Soldiers. Soldiers everywhere. Juliette pulled at the sleeves of her dress and tried to walk without letting her posture slump. The French Concession and International Settlement were closed: no one in, and no one out. That could not last for long—the foreign concessions were never built to operate as their own self-contained territories, and once they came to an agreement with the Nationalists, the barbed wire and makeshift fences would go down. For now, people steered clear in fear of the armed soldiers along Boundary Road, and so that was where Juliette went, to the rooftop of a building at the outer bounds of the Chinese part of the city, just out of view of the foreign soldiers peering through their rifle scopes. There was no telling what this building once was. Perhaps a small noodle shop, or a tailor’s parlor. When Juliette trekked up, she saw shattered glass and ripped ledgers left behind on the emptied shelves.
Juliette eased open the rooftop door, her shoes coming onto the cement carefully. She kept her breath in her lungs, scanning the space . . .
Her exhale came out with relief. Silently she bounded over to the figure standing in the corner and wrapped her arms around his shoulders before he could turn around, setting her chin at the crook of his neck.
“Hello, stranger.”
Roma relaxed under her grip, tipping his head back so that his hair brushed her cheek. “Is this an attack?”
“Perhaps,” Juliette replied. She shook the knife from her sleeve and pressed the blunt side to his throat. “One lone White Flower, out in the middle of nowhere?”
Juliette felt a sudden pressure on her ankle. She hardly had a moment to gasp before she realized Roma had hooked his foot over her leg and pulled her off-balance. For the briefest second, she was falling backward, before Roma turned around fast and caught her waist, swiping the knife out of her hand and pressing the flat side to her throat instead.
“You were saying?” Roma asked, grinning.
Juliette shoved his shoulder. She was scowling, vexed to be caught off guard, but then Roma dropped the knife and pulled her closer. Their lips met, and she forgot what exactly she was going to rebuke him for.
“I missed you,” Roma said when he pulled away.
Juliette quirked a brow, placing her hands upon his face. “You saw me yesterday.”
“To talk business.”
“We’re here today to talk business too.”
“Semantics—” Roma stopped with a frown, noticing the headdress twined around her hair. It was pale pink, just as the flowers at the cemetery were, a far lighter color than a Scarlet would usually dare to wear. “Another funeral?”
“Tyler’s,” Juliette answered quietly.
Roma touched the fixture in her hair, adjusting it carefully so it would hold back the strands from her eyes. When he had it in place, he smoothed his hand along her neck.
“Are you okay?”
Juliette leaned into the touch, exhaling. “What other choice is there?”
“That’s not an answer, dorogaya.”
Juliette pulled away gently with a shake of her head. The warmth and kindness were too distracting—it fooled her into thinking that all would be well, that the city was not crumbling under their feet. Instead, she twined her arm around his to drag them to the edge of the rooftop. There, they looked out upon the streets, upon the casual sprawl bleeding outward to the horizon.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Surviving. That’s the best one could hope for now.”
Roma cast her a sidelong look like he was going to argue, but Juliette shook her head, directing the topic back to true business. They were meeting today because Roma had sent a note about new information on the blackmailer, and to tell the truth, Juliette had been surprised. Much as she wanted to eradicate the threat once and for all, it hardly seemed important in the grander scheme of things. The monsters had not attacked in so long. Now Roma and Juliette’s search for the blackmailer was not so much in fear of the madness or in desperation to protect their people—it was simply for something to do, something to keep themselves from sitting idle while their city fractured to pieces on a level the teenage gangsters could not touch.
“What did you find?” Juliette asked.
A hint of pride flickered upon Roma’s expression. “I got a name for the Frenchman,” he said. “The one who turned into a monster on the train. Pierre Moreau.”
Juliette blinked, the name striking a nerve of familiarity. Roma was still speaking, but Juliette had stopped listening, desperately searching her memory for where she had heard the name before. Had it been an introduction in the French Concession? No, she would have remembered if she had met the Frenchman before. Could she have seen his name in their records? Their guest lists? But then why would she have seen a White Flower on Scarlet lists?
“. . . sailed into the city some few years ago to start trading.”
Finally, Juliette remembered.
She almost dropped to her knees.
“Roma,” she said breathlessly. “Roma, I’ve seen that name before. A slip of paper on Rosalind’s desk. She said he was a patron at the Scarlet burlesque club.”
Roma furrowed his brows. She had told him about Rosalind’s disappearance, about her affair with a White Flower whom she wouldn’t name. Roma had reported back a brief sighting of Rosalind near the White Flower headquarters the day she went missing. Because the Scarlet grapevine wasn’t working as well as it used to, that was the last time anyone had heard from or seen Rosalind.
“Impossible,” Roma insisted. “I may not have known the man by name, but he is prominent enough to be recognized in your clubs. He would have been identified immediately as a White Flower.”
“Then . . . ?” Juliette physically felt her gut twist, her fingers pressing to her stomach. “Then he was never a patron at the club. Rosalind just happened to have a list of names, the first of which happened to be a monster.”
Juliette needed to find the list again. There were four other names on it.
Four other names, four other monsters.
“Could it be?” she whispered.
She met Roma’s eyes, a reflection of her own horror, having reached the same conclusion. Rosalind was raised in Paris, as passably French as anyone in the Concession could be.
“Is Rosalind the blackmailer?”
Thirty-Four
Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
Juliette slammed the drawers of Rosalind’s desk shut, striking her hands so hard against the surface of the table that her palms stung. Rosalind playing spy was one matter. People were lured into betrayal across blood feud lines all the time—it was why their numbers were always shifting; it was why there were always eyes trying to penetrate the inner circle. But setting a monster on the city was another matter altogether. Using monsters to aid politics was something so absurd coming from Rosalind that Juliette couldn’t even comprehend a reason for it. Unless the only motive was destruction. Unless the only motive was to burn the whole city down.
“Is that why?” Juliette asked aloud. She lifted her head, peering into the mirror opposite her, acting as if her reflection was a sullen Rosalind staring from some faraway place.
Sooner or later, Juliette would have to reckon with her own guilt. She could keep thinking of herself as mighty because she knew her way around a blade. But it was not the blade nor her ruthless tendencies that pushed her to the top. Perhaps they kept her there.