Horrified, Juliette staggered a step back, her legs hitting the couch. She tried to school her expression, but she doubted it worked, not when a cold sweat had broken out from head to toe.
Monsters? Right after Juliette’s heist? On the same night? How could this possibly be a coincidence?
The maid returned with Juliette’s slippers then, but she took one look at the scene before her and set the slippers down by the kitchen, making a quick exit. A click echoed through the living room, the hallway door closing. Above, the chandelier gave a single chime, picking up that faint whisper of the wind.
“Did you see anything?” Juliette asked. “Was it all of them?”
“All five of them,” Kathleen answered. “We caught the last glimpse of the monsters disappearing, and yet Tyler still thinks I had a hand in it despite catching up to me from three streets away before the monsters attacked.”
Kathleen must have done as she said, distracting Tyler so Roma and Juliette could get away without being caught. But who was to know that monsters would suddenly add themselves into the equation too?
Of course . . . it wasn’t the monsters, was it? It was that damn blackmailer.
“Why else were you even there?” Tyler snapped at Kathleen.
“That’s my business, Cai Tailei! Regardless, you chased me all the way out of Chenghuangmiao. You saw how far I was from the monsters!”
“That wouldn’t have prevented you from summoning them. That wouldn’t have prevented you”—at this, he pointed a finger at Juliette—“from summoning them.”
Kathleen shook her head. “You’re being ridiculous. I’m going to go fetch Lord Cai to handle this.” She trekked up the steps before Tyler could say otherwise, disappearing from view. In her absence, the living room fell quiet: Tyler watching Juliette carefully for any tell of her guilt, and Juliette racking her brain for how it was possible that the blackmailer would strike at the same time as her. It couldn’t have been the White Flowers. Roma had been lying unconscious in an alleyway. Benedikt Montagov had been with her. No one else knew of her plans, unless Roma had sent people after him, which she could not imagine, for otherwise he would have had to explain how he came across the information.
So what happened?
“Listen,” Tyler said. His voice had lowered. “If you just come clean, I can help you. There’s no shame in admitting that you’re simply misguided.”
Juliette shook her head. “How many times do you need to hear of my innocence, Tyler?”
“It is not your innocence I want to hear. I’m trying to steer you to do what’s right. Why can’t you see that?”
There was the shuffle of footsteps from upstairs. It could have been Kathleen popping in and out of the rooms. It could have been the household staff slinking near to witness the drama. Either way, Juliette was so irritated that she could only splutter for a moment, temporarily losing grasp of every language she spoke.
“Your idea of what’s right is not gospel,” she finally managed. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the people of Shanghai dying, gouging at their own skin from a preventable madness, all because the people at the top—because people in this very household—couldn’t find it in themselves to care. “Who do you think you are to tell me what’s right?”
“I am your family,” he snapped. “If I don’t keep you in line, who will?”
“Hey!”
Kathleen’s voice cut through the argument. She was leaning upon the second-floor banister, her head visible from where Juliette and Tyler stood.
“Your father’s not here,” she reported once she had Juliette’s attention. “It’s almost eleven o’clock.”
Juliette blinked. “Lái rén!”
Almost immediately, the maid came back. She had been waiting in the hallway just outside the living room. “Would you like me to make a call to see where your father is, Miss Cai?”
And apparently there wasn’t even any shame in pretending like she wasn’t listening.
“Yes, please.”
The maid disappeared, and Kathleen came back down the stairs. As they waited, hovering in the living room, Kathleen loosened her braid and smoothed her fingers along her scalp, as if the weight of her hair was giving her a headache. Quietly, Juliette pulled a thin, needlelike knife from her sleeve and offered it. Kathleen took it with a grateful look, then stuck it into her hair for a pin.
The maid returned.
She was pale.
“Scarlet reports say Lord Cai is at the burlesque club,” she said. Juliette was already starting toward the door, ready to report to her father what nonsense was happening with the blackmailer, but then the maid went on: “The place has been locked down. He’s not letting people in.”
Juliette paused in her step, turning over her shoulder. On instinct, she looked at Kathleen, then Tyler, and they both appeared equally puzzled.
“For what reason?”
The only times she could remember her father shutting down a club or a restaurant was when someone had misbehaved, and he needed to . . .
A bolt of ice sank down Juliette’s spine. Suddenly she thought she could smell metal under her nose: the phantom scent of blood, the scent that soaked the ground each time a deal had fallen through or a secret had slipped and the men of the Scarlet inner circle needed to pay for it.
“Punishment,” the maid reported, turning even paler. “He’s just arrived. For Miss Rosalind.”
“Rosalind?” Tyler exclaimed. “The hell did she do?”
Oh merde. Juliette ran for the door, but even as she tore into the night, the maid’s answer followed her out.
“She’s the White Flower spy.”
Twenty-Six
Juliette practically slammed into the two Scarlets guarding the door to the burlesque club, narrowly halting before a collision. Kathleen was close behind, her breath coming fast.
“Let me through.”
“Miss Cai.” The Scarlets exchanged a glance. “We can’t—”
“Stand aside. Now.”
One of them shifted out of her way, drawing a glare from the other, but that small gap was enough for Juliette. She squeezed past and pushed through the door, barging into the dark interior of the club, the smell of smoke bringing an immediate sting to her eyes.
And inside, all she could hear was screaming.
For a moment Juliette was frozen in shock, uncertain what she was witnessing. The club had been cleared out, the tables and bar emptied of patrons and workers. The only people present were her father’s men, seated around him and at the ready while he lounged at one of the largest tables, arms splayed across the velvet of the half-moon couch.
He was facing forward.
Facing the stage, where Rosalind was being whipped.
The lash came down again on her back, and Rosalind cried out, her whole body shuddering. They didn’t allow her to crumple to the floor: there were four Scarlets around her, two to hold her upright, one with the whip, and one standing just to the side.
“Oh my God,” Kathleen whispered. “Oh my—”
Juliette charged for the stage. “Stop it!” she demanded. She was upon the platform in three fast steps. When the Scarlet standing guard tried to stop her from lunging in Rosalind’s direction, Juliette was faster, pushing at the arms that tried to grab her. The guard tried again, and Juliette immediately struck her fist across his face. He stumbled away, finally letting Juliette throw herself before Rosalind, her own body a shield for the next lashing.