Fifteen

Fifteen

It was late afternoon by the time the train arrived in Kunshan and even later by the time Roma and Juliette finished speaking to the authorities, because what qualified for authorities here was no more than men in flimsy uniforms blanching at the sight of the bodies. What could have taken ten minutes instead took two hours of Juliette making threats and yelling, “Do you know who I am?” before they had the bodies removed and a completed list of victims. The bodies went to storage, and messengers were sent in cars to Shanghai, en route to notify both the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers what had happened. They sent men out along the tracks, too, traipsing through the hills to look for the escaped monster, but Juliette doubted they would find anything. Not with their level of incompetence. By the time she summoned Scarlets to drive out and search with them, she was sure the monster would be long gone.

“Outrageous,” Juliette was still grumbling as she and Roma left the railway station. “Utter outrage.”

“It is expected,” Roma replied evenly. “I imagine they have never before encountered such mass casualties.”

Irked, Juliette swiveled her narrowed eyes at him but opted to remain quiet. They had not spoken about whatever it was that had happened between them on the train, and if that was the way Roma wanted to play it, then Juliette was happy to oblige. It seemed that they were to pretend it never happened, even if Juliette could hardly look in Roma’s direction now without all the little hairs on her arms sticking up.

She shouldn’t have kissed him back.

He hated her, but that didn’t override their whole past, nor the instinctive tug that had always drawn them into collision with each other like meteors in orbit. Juliette knew what was going on in his head because it was exactly what she had been circling around some few months ago, so why had she become so thoughtless as to give in? Even if he didn’t hate her as deeply as he said he did, it was all the more dangerous. The whole point of lying to him was to keep him away. The whole point was that they couldn’t do this again, because the moment he saw through her, then their city of blood would catch up to them, and perhaps they could be together at last if it was together in death.

And what was love if all it did was kill?

“—a car?”

With a start, Juliette realized she hadn’t been listening, and only now registered Roma’s suggestion, glancing upon the road. After handling the bodies, they had asked an officer for the directions to their destination, and the route was a simple, albeit hefty walk. Kunshan itself was classified a city, but it was a far cry from Shanghai. Rather than a living, breathing entity that turned inside out upon itself in an effort to find space, Kunshan was a small lasso on a map: a grouping of ten or so quiet towns that sat side by side with little activity past its day-to-day humdrum energy. This place was easy to navigate because it was quiet and still, but that also meant it was impossible to hide within, should they pick up a tail.

“No, we can’t take a car,” Juliette replied. She peered over her shoulder, eyeing the few officers that remained standing by the railway station, deep in conversation. “The blackmailer is onto us. We would be too easy to follow.”

Roma looked back too, frowning when he saw that Juliette was still watching Kunshan’s useless administrative officers. “Them?”

“Obviously not.”

Juliette hurried along. At this rate, the sun would have set by the time they reached the address. The cold was biting enough already, but once night fell, it would be almost unbearable to stand outside, especially when Juliette’s thick coat was a tad more fashionable than it was practical.

“However, I thought about it,” she continued. “That man was sent after us in the train car, but he took his damn time transforming. Paul Dexter is the one who vaccinated me, so I cannot imagine that his collaborator does not know I am immune. They weren’t trying to kill us. They were trying to scare us, collateral damage be damned.”

A bell rang somewhere in the distance. Its echoes bounced down the flat row of buildings erected stoutly on the other side of the road. As Roma and Juliette walked along the footpath, a thin river flowed gently on their left, lapping into the fading evening.

Sometimes Juliette forgot that this was how the rest of the country lived. The farther one receded from the coastal cities, they also receded from coastal control, from power-hungry Nationalists and invading foreigners. They receded away from places where every move felt like life and death, and instead . . .

The river trickled into a wider stream. When a small bird came to perch upon a rock jutting from the riverbed, it barely disturbed the flow of the water.

Instead, they had the space to breathe.

“Believe it or not,” Roma said now. “This monster attack was a good thing.”

Juliette pulled her attention away from the water, searching for the next street sign. The last thing they needed was to get lost. “I do beg your pardon. The bodies on their way to the morgue would argue otherwise.”

“Heaven rest their souls, obviously I do not wish for more death.” Roma’s words were edged with a bite. “When we return to Shanghai, I can root through every White Flower within our ranks until I find exactly who that Frenchman was. And if our trip here does not prove useful, then finding whoever that monster was may be the fastest way to trace back to the blackmailer.”

Juliette didn’t see a point in arguing. Nothing was stopping Roma from refusing to share the information with her if their next course of action was solely down to him, but if she got heated about it, then he got heated back, and they would start screaming at each other again because it was too easy to lean into anger just for a split second of truth. For a sign that Juliette wasn’t entirely lost to him, Roma would pick a fight. In a moment of weakness to glimpse the Roma she loved, Juliette would entertain it. It was a volatile game. She needed to stop. She couldn’t keep doing this. If she had to turn cold, then so be it.

So all Juliette said aloud was “I hope this trip proves useful, then.”

She gestured for them to move along, glancing once more over her shoulder.

“I suspect we are here,” Roma said.

He stopped, looking at the sight ahead with an undisguised puzzlement stamped into his expression. Juliette, too, searched along the row of shops, thinking that they were misunderstanding something.

They were not.

The address for the alleged vaccine center was a wonton shop.

“They advertised this place across the whole French Concession,” Juliette exclaimed. She couldn’t hold back the accusatory tone in her voice, though she was not quite sure whom she was putting at blame here. “It cannot possibly be a scheme just to have more customers for a bowl of húntún tāng.”

Roma suddenly pulled two revolvers from the inside of his suit jacket, one tucked on each side. Juliette blinked at his fast handiwork and absently wondered how she had not felt them when she was pressed up against him earlier.

“It cannot be a mere shop,” he said. “Let’s go, Juliette.”

By the time Juliette retrieved her pistol, Roma had already charged ahead and kicked in the shop door. Juliette hurried after him—feeling rather foolish to be storming into a wonton shop of all places—and found Roma by the register, demanding an audience with whoever had the nerve to be distributing a new vaccine. In the far corner, there was one elderly couple in the shop, eyes wide and concerned.

“Please, please!” the man behind the register shrieked, immediately putting his hands up. He was old too, but at the end of middle age, hair long and pulled back with a band. “Don’t shoot! I am not who you are looking for!”

Juliette tucked her pistol away, making eye contact with the elderly couple and jabbing a sharp thumb toward the door. Not needing to be prompted twice, they hobbled to their feet and gathered their bags, scuttling out of the shop. The door slammed after them so quickly that the ceiling light flickered.

“Then who is?” Roma asked. “Who owns this place?”

The man’s throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed nervously. “I—I do.”

While Roma kept his weapons upon the shop owner, Juliette leaned onto the register and peered around the back of the shop. A cursory sweep revealed a table dusted with flour, a lump of dough hardening by the sink, and there, by the chair—

“Well, I see that the flyers originated from here, so no use lying your way out,” Juliette said cheerily. “Lǎotóu, how are you making the vaccine?”

The man blinked, his clear terror suddenly morphing into confusion. “Making . . . the vaccine?” he echoed. “I—” His head pivoted back to Roma, eyes crossing to stare down the barrel of the revolver. “No! I am not making anything! I am auctioning off the last vial that remains from the Larkspur of Shanghai.”

Juliette pushed off the register. She exchanged a fast glance with Roma, and then, caring little for social propriety, she climbed right up on the counter in her heels and hopped into the back of the shop, retrieving one of the flyers. It was identical to the one that Ernestine de Donadieu had given them, down to the error-riddled French. Only this time, Juliette realized exactly what mistake they had made.

The madness arrives again! Get vaccinated!

Where did it say that the location upon the advertisement would be giving out vaccinations? They had merely assumed, because that was what the Larkspur’s flyers had said.

“Tā mā de,” Juliette cursed, throwing the flyer down. “You have one?”

The man nodded eagerly, seeing it was this information getting the two gangsters off his back. “I was hoping to collect offers from foreigners, then sell to the highest bidder. I am low on cash, you see. It is not easy running a húntún shop in Kunshan, and when my cousin from Shanghai passed along this vial he had held on to—”

“Oh, stop talking, I do beg,” Juliette interrupted, holding a hand up. This was not a vaccine center at all. This was an auction.

With a sigh, Roma withdrew his revolvers, shoving them back into his jacket. He was visibly annoyed. This had been a waste of time. What could they do with one vial? They had already asked Lourens at the White Flower labs to test the vaccine the last time around in an effort to re-create it, but he had not been successful.

Juliette’s eyes widened suddenly.

Lourens had failed in the past . . . but the Scarlets had Paul’s papers now.

“I’ll take it,” Juliette said, her declaration coming so loud and so abrupt that the man jumped. In a smooth motion, Juliette bent and swept up the flyer, then plucked a fountain pen from the side of the register, scribbling down a number. “My offer.”

The man peered at the sum, his jaw dropping immediately. “I—I cannot simply agree. I must send telegrams in case there are higher bidders—”

“Double it,” Roma cut in. When Juliette’s gaze shot to him sharply, he smiled, the expression mocking. “We will share, won’t we, Miss Cai?”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Juliette demanded in Russian. She pasted on her own smile, so that the shop owner would not realize they had switched to a different language to argue. They didn’t need the shop owner deciding his vaccine was in high demand. “You already ran tests, remember? Lourens couldn’t reengineer it; he could only determine that it was true.”

“Yes,” Roma agreed. “That time we did not have materials from Paul Dexter. Remember, we can still steal them from you. And if you want this vial that badly, I am sure you think having it will cause a breakthrough alongside the papers.”

Juliette almost started vibrating with her new irritation. He had read her through and through. He always did.

“If shàoyé and xiǎojiě each want their own . . . ,” the man supplied, hands wringing in front of him. There was a new nervousness in his air. He had figured it out, then. Connected the dots on Juliette’s and Roma’s identities, for as soon as Roma had called her Miss Cai, it was not hard to see that the heirs of the Shanghai-native Scarlet Gang and Russian White Flowers stood before him.

“There were two in circulation after the Larkspur went under.” He reached for another slip of paper, and with the same fountain pen Juliette had been using, quickly began scribbling. “The second is in Zhouzhuang, so this is the seller and address—”

“Forget it,” Juliette said. “We only need one, so don’t think you can siphon double the money from us. Take it or leave it.”

The shop owner paused. Juliette could imagine the cogs turning in his head, calculating the chances that there could be a higher bidder, and the risks he would invite if he turned down Shanghai’s gangsters.

Without a word, the man dropped into a crouch and started to enter a combination into a safe under the register, one that Juliette had not even noticed. She frowned, and he seemed to sense it, because as he twirled the combination dial, he said, “People get desperate, and I cannot afford guards.”

The safe hissed open. The man reached in, and out came the vial, glistening the same lapis lazuli blue that Juliette remembered. She shuddered.

“I don’t suppose you have cash on you, do you?”

“We’ll sign IOUs,” Roma replied without missing a beat. The shop owner knew who they were, after all. He knew they were big and mighty enough to keep their word; the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers had the money.

All they had was money, really.

“Well, thank you for your business,” the shop owner said gleefully, watching Roma and Juliette scrawl their names on the same sheet Juliette had scribbled her offer on. He was right to be gleeful—he had just become very, very rich. The two gangs would feel the effect of this payment, but it was nothing they couldn’t recover from. The Scarlets had recovered time and time again after paying the blackmailer.

“I will be holding on to this,” Juliette said, gesturing for the vial and shooting Roma a warning glance.

Roma did not complain. He let the shop owner press the vial into Juliette’s hands, and while her palm was out, the man tucked in the slip of paper with the address of the second seller.

“You should take this anyway.”

Juliette shoved both into her pocket. Roma only watched the motion warily, his eyes glowering black, like he suspected she would perform a magic trick to make the vial disappear. She wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to make a grab for it at some point on their way back into the city.

Don’t even think about it, she mouthed.

Wouldn’t imagine it, he mouthed back.

“So,” the man said into the silence that had fallen. “Would you two like a bowl of wontons?”