there with me.”

A sudden rustle came from the other side of the rooftop, and Marshall jolted, startling out of his thoughts. He had gotten so caught up in his memories that he had tuned out the world around him. A mistake—one that he couldn’t afford to make. This was Scarlet territory.

And indeed, a Scarlet circled around the rooftop tower, coming into view. He froze as he looked up, cigarette dangling from his lips.

Please don’t recognize me, Marshall thought, his hands creeping for the pistol in his pocket. Please don’t recognize me.

“Marshall Seo,” the Scarlet croaked. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Aish.

The Scarlet threw his cigarette down, but Marshall had readied himself. There was only one way this could end. He drew the pistol from his pocket in one fast motion and fired—fast and first, because that was what mattered.

At the end of the day, that was the only thing that mattered.

The bullet landed true. With a harsh clatter, the Scarlet’s weapon fell to the floor. It might have been a gun. It might have been a dagger. It might even have been a throwing star, for all the consequence it held. But in the hazy dark, all Marshall cared about was it being out of reach, and then the Scarlet collapsed too, a hand clasped over the hole studded into his breastbone.

For a few tense seconds, Marshall heard labored breathing, the metallic smell of blood permeating the rooftop. Then, silence. Utter silence.

Marshall kicked the edge of the rooftop, skittering little stones down the side of Bailemen. All this death on his hands. All this death, and in truth, none of it mattered to him so long as it protected him, protected the secrets of those he was hiding for.

“Goddammit,” he whispered, scrubbing his face and turning to the breeze, away from the smell. “I hate this city.”