The monsters howled into the night. Loomed closer.
“In this life and the next,” Roma returned, “for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours.”
Juliette squeezed his hand. In that action, she tried to communicate everything she couldn’t put into words, everything that didn’t have a spoken form other than I love you. I love you. I love you.
When Dimitri stepped forward, when the monsters finally approached within good range, Juliette turned the spark wheel on her lighter.
“Don’t miss,” Roma said.
“I never do,” Juliette replied.
And with Roma’s nod, she threw the burning flame onto the bags of highly flammable vaccine.
“What could be taking so long?” Benedikt demanded. He had his foot on the pedal. They needed to be ready to go the very second Roma and Juliette appeared.
Alisa whimpered from the back seat. Marshall strained against the rear window, waiting to see if anyone was coming up the street and within sight.
The ground beneath them seemed to shudder. One thump. Another.
Then Marshall turned around, swearing so loudly his voice cracked. “Go, Benedikt, go!”
“What? But—”
“Drive!”
Benedikt pressed down on the accelerator, the car tearing through the street so suddenly that its wheels shrieked into the night.
Behind them, with gasoline drenched into every square inch of the pavement, the explosion rang so loud and hot that all of Shanghai rocked with the blow.
Epilogue
April 1928
There is scarcely any movement around this part of Zhouzhuang, scarcely any sound at all to disturb Alisa Montagova as she kneels by the canal, folding yuánbǎo out of silver paper. She doesn’t think that they much resemble the ingots they are supposed to look like, but she is trying her best.
Today is the Qingming festival: Tomb-Sweeping Day. A day of veneration for ancestors who have passed away, for gravesite cleaning and praying and burning false money into the afterlife for the dead to use. Alisa has no ancestor to pray for in Shanghai. In Shanghai, there are only gravestones, laid side by side over empty graves.
Nobody had argued against it. With the explosion twelve months ago, the papers the next day had gotten ahold of a marriage certificate that sent the city into an uproar. A certificate that showed Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai married, bound together this whole time while the blood feud tore the streets apart.
Alisa adds another yuánbǎo to her pile. In truth, the certificate never existed. But Alisa heard their vows that night, eavesdropping instead of going to sleep. She had forged the document and sent it to the press. The blood feud may not have fallen apart immediately, but that was the first moment it started to fragment. If their heirs did not believe in the feud, why should the common people? If the heirs had died for each other, what was the basis for their people to keep fighting?
They had buried them together. There were no ashes, no bones. Kept apart in life, allowed together in death.
At the thought, Alisa sniffles suddenly, finding her nose to be running. She didn’t believe it. The first time she saw their gravesite, she had dived at the headstones, trying to carve the engravings right out.
“They’re not dead!” she screamed. “If you can’t find their bodies, they’re not dead!”
They said the explosion had been too hot. That they found the monsters because of how tough their skins were, that they found Dimitri Voronin body because of his distance from the blast. But no Roma and no Juliette.
Benedikt had to pull her off. He had to throw her over his shoulder so she wouldn’t dig the grave up, but even as he walked her away, her eyes remained pinned on the stones.
“They’re gone, Alisa,” Benedikt whispered. “I’m sorry. They’re gone.”
“How can they be gone?” She clutched her cousin, burying her face in his shoulder. “They were once the mightiest people in this city. How can they just be gone?”
“I’m sorry.” That was all Benedikt could say. Marshall crouched down beside them, offering his presence. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Those aren’t even their names, Alisa wanted to scream. Those headstones have the wrong names.
Now, she finishes her little pile of false money and gathers them into a tight circle. Twilight creeps deeper against the horizon, bathing the sky in orange. Alisa is here because she cannot stand the insincere gestures in Shanghai, cannot bear to join the crowds at the cemeteries, all the sobbing faces who didn’t even know her brother. Benedikt and Marshall had fled the city a month after the explosion. They wanted to take her with them to Moscow, where no one knew who they were, where no one had heard of the Montagovs and their legacy, where Kuomintang generals wouldn’t be on the hunt for them. Alisa refused. She wanted to know what happened to her father. She wanted to see what would happen to her city.
She hasn’t gotten any good answers. Her father remains missing, and the city slowly returns to normal. War rages through the country with no sign of ceasing, but Shanghai has always been a city in a bubble. War rages on, and the city tells the tale of Roma and Juliette like some folk song passed between rickshaw runners on their breaks. They speak of Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai as the ones who had dared to dream. And for that, in a city consumed by nightmares, they were cut down without mercy.
“Alisa Montagova, it is starting to get cold.”
Alisa turns around, squinting into the dark. “I’m almost done. I would have been faster if you had helped me fold.”
A grumble. “I will stay here. Don’t fall into the water.”
Alisa strikes a match, bringing it to the false money. She cups the flame so that the soft wind does not blow it away, her hand steady until an ember catches and flares to life.
Today, of all days, there will be crowds upon crowds tending to Roma and Juliette’s gravesite. Which is why Alisa has come here instead, to Zhouzhuang, where Roma once said he wanted to go. If the human soul has an afterlife, has a will, then his would be here for rest, and Alisa has no doubt that Juliette’s would follow.
It had been absolute hell trying to find a way out to this little township. Alisa no longer lives at White Flower headquarters. Headquarters doesn’t exist anymore, taken over by Nationalists and soldiers once the White Flowers were run out. Benedikt was immensely worried when he was leaving with Marshall, wondering what Alisa was going to do, where Alisa was going to go. She already had an answer for him. He hadn’t liked it, but he couldn’t stop her.
She became a Communist spy.
It isn’t that she cares all that much for the cause. It isn’t even that she likes the people very much, short of her superiors who decide her tasks, and on the occasion, drive her out into the countryside when she pouts for long enough. But she sees the city trying to revert to its old ways. She sees the lines and cracks growing and growing, and she wonders what it was all for, why her brother made such a sacrifice if nothing is going to change. The White Flowers are fractured beyond repair; the Scarlets have disintegrated. Lord Cai joined the ranks of the Kuomintang; the government sits steady. And yet this city hums with injustice. No true law, no true rule. Foreigners, lurking at the seams, waiting for the moment the Kuomintang missteps. Imperialists in other parts of the country, their armies at the ready, simply biding their time. Alisa is no expert in politics, but she is quick and nimble. She crawls in and out of hiding spaces before anyone can see her. She hears the reports of the Japanese taking land in the north. She hears the British and French plotting to consume what they can. For as long as the country is kept in chaos, the people fear the fates that they mourn in Roma and Juliette. For as long as hatred lurks in the waters, the story of Roma and Juliette starts anew.