Twenty-Five

Twenty-Five

Benedikt didn’t put away his weapon as he followed Juliette through the city. He didn’t trust her. He couldn’t guess how she might sidle out of this, couldn’t pick out the clear sign of a lie when she had winced at Roma’s unconscious form in that alleyway and waved for Benedikt to walk alongside her, but there was plenty of time between now and wherever they were going for Juliette to run—or God forbid, retrieve her own weapon and shoot.

She didn’t pull out any weapon.

She only continued walking forward, her step certain, like she had walked this route a thousand times before. Benedikt was developing a tic in his cheek. He could hardly think long on what Juliette had said lest he lose his mind before he saw the truth for himself. He had the urge to smack his palm against something, to stamp his feet down until his shoes were in pieces. He did nothing. He only followed, obedient and blank-faced.

Juliette stopped outside a nondescript building, its exterior small and faded enough that it blended right into all the walls and windows nearby. There were three steps that went up into the building, and through the open entranceway, there was a single door pressed right by the entrance, two or three paces away from a staircase that continued winding up. Benedikt listened. Past the howl of the wind, there was very little to be heard. The upper levels of this building were likely vacant.

Benedikt jumped, the gun in his hand twitching, when Juliette plopped herself down upon a crate outside the apartment door.

“I’ll wait out here,” she said. “Door’s unlocked around these times.”

Benedikt blinked. “If this is a trick—”

“Oh, spare me! Just go in.”

His hand came down on the handle. For whatever reason—or for every reason, he supposed—his heartbeat was raging like a war drum in his chest. The door eased open, and he stepped into the dim apartment, eyes adjusting while the door clicked behind him on its own. For a moment he did not know what to look for: a stovetop, papers scattered on a table, a shelf, and then . . .

There. Like a goddamn specter raised from the dead, Marshall Seo was lounging on a shabby mattress. Hearing the intrusion in the room, Marshall casually glanced up from the wood carving he was working on, then did a rapid double-take, bolting to his feet.

“Ben?” he exclaimed.

He was paler. His hair was shorter, but uneven, as if he had taken a pair of scissors with his own hands and hacked away, doing a piss-poor job at the back.

Benedikt could not move, could not say anything. He gaped like a fish, all wide eyes and loose hanging mouth, staring and staring, because this was Marshall, alive and walking and right in front of him.

“Benedikt,” Marshall said again, nervously now. “Say something.”

Benedikt finally jolted to action. He picked up the nearest object he could find—an apple—and threw it at Marshall with all his strength.

“Hey!” Marshall yelped, jumping out of the way. “What gives?”

“You didn’t think to contact me?” Benedikt shouted. He picked up an orange next. It bounced off Marshall’s shoulder. “I thought you were dead! I mourned you for months! I slaughtered Scarlets in your name!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Marshall kept darting around, trying to avoid being target practice. “It had to be this way. It was too dangerous to tell you. Juliette’s reputation is on the line if this gets out—”

“I don’t care about Juliette! I care about you!”

Suddenly Benedikt and Marshall both froze—the former remembering that Juliette was still within hearing range and the latter realizing that she must be outside if Benedikt was here.

There came a shuffling sound on the other side of the door and then Juliette, clearing her throat.

“You know what?” she called. “I think I might go take a walk.”

Her heels clicked off, fading into the distance. Benedikt felt like a hole had been punctured in his lungs as he leaned up against the table, all that fury and anger he had been carrying inside him finding nowhere to go and opting to deflate and deflate and deflate instead. He had expected to explode outward, to at last rid the darkness in his chest by seeking revenge and directing a very sharp object at Juliette. Instead, the darkness had turned to light, and now he was an overwrought light bulb, close to implosion when the vacuum space inside shattered.

“She didn’t have to save me,” Marshall said softly, when it looked like Benedikt was at a loss. Benedikt remained staring at the table, both his hands pressed to the flat surface. Slowly, Marshall crept nearer until he was right beside Benedikt. He opted to lean against the table, the two of them facing different directions. “She could have killed me and secured complete power, but she didn’t.”

“She has been hiding you?” Benedikt asked, his head lurching up. “Here? All this time?”

Marshall nodded. “If Tyler Cai finds out, it is not merely a fight that will result. It is Juliette’s entire position. She will be ousted.”

“She could have avoided pretending to kill you in the first place,” Benedikt muttered.

“And have us all die at the Scarlets’ hand in that hospital?” Marshall asked. “Come on, Ben. I already had a bullet in my stomach. If she hadn’t sent them running in those few minutes, I would have bled out.”

Benedikt scrubbed at his face. Try as he might to be resentful, he had no alternative to offer.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Perhaps Juliette Cai knew what she was doing.”

Marshall reached out and punched Benedikt’s shoulder. It was something he had done thousands of times before. Benedikt’s pulse picked up regardless, like the weight of his newfound knowledge added to the weight of the hit.

“I owed it to her to lie low,” Marshall said, not noticing the turmoil unraveling right beside him. “Well, when people on the streets weren’t trying any funny business, at least. Otherwise I was lying low.”

“Funny business?” Benedikt echoed.

Marshall picked up a cloth on the table and mimed tying it to his face. In a flash, Benedikt saw that dark figure on the rooftop again, the one who had shot all those Scarlets when he had been badly outnumbered.

“That was you.”

“Of course it was,” Marshall replied, his dimples deepening. “Who else would keep such a close eye on you?”

Benedikt’s breath left him in a whoosh. The air in the room grew still, or maybe that was just him, his lungs reaching critical deflation. I love you, he thought. Do you know? Have you always known? Have I always known?

A notch in Marshall’s brow formed, accompanying his hesitant smile. Marshall was confused. Benedikt was staring, and he could not stop, all the terror and devastation that had wrecked him these past few months lodged right in his throat like a physical block.

You could reach for him. Ask if he loves you back.

“Ben?” Marshall asked. “Are you okay?”

If he loved me too, wouldn’t he have told me? Wouldn’t he have come to me, come hell or high water?

Benedikt reached over suddenly, but only to hug his friend close, only to do as he had always done in all these years they had known each other. Marshall jolted but was quick to return the embrace, laughing as Benedikt pressed his chin hard into Marshall’s shoulder, like the physical sensation was enough to confirm that this was real; this was all real.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he muttered. “Don’t ever do something like that again.”

Marshall’s arms tightened. “Once is plenty, Ben.”

He’s alive, Benedikt thought, pulling back with a thin smile. That’s all that matters.

Roma awoke with a deep cough, rolling onto his side and wheezing for breath. By the time he came to, the moon was directly above him, shining into his bleary eyes. His neck was in pain. His back was in pain. Even his ankles were in pain.

But the vaccine still lay beside him, the bag untouched. So too did the papers, tucked inside.

“What the hell?” Over his head, the birds perched on the electric lines flew off at once, startled by Roma’s shout. He hadn’t seen who had knocked him out. Juliette was gone too, but there was no sign of a struggle, no blood in the alley or even a sequin fallen from her dress.

Roma got to his feet. He could only assume that it had been a Scarlet, and Juliette had either dealt with the situation or was off elsewhere leading them away. There was nothing he could do now except take the vaccine to Lourens as he had planned.

Roma trudged off.

In that alley, the birds did not come back in his absence. They knew to flee as something else stirred in Chenghuangmiao, lumbering in on two upright feet. If the people in the market had paid attention, they might have known to go too. Instead, not a soul in Chenghuangmiao thought to move until the screaming started and they looked up, finding five monstrous creatures tearing a path into the clearing.

Juliette came in through the front door of her house, shrugging her coat off when one of the maids gestured to take it. There was still activity in the kitchen, some aunt making a late-night snack, the warm glow of light crossing into the otherwise dark living room.

“Go to bed,” Juliette told the maid after she hung up the coat. “It’s late.”

“I’ll fetch you some slippers first,” the maid said. She was on the older side, likely a mother by the way she was frowning disapprovingly as Juliette rolled off her sharp and impractical heels.

Juliette sighed and collapsed sideways into the couch. “Xiè xiè!”

“Āiyā,” the maid chided, already marching out of the living room. “Bù yào shǎ.”

The maid disappeared into the hallway. If only the people of the vast and expansive Scarlet empire could see Juliette now. She looked like a paper doll more than she looked an heiress with blades for teeth.

Then the front door burst open, and Juliette jolted to her bare feet immediately, braced for war. A gust of cold came blowing in, then Tyler, dragging someone behind him. When Tyler came closer, he pulled his hostage forward too, and it was Kathleen who came into the light, stumbling to a stop in front of Juliette.

“What is the meaning of this?” Juliette demanded. She reached for Kathleen’s shoulders, giving her a cursory pat. “Are you hurt?”

“No. I’m fine,” Kathleen said, shooting Tyler a deathly glare. She rubbed her arm harshly. “Your cousin just has barnacles for brains.”

“I know you did it, Juliette,” Tyler spat. “I could smell your perfume everywhere. What was in it for you? Power? Money?”

Juliette exchanged a glance with Kathleen, who shrugged, seeming flabbergasted as well.

“What are you talking about?” Juliette asked.

Tyler’s expression turned livid. “Why are you feigning ignorance?”

“I am ignorant—what are you accusing me of?”

“The monsters, Juliette! Monsters stormed the lab and took every bit of the vaccine.”

Horrified, Juliette staggered a step back, her legs hitting the couch. She tried to school her expression, but she doubted it worked, not when a cold sweat had broken out from head to toe.

Monsters? Right after Juliette’s heist? On the same night? How could this possibly be a coincidence?

The maid returned with Juliette’s slippers then, but she took one look at the scene before her and set the slippers down by the kitchen, making a quick exit. A click echoed through the living room, the hallway door closing. Above, the chandelier gave a single chime, picking up that faint whisper of the wind.

“Did you see anything?” Juliette asked. “Was it all of them?”

“All five of them,” Kathleen answered. “We caught the last glimpse of the monsters disappearing, and yet Tyler still thinks I had a hand in it despite catching up to me from three streets away before the monsters attacked.”

Kathleen must have done as she said, distracting Tyler so Roma and Juliette could get away without being caught. But who was to know that monsters would suddenly add themselves into the equation too?

Of course . . . it wasn’t the monsters, was it? It was that damn blackmailer.

“Why else were you even there?” Tyler snapped at Kathleen.

“That’s my business, Cai Tailei! Regardless, you chased me all the way out of Chenghuangmiao. You saw how far I was from the monsters!”

“That wouldn’t have prevented you from summoning them. That wouldn’t have prevented you”—at this, he pointed a finger at Juliette—“from summoning them.”

Kathleen shook her head. “You’re being ridiculous. I’m going to go fetch Lord Cai to handle this.” She trekked up the steps before Tyler could say otherwise, disappearing from view. In her absence, the living room fell quiet: Tyler watching Juliette carefully for any tell of her guilt, and Juliette racking her brain for how it was possible that the blackmailer would strike at the same time as her. It couldn’t have been the White Flowers. Roma had been lying unconscious in an alleyway. Benedikt Montagov had been with her. No one else knew of her plans, unless Roma had sent people after him, which she could not imagine, for otherwise he would have had to explain how he came across the information.

So what happened?

“Listen,” Tyler said. His voice had lowered. “If you just come clean, I can help you. There’s no shame in admitting that you’re simply misguided.”

Juliette shook her head. “How many times do you need to hear of my innocence, Tyler?”

“It is not your innocence I want to hear. I’m trying to steer you to do what’s right. Why can’t you see that?”

There was the shuffle of footsteps from upstairs. It could have been Kathleen popping in and out of the rooms. It could have been the household staff slinking near to witness the drama. Either way, Juliette was so irritated that she could only splutter for a moment, temporarily losing grasp of every language she spoke.

“Your idea of what’s right is not gospel,” she finally managed. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the people of Shanghai dying, gouging at their own skin from a preventable madness, all because the people at the top—because people in this very household—couldn’t find it in themselves to care. “Who do you think you are to tell me what’s right?”

“I am your family,” he snapped. “If I don’t keep you in line, who will?”

“Hey!”

Kathleen’s voice cut through the argument. She was leaning upon the second-floor banister, her head visible from where Juliette and Tyler stood.

“Your father’s not here,” she reported once she had Juliette’s attention. “It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

Juliette blinked. “Lái rén!”

Almost immediately, the maid came back. She had been waiting in the hallway just outside the living room. “Would you like me to make a call to see where your father is, Miss Cai?”

And apparently there wasn’t even any shame in pretending like she wasn’t listening.

“Yes, please.”

The maid disappeared, and Kathleen came back down the stairs. As they waited, hovering in the living room, Kathleen loosened her braid and smoothed her fingers along her scalp, as if the weight of her hair was giving her a headache. Quietly, Juliette pulled a thin, needlelike knife from her sleeve and offered it. Kathleen took it with a grateful look, then stuck it into her hair for a pin.

The maid returned.

She was pale.

“Scarlet reports say Lord Cai is at the burlesque club,” she said. Juliette was already starting toward the door, ready to report to her father what nonsense was happening with the blackmailer, but then the maid went on: “The place has been locked down. He’s not letting people in.”

Juliette paused in her step, turning over her shoulder. On instinct, she looked at Kathleen, then Tyler, and they both appeared equally puzzled.

“For what reason?”

The only times she could remember her father shutting down a club or a restaurant was when someone had misbehaved, and he needed to . . .

A bolt of ice sank down Juliette’s spine. Suddenly she thought she could smell metal under her nose: the phantom scent of blood, the scent that soaked the ground each time a deal had fallen through or a secret had slipped and the men of the Scarlet inner circle needed to pay for it.

“Punishment,” the maid reported, turning even paler. “He’s just arrived. For Miss Rosalind.”

“Rosalind?” Tyler exclaimed. “The hell did she do?”

Oh merde. Juliette ran for the door, but even as she tore into the night, the maid’s answer followed her out.

“She’s the White Flower spy.”