Thirty-One

Thirty-One

Numbly, Juliette removed her hands from Tyler’s body. They were coated in red up to her wrists. Her fingers were wet, slick with the viscosity of blood.

For a long moment, the alley was quiet and still, frozen like a film that had become stuck on its reel. Then Alisa darted forward and flung herself at Roma, who opened his arms for her, his face shell-shocked. He stared at Juliette, Juliette stared at her hands, and the only one who seemed to have some sense remaining was Benedikt, who called, “Juliette, you should probably tell him now.”

A harsh, salt-soaked gust of wind blew at Juliette’s hair, obscuring her vision when she looked up. Some faint argument had broken out afar in tandem with dimly chiming bells—striking twelve times to signal noon, each echo adding to the white noise in her ears.

“Just my two cents,” Benedikt added softly.

Roma’s grip tightened on Alisa. He looked between Juliette and his cousin, his brow furrowing, still unable to erase the shock in his expression.

“What?” he managed faintly. His eyes shot to the corpses on the ground. “Tell me what?”

Juliette rose to her feet. It was a shaky effort. It was that feeling in dreams when she couldn’t push up from the ground, her bones as heavy as metal.

Only before Juliette could respond, she was interrupted by another voice—one that came from above, from the roof of the building pressing in on the alleyway.

“That she beat me to the shot.”

A blur of motion landed before her with a thump. Marshall Seo turned smoothly, as if he had not leaped down two stories, tugging off the cloth around his face and offering Roma a small smile.

Roma stared. And stared, and stared, and stared.

Then he ran at Marshall and hugged him so tightly that he had to thump his friend’s back to work off his excess energy. Marshall hugged Roma just as enthusiastically in return, not at all minding the attack.

“You died,” Roma gasped. “I saw you die.”

“Yes,” Marshall replied simply, “Juliette tried very hard to make sure of that.”

Suddenly, Roma released Marshall, his eyes snapping to Juliette. She could feel her distress emanating off her skin like a visible aura. She didn’t know how to stand or where to place her hands, didn’t know whether it was appropriate to try to rub the blood off or if she was to pretend she wasn’t occupying an alley with three White Flowers while all her Scarlets lay dead around her.

Roma’s mouth opened. Before he could demand an explanation, Juliette was already speaking, her eyes turned back to her hands. She couldn’t—couldn’t look at him.

“I had to.” Her voice cracked. “Tyler had to see your hatred. He would have destroyed us if he knew I—” Juliette broke off, her red fingers scrunching into fists. She hardly needed to elaborate. They had heard her. They all heard what she’d said to Tyler.

“Juliette.”

Juliette looked up. She lifted her chin and faked bravery, faked it like she faked every damn thing in her life—all to survive, and for what? To piece together some pathetic excuse of living surrounded by material goods and not a single shred of happiness. Her heart had never felt so heavy.

“It doesn’t matter,” Juliette said. “He can’t hurt us now, can he?”

Juliette turned away and started to walk. She could feel it—the shaking was already starting in her hands, and soon the tremors would shudder her chest, consume her whole body. She needed to leave before she could break, before her mind started to circle exactly what she had done here and how she would explain this away.

Tyler was dead. Tyler’s men were dead. The only person left to spin the tale was Juliette. She could say whatever she wanted, and the thought felt too big for her to comprehend.

“Juliette.”

Footsteps thundered after her. She picked up her pace a moment too late, a touch coming upon her wrist. Only as soon as Roma grabbed her arm, a horrific sound came from outside the alley, from North Suzhou Road, near the wide creek. They both ducked at once, heads turning toward the source.

“What was that?” Benedikt demanded. “Was that gunfire?”

The sound came again: a spray of bullets moving even closer. Like phantoms materializing from the mists, three men suddenly ran across the mouth of the alley—quickly enough that they did not sight Roma and Juliette standing there, but not so quick that Juliette couldn’t sight the red rags tied around their arms. It all seemed to happen in seconds. Where it had been quiet, the roads suspiciously empty like its business occupants were taking the day off, the city suddenly roared to life: shouting at every corner, and gunfire. Constant gunfire.

“It’s happening,” Juliette said in disbelief. Today was the twenty-first of March, by the Western calendar. “Revolution.”

“Where are they? Where are Juliette and Tyler?”

Kathleen peered down the second-floor banister, frowning at the sudden commotion. The front door slammed and the volume in the foyer increased, voices shouting atop one another. Lady Cai seemed to be giving instructions, but with so many other people speaking too, she had grown inaudible.

Kathleen hurried down the stairs. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Nobody paid her any attention. Lady Cai continued giving orders, her posture stick straight, her arms gesticulating—grouping men together and sending them out the door as if she were merely conducting some orchestral show.

“Niāngniang.” Kathleen slid herself right in front of Lady Cai. At any other time, she would never have dared. Right now, the house was in so much chaos that her aunt couldn’t tell her off. “Please. Tell me what is happening.”

Lady Cai tried to brush Kathleen aside.

“Communists are acting against Kuomintang instructions for patience,” she said distractedly. “Separate uprisings are happening across the city in an attempt to take Shanghai for the Northern Expedition.” It was then that Lady Cai cocked her head, looking at Kathleen properly. “Aren’t you our inside source on this business?”

“I—yes,” Kathleen replied, tripping over her words. She hoped she wasn’t about to get the blame for this. “I am your source. And I’ve told everyone again and again that the strikes will get larger, that their numbers will rise—”

“Nothing to worry about,” Lady Cai interrupted, her no-nonsense mode returning. “No matter what the Communists take, the Nationalists will take it back, and then it will again be in our hands. Our only problem now”—she waved her hands at the nearest group of men—“is finding where my daughter has gotten herself to before she gets herself killed.”

Kathleen watched their gangsters hurry out the door. Heard them mumble Tyler’s name, Juliette’s name.

Rosalind was missing too. And yet there was hardly a single gangster worried. They pushed and shoved to get out, piling onto the streets while the workers caused chaos, but only because they had been given the instruction to find the younger Cais, somewhere out in the city. If Lady Cai had not commanded it, would they still care?

Kathleen breathed out, stepping away from Lady Cai. Even here, at the mansion, which sat along the city’s outer boundaries, there came the sound of gunfire in the distance. There came the deep, deep rumble of the ground shifting, like something colossal had just blown up.

Juliette would be fine. She would not be so easily taken down.

Shanghai, on the other hand, was a different question.

And Rosalind, too, was another matter entirely.

Kathleen pulled her coat off the rack. She merged with a group of messengers heading out of the house, piling into a car heading for the heart of the city. She needed to find Rosalind. She needed to get her sister back before this city burned down around them.

Lady Cai walked upon the driveway, her arms folded, and locked eyes with Kathleen through the window of the car.

When the car drove off, Lady Cai did not protest.

Juliette watched a brothel owner wander out onto her balcony, her silk billowing in the wind. In seconds, she was shot from below, and with a spray of red, tumbled over the railing onto the hard cement ground.

The worker who had fired the bullet did not pause. He was already moving on, joining a crusade of others in their hunt for another target.

Juliette slammed back inside the alley, her hand flying to her mouth, the metallic tang of the drying blood hitting her tongue. She knew violence. She was used to it, used to bloodshed and hatred . . . but this? This was on a scale wholly unknown. This was not a feud between gangs in a contained face-off. This was the whole city rising up from the gutters, and it seemed riots and protests were no longer enough.

Once the workers were finished, the Nationalists would come in to claim an allied victory. And depending on when the blackmailer decided to show their face, it would soon turn into a civil war fought with monsters and madness. Juliette supposed she should be grateful this revolution was merely an exercise in bullets right now. The monsters were being conserved. Squirreled away until the real claim for power.

“We have to go,” Benedikt declared. “I’m sorry, Juliette, but you’ll have to leave the bodies here.”

“No matter,” Juliette replied quietly, wiping at her face. Perhaps when they were found later, the workers would be blamed for the deaths. Perhaps she wouldn’t need to be more terrible. She could just be a murderer instead of a murderer and a liar.

Another round of heavy gunfire. They had to take the back roads out. There was no way they could venture along the main creek and not be shot immediately.

“Where are we going to go?” Alisa whispered. There was something in her hands. She had retrieved Tyler’s book, hugging it to her chest. “What sort of—”

Marshall shushed her, then gestured for them to press against the wall, remaining very still while a group gathered close to the alley, yelling instructions at one another to fan out. This was not just an opportunity to incite chaos. With the machine guns coming out, the workers were trying to take Shanghai from the hands of imperialists and gangsters.

It was exactly what both the Scarlets and the White Flowers had feared.

“We have a safe house two streets away,” Benedikt reported quietly when the gunshots seemed to move in the other direction. “Let’s go.”

Marshall touched Juliette’s elbow. “Come with us.”

Juliette startled. She could still feel Roma’s eyes on her.

“No,” she said. “No, I have my own.”

The ground shook under their feet. Somewhere, somehow, something was blowing up. On the other side of the creek, the nearest factory’s windows all shattered into dust.

There was no time to lose. They needed to disperse.

Juliette bent and picked up the pistol she had tossed, trying hard not to look at her cousin’s body. “Stay inside until this blows over. When it ends, Shanghai will not be the same city.” She made to leave, and for the second time, Roma lunged out quickly and grabbed her wrist. This time Juliette finally whirled to face him, her teeth gritted.

“Roma, let go.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“The hell you are.”

“Quit running from me,” Roma snapped. “We need to talk.”

“Really?” Juliette exclaimed. A bullet struck the mouth of the alley, and Juliette knew that they had been spotted. “You want to talk now? While the city undergoes revolution?”

Behind them, Benedikt and Marshall were wide-eyed, uncertain if they needed to step in and facilitate this. They could either demand that Juliette to accept it, or persuade Roma to back off, and neither option seemed very likely to have success. Only Alisa offered a little thumbs-up as Roma turned over his shoulder, waiting to see if another bullet was coming.

“Benedikt, Marshall,” he said. There was a note of awe in his voice that he could at last say those two names together again, the way that things were supposed to be—the return to a normal he knew even if the world around him was splitting apart. “Please take Alisa to the safe house.”

“Roma—”

“I’m standing here until Juliette agrees to talk,” he warned. “If the workers storm this alley, then they themselves can move me.”

Juliette stared at him, flabbergasted. “You have lost your mind.”

True to his word, he was unmoving as Benedikt and Marshall exchanged a quick nod, nudging Alisa to hurry and go. Alisa reached over to squeeze Roma’s arm as they passed by, whispering a quick, “Stay safe,” before the three of them disappeared. Then it was only Roma and Juliette and an alley soaked in red.

“It is not a difficult choice, Juliette,” he said. Voices now, coming right by the main road, seconds away from turning into the alley. “We can leave, or we can die here.”

Juliette felt the press of his fingers on her wrist. She wondered if he noticed her pulse beating a cacophony under his touch.

“For crying out loud,” she said darkly, shaking his grip loose so that his fingers entwined with hers instead, blood mixing on skin, pulling him away from the mouth of the alley. “You are so dramatic.”

Just as the workers rounded into the alley and loosed their ammunition, Juliette and Roma disappeared through the narrow back passages and merged into the city.