Thirty-Five

Thirty-Five

Bàba!” Juliette exclaimed. “Please, tell me what’s going on!”

The house was in disarray, overtaken by activity. At first Juliette had thought they were assembling their forces to fight against the attack. Messengers had been sent out the door at rapid speed, but as soon as she listened in on exactly what her father’s men were saying, it seemed that it was not a defense they were putting up. They were summoning Nationalists to the door, gathering forces inward. They were bringing together the Scarlet inner circle, the business tycoons who held properties in the city.

Now they were here in abundance, greeting Lord Cai briefly and hurriedly, eyes darting back and forth like there was something urgently pressing on their heels. The moment her father came up the stairs, Juliette lunged for his sleeve, holding on tightly.

“What’s going on?” she tried again when he continued walking forward. “Why would the blackmailer strike now—”

“It was never one blackmailer,” Lord Cai replied evenly. Pausing before his office, already humming with noise inside, he eased her grip off his sleeve, then smoothed the fabric of his shirt down until it was free of wrinkles. “It was the Communists. It has always been the Communists.”

Juliette felt her face furrow, all her muscles pinching together. “No, I told you, they’re working with the Communists, but those were Paul’s insects. One of the monsters is a Frenchman.”

Lord Cai opened his office door, then gestured for Juliette to stay put. He wasn’t allowing her to follow him in.

“Not now, Juliette,” he said. “Not now.”

The door closed in Juliette’s face. For a minute Juliette could only stand there, blinking in disbelief. It had been laughable of her to think that she would be accepted into this gang once Tyler was gone, that Tyler was the only thing standing between her and complete recognition. They let her feel powerful, running about the city like she could solve all its problems, but as soon as true trouble came . . .

They closed the damn door in her face.

Juliette took a step back, practically seething through her teeth.

“Miss Cai?”

A pitter-patter of footsteps came up behind her. Juliette turned and found a young messenger holding a note out for her.

“For you,” he said.

Juliette scrubbed a hand over her face, then took the note. “How come you weren’t sent out into the city with everyone else?”

The messenger grimaced. “I—er—if you don’t need me, I’ll be off now!”

He fled before Juliette could get another word in. She almost called out again to summon the messenger back, but then she unfolded her note and stopped short. It was written in Russian. The messenger had not been a Scarlet at all, but a White Flower.

Come quickly. The safe house. We have Rosalind.

—♥

“Kathleen!” Juliette bellowed. She was already sprinting down the hallway, coming to a sharp stop outside her cousin’s bedroom, her heels practically making skid marks in the flooring.

Kathleen scrambled up from her bed. “Do we know what’s happening?”

“We have something better,” Juliette said. “Get your coat. Roma found Rosalind.”

When Roma opened the door to the safe house, it was so dark inside that Juliette could hardly see anything past his shoulder. As soon as she and Kathleen stepped in, Roma closed the door again and the apartment fell into utter black.

“What is this, an ambush?” Juliette remarked, flipping her lighter on. The first sight that flickered to life was Benedikt and Marshall, both standing by the stove and grimacing like they were bracing for something.

The second was Rosalind, gagged and tied to a chair.

“Oh my God,” Kathleen cried, starting forward immediately. “What—”

“Make her promise not to yell before you take that out,” Roma cut in quickly. He finally flicked on the overhead light, then sighed when Kathleen didn’t listen, yanking at Rosalind’s gag. It was only a small wad of fabric that once bundled vegetables; if Rosalind had really tried, she might have been able to spit it out.

“No yelling,” Marshall emphasized. “One shout and the Nationalists will come knocking.”

“Don’t you tell me not to yell,” Rosalind grumbled. “I’ll—”

“Rosalind,” Juliette cut in.

Her cousin fell quiet. There was no running this time. There was nowhere to go. The streets outside were crawling with soldiers, their numbers gathered thickly after the panic that had erupted near the railway station. The attack had happened too close to the International Settlement. One wrong move, and the British would start firing along the borders.

Juliette walked to the window, unwilling to face Rosalind quite yet. She pulled at the boards, peering through the slivers.

“How did they stop the attacks?” she asked.

“They didn’t,” Benedikt answered. “The monsters retreated of their own volition.”

Juliette sucked in a tight breath. Thinned her lips. Crossed her arms—maybe crossed them a bit too tightly and looked as if she was reaching for a weapon, gauging by the way Benedikt made a noise of alarm.

Roma rolled his eyes at his cousin, gesturing for him to step back and get out of the way as Juliette wound around the table, coming to a stop beside Kathleen, in front of Rosalind.

“Was it because of you?” Juliette asked quietly. “Did they retreat because of you?”

“No,” Rosalind replied.

Across the room, Benedikt and Marshall exchanged a nervous glance. Roma leaned into the table, his body inclining in Juliette’s direction. Kathleen bit her lip and shifted to her left until she was against the wall.

“Rosalind,” Juliette said. Her voice cracked. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what you did.”

“Who said I needed help?” Rosalind replied. There was no malice in her tone. Only a faint, faint sense of dread. “I am a lost cause, Junli.”

If the table hadn’t been behind her, Juliette would have staggered back, guts twisting at the sound of her name. The last time Rosalind might have used it was when they were children. When they were barely taller than the rosebushes in the gardens, jumping over each other in a game of leapfrog, diving into the piles of leaves the household staff were trying to sweep and giggling when they messed it all up.

“Oh, don’t try that with me.”

“Juliette!” Kathleen hissed.

Juliette didn’t relent. She plunged her hand into her pocket and dug out the list they had retrieved, unfolding the paper with a brisk snap. “This was on your desk, Rosalind,” she said. “Pierre Moreau, Alfred Delaunay, Edmond Lefeuvre, Gervais Carrell, Simon Clair—five names, and if my guess is correct, five monsters. It is a simple question: Are you the blackmailer?”

Rosalind looked down in lieu of answering. Juliette threw the paper to the floor with a loud curse, her foot stamping on the list.

“Wait, Juliette.” Roma bent over to pick up the piece of paper. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have made much of the curiosity in his voice. Only then Benedikt and Marshall surged forward too, the three of them pale under the hazy bulb light, leaning in to read the list like it was something incomprehensible.

“What is it?” Juliette demanded.

“Simon Clair?” Benedikt muttered.

“Alfred Delaunay,” Marshall added, rocking back on his heels. “Those are . . .”

“Dimitri’s men,” Roma finished. He passed the list back to Juliette, but Kathleen reached over and intercepted it. “Those are all Dimitri Voronin’s men.”

For all Juliette knew, the ground underneath her feet had crumbled to pieces. She was in free fall, her stomach suspended in motion. Rosalind did not deny it, did not offer another explanation. Nor did she do anything to resist when Juliette reached forward and pulled out the chain around her neck. It glimmered under the light, but Juliette paid no attention to hidden jewels. Instead, she flipped over the flat strip of metal at the necklace’s end, running her finger across the engraving on the other side.

Воронин

Juliette choked out a laugh. Half gasping, half guffawing, she was almost struggling to catch her breath when Roma pulled her back gently, easing her grip off Rosalind’s necklace before she could rip the chain off and strangle her cousin with it.

“Don’t judge me,” Rosalind said. Her eyes flickered between Juliette and Roma. “Not when you clearly did the same.”

“The same?” Juliette echoed. She couldn’t stand here anymore. She pushed off the table and marched to the other side of the room, gulping in air.

If Juliette had thought hard enough, perhaps she could have worked it out sooner, could have stopped this. She had always known: Rosalind was angry—angry at the world, at the place she had been given. But what she wanted was not to change her place; it was to find something that made her place worth it.

Juliette turned to Rosalind, her eyes stinging. “I decided to love a White Flower,” she managed, each word slicing at her tongue. “You helped a White Flower set destruction onto this city. It is not the same!”

“I loved him,” Rosalind said. She denied none of it. She was too prideful to deny it once she had been caught. “Tell me, if Roma Montagov had asked, wouldn’t you have done it too?”

“Don’t speak about me as if I’m not right here in the room,” Roma interrupted before Juliette could answer. His tone was stern, if only to disguise how shaken he was. “Juliette, sit down. You look as though you are near fainting.”

Juliette folded herself upon the floor and dropped her head into her hands. Wasn’t Rosalind right, in a way? However it had happened, she had loved Dimitri enough to betray her family, feed him information to whatever ends he wanted. Juliette had loved Roma enough to kill her own cousin in cold blood. Rosalind was a traitor, but so was she.

Marshall cleared his throat. “Just to be sure that I am following,” he said. “Dimitri Voronin . . . is the blackmailer? And you are his lover—”

“Not anymore,” Rosalind cut in.

Marshall took the correction in stride. “You were his lover, both his source for Scarlet information and his”—he trailed off, thinking briefly—“what? Monster keeper?”

Rosalind turned her head away. “Untie me, and I will give you answers.”

“Don’t.”

The command came from Kathleen, who had remained quiet until now. The ceiling light flickered, and underneath it, Kathleen’s eyes looked utterly black.

“You owe us that much, Rosalind,” Kathleen said. She tossed the paper onto the table; by now, Kathleen had scrunched up the list so much that it was nothing but a tiny ball, bouncing off the surface and flying to the floor. “I won’t tell you how deeply you have betrayed us. I think you know. So speak.”

Slowly, Juliette put a hand on the floor and started to get back onto her feet. “Kathleen—”

Kathleen spun. “Don’t defend her. Don’t even think about it.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Juliette straightened to her full height, dusting off her hands. “I was going to ask you to take a step back: Rosalind is about to stand.”

Just as Rosalind shifted, Benedikt lunged forward and yanked Kathleen toward him, stopping Rosalind from bowling her sister over with the chair’s leg and making a run for the door. Heavens knew how she expected to escape her bindings even if she got to the door.

“Yes, fine!” Rosalind snapped, finally reaching a breaking point as her chair came back down with a defeated thump! “Dimitri wanted to take over the White Flowers, and when one of his associates came in contact with Paul Dexter’s remaining monsters, I went along with his plan to destroy this city. Is that what you want to hear? That I am weak?”

“No one ever said you were weak,” Marshall replied. “Merely foolish—as the best of us have been known to fall prey to.”

Roma waved for Marshall to stop speaking.

“Backtrack,” Roma said. He looked over his shoulder briefly and exchanged a glance with Juliette. “What do you mean, take over the White Flowers? Paul Dexter’s last note went to someone in the French Concession—how did Dimitri even get ahold of it?”

If Rosalind had her hands free, this would have been the time she placed a delicate palm to her forehead, smoothing down the long wisps of hair around her face. But she was bound, subject to interrogation by family and enemy, and so she only stared ahead, her jaw tight.

“Your search through the French Concession would never have led anywhere,” Rosalind whispered. “In the event of my death, release them all. It was an instruction to the servants at a different property Paul owned in the Concession, on White Flower territory. When they didn’t pay rent, Dimitri stormed the place and found the insects before they could be released.” Her eyes closed, like she was remembering the scene. No doubt she would have been called upon to examine their findings; no doubt she must have seen to the fates of the servants, perhaps a simple bullet to shut them up, perhaps thrown into the Huangpu River so no one could follow Paul Dexter’s last trail.

“Lord Cai will kill you for this,” Kathleen said quietly.

Rosalind blew a harsh breath through her nose, feigning an amusement that didn’t land. “Lord Cai hardly has the time. Don’t you wonder why Dimitri thinks he can stage a coup? Don’t you wonder where he got the nerve?” Her gaze shot up, landing right on Juliette. “The Scarlets and the Nationalists are working together to purge the city of Communists. As soon as the Kuomintang armies are ready, they will open fire on the city. Dimitri is waiting. He waits for that moment, and in the struggle, it will be him who comes in like a savior with his guns and money and allied Communists, driving the Nationalist effort back. It will be Dimitri who rises just as the workers are at their lowest, and he will give them hope, and when he is the prize force of the revolution, he will have the power he wants.”

The safe house fell quiet. All that could be heard was faint shouting outside, as if soldiers were nearing. Quickly, Marshall walked to the window and peered through the cracks again. The others in the room remained where they stood, ignoring everything beyond their four walls.

For whatever absurd reason, Juliette’s mind went to the assassin who had come after the merchant at the Grand Theatre. There was no greater scheme; there never had been. It was merely Dimitri trying to stir trouble with Roma’s tasks. It was merely Dimitri, intent on taking the White Flowers for himself.

“Where did you hear this from?” Benedikt asked in horror. “Why would you have information about secret Scarlet plans when even Juliette does not?”

Another laugh. Another dry, bitter sound that held no humor.

“Because Juliette is not a spy,” she replied. “I am. Juliette did not lurk in the corners listening to her father. I did.”

Juliette’s pulse was beating so hard that the skin of her wrists trembled with movement. Roma reached over and squeezed her elbow gently.

“How long might we have?” Juliette asked, the question directed at Kathleen. “If the Nationalists decide to purge everyone with Communist alignment out of the Kuomintang?”

Kathleen shook her head. “It’s hard to say. They haven’t come to an agreement with the foreign concessions yet. They might wait until jurisdiction settlements are made. They might not.”

A purge itself was bad enough. But monsters and madness loosed on the gangsters that went in with guns blazing? It would be slaughter on both sides.

“We have to stop Dimitri before the Scarlets do anything,” Juliette said, almost speaking to herself. It was impossible to put a stop to politics. But monsters could be found, and the men who controlled them could be killed.

“Should we?”

Juliette looked at Kathleen sharply. “What?”

“It might help,” Kathleen said quietly. “If the Scarlet Gang is organizing massacre, setting chaos onto our side might help save the workers.”

“Don’t get brainwashed.” That was Marshall—cutting in. “You can’t control an infectious madness. Besides, your Scarlets have practically been overtaken by the Nationalists. You haven’t had true power for months. You cut down a few of your numbers, and the armies only bring more in.”

The room grew quiet again. There was no easy answer to any of this.

“Benedikt,” Roma said after a long moment. “Do we know where Dimitri is?”

Benedikt shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since the takeover. I don’t think anyone has seen him since the takeover. He hasn’t been around the house. All his men are scattered. Lord Montagov even suspected he might have been killed during the battle in Zhabei.”

“But he is alive,” Juliette said, her eyes pinned on Rosalind. “Isn’t he, biǎojiě?”

“Alive,” Rosalind confirmed. “Only I don’t know where.”

“Then I’ll ask again . . .”

A click echoed through their tight space. Juliette knew it was disbelief that had every gaze in the room reacting so slowly, that caused the stunned, gaping alarm when Juliette pointed her pistol at her cousin, the safety off.

“I want his location,” Juliette said. “Don’t think I won’t do it, Rosalind.”

Kathleen started forward, panic setting into her eyes. “Juliette—”

“Wait.” Roma stepped in front of Kathleen quickly, keeping her out of Juliette’s way. “Just wait.”

“I am telling the truth,” Rosalind snapped. She pulled against her ropes to little avail. After all these years, she knew that Juliette did not wave around her pistol to make an empty threat. Juliette might not aim for the heart, but a body had many expendable parts. “You wouldn’t even have caught me if I hadn’t heard screaming about a monster attack and followed the sounds in an attempt to stop it. That was out of my own goodness. I have been trying to find Dimitri too! The men inside the monsters don’t listen to me anymore!”

Juliette’s grip tightened. The pistol in her hand trembled.

“I don’t know where he is!” Rosalind spat, increasingly agitated. “He used to base his operations from an apartment on Avenue Joffre—the one he took over from Paul’s people—but he moved. He wouldn’t risk it with the French Concession so carefully watched after the takeover. He is out of my reach!”

“Forgive me,” Juliette said, “if I don’t believe you.”

Her hand stilled. In her head, she counted to three, just to afford her cousin one last chance.

But when she reached three, it was not her gun that deafened the safe house with sound. It was the door, shuddering with explosive effort—once, twice, and then before Juliette and Roma could dart for it and hold it closed, it had blown open, halting the two in their tracks.

Juliette’s pistol was still raised when General Shu came in, followed by so many soldiers that half of them were forced to remain outside, lest the apartment overspill.

“Not one step farther,” Juliette demanded. Her eyes darted to the side. In that brief second of eye contact, she and Roma were silently asking each other how the Nationalists had found them and what the Nationalists wanted—but neither had an answer. All that was for sure was they had been found: Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov, colluding together.

But General Shu, as he ignored Juliette and took a step in, was not even looking at them. Nor did he take note of Rosalind in the corner, bound to a chair. With an expression akin to amusement, he merely examined the room, like he was a new tenant searching for a place to rent.

“Put your weapon down, Miss Cai,” General Shu said, finishing his perusal and resting his hands at his belt. There, a vast selection of handguns sat at the ready, dangling from the leather. “I’m not here for you.”

Juliette narrowed her eyes. Her finger twitched on the trigger. “Then why bring so many soldiers?”

“Because”—he signaled for the men behind him—“I heard that my son was alive and well, and I have come to fetch him back.”

At once, the soldiers raised their firearms, pointed at one person in the room.

“Hello, Bàba,” Marshall spat. “You have terrible timing.”