Four

Four

Word of the attack spread through the city so quickly that by morning it was on the lips of every servant in the house. They murmured to one another while they dusted the living room, not daring to discuss White Flower casualties with any sense of pity, but moving the volume control on the radio as high as it would go, captivated by the reports coming through.

All morning, everyone waited for the inevitable, waited to hear about rising numbers. But it didn’t come. The White Flowers of the Podsolnukh had all dropped dead like this was merely the work of an assassin, not a monster bearing contagion.

Juliette ran her blade over the flat of the bowl again. She was sharpening her knives because they were as blunt as a well-fed beast, each metallic strike echoing through the house. No one seemed particularly bothered; Rosalind was sitting in the living room, blowing on the nib of a pen while she leafed through the giant tome of a French-to-English dictionary on the table.

“I’m not disturbing you, am I?” Juliette called over.

Her cousin glanced up briefly. “With your loud blade-whacking? Why, Juliette, who could possibly be disturbed?”

Juliette pretended to scowl. One of her great-aunts wandered in from the hallway at that moment, hovering between the kitchen and the living room, catching sight of Juliette just as she struck the bowl again. When Juliette switched quickly to a grin, the aunt only eyed Juliette with absolute apprehension before sidling into the living room and hurrying away.

“Now look what you did,” Rosalind remarked, arching a brow. The aunt’s footsteps faded up the staircase. “Your knives are already too sharp.”

“You take that back.” Juliette set her weapons down. “There is no such thing as too sharp.”

Rosalind rolled her eyes but didn’t say more, opting to resume her task. Curious now, Juliette turned the bowl right side up and walked over, peering at what Rosalind was writing.

Stock Report on Commercial and Economic Conditions in Shanghai Following Anti-British Boycott of 1925

“For your father?” Juliette asked.

Rosalind made an affirmative noise, her finger scanning down the page of the dictionary in front of her. Mr. Lang was a businessman located in the central city, delegated to handle the smaller Scarlet merchant trade that wasn’t important enough for Lord and Lady Cai but still important enough to keep within the family. For the last few years, he had quietly done his job, to the point where Juliette would downright forget Rosalind and Kathleen still had a father until he showed up to a family dinner as a reminder. It wasn’t as though Rosalind and Kathleen interacted with him often either, given their residence at the Cai house, and as far as Juliette knew, her two cousins didn’t want to reside with their grouchy father.

But he was still their father. And about a week ago, when he had proposed taking them out of the city to move into the countryside instead, Rosalind and Kathleen had hated the idea immediately.

“I’m trying to get as much of his affairs in order as possible,” Rosalind explained absently, flipping to the next page of the dictionary. “He’s using the excuse of politics to get out, but I also think he is sick of work. I will not be made to leave simply because my father won’t write up a few reports.”

Juliette squinted at the paper. “What on earth is a hog casing, and why are we exporting them to America?”

“Je sais pas,” Rosalind grumbled. “But prices dropped last February, so that’s all we care about.”

In truth, Juliette wasn’t quite sure she cared about that either. Her father certainly didn’t. That was the very reason why Mr. Lang was off chasing merchants about hog casings, and the inner circle of the Scarlet Gang busied itself with funneling opium and torturing police chiefs who wouldn’t fall into line with gangster rule.

Juliette came around the other side of the sofa, sinking in next to Rosalind. The cushions bounced up and down, cold leather squeaking against the beads of her dress.

“Have you seen Kathleen?”

“Not since this morning,” Rosalind answered. Her tone had turned colder, but Juliette pretended not to notice. Kathleen and Rosalind kept having little fights. If it wasn’t Kathleen getting on Rosalind’s nerves, telling her to quit doing their father’s work, it was Rosalind getting on Kathleen’s nerves, telling her to quit running around with Communists when she wasn’t on a task. There was something lurking under the surface, something that Juliette suspected neither sister was telling her, but she had no business trying to push. At the end of the day, Kathleen and Rosalind couldn’t stay mad at each other for long.

“Well, if you see her before I do,” Juliette said, “let her know there’s dinner tomorrow night. At Cheng—”

The front door of the house flew open, interrupting Juliette midsentence. A commotion stirred through the house, relatives poking their heads into the hall. When it was Tyler who hobbled in, his nose bloody and his arm looped over one of his men, Juliette only rolled her eyes. He wasn’t putting any weight on his left leg. A knife wound, perhaps.

“Cai Tailei, what in heavens happened?” an aunt asked, bustling into the foyer. Behind her, a crowd of Scarlets followed, half of them Tyler’s usual men.

“No matter,” Tyler replied, grinning even while blood dripped down his face, staining the lines between his sparkling white teeth. “Only a small skirmish with a few White Flowers. Andong, send for cleanup on Lloyd Road.”

Andong ran off immediately. The Scarlets were always fast when it came to summoning others ready for dirty work.

“What were you doing picking fights on Lloyd Road?”

Tyler’s gaze snapped in Juliette’s direction. She rose from the sofa, leaving Rosalind to her writing. Suddenly, the relatives gathering near the foyer were much more interested, heads turning back and forth between Juliette and Tyler like they were spectators in a game.

“Some of us don’t fear the foreigners, Juliette.”

“You are not showing bravery against the foreigners,” Juliette shot back, coming to a stop in front of him. “You are performing for them like a horse at the Shanghai Racecourse.”

Tyler did not rise to her bait. It was infuriating how at ease he looked, like he saw nothing wrong with the situation—with heightening the blood feud at the very center of the International Settlement, where men who knew nothing about this city governed it. The blood feud ravaged the whole city, true, but the worst of the fighting was always contained within gangster-controlled territory lines, kept out of the foreign concessions as much as they could help it. The British and the French did not need to see firsthand how wickedly the Scarlets and the White Flowers hated each other, especially now. Give them a reason—any reason—and they would try their luck with fixing the blood feud by rolling in their tanks and colonizing the land they hadn’t already taken.

“Speaking of the foreigners,” Tyler said. “There’s a visitor outside for you. I told him to wait by the gates.”

Juliette’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she furrowed her expression in irritation. It was too late; Tyler had already caught it, and he grinned wider, disappearing up the stairs and disappointing all the relatives who had gathered around to fawn.

“A foreign visitor?” Juliette muttered beneath her breath. She pushed to the front door and slipped out, forgoing her coat with the thought that she would quickly dismiss whoever it was. Suppressing a shiver, she hopped over the awry plant that had drooped onto the mansion footpath and trekked down the driveway to the front gates.

Juliette stopped dead in her tracks. “Good God,” she said aloud. “I must be hallucinating.”

The visitor looked up at the sound of her voice and, from the other side of the gate, scrambled back a few steps. It wasn’t for several delayed seconds that Juliette realized the only reason Walter Dexter had reacted in such a way was because she still clutched the knife she had been sharpening.

“Oh.” She slid the knife into her sleeve. “My apologies.”

“Not to worry,” Walter Dexter replied, rather shakily. His gaze darted left and right to the Scarlets who guarded the gate. They were pretending not to notice the conversation taking place, staring straight ahead. “I hope you have been well since we last met, Miss Cai.”

Juliette almost snorted. She had been the opposite of well, in fact, and it all started with her meeting with Walter Dexter. It was almost eerie to look upon the middle-aged man now, his pallor as gray as the thick winter sky above them. She wondered briefly if she ought to invite him in, as would be the polite thing to do, so the both of them could stop shivering in the cold, but that reminded her too much of when Paul Dexter came calling on behalf of his father. It reminded her of when she had willingly let a monster into her house before she knew of the literal monster he controlled, before she put a bullet right through his forehead.

Juliette didn’t regret it. She had made a pact with herself long ago not to despair over the people she killed. Not when they were so often men who had forfeited their lives to greed or hate. Still, she saw Paul Dexter in her nightmares sometimes. It was always his eyes—that pale green stare, looking directly at her. They had been dull when she killed him.

Walter Dexter had the same eyes.

“How can I help you, Mr. Dexter?” Juliette asked. She folded her arms. There was no point keeping up small talk when it was unlikely Walter Dexter truly cared. It did not seem like he had fared well either. He had no briefcase; nor was he wearing a suit. His dress shirt was too big, the collar loose around his neck, and his pants pockets were practically fraying into threads.

“I’ve come with something of value,” Walter Dexter said, reaching into his coat. “I’d like to sell you the remains of my son’s research.”

Juliette’s pulse jumped, each thud inside her chest suddenly picking up in pace. Archibald Welch—the middleman who ran Paul’s shipments—had said that Paul burned his notebooks after making the vaccine.

“I heard that he destroyed it all,” Juliette said carefully.

“Indeed, it is likely he would have thought to discard his primary findings.” Walter pulled a bundle of papers from his coat, neatly clipped together. “But I found these in his bookshelves. It is possible they were so unimportant that he had not the idle thought to even deal with them.”

Juliette folded her arms. “So why do you think we would want them?”

“Because I heard he passed on his chaos,” Walter replied darkly. “And before you ask, I have nothing to do with any of it. I am boarding the first ship out of here tomorrow for England.” He shook his head then, an exhale rattling his lungs. “If the madness starts again, I will not remain to see how this one plays out. But I figure you, Miss Cai, may want to counter it. Make a new vaccine, protect your people against its spread.”

Juliette eyed the merchant warily. It sounded like Walter Dexter didn’t know this madness was a targeted matter, dropped on its victims like a bomb.

“He claimed to have done it for you,” Juliette said quietly. “He took you into a period of riches, but now you are here, back where you began, and your son is dead.”

“I didn’t ask for him to do it, Miss Cai,” Walter rasped. All his age shuttered down on him, weariness sagging every line and wrinkle on his face. “I didn’t even know what he was doing until he was dead and I was paying back his debts, cursing him for trying to act the savior.”

Juliette looked away. She didn’t want to feel pity for Walter Dexter, but it twinged at her anyway. For whatever reason, her mind flashed to Tyler. At the heart of the matter, he and Paul were not so different, were they? Boys who tried to do the best for the people they cared about, not concerned for the collateral damage they might wreak in the process. The difference was that Paul had been given real power—Paul had been given a whole system that bowed at his feet—and that made him so much more dangerous than Tyler could ever be.

Slowly, Walter Dexter extended his arm through two of the bars in the gate. He almost looked like an animal at the zoo, foolishly reaching out in hopes of some food. Or perhaps Juliette was the animal inside the cage, taking poison being fed to her.

“Take a look and see if it may be useful,” Walter Dexter said, clearing his throat. “My starting price is written at the top left corner of the first page.”

Juliette received the papers, then unfolded the dog-eared corner, revealing the price. She lifted her brows. “I could buy a house with that amount.”

Walter shrugged. “Buy it or not,” he said simply. “It is not my city that is soon to suffer.”