Thirteen
Juliette smoothed down the fabric of her qipao, pressing at the creases that were bunching up beneath her coat. She swallowed her discomfort in a hard gulp, as if it were nothing more than a bitter medicinal pill. It felt fraudulent, somehow, to put on a type of clothing that she hadn’t worn in years. It felt like lying—to herself, to the image she had been building before she stepped foot back into this city.
But if she wanted to blend in within Zhang Gutai’s daytime place of work, she had to look like any regular upper-class eighteen-year-old clacking around these streets with pearl earrings dangling in her loose, ungelled hair.
Juliette took a deep breath, tightened her grip on the sleeves of her coat, and marched into the building.
Zhang Gutai—as an important gure in a relatively new and fragile political party—was a secretive man. But he was also the chief editor of a newspaper called Labor Daily, and their address was public information. Though she hadn’t expected to nd much but a scant oce complex when she wandered out here into the industrial edges of the Chinese part of the city, she was met with the absolute bustle of activity in the Labor Daily’s oces: people running around with bundles of paper and typewriters clutched in their arms as they yelled for the latest update on a batch that had proceeded forward into printing.
Her nose wrinkling, Juliette walked right past the front desk with her chin held high. These people were Communists, weren’t they? They believed in equality, after all. She was sure they would also believe in letting Juliette take a
look around by herself until she stumbled onto Zhang Gutai’s oce. She wouldn’t need anybody to show her around.
Juliette smiled to herself.
The thick of the activity seemed to be coming in and out of a little set of stairs dropping into a basement level, so Juliette went there, snagging a clipboard from a table in an eort to look occupied. There was no natural light when she entered the basement level. She passed what may have been a back door, then turned left, entering the main space and scanning the scene before her. The oor and walls were constructed of cement. The only illumination came from the few light xtures latched to the walls, which seemed terribly inconvenient for all these people down here at their desks, squinting in the dimness.
It reminded her of what cell blocks during the Great War might have looked like. Juliette supposed she wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned out this building really had been converted from an original use of holding prisoners.
She continued striding forward, deeper into the prisonlike oce space, peering into each nook. Her heels were loud as she clicked through, but there was enough chaos down here that, for now, nobody thought much of her presence. Harried writers—both old and young—were busy scribbling, working fast on their typewriters, or taking phone calls. The wires that carried signals into this subterranean level were all tangled in a big mass at the back of the expansive space. As Juliette scanned the desks she passed, looking for anything of note, her attention snagged on one desk that appeared unoccupied.
Such an observation was peculiar enough in this little bubble of activity. She was even more intrigued when she craned her neck to read the writing atop the folders beside the telephone and saw, in Chinese, MEMO FOR ZHANG GUTAI.
Quickly she scrambled beneath the desk, clipboard shoved under her arm so she could search through the les. There was nothing noteworthy in the political reports, but when she dropped to a crouch and looked to the oor of the desk, she found drawings.
If everybody else is so busy, why is this desk empty? Juliette thought. And whose was it? Surely not Zhang Gutai, who most certainly had his own space. Shaking her head, she reached into the pile of drawings and pulled a few out, resolving not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
But when she looked upon the rst drawing, she broke out in a cold sweat— all the way from the high collar at her neck to the edges of the qipao brushing her ankles.
One drawing was of wide, reptilianlike eyes. Another was of ve claws gripping against a board of wood and scales somehow glistening despite the stray smears of ink along the page. Juliette’s ngers froze, stunned as she took in the images—dozens of them, all depicting variations of the same thing.
“Guài wù,” Juliette breathed. Monster.
Before she could overthink it, she snatched one of the drawings in the pile— the one that depicted a blur of a creature standing in its entirety—and folded it up, tucking the little square of paper into her coat pocket. It joined the masquerade invitation that she had placed there yesterday and forgotten to remove. With a cursory glance around to make sure she was still in the clear, Juliette stood and wiped the sweat o her palms. She marched for the little steps out of the basement level, her sts clutched tight.
Juliette paused suddenly, her foot hovering on the rst step. To her left again
was the back door.
And it was shuddering.
Suddenly all she could think of was the drawing in her pocket. She imagined a monster just on the other side of the door, breathing heavily, awaiting the prime moment to burst free and wreak havoc on innocents.
Juliette stepped toward the door hesitantly. Her hand came down to rest on the round knob. “Hello?” she called, her voice hoarse. “Is someone—”
“What are you doing there?”
Juliette jumped, snatching her hand away from the knob of the door. The frame had stopped shuddering. She swiveled around.
“Oh, me?”
The man who stood before her wore a fedora cap, his suit more Western looking than what everyone else down here was wearing. He had to be someone important, along the lines of Zhang Gutai’s rank rather than a mere assistant who answered the phone.
“I’m here to see your chief editor for important business,” Juliette continued.
“I got a little lost.”
“The exit is that way,” the man said, pointing.
Juliette’s smile grew cold.
“Ocial Scarlet business,” she corrected. “My father—Lord Cai—sent me.”
There was a moment of pause as the man digested her words, wariness setting in. Juliette had perfected the art of dishonest guiles; she hid her identity when necessary, then wielded it like a weapon when the time came. Only the man suddenly looked a little amused, too, much to Juliette’s chagrin. Still, he nodded and gestured for her to follow him.
There was one more oor above the rst oor, and the man spared no patience in hurrying Juliette along. He ascended the humble brown staircase three steps at a time while Juliette clacked up slowly, looking around. This staircase, with its thick handrails and long, polished panes, had the potential to be sweeping and decadent, if only the Communists were not so intent on giving the appearance of seeming grounded with the common people. Everything in this building could have been glorious. But glory was not the point anymore, was it?
Juliette leaned over the banister of the second oor with a sigh, peering at the frenzy of papers and typewriters below. When the man gestured at her impatiently from ahead, she grimaced and kept walking.
The man turned a corner and directed her into a spacious waiting area. There were two rows of chairs here, both pressed up against opposing walls and facing each other in front of a closed oce door. Juliette nally understood his amusement. There was already someone sitting on one of the yellow chairs, legs
stretched out in front of him.
Roma lurched upright.
“What are you doing here?” they demanded in unison.
The man in the fedora cap quietly removed himself. As soon as he was out of sight, Roma launched out of his seat and grabbed Juliette’s arm. She was so oended he dared touch her that she couldn’t react for a long second, not until Roma had already moved them to a corner of the waiting space, the wall cold against Juliette’s back.
“Let go of me,” she hissed, shaking her arm from his grip. Roma must have obtained the same information that she had. He wanted to know about Zhang
Gutai’s involvement in the madness.
Juliette bit back a curse. If the White Flowers got answers before she did, they would treat their ndings like they treated the black market. They would do everything they could to secure a monopoly upon the information, pay o and kill sources until there was no way for the Scarlets to obtain what they knew.
That way, only the White Flowers were safe, assuming there was a way to stop this madness. That way, the city only stacked up with the bodies of their enemies. Then people would begin to switch loyalties.
Then the White Flowers would be victorious. And the Scarlets would suer.
“Look,” Roma snapped. “You have to leave.”
Juliette blinked rapidly, her head rearing back. “I have to leave?”
“Yes.” Roma reached up, his expression dripping with derision, and icked one of the earrings dangling from Juliette’s ear. The pearl swung against her skin, brushing her jaw. Juliette barely stied the whoosh of breath that threatened to escape, barely stied the stream of re she wanted to breathe from her throat.
“Play dress-up somewhere else,” Roma went on. “I was here rst.”
“This is Scarlet territory.”
“These people are Communists. You have no sway over them.”
Juliette gritted her teeth, hard. Indeed, the Scarlet Gang had no control here.
Her only consolation was that Roma didn’t appear too happy himself, which meant the White Flowers had no sway over the Communists, either. For the time being, this neutrality was a good thing. The man in the fedora had shut his mouth immediately in learning Juliette’s identity, precisely to avoid any unnecessary aggravation with the Scarlet Gang. But tiptoeing on thin ice wouldn’t last forever. The Communists’ very model of progress was overthrowing Shanghai as it was now—as it was for gangsters to thrive: sinful, protable. Given the choice between killing all the capitalists and killing all the gangsters, they would choose both.
“Our relationship with the Communists is, as always, none of your business,” Juliette said. “Now, if you would be so kind, get out of my face.”
Roma narrowed his eyes. He took her command as a threat. Perhaps she had intended for it to be one.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
God, the nerve. Juliette straightened to her full height. They weren’t that far apart, she and Roma—he barely held half an inch over her when she was in heels. “I won’t say it again,” she hissed. “Get out of my face. Now.”
His lips thinned. Resentfully, and slowly, Roma submitted to the threat. He made a steady step back, glaring at her as he scrubbed a hand along his eyes. If Juliette didn’t know better, she would have thought the gesture to be an act of self-consciousness. But no—it was exhaustion; the shadows under his eyes were almost smoky, like his bottom lashes were fringed with soot.
“Have you not been sleeping?” Juliette found herself asking suddenly. There was a direct correlation between her willingness to be civil and the distance between them. With him several strides away, she wanted to commit homicide a little less.
Roma’s hand returned to his side. “I’ll have you know,” he answered, “that I am well, thank you very much.”
“I wasn’t asking after your well-being.”
“Oh, give it a rest, Juliette.”
Juliette folded her arms thoughtfully. Last night she had heard the news about the sudden spike in White Flower deaths, all lost to the madness. It was the biggest mass casualty yet. Which meant Roma wasn’t going to leave just because she made a few barbed remarks—he was here now precisely because this strange madness had crept so close to home.
She tilted her chin at the closed door. “Is that his oce?”
Roma didn’t need to clarify who she meant. He nodded. “Zhang Gutai won’t take visitors until the hour. Don’t try anything.”
Like what? Juliette thought nastily. It wasn’t as if she could run Roma out without making a scene and oending the Communists, and she certainly refused to leave before she spoke to Zhang Gutai. To nd answers, it was this or nothing.
Juliette marched to a chair and sat down. She tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling, resolute not to look anywhere else. Directing her mind elsewhere too, she reached into her coat pocket and ngered the drawing she had stashed away. It was uncertain whether these frightening sketches conrmed trouble
with the Communists specically, but it conrmed something. She would have to inspect it further, because she thought she recognized the background to be the Bund. It was nothing more than a few harsh lines, but for somewhere as distinctive as the Bund, a few harsh lines were enough.
Meanwhile, Roma had settled back onto his seat along the other row of chairs, his ngers tapping to the tick-tick-tick of the clock on the wall. He kept his gaze pinned to Juliette, much to Juliette’s annoyance. She could feel his inspection like it was a physical thing, as if he were inches away instead of across the room. Every sweep of his eyes felt like he was mechanically pulling her apart, piece by piece, until her insides were out in the open for inspection. Juliette could feel a ush creeping up from her chest, coloring her neck with discomfort, then spreading until her cheeks were blazing hot.
She was going to skin herself with her own damn knife. Her cells were betraying her on a molecular level. He was just looking, for heaven’s sake. It did not qualify as an attack. Juliette was not going to rise to the bait. She would sit here until Zhang Gutai was ready to meet, and then— “What?” Juliette snapped, unable to bear it any longer. She tore her gaze down, nally supplying her own ammunition against Roma’s weaponized stare.
Roma made an inquisitive noise. He pursed his lips slowly, then tipped his chin. “What’s got you so worked up?”
Juliette followed the direction of his gesture. She yanked her hand out from her pocket.
“Again, that would be none of your business.”
“If it is to do with madne—”
“Why would you assume that?”
Roma’s expression thundered. “Can I finish my sentence—”
The oce door opened, cutting him o. A harried assistant came out and summoned Roma to go in before she quickly hurried away. With a hu, Roma shot Juliette a look that said this isn’t over, before entering the oce.
Juliette broiled in the wait, her toes tapping erratically against the hard oor panels and her ngers twisting around one another. For ten minutes she drove herself up the wall, envisioning Roma doing all in his power to convince Zhang
Gutai to give him all the answers and disregard Juliette. Roma was a liar through and through—his tactics of persuasion knew no bounds.
When Roma came out, however, it was immediately clear in the slouch of his head that he hadn’t gotten what he wanted.
“Don’t look so smug,” he whispered while Juliette passed him.
“That’s just my face,” she hissed back.
With her chin held high, Juliette walked into Zhang Gutai’s oce.
“Well, it must be my lucky day,” Mr. Zhang declared when she entered, putting his fountain pen down. Despite his laudatory tone, he was frowning as he spoke. “First it was the heir of the White Flowers, now the Scarlet crown princess. What can I do for you, Miss Cai?”
Juliette opped into one of the two large chairs placed opposite Mr. Zhang’s heavy mahogany desk. In seconds she took in everything before her: the framed black-and-white photographs of his elderly parents, the hammer-and-sickle ag hanging from the side of the ling cabinet, the festive red calendar on the wall marked with daily meetings. Her eyes returning to the Communist before her, Juliette relaxed and made him see what she wanted him to see, letting out a small, careless laugh, vacuous as could be.
“You know how rumors work in this city, Mr. Zhang,” she said. She held her nails out in front of her, squinting at a little chip marring her pinky. “They come to me, and I follow them. Do you know what graced my ear the other day?”
Zhang Gutai appeared mildly entertained. “Do tell.”
“They say”—Juliette leaned in—“that you know why there is madness sweeping through Shanghai.”
For a long moment Mr. Zhang said nothing. Then he blinked rapidly and replied, “Miss Cai, I haven’t a clue why you would think that.”
“No?” Juliette said lightly. “You didn’t scheme up a madness to spread through the city? No plans at all to cause enough death until the gangsters are weak and the workers are frightened, until the factories have ripened into the ideal conditions for the Communists to swoop in and incite revolution?”
She digested his surprise, his astonishment at being confronted. Roma must not have asked him about the madness directly—he must have approached it in a more roundabout way, treading the waters to gather his conclusions instead of
coming right out and saying it. That was to be expected. The direct approach was more of Juliette’s arena.
“Miss Cai,” Zhang Gutai said sternly. “That is absurd.”
Juliette wasn’t getting anywhere like this. She straightened in her chair and dropped her smile, her hands gripping the armrests. Now the easy apper girl was gone. In her place sat the heiress of the most brutal gang in Shanghai.
“I will nd the truth one way or another,” Juliette said. “So speak now if you wish to be oered mercy. Else I will tear the answer from you limb by limb—”
“Miss Cai, I truly have no clue what you are speaking of,” Mr. Zhang interrupted. “Please leave now. This is a place of work, and I won’t have your ridiculous accusations taking up my time.”
Juliette considered her options. Zhang Gutai’s words were convincing, but he was uneasy. Unless he was a very, very good actor, he was no liar, but he kept glancing to the door, he kept tapping his hand against the at of his desk. Why?
What did he know that she didn’t? Even if he did not scheme the madness, what was his involvement?
Juliette leaned back in her seat, relaxing her spine again into a false ease.
“And what if I have questions on the Communist Party?” she asked. “You are the Secretary-General, are you not?”
“You are welcome to attend our meetings if you wish to know about the Party,” Mr. Zhang answered stiy. “Otherwise, Miss Cai, please leave.”
Juliette stood, taking her sweet time to stretch and work out the cricks in her neck. Then, bobbing a deep and exaggerated curtsy, she simpered, “Thank you for your gracious time,” and left the oce.
What now? she thought, closing the door behind her with a quiet click. She started to walk. If he won’t— “Oof!” Juliette staggered back, her head spinning as she rounded the corner and immediately collided hard with someone. The moment she looked up to see who the hell was in her path, she could only see red.
Roma caught her wrist before her hand could come down on him. He held her midmotion, their arms crossed like they were exchanging sword blows.
“Careful,” Roma said quietly. His voice was too soft for the violence brewing under Juliette’s skin. It was trickery. He was trying to divert her attention to his
lips and breath and calm instead of whatever was going on here, with his harsh grip carving grooves into her wrist, and it was working. Juliette wanted to kill him for that alone.
Roma gave a mocking smile, like he knew what she was thinking. “Wouldn’t want to make a scene in a Communist stronghold, would you?”
Juliette tried to tug her arm back, but Roma held rm. If he didn’t let go in three seconds, she was drawing her gun. One, two— Roma let go.
Juliette rubbed her wrist, smoothing a palm over her raging pulse and grumbling something inaudible under her breath. When Roma simply stood there, she demanded, “Why are you still here?”
Innocently, Roma pointed over to the chairs. “I left my hat behind.”
“You weren’t even wearing a hat before.” But indeed, on the chair where he had originally been sitting, a hat was lying on its side. Roma, shrugging, merely went to pick it up. Juliette pivoted on her heel and left as fast as she could, hurrying from the building.
It wasn’t until she was halfway down the road, pulling her coat tightly around her, that she stopped in her tracks, swearing.
“He better not have…” She plunged her hand into her pocket and came out with only one slip of paper. But when she unfolded it, she saw that the monster was still staring back at her, lines hazy with folding and refolding.
Juliette snorted. Roma had taken the masquerade invitation instead.
“Fool,” she muttered.
When Juliette returned home, she found Kathleen already lounging on one of the couches in the living room. She went to join her cousin, complaining under her breath.
“What’s wrong?” Kathleen asked absently, ipping the pages of her magazine.
“A lot of things,” Juliette grumbled. “Did you nd the address?”
Kathleen made a motion with her head that resembled a half nod. “Sort of.
I’ll have it in a few days.”
“Good enough,” Juliette muttered. “I’ve got the masquerade to worry about until then anyway.”
A headache was starting in the space behind her ears. She was trying to plot her next move, but it was hard to decide where to look. There had to be a reason why Madame had heard what she heard. There had to be a reason why the Communists had said what they said. And if it was naught but a rumor, then Juliette could only put her suspicion to rest when she had exhausted every avenue to do with Zhang Gutai.
Juliette perked up slightly. Her hand reached into her pocket again, touching the drawing. She had yet to exhaust everything.
A whistle came from the front door then, interrupting Juliette’s silent brooding. She looked up to nd a Scarlet messenger hovering in the foyer space, gesturing at her with one hand and xing the t of his shoe with the other.
“Pass me that parcel beside you.”
Juliette looked to her side. Indeed, a parcel was lying on the circular table beside the sofa she had chosen to collapse on, but what did this messenger think he was doing asking her to fetch him something that he could simply come get himself— It clicked. The qipao. The Scarlet gangsters had become accustomed to shortcutting their association of her to glittery, beaded dresses and pomade in her nger-curled hair. As soon as she dressed in Chinese clothing instead, they saw right past her.
Juliette breathed in and found her lungs to be horribly tight. Could she never be both? Was she doomed to choose one country or the other? Be an American
girl or nothing?
The messenger whistled again. “Hey—”
Juliette yanked out the knife sheathed at her thigh, right above where the slit of her qipao ended, and threw it. The blade embedded perfectly into the front door with a deep, sonorous thud. It drew a single drop of blood from the messenger’s ear, where it had cut through.
“You don’t whistle at me,” Juliette said coldly. “I whistle at you.
Understand?”
The messenger looked at her—really looked at her now. He reached up and touched his ear. The bleeding had already stopped. But his eyes were wide as he nodded.
Juliette took the parcel in her hands and stood. She walked right up to the messenger and passed it to him quaintly, as if she were delivering a lunch box to her friend.
“While you’re at it,” she said, “I need you to do something for me. Go to the Bund and interview the bankers who work along the main strip. Ask whether they’ve seen anything funny lurking about.”
The messenger’s mouth opened and closed. “All of them?”
“All. Of. Them.”
“But—”
“Juliette, hold on,” Kathleen called, rising from the couch too. “Let me.”
Juliette raised an eyebrow. Kathleen waved a hand at the messenger in a shooing gesture, and the messenger took the opportunity to ee, closing the front door after him with the knife still embedded within it.
“You want to waste your time on this?” Juliette asked.
“It is not wasting my time if it is useful information you need.” Kathleen reached into the coatrack by the door. “Why are you chasing after it?”
“I can send any one of the other messengers,” Juliette continued, wrinkling her brow. Ordering her own cousin around didn’t sit well with her. A specic task with specic goals was one matter, especially if Kathleen had contacts that beneted the mission. Sending her on a wild-goose chase was another matter
entirely.
“Juliette—”
“I was mostly trying to frighten the messenger. It really is quite all right—”
Kathleen grabbed her cousin’s wrist and squeezed, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough for Juliette to know that this was serious.
“I’m not just doing this out of the kindness of my heart,” she said rmly. “In some few years, this gang is either under your hands or someone else’s. And knowing the other contenders…”
Kathleen paused. Their heads both went to the same people: Tyler rst, then perhaps the other various cousins who might have a ghting chance only if Tyler
mysteriously disappeared. They were all terrible and ruthless and hateful, but Juliette was too. The minuscule dierence was that Juliette was also careful, intensely controlling with how much of that hate she let slip out to guide her hand.
“It could be under your hands too,” Juliette said lightly. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in a few years.”
Kathleen rolled her eyes. “I’m not a Cai, Juliette. That’s not even in the realm of possibility.”
There was little to argue back against that. Kathleen came from Lady Cai’s side of the family. When Lord Cai was the face of the Scarlet Gang, it was unsurprising that only those sharing his name were seen to be legitimate. One only had to look at how easily his fellow cousins merged into the inner circle, while Mr. Lang, Lady Cai’s brother, still had not won any favor in the two decades he had been around.
“It has to be you,” Kathleen said. Her tone did not allow for dissent.
“Everyone who may come for your crown is dangerous. And you are too, but”— she took a moment to think through her phrasing—“but at least you will never willingly bring danger inward just to soothe your pride. You’re the only one I trust to hold this gang together as a steady steel structure, rather than a grappling hierarchy of whims. If you fail to be a good heir—if you fall—then this way of life falls. Let me do this for you.”
Juliette’s mouth opened, then closed. When all she could manage was a meek, “Okay,” her cousin snorted.
The serious spell broke. Kathleen shrugged her coat on. “So, why do you need to know about the bankers at the Bund?”
Juliette was still mulling over her cousin’s words. She had always thought of herself as the heir of the Scarlet Gang, but that wasn’t it at all, was it? She was the heir to her father’s version of the Scarlet Gang.
And was that so great? This Scarlet Gang was unraveling at its very seams.
Perhaps a dierent one could have won the blood feud with the White Flowers generations ago. Perhaps a dierent one would have stopped the madness by now.
“Rumors of a monster,” Juliette answered aloud, shaking herself out of her head. There were so many loose pieces oating around: a monster, a madness, the Communists—she had to focus on aligning them, not doubting herself.
“I’ve reason to believe they might have witnessed something. My hopes aren’t high, but a smidgen of it exists at least.”
Kathleen nodded. “I’ll report back with what I nd.” With that, her cousin waved goodbye and shut the door after her, the sound echoing back into the living room. The knife looked rather comical moving with the door like that.
Juliette sighed and yanked it out, tucking the blade into her dress as she trudged up the stairs. Her parents were going to be horried to nd a gouge in the door.
She smiled at the thought and remained rather amused, until she entered her room and spotted a lone gure on her bed.
Juliette almost jumped two feet into the air.
“Oh, heavens, you scared me,” she gasped a moment later. The sisters were hardly ever in her room separately, so she hadn’t immediately identied Rosalind, especially not while her cousin had her face inclined toward the beam of afternoon sun cutting through the window. “Are you and your sister both insistent on surprising me today?”
Rosalind looked a little mied as she turned to Juliette. “You were with Kathleen just now? I’ve been waiting for you here for hours.”
Juliette blinked. She wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry,” she settled on, though her apology was confused and, as a result, disingenuous. “I didn’t know.”
Rosalind shook her head and muttered, “No matter.”
This was one of the details that Juliette remembered from their childhood, before any of them had left for the Western world. Rosalind carried grudges like it was a contest. She was passionate and headstrong and had nerves of steel, but when you looked past her well-chosen, surface-level pretty words, she could also simmer on feelings long past their relevance.
“Don’t grouch at me,” Juliette tutted. She had to address it now or fear its are-up long into the distant future. She knew her cousin, had borne witness to Rosalind’s slow-building hatred toward the people who upset her—toward her maternal aunts who tried to take the place of her dead mother; toward her
father, who valued the strengthening of his guānxì in the Scarlet Gang more than he valued caring for his children; even toward her fellow dancers at the burlesque club, who were jealous enough with Rosalind’s growing star status that they tried to exclude her from their circles.
Sometimes Juliette wondered how Rosalind even managed to cope with so much absence in her life. And at that thought, she felt a little bad for not checking in with her cousin more often, though she hadn’t been back in this city for all that long. Everyone always had more important things to be doing in the Cai family. Kathleen, at least, erred on the side of optimism. Rosalind did not.
But constant care and outreach to your cousins was not a high priority when people were ripping at their own throats on the streets outside.
“What’s wrong?” Juliette asked anyway. She could at least spare a minute if Rosalind had been waiting here for hours.
Rosalind didn’t respond. For a moment Juliette almost feared that she hadn’t absolved the burgeoning grudge. Then, all of a sudden, Rosalind dropped her face into her hands.
There was something haunting about that motion that struck Juliette to the core, something childlike and lost.
“Insects,” Rosalind whispered, her words mued into her palm. Now a coldness had settled into the room. Juliette felt all the little hairs at the back of her neck lift, standing so ramrod straight that her skin almost felt sensitive, sore to the touch.
“So many of them,” Rosalind continued. Every crack of her cousin’s voice sent a new shiver down Juliette’s spine. “So many of them, all coming from the sea, all going back into the sea.”
Slowly Juliette managed to lower herself into a kneel on her carpet. She craned her head to meet her cousin’s drooped, terried stare.
“What do you mean?” Juliette asked softly. “What insects?”
Rosalind shook her head. “I think I saw it. I saw it in the water.”
It still didn’t answer the question. “Saw what?” Juliette tried clarifying again.
When Rosalind yet remained quiet, Juliette reached out and took her by the arms, demanding, “Rosalind, what did you see?”
Rosalind inhaled sharply. In that one motion, it was as if she sucked all the oxygen out of the room, sucked out all possibility that whatever she had witnessed could be something casually explained away. A second heartbeat was starting up along Juliette’s skull, a pressure building from within to listen, brace, prepare. Somehow, she knew that what she was about to hear was going to change everything.
“Rosalind,” Juliette prompted one nal time.
“Silver eyes,” Rosalind nally choked out with a shudder. Now that she had started speaking, it was coming out in a tumble. Her breathing grew increasingly shallow and Juliette’s grip grew increasingly tight, ngers still clasped about Rosalind’s arms. Her cousin barely seemed to notice. “It had silver eyes. And a curved spine. And sharp ridges. And scales and claws and—I—I don’t know, Juliette. I don’t know what it was. Guài wù, maybe. A monster.”
A roar started to sound in Juliette’s ears. With careful control, she pried her hands away from her cousin, then reached into her coat, retrieving the drawing she had stolen. She unfolded the worn sheet, smoothing out the lines of ink smeared upon it.
“Rosalind,” Juliette said slowly. “Look at this drawing.”
Rosalind reached for the thin piece of paper. Her ngers tightened upon it.
Her eyes lled with tears.
“Is this what you saw?” Juliette whispered.
Ever so slowly, Rosalind nodded.
