by Chloe Gong
“I said escort him,” Juliette snapped at the Scarlet. “It’s the Mid-Autumn Festival. Don’t be a brute.”
“But, Miss Cai—”
“Don’t you see?” Roma cut in coldly, pointing a finger at the dying man. He turned to face Juliette, his jaw tight, eyes level on her—only her. He acted like nobody else was present in his line of sight save for Juliette, like the two men weren’t glaring daggers at him, like the whole club wasn’t screaming in havoc, running in circles about the growing puddle of blood. “This is exactly what happened last night. It is not a one-off incident; it is madness—”
Juliette sighed, waving a floppy wrist. The two Scarlet men took a proper hold of Roma’s shoulders, and Roma swallowed his words with an audible snap from his jaw. He wouldn’t make a scene in Scarlet territory. He was already lucky to be leaving without a bullet hole in his back. He knew this. It was the only reason why he tolerated being manhandled by men he might have killed on the streets.
“Thank you for being so understanding,” she simpered.
Roma said nothing as he was hauled from her sight. Juliette watched him, eyes narrowed, and only when she was certain he had been pushed out the door of the burlesque club did she focus on the mess in front of her, stepping forward with a sigh and kneeling gingerly beside the dying man.
There was no saving with a wound like this. It was still spurting blood, pulsating red puddles onto the floor. Blood was certainly seeping into the fabric of her dress, but Juliette hardly felt it. The man was trying to say something. Juliette couldn’t hear what.
“You’d do well to put him out of his misery.”
Walter Dexter had found his way near the scene and was now peering over Juliette’s shoulder with an almost quizzical expression. He remained unmoving even when the waitresses started pushing the crowd back and cordoning the area off, yelling for the onlookers to scatter. Irritatingly, none of the Scarlet men bothered to haul Walter away—he had a look to him that made it seem like he needed to be here. Juliette had met plenty of men like him in America: men who assumed they had the right to go wherever they wished because the world had been built to favor their civilized etiquette. That sort of confidence knew no bounds.
“Hush,” Juliette snapped, leaning her ear closer to the dying man. If he had last words, he deserved to be heard—
“I’ve seen this before; it’s the lunacy of an addict. Perhaps methamphetamine or—”
“Hush!”
Juliette focused until she could hear the sounds coming from the dying man’s mouth, focused until the hysteria around her faded to background noise.
“Guài. Guài. Guài.”
Guài?
Head spinning, Juliette ran through every word that resembled what the man was chanting. The only one that made sense was—
“Monster?” she asked him, gripping his shoulder. “Is that what you mean to say?”
The man stilled. His gaze was startlingly clear for the briefest second. Then, in a fast garble, he said, “Huò bù dān xíng.” After that one breath, one exhale, one warning, his eyes glazed over.
Juliette reached out, numb, and brushed his eyelids closed. Before she could quite register the dead man’s words, Kathleen had already stepped forward to cover him with a tablecloth. Only his feet were sticking out, in those tattered shoes that Roma had been staring at.
They’re mismatched, Juliette noted suddenly. One shoe was sleek and shined, still glinting with its last polish; the other was far too small and a different color entirely, the fabric held together by a thin piece of string wrapped thrice around the toes.
Strange.
“What was that? What did he say?”
Walter was still lurking at her elbow. He didn’t seem to understand that this was his cue to remove himself. He didn’t seem to care that Juliette was staring forward in a state of stupefaction, wondering how Roma had timed his visit to coincide with this death.
“Misfortunes tend to come all at once,” Juliette translated when she finally jolted back to the frenzy of the situation. Walter Dexter only looked at her blankly, trying to understand why a dying man would say something so convoluted. He didn’t understand the Chinese and their love for proverbs. His mouth was opening, likely to give another spiel about his extensive knowledge regarding the world of drugs, another plug about the dangers of purchasing products from those he deemed untrustworthy, but Juliette held up a finger to stop him. If she was certain of anything, it was that these weren’t the last words of a man who took too many drugs. This was the final warning of a man who had seen something he shouldn’t have.
“Let me correct myself. You British already have an appropriate translation,” she said. “When it rains, it pours.”
* * *
High above the leaky pipes and moldy carpeting of the White Flower house, Alisa Montagova was perched upon a wooden beam in the ceiling rafters, her chin pressed against the flat of her knees as she eavesdropped on the meeting below.
The Montagovs didn’t live in a big, flashy residence like their money bags could afford. They preferred to stay in the heart of it all, one and the same with the dirt-smeared faces picking up trash on the streets. From the outside, their living space looked identical to the row of apartments along this bustling city street. On the inside, they had transformed what used to be an apartment complex into one big jigsaw puzzle of rooms and offices and staircases, maintaining the place not with servants or maids but with hierarchy. It wasn’t just the Montagovs who lived here, but any White Flower who held some role in the gang, and among the assortment of people coming and going in this house, within the walls and outside them, there was an order. Lord Montagov reigned at the top and Roma—at least in name—stood second, but below, roles were constantly changing, determined by will rather than blood. Where the Scarlet Gang depended on relationships—on which family went the farthest back before this country crumbled from its imperial throne—the White Flowers operated on chaos, on constant movement. But the climb to power was one of choice, and those who remained low within the gang did so by their own desire. The point of becoming a White Flower wasn’t power and riches. It was the knowing that they could walk at any point if they didn’t like the orders given by the Montagovs. It was a fist to the chest, a lock of eyes, a nod of understanding—like that, the Russian refugees filing into Shanghai would do anything to join the ranks of the White Flowers, anything to reunite with the sense of belonging they had left behind when the Bolsheviks came knocking.
For the men, at least. The Russian women unfortunate enough not to be born into the White Flowers picked up jobs as dancers and mistresses. Just last week, Alisa had overheard a British woman crying about a state of emergency in the International Settlement—of families being broken up by pretty faces from Siberia who had no fortune, only face and figure and a will to live. The refugees had to do what they must. Moral compasses meant nothing in the face of starvation.
Alisa jolted. The man she had been eavesdropping on had suddenly started whispering. The abrupt change in volume drew her attention back to the meeting below.
“The political factions have made one too many snide remarks,” a gruff voice muttered. “It is almost certain that the politicians are engineering the madness, but it’s hard to say at this point in time whether the Kuomintang or the Communists are responsible. Many sources say Zhang Gutai, though… well, I hesitate to believe it.”
Another voice added wryly, “Please, Zhang Gutai is so bad at being Secretary-General of the Communist Party that he printed the wrong date on one of their meeting posters.”
Alisa could see three men seated opposite her father through the thin mesh that lined the ceiling space. Without risking a fall from the rafters, she couldn’t quite pick out their features, but the accented Russian gave away enough. They were Chinese spies.
“What do we know of their methods? How does this madness spread?”
That was her father now, his slow voice as distinctive as nails against a ch
alkboard. Lord Montagov spoke in such a commandeering manner that it felt like a sin to deny him your full attention.
One of the Chinese men cleared his throat. He was wringing his hands on his shirt so aggressively that Alisa leaned forward into the rafters, squinting through the mesh to see if she was mistaking the motion.
“A monster.”
Alisa almost toppled over. Her hands came down on the beam just in time to right herself, letting out a small exhale in relief.
“I beg your pardon?”
“We cannot confirm anything regarding the source of the madness except for one thing,” the third and final man said. “It is linked to sightings of a monster. I saw it myself. I saw silver eyes in the Huangpu River, blinking in a way no man could—”
“Enough, enough,” Lord Montagov interrupted. His tone was rough, impatient with the turn this information briefing had taken. “I have no interest in hearing nonsense on a monster. If that is all, I look forward to reconvening at our next meeting.”
Frowning, Alisa scuttled along the beams, following the men as they left. She was already twelve years old, but she was tiny, always darting from shadow to shadow in the manner of a wild rodent. As the door shut below, she hopped from one ceiling beam to another until she was pressed flat directly above the men.
“He looked afraid,” one remarked quietly.
The man in the middle hushed him, except the words had already been said and birthed into the world, becoming sharp arrows tearing through the room with no target in mind, only destruction. The men pulled their coats tightly around their bodies and left the broiling, chaotic mess of the Montagov house behind them. Alisa, however, remained in her little nook up in the ceiling.
Fear. That was something she didn’t think her father knew how to feel anymore. Fear was a concept for the men without guns. Fear was reserved for people like Alisa, small and slight and always looking over her shoulder.
If Lord Montagov was afraid, the rules were changing.
Alisa leaped from the ceiling and sprinted off.
Three
The moment Juliette barreled into the hallway, shoving the last pin into her hair, she already knew she was too late.
It was partly the maid’s fault for not waking her when she was supposed to and partly Juliette’s own fault for failing to get up with the sunrise, as she had been attempting since her arrival back in Shanghai. Those sparse moments just as the sky was brightening—and before the rest of the household rumbled to life—were the most peaceful few minutes one could get in this house. The days she started early enough to snatch a breath of cold air and a gulp of utter, complete silence on her balcony were her favorites. She could trail through the house with no one to bother her, skipping into the kitchen and snatching whatever she liked from the cooks, then taking whichever seat she pleased on the empty dining table. Depending on how fast she chewed, she might even have a while to spend in the living room, the windows thrown open to let in the tunes of early birdsong. The days when she failed to scramble out of her covers fast enough, on other the hand, meant grumpily sitting through the morning meals with the rest of the household.
Juliette stopped outside her father’s office door now, cursing under her breath. Today hadn’t only been a matter of avoiding her distant relatives. She had wanted to poke her nose into one of Lord Cai’s meetings.
The door opened swiftly. Juliette took a step back, trying to look natural. Definitely too late.
“Juliette.” Lord Cai peered at her, frowning. “It’s so early. Why are you awake?”
Juliette placed her hands under her chin, the picture of innocence. “I heard we had an esteemed visitor. I thought I’d come offer my greetings.”
The aforementioned visitor raised a wry brow. He was a Nationalist, but whether or not he was truly esteemed was hard to determine when he was dressed merely in a Western suit, void of the decorations his Kuomintang military uniform might bear on the collar. The Scarlet Gang had been friendly with the Nationalists—the Kuomintang—ever since the Kuomintang’s founding as a political party. Of late, relations had become even friendlier to combat the rise of their Communist “allies.” Juliette had been home for only a week, and she had already watched her father take at least five different meetings with the harried Nationalists who wanted gangster support. Each time she had been just too late to slip in without acting like an embarrassment, and settled for idling outside the door instead to catch whatever bits and pieces she could.
The Nationalists were afraid, that much she knew. The budding Communist Party of China was encouraging its members to join the Kuomintang in a show of cooperation with the Nationalists, only instead of demonstrating cooperation, the growing influence of Communist numbers within the Kuomintang was starting to threaten the Nationalists. Such scandal was the talk of the country, but especially in Shanghai, a lawless place where governments came both to be born and to die.
“That’s very kind of you, Juliette, but Mr. Qiao has another meeting to hurry to.”
Lord Cai gestured for a servant to lead the Nationalist out. Mr. Qiao politely tipped his hat, and Juliette smiled tightly, swallowing back her sigh.
“It wouldn’t hurt to let me sit in on one meeting, Bàba,” she said as soon as Mr. Qiao was out of sight. “You’re supposed to be teaching me.”
“I can teach you slowly,” Lord Cai replied, shaking his head. “You don’t want to get involved in politics yet. It’s boring business.”
But it was relevant business, especially if the Scarlet Gang spent so much damn time entertaining these factions. Especially if Lord Cai had hardly blinked an eye last night when Juliette told him the heir of the White Flowers had pranced into their most central burlesque club, telling her that he had been made aware already and they would speak of it in the morning.
“Let’s go to the breakfast table, hmm?” her father said. He placed his hand on the back of Juliette’s neck, guiding her down the stairs as if she were at risk of running off. “We can talk about last night, too.”
“Breakfast would be delightful,” Juliette muttered. In truth, the clamor of morning meals gave her a headache. There was something about mornings in this household particularly that made Juliette uneasy. No matter what it was that her relatives discussed, no matter how mundane—like their speculation on the rising prices of rice—their words dripped with scheming and relentless wit. Everything they discussed seemed more fitting for the late night, when the maids retired to their rooms and the dark crawled in on the polished wood floors.
“Juliette, darling,” an aunt crowed the moment she and her father approached the table. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, Ā yí,” Juliette replied tightly, taking a seat. “I slept very well—”
“Did you cut your hair again? You must have. I don’t remember it being this short.”
As if her relatives weren’t vexing enough, there were also so many of them coming in and out of the Cai household for Juliette to care very much about any of them. Rosalind and Kathleen were dually her closest cousins and only friends, and that was all she needed. Everybody else was merely a name and a relation she had to remember in case she needed something from them one day. This aunt jabbering in her ear now was far too distant to be useful at any point in the future, so distant that Juliette had to stop for a second to wonder why she was even at the breakfast table.
“Dà jiě, for God’s sake, let the kid breathe.”
Juliette’s head jerked up, grinning at the voice who had chimed in from the end of the table. On second thought, there was only one exception to her apathy: Mr. Li, her favorite uncle.
Xiè xiè, she mouthed.
Mr. Li merely raised his teacup to her thanks, a twinkle in his eye. Her aunt huffed, but she ceased talking. Juliette turned in her father’s direction.
“So, Bàba, last night,” she started. “If talk is to be believed, one of our men met up with five White Flowers at the ports, then ripped his own throat out. What do you make of it?�
��
Lord Cai made a thoughtful noise from the head of the long rectangular table, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing deeply. Juliette wondered when her father had last gotten a full night’s sleep, uninterrupted by worrying and meetings. His exhaustion was invisible to the untrained eye, but Juliette knew. Juliette always knew.
Or maybe he was just tired of having to sit at the head of this table, hearing everyone’s gossip first thing in the morning. Before Juliette left, their dining table had been round, as Chinese tables rightfully should be. She suspected they had switched it up only to appeal to the Western visitors who came through the Cai house for meetings, but the result was messy: family members unable to talk to who they wished, as they could if everybody was seated around a circle.
“Bàba,” Juliette prompted, though she knew he was still thinking. It was only that her father was a man of few words and Juliette was a girl who couldn’t stand silence. Even while it was hectic all around them, with staff bustling in and out of the kitchen, a meal underway, and the table accommodating various conversations at oscillating volumes, she couldn’t stand it when her father let her question draw out in lieu of answering immediately.
The matter was, even if he indulged her now, Lord Cai was only pretending to be concerned about an alleged madness. Juliette could tell—this was child’s play atop the already monstrous list plaguing her father’s attention. After all, who would care for rumors of strange creatures rising from the waters of this city when the Nationalists and Communists were rising too, guns poised and armies ready to march?
“And that was all Roma Montagov revealed?” Lord Cai finally asked.
Juliette flinched. She couldn’t help it. She had spent four years recoiling at the mere thought of Roma that hearing his name aloud—spoken from her own father, no less—felt like something improper.
“Yes.”