by Chloe Gong
Lord Montagov shrugged flippantly, but there was something in his eyes that Roma didn’t like.
“It is not so absurd an idea,” his father said. “Surely you can ask one favor. She was your lover once, after all.”
Seven
In the span of a few short days, talk had started in the city. At first nothing except rumors: a suspicion that it was not an enemy nor a natural force bringing about this madness but the devil himself, knocking on doors in the dead of night and with one look, utter insanity was wrought on the victim.
Then the sightings began.
Housewives who hung their washing by the ports claimed to see tentacles skittering away when they ventured outside at nightfall to collect their things. A few Scarlet workers who showed up late to their shifts were scared away by growling, then flashes of silver eyes staring them down from the other end of the alleyway. The most horrific account was the story spread by the owner of a riverside brothel, speaking of a creature curled amid the trash bags outside his brothel as he closed up. He had described it panting, as if in pain, as if struggling against itself, half-cast in shadow but doubtlessly an unnatural, strange thing.
“It has a spine studded with blades,” Juliette heard whispered in front of her now, the story presently being passed from son to mother as they waited for food from the window of a fast-serving restaurant. The little boy was bobbing up and down in excitement, echoing words heard from a schoolmate or a neighborhood friend. The more deaths there were—and there had been multiple since the man in the burlesque club—the more the people speculated, as if just by speaking the possibilities they could stumble upon the truth. But the more people talked, the further truth slipped.
Juliette would have shaken the stories off as rumors, but the fear seeping into the streets was very, very real, and she doubted such a feeling would reach these heights without substantial backing to the claims. So what was it, then? Monsters weren’t real, no matter what Chinese fairy tales had once been taken as truth. This was a new age of science, of evolution. The so-called monster had to be a creature of someone’s creation—but whose?
“Hush,” the mother tried, the fingers of her left hand nervously twining through the beads on her right wrist. They were Buddhist prayer beads, used to track mantra, but whatever mantra the woman recited now couldn’t compete with the limitless enthusiasm of her son.
“They say he has claws the size of forearms!” the boy continued. “He prowls the night for gangsters, and when he smells the taint of their blood, he pounces.”
“It is not only the gangsters dying, qīn’ài de,” his mother said quietly. Her hand tightened on the back of his neck, keeping him steady in the slow-moving line.
The little boy stopped. A tremor entered his sweet voice. “Māma, am I going to die?”
“What?” his mother exclaimed. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” She looked up, having reached the front of the line. “Two.”
The shopkeeper passed a paper bag over the window and the mother-son pair hurried off. Juliette stared after them and thought about the sudden fear in the boy’s voice. In that brief moment, the boy—barely older than five—had comprehended that he too could die with the rest of the corpses in Shanghai, because who could be safe from madness?
“On the house, miss.”
Juliette looked up suddenly, finding a paper bag already hovering in front of her face.
“Only the best for the princess of Shanghai,” the old shopkeeper said, his elbows resting on the perch of the serving window.
Juliette summoned her most dazzling smile. “Thank you,” she said, taking the bag. Those two words would give the shopkeeper plenty of material to brag about when he met up with his friends for mahjong tomorrow.
Juliette turned around and left the line, reaching into the bag and ripping a chunk of the bun to chew on. Her smile fell as soon as she was out of sight. It was getting late and she would be expected at home soon, but still she dawdled among the shops and the bustle of Chenghuangmiao, one slow-moving girl in a crowd of havoc. She didn’t have a lot of opportunities to wander about in places like these, but today she did. Lord Cai had sent her over to check on an opium distribution center, which unfortunately, hadn’t been as exciting as she’d thought. It had merely smelled bad, and upon finally locating the owner with the papers her father wanted, the owner had passed them to her looking half-asleep. He hadn’t even offered a greeting first nor verified Juliette’s right to be asking for such confidential supply information. Juliette didn’t understand how someone like that could be given management over fifty workers.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, pushing through a particularly thick crowd gathered in front of a pencil sketch shop. Despite the darkness seeping into the pink skies, Chenghuangmiao was still bustling with visitors—lovers taking slow strolls through the chaos, grandparents purchasing xiǎolóngbāo for the children to slurp on, foreigners simply taking in the sights. The name Chenghuangmiao itself referred to the temple, but to the people of Shanghai, it had come to encompass all the busy surrounding markets and the cloisters of activity in the area. The British army had set up its head office here almost a century ago, in the Yuyuan Gardens, which Juliette was passing now. Since then, even after their departure, the foreigners had taken a liking to this place. It was always full of their faces, cast in wonder and amusement.
“This is the end! Get the cure now! There is only one cure!”
And sometimes it was full of native eccentrics too.
Juliette grimaced, tucking her chin in so as not to make eye contact with the ranting old man on the Jiuqu Bridge. However, despite her best efforts to pass unnoticed, the old man straightened at the sight of her and darted along the zigzag bridge—the thuds of his footsteps making sounds that were rather concerning to hear from such an old structure. He skittered to a stop in front of her before she could put enough distance between them.
“Salvation!” he screeched. His wrinkles deepened until his eyes were wholly swallowed by sagging skin. He could barely lift his back past a perpetual hunch, yet he moved as fast as a scurrying rodent on the hunt for food. “You must spread the message of salvation. The lā-gespu will give it to us!”
Juliette blinked rapidly, her eyebrows raised. She knew she shouldn’t entertain ranting men on the streets, but there was something about him that pricked the little hairs on her neck straight up. Despite his rural accent, she had understood almost all of the man’s croaky Shanghainese—all except that little pocket of gibberish.
Lā-gespu? Was the ‘s’ sound merely a lisp of his generational upbringing?
“Lā gē bō?” Juliette tried to guess in correction. “A toad will give us salvation?”
The old man looked mightily offended. He shook his head from side to side, throwing around his thin, wispy white hairs and rustling up the flimsy braid he wore. He was one of those few people who still dressed like the country hadn’t left the imperial era.
“My mother told me a wise proverb when I was young,” Juliette continued, amusing herself now. “Lā gē bō xiāng qiē tī u ̄y.”
The old man merely stared at her. Did he not understand her Shanghainese? Abroad, she had constantly feared that she would lose her accent, feared she would forget how to pronounce those persistently flat tones found in no other dialect across this country.
“Bad joke?” Juliette asked. In the more common dialect, she repeated herself, this time more hesitantly. “Lài háma xiǎng chī tiān é ròu? Yes? I deserve at least a little chuckle, come on.”
The old man stomped his foot down, shaking in his exertion to be taken seriously. Perhaps Juliette had chosen the wrong proverb to joke around with. The ugly toad wants a bite of swan meat. Maybe the old man hadn’t been raised on fairy tales about the Frog Prince and his ugly toad stepbrother. Maybe he didn’t like that her joke implied his lā-gespu savior—whatever that meant—was the equivalent of a proverbial, scheming, ugly creature who lusted after the swan, his Frog Prince brothe
r’s beloved.
“The lā-gespu is a man,” he snapped right into Juliette’s face, his voice a reedy hiss. “A man of great might. He gave me a cure. An injection! I should have died when my neighbor collapsed on me, tearing at his throat. Oh! So much blood! Blood in my eyes and blood running down my chest! But I did not die. I was saved. The lā-gespu saved me.”
Juliette took a great step back, one she should have taken five minutes ago, before this conversation began.
“Uh, this has been fun,” she said, “but I really should be going.”
Before the old man could make a grab at her, she sidestepped him and hurried off.
“Salvation!” he screamed after her. “Only the lā-gespu can bring salvation now!”
Juliette took a sharp turn, moving out of view completely. Now that she was in a less crowded area, she let out a long breath and took her time weaving through the shops, casting glances over her shoulder to ensure she wasn’t being followed. Once she was certain there was nobody on her tail, she sighed in sorrow to be leaving Chenghuangmiao behind and wove out from the collection of closely congregated shops, stepping back onto the city streets to begin her walk home. She could have flagged a rickshaw or stopped any one of the Scarlets loitering outside these cabarets, to have them fetch her a car. Any other girl her age would have, especially with a necklace as shiny as the one around her neck, especially if their footsteps reverberated with an echo that stretched two streets over. Kidnapping was a lucrative business. Human trafficking was thriving at an all-time high, and the economy was booming with crime.
But Juliette walked on. She passed men in large groups and men who squatted in front of brothels, leering like it was their second job. She passed gangsters throwing knives outside the casinos they had been hired to guard, passed shady merchants cleaning their guns and chewing on toothpicks. Juliette did not falter. The sky grew redder and her eyes grew brighter. Wherever she went, no matter how far into the darkest underbelly of the city she wandered, as long as she stayed within her territory, she was the reigning supreme.
Juliette paused, rolling out her ankle to ease the tightness of her shoe. In response, five nearby Scarlet gangsters who were waiting around a restaurant also stilled, waiting to see if they would be summoned. They were killers and extortionists and raging forces of violence, but as the rumors went, Juliette Cai was the girl who had strangled and killed her American lover with a string of pearls. Juliette Cai was the heiress who, on her second day back in Shanghai, had stepped into a brawl between four White Flowers and two Scarlets and killed all four White Flowers with only three bullets.
Only one of those rumors was true.
Juliette smiled and waved to the Scarlet men. In response, one waved back, and the other four nervously laughed among themselves. They feared Lord Cai’s wrath if anything were to happen to her, but they feared her wrath more if they were to test the truth of the rumors.
It was her reputation that kept her safe. Without it, she was nothing.
Which meant that when Juliette wandered into an alleyway and was stopped by the sudden pressure of what felt like a gun pressed to the small of her back, she knew it wasn’t a Scarlet who had dared stop her.
Juliette froze. In a split second, she ran through all the possibilities: an affronted merchant wanting comeuppance, a greedy foreigner wanting ransom, a confused addict on the streets who hadn’t recognized her by the sparkly beads of her foreign dress.…
Then a familiar voice said, in English, of all languages: “Don’t shout for help. Keep moving forward, follow my instructions, and I won’t shoot.”
The ice in her veins thawed in an instant and instead roared into a fiery rage. Had he waited for her to enter an isolated area, until no one was around to give aid, thinking she would be too afraid to react? Had he thought it would actually work?
“You really don’t know me anymore,” Juliette said quietly. Or maybe Roma Montagov thought he knew her too well. Maybe he thought himself an expert and had brushed off the rumors she spread about herself, thinking there was no way she had become the killer she claimed to be.
The first time she killed someone, she had been fourteen.
She had known Roma for only a month, but she had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t follow the blood feud, that she would be better. Then, one night on their way to a restaurant, their car had been ambushed by White Flowers. Her mother had yelled for her to stay down, to hide behind the car with Tyler, to use the guns that had been placed in their hands only if absolutely necessary. The fight had almost ended. The Scarlets had killed almost every White Flower.
Then the last White Flower remaining dove in Juliette and Tyler’s direction. There was a last-ditch fury burning in his eyes, and in that moment, though there was no doubt that it was a time of absolute necessity, Juliette had frozen. Tyler had been the one to shoot. His bullet had studded into the White Flower’s stomach and the man had gone down, and in horror, Juliette had looked to the side, where her parents were watching.
It wasn’t relief that she saw. It was confusion. Confusion over why Juliette had frozen. Confusion over why Tyler had been more capable. So Juliette had raised her gun and fired too, finishing the job.
Juliette Cai feared disapproval more than she feared grime on her soul. That killing was one of the few secrets she had kept from Roma. Now she knew she should have told him, if only to prove that she was just as nefarious as Shanghai always said she was.
“Walk,” Roma demanded.
Juliette remained still. As she intended, he misread her inaction as fear, for ever so slightly, he hesitated and eased up the press of his gun just a smidgen.
She whirled around. Before Roma could so much as blink, her right hand came down hard on his right wrist, twisting his gun-wielding hand outward until his fingers were unnaturally bent. She slapped down at the gun with her left hand. The weapon skittered to the ground. Her jaw gritted to brace for impact, Juliette twisted her foot out behind Roma’s and jerked it against his ankles—until he was falling backward and she followed, one hand locked on his neck and the other reaching into her dress pocket to retrieve a needle-thin knife.
“Okay,” Juliette heaved, breathing hard. She had him pinned flat on his back, her knees on either side of his hips and her blade pressed to his throat. “Let’s try this again like civilized people.”
Roma’s pulse jumped under her fingertips, his throat straining to move away from the blade. His eyes were dilated as he stared at her, adjusting to the shadows of the sunset while the alleyway faded into a dusky violet. They were close enough to be sharing quick, short breaths, despite both of their best efforts to appear unbothered by the exertion of the struggle.
“Civilized?” Roma echoed. His voice was scratchy. “You have me at knifepoint.”
“You had me at gunpoint.”
“I’m on your territory—I had no choice.”
Juliette frowned, then pressed the knife in until a bead of blood appeared on its tip.
“Okay, stop, stop.” Roma winced. “I get it.”
One small slip of her hand now would cut his neck right open. She was almost tempted to give it a try. Everything between them felt far too familiar, too automatically intimate. She itched to be rid of that feeling, to slice it off like it was a malevolent tumor.
Roma still smelled as he used to: like gunmetal and mint and the softness of a gentle zephyr. This close, she could determine that everything and yet nothing had changed.
“Go on,” Juliette prompted, wrinkling her nose. “Explain yourself.”
Roma’s eyes flickered up in vexation. He acted flippant, but Juliette was tracking his erratic pulse as it thudded away beneath her fingers. She could feel every jump and stutter of fear as she leaned in with her blade.
“I need information,” Roma managed.
“Shocking.”
His eyebrows rose. “If you let me go, I can explain.”
“I’d prefer if you explain like this.”
“
Oh, Juliette.”
Click.
The echo of the safety being pulled on a handgun sounded into the alley. Surprised, Juliette looked to her left, where the gun she had disarmed was still lying, untouched. She turned her gaze back to Roma and found him smiling, his beautiful, wicked lips quirked in mockery.
“What?” Roma asked. He sounded almost teasing. “You thought I only had one?”
The cold press of metal touched her waist. Its chill seeped through the fabric of her dress, printed its shape into her skin. Begrudgingly, slowly, Juliette removed her knife from Roma’s throat and raised her hands high. She released her deathly grip on him, each step as prolonged as possible until she was standing up, striding backward to put herself two paces away from the pistol.
In unison, with no other way to avoid a deadlock, they put their weapons away.
“The man who died at your club last night,” Roma began. “Do you remember his mismatched shoes?”
Juliette bit down on the insides of her cheeks, then nodded.
“I found the other half of one of the pairs in the Huangpu River, right where the rest of the men died the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival,” Roma went on. “I think he escaped the first bloodshed. But he took the madness with him, took it to your club a day later and then succumbed to it.”
“Impossible,” Juliette snapped immediately. “What sort of science—”
“We are past science, Juliette.”
Her indignation hot in her throat, Juliette brought her shoulders up to her ears and clutched her hands into fists. She entertained the idea of calling Roma paranoid, irrational, but unfortunately she knew how diligent he was when he found something to focus on. If he thought this a possibility, it was very likely a possibility.
“What are you saying?”
Roma folded his arms. “I’m saying that I need to know for certain if it was indeed the same man. I need to see the other shoe on his corpse. And if the shoes match up, then this madness—it could be contagious.”
Juliette felt denial lay thick and heavy in her bones. The victim had died in her club, spraying blood onto a room full of her Scarlets, coughing spittle into a gathering full of her people. If this was indeed a disease of the mind—a contagious disease of the mind—the Scarlet Gang was in big trouble.