by Chloe Gong
Juliette shrugged. “Fine.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Paul crowed. She didn’t know why he was responding so enthusiastically to her uninspiring reply. “Let me say, it’s most—”
“What do you want, Paul?” Juliette interrupted. “I already told you that we don’t want your business.”
Undeterred, Paul only ramped up his zeal and took Juliette by the elbow to lead her away from the food. At the back of her mind, she considered shooting him, but because this was a party with hundreds of rich foreigners mingling about, she decided that probably would not be the best course of action. She tensed her arm, but allowed Paul to lead her away.
“Just to talk,” he said. “We’ve taken our business straight to the other merchants. Worry not. I have no more intentions to bother the Scarlet Gang.”
Juliette smiled sweetly. Her teeth were gritted hard.
“And if that is the case, why are you bothering with me?”
Paul smiled sweetly back, though his expression appeared genuine.
“Perhaps I am after your affection, pretty girl.”
Gross. She would bet her life savings that he only thought her pretty because she was digestible to Western standards. Her feminine beauty was a concept as fleeting as power. If she acquired a tan, put on some weight, and let a few decades pass, the street artists would not be rendering her face to sell their creams anymore. Chinese and Western standards alike were arbitrary, pitiful things. But Juliette still needed to keep herself in line, force herself to follow them if people were to look up to her. Without her looks, this city would turn on her. It would claim that she didn’t deserve to be as competent as she was. The men, meanwhile, could be as tan, as fat, and as old as they wished. It would have no bearing on what people thought of them.
Juliette removed her arm from Paul’s grip, pivoting on her heel to return to the food.
“No, thanks. My affection is not won with such humdrum energy.”
It was as thorough a dismissal as any. Juliette thought she had been left alone when she picked up a drink. But Paul was persistent. His voice came over her shoulder again.
“How is your father?”
“He is well,” Juliette replied, barely biting back the aggravation that wanted to climb into her words. Out of social courtesy, she asked him in a light voice, “And how is yours?”
Juliette was the queen of socialites. She had had nothing but practice. If she wanted to, she could have turned her slight, polite smile into a megawatt grin. But she did not think she could get any information out of Paul, and associating with him seemed pointless.
Perhaps Paul could tell. Perhaps he was smarter than Juliette gave him credit for. Perhaps he had indeed detected the restlessness of her tapping fingers and the ceaseless movement of her craning neck.
So he made himself useful.
“My father and I have started working for the Larkspur,” Paul said. “Have you heard of him?”
The Larkspur. Juliette’s tapping fingers halted midmovement. Lā-gespu. Larkspur. That was what the old man in Chenghuangmiao had been trying to say. Hearing one lunatic scream about a mysterious figure, claiming he had received a cure for the madness, was unworthy of notice. Hearing that same mysterious figure mentioned twice in a few days was strange. Her eyes focused properly on the British smooth talker before her, for once settling into a steady gaze.
“I’ve heard some things, here and there,” Juliette replied vaguely. She tilted her head. “What do you do?”
“Run errands, mostly.”
Now Paul was being deliberately vague, and he knew it. Juliette watched the lines of his small smirk, the curve of his eyebrows drawing together, and read him to an inch of his life. He wanted attention for his involvement with the Larkspur, but he was not allowed to give answers. He would hint at all he knew, but he would not give anything up just for gossip.
“Errands?” Juliette parroted. “I cannot imagine there is much to do.”
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong,” Paul said, his chest puffing up. “The Larkspur has created a vaccine for the madness. He has merchants rushing for it in droves, and the organization of such a large affair requires workers the size of an army.”
“Your salary must be fantastic.” Juliette eyed the chain of a golden pocket watch draped through one of his buttonholes.
“The Larkspur sits upon stacks of money,” Paul confirmed.
Is this Larkspur benefiting off the panic of the madness, then? Juliette wondered. Or does he truly have a vaccine that is worth the money of these merchants?
Juliette could have voiced her musings aloud, but Paul was looking too satisfied to give her a truthful answer. She only asked bluntly, “And does the Larkspur have a name?”
Paul shrugged. “If he does, I do not know it. If you would like, I could arrange for you to meet him.”
At this Juliette straightened up, peering at him from underneath her blackened eyelashes, waiting for the catch.
“Though I must say,” Paul continued, looking apologetic, “I am not yet very high in the ranks. You would have to stick around for some time while I work my way up.…”
Juliette barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Paul was still blabbering on, but she had stopped listening. He was only after a power trip. He couldn’t make himself useful after all.
“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle.”
Paul abruptly shut up as the voice spoke behind Juliette, giving her a blissful few seconds without his prattling. She silently thanked the French intruder, then took it back the moment she turned and faced the masked blond man standing before them.
Oh hell.
“Voulez-vous danser?”
Though Juliette could feel a vein in her forehead throbbing dangerously, pulsating with the rhythm of her anger, she took the opportunity to escape.
“Bien sûr,” she said tightly. “À plus tard, Paul.”
Juliette snagged Roma’s sleeve and dragged him away, her fingers curled so tightly that her right hand turned numb. Did he think she wouldn’t recognize him just because he was wearing a blond wig and a mask?
“Do you have a death wish?” Juliette hissed, switching to English as soon as Paul was out of earshot. Then, noting all the British ministers and merchants around her, she lowered her tongue into Russian instead. “I should kill you right now. Your audacity!”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Roma replied, his Russian fast and biting. “Would you risk allowing the Scarlet Gang to be seen as violent brutes in front of these foreigners just to get rid of me? The price is too high to pay.”
“I—” Juliette clamped her lips shut, swallowing whatever else was poised on her tongue. They had paused in the fray of the dancing, amid a gathering of couples steadily increasing with the change in music. The pull of strings from the quartet was coming fast—the tune was livelier, the rhythm was teasing. Roma was right. Juliette wouldn’t dare, but the foreigners had been the furthest thing from her mind. Juliette wouldn’t dare because no matter how big her talk was, she still couldn’t separate the hatred broiling in her stomach with the sudden lurch of adrenaline that came to life with his proximity. If her body refused to forget who Roma once was to her, how was she to make those same limbs rebel from their nature, make them destroy him?
“Penny for your thoughts?”
At Roma’s switch back into English, Juliette’s gaze jerked up. Their eyes locked. A tremor shuddered along the back of her hands. In the midst of so many swishing skirts, the stillness between them was starting to look suspicious. Really, Juliette wondered how Roma avoided looking suspicious anywhere he went. He moved too well. Had someone told her four years ago that he was a god in human form, she would have believed them.
“I doubt you have a penny on you,” Juliette finally replied. Reluctantly, she took a step forward and raised her hand; Roma did the same. They didn’t need to speak to make the complementing gesture. They had always known how to predict what the other was about to do.
“I
ndeed, but I have plenty of larger bills. Would you offer more thoughts for those?”
The music grew louder, spurring the couples all around them to move with a renewed vigor. Roma and Juliette were forced to circle each other, hands extended but not touching, hovering but not steady, needing to move to blend in but unwilling to make contact, unwilling to pretend to be more than what they were.
“What are you doing here, Roma?” Juliette asked tightly. She did not have the energy to play along with his trivial conversation. At such an intimate distance, she could hardly keep her breath even, could hardly hide the trembling that threatened to shake her extended hand. “I gather you are not risking your life just to have a little dance.”
“No,” he replied surely. “My father sent me.” A pause. Only then did it seem like Roma was struggling to get his next words out. “He wishes to propose that the Scarlet Gang and White Flowers work together.”
Juliette almost laughed in his face. She quavered at the rising numbers of the dead lost to the madness, yes, and she feared another outbreak within her own house—this time targeting those of her blood, those whom she knew well and held close to her heart. But it hadn’t happened yet, and it wouldn’t happen if Juliette could work fast enough—alone. No matter how much more efficient it was for the two gangs to work together, to join a divided city into one, she had no incentive at all to agree to Roma’s proposal, and he appeared to think the same.
The words coming out of his mouth were one matter, but his expression was another. His heart was not in it, either. Even if working together could merge their territory, even if it could bring a momentary peace to the feud so they could discover why their gangsters were being picked off one by one, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to set down the hatred and the blood, to resolve the fury that Juliette had been nursing in her heart for four years.
Besides, why would Lord Montagov, of all people, propose an alliance? He was the most hateful of them all. Juliette could only come to one conclusion, the most likely: it was a test. If he sent Roma here and the Scarlet Gang agreed, then Lord Montagov knew the extent of their desperation. The White Flowers didn’t truly want to work together. They only wanted to know how hard the Scarlet Gang had been hit, so they could use the information to strike even harder.
“Never,” Juliette hissed. “Run home and tell your father he can choke.”
Juliette whirled on her heel and broke away from their half dance, but then the music changed to suit a waltz, and Roma snagged her arm, pulling her back until her other hand landed on his shoulder and his came around her waist. Before she could do a thing about it, he had pulled her into the proper stance, chest to chest, and they were dancing.
It was like she was under compulsion. For a moment she allowed herself to believe they were fifteen again, spinning on the rooftop they liked to hide on, moving to the jazz club roaring beneath their feet. Memories were beastly little creatures, after all—they rose with the faintest whiff of nourishment.
She hated the knee-jerk way she leaned into him. She hated that her body followed his lead without resistance. They used to be unstoppable. When they were together, they never had an ounce of fear, not when they were hiding at the back of a noisy club playing cards, nor when they made it their mission to sneak into every private park in Shanghai, a bottle of whatever Juliette had stolen from the liquor cabinet tucked underneath Roma’s arm, giggling like a pair of idiots.
It was all too familiar. The feeling of Roma’s hands on her waist, his hand tucked in hers—those hands were of such grace, but she knew better than anyone that blood was soaked through and through the lines of his palms. Lines that read like scripture in appearance were in truth nothing but sin.
“This isn’t proper,” she intoned.
“You give me no choice,” Roma replied. His voice was strained. “I need your cooperation.”
The music rang sharp and then it moved fast, and as Roma twirled her outward, her skirts clinking alongside the tune, Juliette’s resistance snapped to attention. When she came back, she wasn’t content to let Roma lead. Despite their stance, the moves, the steps, the angle of their hands—despite everything about the waltz that determined she was the subservient partner, Juliette started to dictate where they were stepping.
“Why do you not dance with my father, then?” she asked, taking in a deep gulp of air as the next spin came. “He is the voice of this gang.”
Roma was fighting back. His grip was tight on her hand, his fingers pressing into her waist like he was trying to press his fingerprints into her dress. If she had only heard his voice, she would not have known the pressure he was under. His voice was easy, casual.
“I fear your father would shoot me in the face.”
“Oh, and you don’t fear that I would do the same? It would appear my reputation doesn’t precede me.”
“Juliette,” Roma said. “You have power.”
The music came to an abrupt stop.
And they froze too, just as they were—eye to eye, heart to heart. As the people around them broke away in light laughter, switching partners before the music started again, Roma and Juliette simply stood there, heaving for breath, chests rising and falling, as if they had just engaged in close-contact combat instead of the waltz.
Step away, Juliette told herself.
The pain of it was almost physical. The years had worn on between them, had aged them into monsters with human faces, unrecognizable against old photos. Yet no matter how much she wanted to forget, it was like no time had passed at all. She looked at him and she could still remember the terrible dip in her stomach when the explosion happened, could still feel the tightness in her throat that signaled the onslaught of tears, worsening and worsening until she was breaking down against the exterior wall of her house, holding her scream back with nothing but the palm of her silk-gloved hand.
“You must consider it.” Roma spoke quietly, like any loud noise could startle the bubble that had formed around them, could stomp down the strangeness between them, boiling and boiling to the surface. “I give my word that this is no ambush. This is a matter of preventing chaos from descending onto the streets.”
Once, a long time ago, at the back of a library while a storm raged on outside, Juliette had asked Roma, “Do you ever imagine what life would be like if you had a different last name?”
“All the time. Don’t you?”
Juliette had thought about it. “Only sometimes. Then I consider all that I would miss out on without it. What would I be if I weren’t a Cai?”
Roma had lifted onto his elbow. “You could be a Montagov.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Very well.” Roma had leaned in, close enough that she could see the twinkle in his dark eyes, close enough to see her own blushing face in the reflection of his gaze. “Or we could erase both names and leave this entire Cai–Montagov nonsense behind.”
Now she wanted to tear out the memories, launch them as a wad of spit right at Roma’s face.
You give your word. But you have always been a liar.
She opened her mouth, the words to turn Roma away balanced right at the tip of her tongue. Then her gaze went to a rapidly approaching blur of movement coming toward him, and she blanched, her jaw wiring shut.
Roma became stock-still when he sensed the gun that Tyler had pointed to his head.
“Juliette,” Tyler said. Where the loose sleeves of his dress shirt billowed with the light wind, his hands were perfectly still, not a single tremor to the steady grip on his weapon. “Step away.”
Juliette considered the situation. Her eyes darted a quick inventory of the foreigners around them, taking in their scandalized gasps and their confused, wide eyes.
She needed to deescalate this right now.
“What is wrong with you?” Juliette scolded, feigning outrage as she stepped away.
Tyler frowned. “What—”
“Put away your gun and apologize to this kind Frenchman,” she c
ontinued. She placed her hands on her hips, like she was Tyler’s snappy aunt instead of a girl with a heartbeat that threatened to tear through her rib cage.
Tyler’s expression morphed from furious to perplexed and back to furious again. He was buying it. It was working.
“Tyler,” Lord Cai called from a distance away. “Gun away. Now.”
“This is Roma Montagov,” Tyler snapped. Gasps sounded from the British couple who stood behind him. “I know it. I could tell by his voice.”
“Don’t embarrass us by acting out like this,” Juliette warned quietly.
Tyler responded by pressing the barrel of the gun deeper into Roma’s neck. “I will not tolerate a Montagov parading around on our territory. The disrespect—”
Two figures stepped out of the shadows then, their guns already pointed on Tyler and snatching the words from his mouth. Benedikt Montagov and Marshall Seo had not even bothered wearing disguises. It was the Scarlet Gang’s fault for not recognizing them. After all, Juliette had known they might be coming. She knew that Roma had snatched her invitation, that the White Flowers would have heard about this function even without it. And perhaps this was her own fault too. Perhaps some traitorous part of her had wanted Roma to show just so she could see him. That part of her—the one that had dreamed of a better world, that had loved without caution—was supposed to be dead.
Just like monsters were supposed to be mere tales. Just like this city, in all its glitter and technology and innovation, was supposed to be safe from madness.
“Stop,” Juliette said, inaudible even to herself. This would end in a bloodbath. “Stop—”
A scream echoed into the night.
The confused rumblings began immediately, but then confusion turned to panic and panic turned to chaos. Tyler had no choice but to lower his gun when the British woman standing two feet away from him collapsed to the ground. He had no choice but to dart backward and give wide berth when the woman’s hands launched at her delicate lily-white throat and tore it to pieces.