And what was love if all it did was kill?
“—a car?”
With a start, Juliette realized she hadn’t been listening, and only now registered Roma’s suggestion, glancing upon the road. After handling the bodies, they had asked an officer for the directions to their destination, and the route was a simple, albeit hefty walk. Kunshan itself was classified a city, but it was a far cry from Shanghai. Rather than a living, breathing entity that turned inside out upon itself in an effort to find space, Kunshan was a small lasso on a map: a grouping of ten or so quiet towns that sat side by side with little activity past its day-to-day humdrum energy. This place was easy to navigate because it was quiet and still, but that also meant it was impossible to hide within, should they pick up a tail.
“No, we can’t take a car,” Juliette replied. She peered over her shoulder, eyeing the few officers that remained standing by the railway station, deep in conversation. “The blackmailer is onto us. We would be too easy to follow.”
Roma looked back too, frowning when he saw that Juliette was still watching Kunshan’s useless administrative officers. “Them?”
“Obviously not.”
Juliette hurried along. At this rate, the sun would have set by the time they reached the address. The cold was biting enough already, but once night fell, it would be almost unbearable to stand outside, especially when Juliette’s thick coat was a tad more fashionable than it was practical.
“However, I thought about it,” she continued. “That man was sent after us in the train car, but he took his damn time transforming. Paul Dexter is the one who vaccinated me, so I cannot imagine that his collaborator does not know I am immune. They weren’t trying to kill us. They were trying to scare us, collateral damage be damned.”
A bell rang somewhere in the distance. Its echoes bounced down the flat row of buildings erected stoutly on the other side of the road. As Roma and Juliette walked along the footpath, a thin river flowed gently on their left, lapping into the fading evening.
Sometimes Juliette forgot that this was how the rest of the country lived. The farther one receded from the coastal cities, they also receded from coastal control, from power-hungry Nationalists and invading foreigners. They receded away from places where every move felt like life and death, and instead . . .
The river trickled into a wider stream. When a small bird came to perch upon a rock jutting from the riverbed, it barely disturbed the flow of the water.
Instead, they had the space to breathe.
“Believe it or not,” Roma said now. “This monster attack was a good thing.”
Juliette pulled her attention away from the water, searching for the next street sign. The last thing they needed was to get lost. “I do beg your pardon. The bodies on their way to the morgue would argue otherwise.”
“Heaven rest their souls, obviously I do not wish for more death.” Roma’s words were edged with a bite. “When we return to Shanghai, I can root through every White Flower within our ranks until I find exactly who that Frenchman was. And if our trip here does not prove useful, then finding whoever that monster was may be the fastest way to trace back to the blackmailer.”
Juliette didn’t see a point in arguing. Nothing was stopping Roma from refusing to share the information with her if their next course of action was solely down to him, but if she got heated about it, then he got heated back, and they would start screaming at each other again because it was too easy to lean into anger just for a split second of truth. For a sign that Juliette wasn’t entirely lost to him, Roma would pick a fight. In a moment of weakness to glimpse the Roma she loved, Juliette would entertain it. It was a volatile game. She needed to stop. She couldn’t keep doing this. If she had to turn cold, then so be it.
So all Juliette said aloud was “I hope this trip proves useful, then.”
She gestured for them to move along, glancing once more over her shoulder.
“I suspect we are here,” Roma said.
He stopped, looking at the sight ahead with an undisguised puzzlement stamped into his expression. Juliette, too, searched along the row of shops, thinking that they were misunderstanding something.
They were not.
The address for the alleged vaccine center was a wonton shop.
“They advertised this place across the whole French Concession,” Juliette exclaimed. She couldn’t hold back the accusatory tone in her voice, though she was not quite sure whom she was putting at blame here. “It cannot possibly be a scheme just to have more customers for a bowl of húntún tāng.”
Roma suddenly pulled two revolvers from the inside of his suit jacket, one tucked on each side. Juliette blinked at his fast handiwork and absently wondered how she had not felt them when she was pressed up against him earlier.
“It cannot be a mere shop,” he said. “Let’s go, Juliette.”
By the time Juliette retrieved her pistol, Roma had already charged ahead and kicked in the shop door. Juliette hurried after him—feeling rather foolish to be storming into a wonton shop of all places—and found Roma by the register, demanding an audience with whoever had the nerve to be distributing a new vaccine. In the far corner, there was one elderly couple in the shop, eyes wide and concerned.
“Please, please!” the man behind the register shrieked, immediately putting his hands up. He was old too, but at the end of middle age, hair long and pulled back with a band. “Don’t shoot! I am not who you are looking for!”
Juliette tucked her pistol away, making eye contact with the elderly couple and jabbing a sharp thumb toward the door. Not needing to be prompted twice, they hobbled to their feet and gathered their bags, scuttling out of the shop. The door slammed after them so quickly that the ceiling light flickered.
“Then who is?” Roma asked. “Who owns this place?”
The man’s throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed nervously. “I—I do.”
While Roma kept his weapons upon the shop owner, Juliette leaned onto the register and peered around the back of the shop. A cursory sweep revealed a table dusted with flour, a lump of dough hardening by the sink, and there, by the chair—
“Well, I see that the flyers originated from here, so no use lying your way out,” Juliette said cheerily. “Lǎotóu, how are you making the vaccine?”
The man blinked, his clear terror suddenly morphing into confusion. “Making . . . the vaccine?” he echoed. “I—” His head pivoted back to Roma, eyes crossing to stare down the barrel of the revolver. “No! I am not making anything! I am auctioning off the last vial that remains from the Larkspur of Shanghai.”
Juliette pushed off the register. She exchanged a fast glance with Roma, and then, caring little for social propriety, she climbed right up on the counter in her heels and hopped into the back of the shop, retrieving one of the flyers. It was identical to the one that Ernestine de Donadieu had given them, down to the error-riddled French. Only this time, Juliette realized exactly what mistake they had made.
The madness arrives again! Get vaccinated!
Where did it say that the location upon the advertisement would be giving out vaccinations? They had merely assumed, because that was what the Larkspur’s flyers had said.
“Tā mā de,” Juliette cursed, throwing the flyer down. “You have one?”