by Chloe Gong
“Really?” Rosalind gestured across the table with her chin. “Why’d you ignore Mr. Ping when he asked for your opinion on the worker strikes, then?”
Juliette’s attention shot to Mr. Ping, a member of her father’s inner circle who used to like asking about her studies whenever he saw her. If she recalled correctly, a favorite topic of his was astrology; he always had something to suggest about the alignment of the Western zodiacs, and Juliette—even at fifteen—always had a quip to fire back about fate working through science and statistics instead. Right now he was pouting on the other side of the circular table, looking especially wounded. Juliette winced.
“It’s been a long day.”
“Indeed,” Kathleen muttered in agreement from Rosalind’s other side, massaging the bridge of her nose.
The racket of their private room was loud enough to compete with the rest of the restaurant outside. Lord Cai was in the seat beside her, but these dinners were not opportunities for father-daughter discussions. Her father was always too occupied with other conversation to utter a single word to her, and her mother was taking charge of the second table in the room, leading the conversation there. This wasn’t the setting for personal conversations. This was prime time for members of the Scarlet Gang’s inner circle to jostle and brag and drink to the edge of death against one another to win favors.
Tyler was usually one of the loudest people at these tables. Today, however, he was off chasing rent money instead, as he had been for the past few days. While Juliette was put in charge of the madness, Tyler was running her heiress roles in her place, and he reveled in them. Juliette stiffened each time she heard him yelling through the house, gathering his entourage so they could set out—and it was happening often. It seemed like every minute had a new dodger, a new account going into the red. Tyler would wave his gun and threaten store owners and house tenants until they coughed up the necessary amount, until the Scarlets had made back what they were owed. It was hypocritical for Juliette to be looking down on Tyler for simply doing what was technically her job, she knew, but performing such a job in this climate made her uneasy. People were not refusing to pay now because they wished to rebel; they were simply not making enough income because all their customers were dying.
Juliette sighed, twiddling her chopsticks. The food spun before them on the glass turntable, presenting roasted ducks and rice cakes and fried noodles without pause. Meanwhile, Juliette was mechanically picking up servings from the center and bringing them to her plate, putting food in her mouth without really tasting it. It was a shame, really. One glance at the decadent greens of the vegetables, at the gleam of the scaled fish, at the glistening oils dripping off the meat was enough to water the mouths of anyone.
Except Juliette had zoned out yet again. Realizing that she was raising the ashtray to her mouth instead of her ceramic teacup, she shook herself back to reality and caught the very last syllable coming out of Rosalind’s mouth—not nearly enough to determine any of what her cousin had said, but just enough to know that it had been a question and something needing a worthwhile answer out of Juliette instead of a smile and a generic, inquisitive noise.
“I’m sorry, what?” Juliette said. “You were talking, weren’t you? I’m sorry, I’m terrible—”
And she was about to be even more terrible because she would never know what Rosalind had asked. At that moment, her father was clearing his throat, and the two tables in the private room fell silent immediately. Lord Cai rose, his hands clasped behind his rigid back.
“I hope everyone is well,” her father said. “There is something I must address tonight.”
Some gut feeling in Juliette tightened. She braced.
“Undeniable proof has come to my attention today that there is a spy in the Scarlet Gang.”
Utter quiet sank into the room—not an absence of sound, but a presence in itself, like an invisible, heavy blanket had been settled over all their shoulders. Even the servers stopped—one boy who had been pouring tea froze midmovement.
Juliette only blinked. She exchanged a glance with Rosalind. It was almost common knowledge that there were spies in the Scarlet Gang. How could there not be? The Scarlets certainly had people among the common ranks of the White Flowers. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to consider the White Flowers had invaded their messengers, especially given how often their people got the jump on the Scarlet Gang.
Lord Cai continued.
“There is a spy in the Scarlet Gang who has been invited into this room.”
For a short, horrific second, Juliette felt a pang of fear that her father was referring to her. Could he have found out about her association with the White Flowers—with Roma Montagov—and taken it the wrong way?
Impossible, she thought, clenching her fists beneath the table. She hadn’t given away any information. Surely something had to have happened to damage their business to elicit a declaration like this from her father.
She was right.
“Today three important potential clients pulled out of their planned partnerships with us.” Juliette’s father was holding himself with the air of exhaustion, as if he was sick and tired of battling nervous clientele, but Juliette saw through the guise. Her eyes skipped over him and traced the tense lines of her mother’s stiff shoulders across the room. They were furious. They had been betrayed.
“They knew of our pricing before it had even been proposed,” Lord Cai continued. “They went to the White Flowers instead.”
Doubtlessly after the White Flowers had approached them with lower prices. And how could a spy know of such protected information unless they were in the inner circle? This wasn’t the work of a messenger who had vague ideas regarding drop-off locations. This was the very core of Scarlet business, and it had sprung a leak.
“I know all your backgrounds,” Lord Cai went on. “I know you are all born and bred of Shanghai. Your blood runs thousands of years back to ancestors who link us together. If there is a traitor here, you have not been turned by true loyalty or anything of that caliber, but rather by the promise of money, or glory, or false love, or merely by the thrill of playing spy. But I assure you…” He settled back into his seat and reached for the teapot. He refilled his ceramic cup, his hand completely steady as the leaves overflowed to the very, very brim, spilling onto the red tablecloth and staining it until the darkness looked like a bloom of blood. If he poured any longer, Juliette feared the hot tea would spill down the tablecloth and burn her legs. “When I uncover who you are, the consequences by my hand will be far greater than what the White Flowers may do upon the notification that you will no longer act the traitor.”
To Juliette’s relief, Lord Cai finally set the pot down just before the overspill reached the edge of the table. Her father was smiling, but his eyes, despite the aged crinkle of crow’s feet, stayed as blank as an executioner’s. In this moment, Lord Cai didn’t choose verbal words to deliver his message. He let his expression speak for him.
There was no doubt which parent Juliette had received her monstrous smile from.
“Please,” Lord Cai said, when nobody moved after the close of his threat. “Let us continue eating.”
Slowly the powerful men and the wives who whispered into their ears picked up their chopsticks again. Juliette couldn’t quite sit still anymore. She leaned toward her father and whispered that she had to run to the washroom. When Lord Cai nodded, Juliette rose, making for the door.
Outside the Scarlet Gang’s private room, Juliette leaned against the cold wall, taking a second to catch her breath. She saw the other patrons of the restaurant to her left, where the volume was at a roar—a collective effort of different small tables each fighting to be heard over the others. To her right, there were separate doorways leading to the kitchen and the washrooms. With a sigh, Juliette marched into the washroom.
“Calm yourself,” she told herself, leaning her head against the large metal sink. She drooped her neck, breathing deeply.
Wha
t would her father say if he knew that she was working with Roma Montagov? Would he see it the way she did, that giving up this one point of pride could help all their people if they managed to stop the madness? Or would he get stuck on the very core of Juliette’s betrayal: that she had had unlimited chances to shoot Roma in revenge for all the blood his hands had spilled, and hadn’t?
Juliette pulled her chin up, facing the distorted bronze mirror before her. All she saw was a stranger.
Perhaps she was in over her head. Perhaps the correct course of action was to break off any alliance with Roma Montagov and go to her own people instead, to figure out a way to corner Walter Dexter with brute manpower and make him talk—
A scream pierced her ear. Juliette startled, registered it as coming from the main restaurant.
She barged out of the washroom. In seconds, she had hurried to the source of the scream, panting for breath as she searched for victims. She found only one man collapsed on the ground. Her eyes landed on him in the same second that his hands launched around his neck.
But nobody went forward to help him. Even as he tore into his throat, littering chunks of skin outward along a small radius and eventually stilling into death, the people of the restaurant continued on. Only one elderly lady at the back waved down a waiter to clean the scene. Some others had hardly flinched, acting as if they had not noticed, as if not acknowledging death would offend it enough to have it go away.
Civilians were ripping out their own throats and the people of this city had become so desensitized that they were content to continue their dinner like it was a regular Tuesday. Juliette supposed it was. If this continued, it would be the norm until the whole city collapsed. It was only a matter of time until every small establishment in Shanghai emptied out, either because their customers had succumbed to the madness or because others wished not to attend places where infection was likely. A matter of time until Scarlet-assisted businesses ate through their savings and could no longer make rent even despite Tyler’s threats, until large restaurants of this size crumbled too. There were red roses sprouting forward on every second door along Scarlet territory. Warnings upon warnings, but what good were warnings in the face of madness?
“Hey,” Juliette snapped when the waiter crouched near the dead man. “Don’t touch him.” Her tone scared the waiter enough to send him scrambling back. “Put a tablecloth over the body and call a doctor.”
Nothing was a guarantee. She needed Roma’s help to fix this city. But she also needed to stop sitting around and making excuses.
She needed to weasel her way beside Paul Dexter.
* * *
At this hour it was hard to find the line in the horizon where the waters ended and land began, where the Huangpu River bled into the bank on the other side. When Benedikt was sitting by the water’s edge, looking out into the night, it was easy to forget the swirling concoction of red and gold and smoke and laughter that existed in the city behind him. It was easy to believe that this was all there was: an unshaped land, blotted with the faintest dots of glitter from the other bank.
“I thought I would find you here.”
Benedikt turned at the voice, letting his leg swing over the boardwalk. The light that framed Marshall stung at Benedikt’s unadjusted eyes when he looked upon him.
“It is not like I go anywhere else.”
Marshall shoved his hands into his pockets. He was dressed nicely in a Western suit tonight, which was rare but not unusual, not if Lord Montagov had just sent him somewhere on an errand.
“Do you know how long the Huangpu River is? You’re picky, Ben. I don’t think I’ve ever found you in the same spot twice.”
Beneath them, the river seemed to rock in response. It knew that it was being gossiped about.
“Did something happen?” Benedikt asked.
“Were you expecting something to happen?” Marshall replied, coming to sit beside him.
“Something is always happening.”
Marshall pursed his lips. He thought for a second. “No, nothing happened,” he finally said. “When I left him, Roma was drafting a reply to a message from Juliette. He’s been at it for three hours. I think he’s going to pull a muscle.”
Roma did nothing half-heartedly. Whenever he visited Alisa’s bedside, he would stay for almost half the day, his other tasks be damned. The only reason Lord Montagov allowed such inactivity from him was because he knew Roma would enact his other tasks with his full attention eventually, as soon as he left the hospital.
“Better to pull a muscle than to pull out his own throat,” Benedikt muttered. He stopped. “I don’t trust her.”
“Juliette?”
Benedikt nodded.
“Of course you don’t,” Marshall said. “You shouldn’t. It doesn’t mean she’s not useful. It doesn’t mean you have to dislike her.” He gestured toward the alleyway. “Can we go home now?”
Benedikt sighed, but he was already getting up, dusting off his hands. “You could have gone home on your own, Mars.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Benedikt would never understand how often Marshall needed to be surrounded by people. Marshall was allergic to lonesomeness—he had once genuinely developed a rash because he sat down in his room and forbade himself from leaving until he balanced an account book. Benedikt was the opposite. People made him sticky. People made him think about his words twice as hard and sweat when he didn’t pick them right.
“I don’t suppose you’re in the mood to stop by a casino first?” Marshall asked when they started to walk, grinning. “I heard there’s—”
Midspeech, Marshall suddenly halted in his steps, throwing an arm out to snag Benedikt back. Benedikt needed a few seconds to see why they had stopped. He needed a few more to truly comprehend what he was seeing.
A shadow—stretching on the pavement in front of them. They were still midway inside this alleyway, too deep inside to look past the tall buildings on either side and determine what was making the looming shadow. The streetlamp was not far; the outline shining down was stark and well defined, leaving no mistake for the sight of horns, for limbs that moved with a pained stagger, for a size that was incomprehensible for anything natural.
Chudovishche. Monster. The same one that all of Shanghai had been seeing, lurking in the city’s corners.
“Good God,” Benedikt muttered.
The shadow was moving toward them, toward their very alleyway.
“Hide!”
“Hide?” Marshall hissed in echo. “You want me to magically shrink myself?”
Indeed, the alleyway was too thin to offer a viable hiding spot. But there was a wide blue tarp lying atop the discarded wooden boxes. With no time to give instruction, Benedikt grabbed the tarp and pushed Marshall down roughly, shushing him when Marshall winced, and folded himself down too, until they were curled up alongside the boxes and hidden under the thin sheet.
Something heavy passed through the alley. It sounded effortful, like feet that did not quite come down right, like nostrils that were too thin to pass breath, so only a wheeze could come out.
Then a rough splash of water rang into the night. Droplets came down onto the river surface as if it had started raining only in one section of the sky.
“What was that?” Marshall hissed. “Did it jump into the water?”
Benedikt grabbed a corner of the tarp, slowly inching his head out into the open. Marshall gripped his shoulder and tried to do the same, until both of them were peering out from their hiding place, squinting into the dark, trying to get a look at the river beating on at the other end of the alleyway.
A shape was floating in the water. Under the moonlight, it was hard to catch much except the glint of what could have been the spine, rows of protrusions that were distorting and changing and…
Benedikt swore, pushing Marshall down. “Hide, hide, hide!”
A burst of movement erupted from the water—from the monster. Miniature dots—spitting into the air, bar
ely visible until they landed on the boardwalk, barely visible until they skittered forward under the moonlight, looking like a moving carpet spreading into the alleyway.
Marshall yanked the tarp up and Benedikt slammed his foot down on the edge of it, pressing the tarp hard into the ground lest the insects crawl through. There was the sound of skittering. The sound of a thousand little legs brushing up against rough gravel, dispersing into the city.
Silence. A long minute passed. The silence only continued.
“I think they’re gone,” Benedikt whispered. “Mars?”
Marshall made a choking noise.
“Marshall!”
Benedikt moved fast enough to disrupt the air around him. He placed his hands on both sides of Marshall’s face, squeezing hard to demand Marshall’s attention and sanity, squeezing hard in case he needed to stop him from clawing himself to death.
But instead of falling to madness, Marshall snorted. A beat later an amused laugh escaped. “Ben, I’m only kidding.”
Benedikt stared at Marshall.
“Mudak,” he hissed angrily. When he took his hands back, he had to resist the urge to hit Marshall. “What’s wrong with you? Why would you joke about such a matter?”
Marshall appeared confused now, like he didn’t understand the fury being thrown in his direction. “They hadn’t crawled upon us,” he said slowly. “Why would you take me seriously?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Benedikt snapped. “You don’t joke about that, Marshall. I will not lose you!”
Marshall blinked. He tilted his head curiously, in the same way he usually did when he was trying to predict Benedikt’s next move during a sparring match. In a true match, Benedikt had always been better at predicting Marshall’s lazy feigns, tracking Marshall’s guesswork and acting the opposite.
But here, while they sat nose to nose, he would never have expected Marshall to reach out and touch his cheek—the brush of a finger feather-soft, as though to test whether Benedikt was really there.