Nine

Nine

When the last of the maids closed their doors to retire for the night, Juliette slipped out from her bedroom, clutching her basket to her chest. She made good time tiptoeing down the hallway—her mind singularly focused on making it out of the house—only then she passed Rosalind’s bedroom and noted the glow of light underneath the door.

Juliette paused. This was strange. “Rosalind?”

A rustling came from within the room. “Juliette? Is that you? You can come in.”

Juliette set her basket down against the wall and opened Rosalind’s door before her cousin could change her mind, letting the gold light of the bedroom flood out into the hallway. When Juliette remained at the threshold for a long moment, taking in the scene, Rosalind looked up from her desk, her thin brow arching smoothly. Her face was still made up despite the late hour. The curtains of her windows were left undrawn, the half-peeking moon shining through the clouds and upon the bed.

“It’s so late,” Juliette said. “You haven’t retired yet?”

Rosalind set her pen down. “I could say the same to you. Your hair is still done up as neatly as mine.”

“Yes, well . . .” Juliette did not quite know how to finish that sentence. She hardly wanted to say it was because she was on her way out. Instead, she zeroed in on Rosalind’s desk and changed the subject. “What has your attention?”

“What has your curiosity?” Rosalind replied just as quickly.

Juliette folded her arms. Rosalind smiled, indicating her tone to be a joke. The moonlight dimmed, passing entirely behind a cloud, and the room’s lamp bulb seemed to hesitate along with it.

“Your sister wanted me to speak with you, actually.” Juliette inched a few steps into the room, her eyes scanning the desk. She caught sight of flyers from the burlesque club, as well as one or two pieces of notepaper torn from whatever ledger it had come from. “She’s worried about you.”

“About me?” Rosalind echoed. “Whatever for?” She leaned back, eyes wide. As she did so, there was a glint from her collar—metal catching light. A new necklace, Juliette noted. Kathleen always wore her pendant, but Rosalind had never been one for jewelry. She said it was dangerous to wear valuables on the streets of Shanghai. Too many pickpockets, too many eyes.

“No concrete reason; call it intuition.” Whip-quick, Juliette strolled closer, then pinched her fingers around a slip of paper, pulling before Rosalind could stop her. Juliette pivoted on her heel, turning her arms the other way in case Rosalind was to snatch it away, but her cousin only rolled her eyes, letting Juliette look.

Pierre Moreau

Alfred Delaunay

Edmond Lefeuvre

Gervais Carrell

Simon Clair

Juliette scrunched her nose, then turned back, asking without words what the list was.

Rosalind held her hand out. “Patrons at the club I’m to accost for funds. Would you like an in-depth explanation about how I drug their drinks? A chronological order of who pulls out their coins first?”

“Oh, hush,” Juliette chided lightly, returning the slip to Rosalind’s hand. She ran her gaze across the other papers for a brief while before determining that there wasn’t much to scrutinize. Kathleen had been concerned about Rosalind’s involvement with foreigners, but to live in this city was to be involved with foreigners.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting on my case too.”

“Who, me?” Juliette asked innocently. Rosalind’s bed jangled with noise when Juliette plopped onto the mattress for a makeshift seat, all the pearls and feathers from Rosalind’s dance costumes tangling together atop the deep blue sheets. “Whatever about?”

Rosalind rolled her eyes, getting up from her desk. Juliette thought her cousin was coming to join her, but Rosalind pivoted the other way and wandered over to her window instead.

“Kathleen cannot go two seconds without trying to trail me across the city. I’m on neutral territory, not operating on White Flower ground.”

“I think she’s more concerned about the foreigners than the blood feud.”

Rosalind leaned up against the windowsill, propping her chin into her hand.

“The foreigners see this country as an unborn child to keep in line,” she said. “No matter how they threaten us with their tanks, they will not harm us. They watch us split internally like embryos in the womb, twins and triplets eating each other until there is no one left, and they want nothing more than to stop it so we can come out whole for them to sell.”

Juliette was grimacing when Rosalind turned back around. “Okay, first of all, that’s a disgusting metaphor and not how biology works.”

Rosalind jazzed her hands around. “Ooh, look at me. I studied with Americans and I know how biology works.”

“Ooh, look at me,” Juliette imitated, her hands doing the same. “I’m a triplet and yet my French tutors forgot to tell me I can’t eat another sibling in the womb.”

Rosalind couldn’t hold back her laugh. It spluttered out in a short and loud sound, and Juliette grinned too, her shoulders lightening for the first time that week. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long.

“My point,” Rosalind said, sobering, “is that the danger in this city is its politics. Forget the foreigners. It’s the Nationalists and the Communists, tearing at each other’s throats then working together for revolution in the same breath. No one should be messing with them. Not you. Not Kathleen.”

If only it were that simple. If only one thing could be to blame. As if they didn’t all ripple off each other like the world’s most cursed game of falling domino tiles. Whether they wanted it or not, revolution would come. Whether they ignored it or not, it would come. And whether they carried on business as usual or shut down every operation before they could be hurt, it would still come.

“Your necklace,” Juliette blurted suddenly, “it’s new.”

Rosalind blinked, taken aback by the switch in topic. “This?” She pulled at the chain, and out came the silver, dangling with a plain strip of metal at the end. “It’s nothing special.”

A feeling prickled the hairs at the back of Juliette’s neck—a peculiar anxiety that she couldn’t quite place.

“I just never see you with jewelry.” She scanned her cousin’s desk again, then the shelf space above, where Rosalind’s loose knickknacks sat. Short of a few earrings, she sighted little else. “Imperial women used to own mounds upon mounds of jewelry, you know. They were seen as vain, but it wasn’t that. It was because it was easier to run with jewelry than it was with money.”

The clock on the mantel gave a loud chime. Juliette almost jumped, but Rosalind only quirked her left eyebrow.

“Biǎomèi,” Rosalind sighed. “I’m not a merchant that you need to speak in metaphors with. I’m not going to run. The whole reason I’m picking up after my father is because I have no interest in leaving.” She splayed her hands. “Where would I even go?”

There were plenty of places to go. Juliette could list them, by distance or by English alphabet. By safety or by likelihood of being found. If Rosalind had never considered it, then she was the more righteous person here. Because Juliette had, even if she could never actually carry it out.

“I don’t know” was all Juliette said, her voice faint. The clock chimed again to mark the first minute of the hour passing, and noting the time, Juliette quickly stood, feigning a yawn. “Anyway, good talk. I will retire now. Don’t stay up too late, all right?”

Rosalind waved her off, casual. “I can sleep in tomorrow morning. Bonne nuit.”

Juliette slipped out from the room and, after closing her cousin’s door, retrieved her basket. Rosalind’s words had left her uneasy, but she tried to push the apprehension down, to swallow and repress it as she did with all things in this city that needed to be dealt with, for otherwise one might implode with all that rested on their shoulders. With a quick pitter-patter, Juliette hurried through the rest of the house and out the front door, easing it shut with a quiet click.

“The things I do,” she muttered to herself. The moon glowed overhead, lighting the driveway. “And for what? To get a gun held to my head, that’s what.”

She slid into the car, waking the chauffeur, who had been snoozing at the driver’s seat.

“Hold out for a little longer, could you?” Juliette said. “I would really prefer not to crash.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Cai,” the chauffeur chirped, immediately sounding more awake. “I’ll get you to the burlesque club safely.”

That’s where the chauffeur thought she went when she took these midnight trips every week. He would idle in front of the burlesque club, and Juliette would slip in then out through the back, trekking the rest of the distance to the safe house. It usually took her no longer than half an hour before she would return, sliding into the car again. The chauffeur would drop her home, and then he was off to his own apartment so he could take his rest before his next early-morning shift, and everyone in the Scarlet Gang would be none the wiser to what Juliette was up to.

Juliette poked her head into the front seats. “Have you eaten?”

The chauffeur hesitated. “There was a short break at six—”

There was already a bun floating beside him, dangling in its bag. Juliette had extra from the many she’d bought off the street cart earlier, and unless Marshall Seo could eat five in two days, they would go bad.

“It’s a little cold,” Juliette said when he took it gingerly. “But it’ll go colder the longer it takes for us to reach our destination, where you can eat it.”

The chauffeur hooted a laugh and pressed the car faster. They rumbled through the streets—busy as ever, even at such an hour. Each building they passed was flooded with light, women in qipao ignoring the winter cold and leaning out their second-floor windows, waving their silk handkerchiefs into the breeze. Juliette’s coat, meanwhile, was long enough to completely cover the dress she had on beneath, thick enough to hide the shapelessness of those American designs.

At last they arrived a distance away from the burlesque club, where they always parked to avoid the stream of men coming and going from the front doors. The first time, the chauffeur had offered to walk Juliette, but his offer dried up as soon as Juliette removed a gun from her shoe and set it in the passenger seat, telling him to shoot if he was ambushed. It was easy to forget who Juliette was when she was lounging in the back seat, inspecting her nails. It was harder when she clambered out and put on her heiress face to combat the night.

“Lock the doors,” Juliette ordered, holding her basket with one hand and rapping on the window with the other. The chauffeur did so, already biting into the bun.

Juliette started forward, keeping as close to the shadows as she could. The fortunate part of the winter season was a lack of observers: people did not like looking up for too long with the wind prickling at their eyes, so they walked staring at their shoes. Juliette never had much trouble making her way to the safe house, but tonight she was on edge, glancing over her shoulder once every few seconds, paranoid that the noise she heard some street over was not the last tram rumbling to its stop but a car trailing her just out of sight.

She blamed all that talk about spies.

“It’s me,” Juliette said quietly, finally arriving at the safe house and knocking twice. Before her fist had even finished coming down the second time, the door was opening, and instead of welcoming her in, Marshall leaned out.

“Fresh air!” he said, dripping with theatrics. “How I thought I would never experience it again!”

“Hajima!” Juliette snapped, pushing him back inside.

“Oh, we’re speaking Korean now?” Marshall stumbled from Juliette’s shove, but he recovered fast, shuffling into the apartment. “Just for me? I’m so honored.”

“You are so annoying.” Juliette shut the door, pulling the three locks. She set the basket down onto the table and hurried to the window, peering through the thin crack between the boards nailed to the glass. She didn’t see anything outside. No one was coming for them. “I’m going to kill you a second time just to see how you like it.”

“It might be fun. Make sure to shoot me so it’s symmetrical with the other bullet scar.”

Juliette spun around, putting her hands on her hips. She glared at him for a long moment, but then she couldn’t help it. The smile slipped out.

“Ah!” Marshall shrieked. Before Juliette could shush him, he was already lunging at her, picking her lithe frame off the ground and spinning her around until her head was dizzy. “She shows emotion!”

“Cease immediately!” Juliette screeched. “My hair!”

Marshall set her down with a steady thump. He held on to her even once she was on her own feet again, his arms splayed along her shoulders. Poor, touch-starved Marshall Seo. Maybe Juliette could find him a stray cat.

“Did you bring me alcohol this time?”

Juliette rolled her eyes. Finding the room to be too dark, she wordlessly tossed Marshall her lighter so he could light an extra candle while she brought out the food, unwrapping fruits and vegetables at rapid speed. In the weeks that Marshall had been hunkered down here, they had worked together to get the water running again without horrendous rumbling in the pipes and the gas connected so that Marshall could cook. In honesty, Juliette didn’t think this was a bad living situation. Disregarding the whole legally dead situation, that was.

“I am never bringing you alcohol,” Juliette said. “I fear I would find this place in flames.”

Marshall responded by hurrying to the other side of the table and inspecting the bottom of Juliette’s basket. He hardly heard her biting remark; after all this time, Juliette and Marshall had grown familiar enough with the other that they could tell what was intended to be sharp and what was not. They were incredibly alike, and that was too eerie a thought for Juliette to mull on it long.

Marshall retrieved one of the newspapers lining the bottom of the basket, his eyes scanning the headline. “A vigilante, huh?”

Juliette frowned, peering at the page. “You know you can never trust the papers to report on feud business.”

“But you’ve heard about him too?”

“Indeed a few whispers here and there, but . . .” Juliette trailed off, her gaze narrowing upon a bag on the floor, one that she knew hadn’t been in this apartment the last time she was here.

Then, some few inches away, there was a leaf.

Now, how would Marshall Seo have heard about a vigilante in the city?

Juliette folded her arms. “You’ve been outside, haven’t you?”

“I—” Marshall’s mouth opened and closed. He tried his best. “No! Of course not.”

“Oh?” Juliette reached for the paper and turned it her way, reading aloud. “The masked figure has intervened on multiple counts to knock both sides out before shots can be fired. Anyone with information should—Marshall!”

“Fine, fine!” Marshall sat upon the rickety seat with a heavy sigh, his energy depleting. A long moment passed, which was rare in any room with Marshall Seo. When he did speak again, he was quiet, his voice pushed out with effort. “I’m only trying to keep an eye on him. I step in on other feud business if I happen to see something while I’m lurking.”

Him. Marshall didn’t say his name, but he was evidently talking about Benedikt. There were no other contenders to be the subject of such carefulness. She should have chided him immediately, but she couldn’t find it in herself. She had a heart, after all. She was the one who had put him here, away from everything—everyone—he loved.

“Has Benedikt Montagov seen you?” she asked tightly.

Marshall shook his head. “The one time he actually got himself in trouble, I shot everyone around him and ran.” At that, his eyes shifted up, a brief flicker of guilt appearing when he remembered who he was talking to. “It was quick—”

“Best not to think too deeply about it,” Juliette said, cutting him off. He had killed Scarlets; she would kill White Flowers. For as long as they lived, so long as the city remained divided, they would kill, and kill, and kill. In the end, would it matter? When the choice was between protecting those you loved and sparing the lives of strangers, who would ever think that to be a hard decision?

Juliette shifted to the window again, peering into the night. It was better lit out there than it was in here, the streetlamps humming happily in harmony with the wind. This safe house had been strategically chosen, after all: as far out as Juliette’s eye could see, there were no particular corners or nooks where anybody could be hiding, watching her as she looked out. Nevertheless, she surveyed the scene warily.

“Just be careful,” Juliette finally said, dropping the curtain. “If anyone sees you . . .”

“No one will,” Marshall replied. His voice had grown firm again. “I promise, darling.”

Juliette nodded, but there was a tightening sensation gripping her chest even as she tried for a smile. During these few months, she had expected Marshall to start resenting her. She had promised she would figure something out soon, but she still had Tyler breathing down her neck and no concrete way around it. Yet she hadn’t heard a word of complaint from Marshall. He had taken it in stride, even though she knew it ate him up inside to be stuck here.

She wished he would yell at her. Get angry. Tell her that she was useless, because that certainly seemed to be true.

But he only welcomed her in every visit like he had missed her dearly.

Juliette turned away, blinking rapidly. “There are rumors that there will be Communist-led riots on the streets tonight,” she said when she had her tear ducts under control. “Don’t go outside.”

“Understood.”

“Stay safe.”

“When am I not?”

Juliette reached for the now empty basket with a glare, but her malice at Marshall—even when feigned—was always half-hearted. Marshall grinned and sent her off with two big, swooping air kisses, still making the faintest noises even as Juliette closed the door after her and heard the locks bolt again on the other side.

She had to stop growing so fond of White Flowers. It would be the death of her.

Lord Montagov pushed the file right to the edge of his desk, giving Roma no choice but to reach out quickly and grab it lest the papers inside flutter to the floor. From the other corner of the desk, leaning upon the outside edge in an ever-so-casual slouch, Dimitri squinted, trying to read upside down as Roma flipped open the folder.

Roma doubted that Dimitri could pick out anything. Dimitri needed glasses, and the bulb light on Lord Montagov’s desk was not doing him any favors. It flooded the room in a cold, off-white color that treated their electric bills kindly but hurt the eyes to be near for long, casting a deathlike tinge on their skin.

“Comb through carefully, memorize the names of the clients we seek,” Lord Montagov instructed. “But that is your secondary goal. First and foremost, you are to keep track of the Scarlet effort with this blackmailer. Don’t let them gain an advantage. Don’t let them shove it on us. If the Scarlet Gang manage to rid themselves of the threat, the White Flowers should too.”

“It will come around to how they achieve it,” Roma replied evenly. “Whether we find the perpetrator or find a new vaccine.”

Finding the perpetrator would be a done and dusted deal. It didn’t matter which side shot the bullet or slashed their blade. A dead blackmailer was no blackmailer. But if the solution to the madness was a new vaccine, then it was a game of who could hold on to the secret and save themselves first.

Dimitri leaned forward, about to say something. Before he could, Roma slapped the file closed.

“Either way, I have it handled.”

A knock came on Lord Montagov’s office then, and the White Flower outside announced an incoming phone call. Roma pushed his chair back, making way for his father as Lord Montagov stood from behind his desk and exited the room. As soon as the door clicked, Dimitri wandered over to the other side of the desk and dropped into Lord Montagov’s chair.

“First of all, you’re welcome,” he said.

Roma could feel an immediate headache starting up at his temples.

“All the clientele in that folder, all these Scarlet merchants on the edge of defection to the White Flowers—that is my doing, Roma. All you have to do is make the killing blow. Should be easy enough.”

“Congratulations,” Roma said, resting his arm on the back of his chair. “You did your job.”

Dimitri shook his head. The gesture was drenched with feigned pity, accompanied by an unspoken tut-tut-tut in the air.

“It is not enough to see the merchants as a job,” Dimitri urged. “You must accept them. Respect them. Only then will they listen.”

Roma did not have the time for this.

“They are colonialists.” He took the folder into his hands, crinkling the edges mercilessly. “They deserve to be robbed and looted, as they have done to others. We work with them to gain what we can. We do not work with them because we love them. Get it together.”

Dimitri didn’t appear chastised. It was hard to tell how much he actually believed in the words he was saying and how much he was saying them only to rile Roma up.

“So that’s how it is?” Dimitri asked. He brought his feet up to the desk. “All this hostility to your allies. But taking an enemy as your lover.”

The room had already been cold. Now it felt chilled like ice.

“You must be mistaken.” Roma stood up, releasing the folder. “I work with Juliette Cai until I can take a knife to her throat.”

“Then why haven’t you done so?” Dimitri countered. He kicked at the desk and tipped Lord Montagov’s whole chair back, letting it teeter dangerously on its hind legs. “In these prior months, before your father wanted to keep her alive for information, why did you never hunt her down?”

Roma stood up, fire stirring beneath his skin. Dimitri did not protest when he stormed out of the office. Dimitri was probably trying to drive him into storming off anyway, all the better to make him look bad when his father returned to find him missing. Uncaring about his father’s irritation, Roma swerved into the nearest empty room and dropped into a settee in the dark, biting back the curses he wanted to let loose.

The dust around him stirred in disturbance. When the room settled again, Roma felt covered by a grimy veneer. Three paces away, the windows had broken blinds, casting irregular silver shapes onto the opposite wall. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear a heavy clock in the corner ticking too, counting down his time in this abandoned room before someone inevitably found him.

Roma exhaled, then slumped ungraciously onto the armrest. He was exhausted by this; he was exhausted by Dimitri’s accusations. Yes—Roma had wet his hands with blood at fifteen years old for Juliette. For what it mattered, he might as well have lit the fuse that tore through a whole household of Scarlets. All to save Juliette, all to protect her, though she had never asked for such protection. Once, he would have burned the damn city to the ground just to keep her unharmed. Of course it was hard for him to hurt her now. It went against every fiber of his being. Every cell, every nerve—they had grown into place with one mantra: protect her, protect her. Even after knowing she had become someone else, even after hearing all the terrible things she had done in New York . . . she was still Juliette. His Juliette.

And now she was not. She had made that abundantly clear. He kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Much as he loathed Dimitri, one point was true—Roma kept refusing to commit to vengeance because some part of him screamed that he knew Juliette better than this. That something was up her sleeve, that she could never betray him.

But Marshall was dead. She’d made her choice. Just as Roma had chosen Juliette’s life over her Nurse’s. Just as Roma had done what he did to send her back to America, send her far, far away. Even if she lied about her coldness, even if she hadn’t feigned her weeping, soft eyes that day behind the Communist stronghold—it didn’t matter. Marshall was unforgivable.

Answer me something first. Do you still love me?

“Why wouldn’t you fight?” Roma whispered into the empty room. His head was light. He could almost imagine Juliette sitting next to him, the smell of her flowery hair gel dancing beneath his nose. “Why would you give up and give in to the blood feud in the most despicable way?”

Unless he was wrong. Unless this wasn’t a hard choice at all, and there was no love anywhere to be found in Juliette Cai.

Enough was enough. Roma jerked upright, his fists tightening. They were to work together at present, but that arrangement would end sooner or later. If Juliette wanted to play the route of the blood feud, she would get blood for blood. It would wound him just as deep, but he would plunge in the knife.

He had to.

The door to the sitting room opened then, and Lord Montagov poked his head in, frowning when he sighted Roma on the settee. Roma had half a mind to wipe at his eyes just in case, but that would have looked more odd than staring ahead blankly, not letting his father see his full expression.

“Dimitri said you might have wandered in here,” his father said. “Can you not sit still for a single minute?”

“Are we to resume the meeting?” Roma asked, diverting the question.

“We covered enough.” Lord Montagov frowned in distaste. “Stay inside. There’s a riot tonight.” He closed the door.