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“Said he was merely doing a head count.” Kathleen grimaced. “He’s on edge about the White Flower spy. It seems he’s contemplating evicting some distant relatives from the house.”
“Good,” Juliette muttered.
Kathleen rolled her eyes, then extended her hand. Juliette threaded her fingers through her cousin’s, immediately less burdened, the tension in her body softening.
“Are you still following the Communists?” Kathleen asked.
“No, we—” Juliette paused, her pulse jumping. Quickly, she corrected, “I’m waiting on more confirmation before I make any accusations.”
Kathleen nodded. “Fair.” She flipped another page in her magazine with her other hand. When she had flipped three and Juliette had not said anything more, opting to stare at her ceiling instead, Kathleen wrinkled her nose.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Trying to mentally organize my time,” Juliette replied wryly. She pulled her hand away and rolled over, squinting at the little clock ticking on her vanity. “I need a favor.”
Kathleen closed her magazine. “Go on.”
“I need all the information there is on a man named Archibald Welch. I need to know how to find him.”
“And is there a reason?” Kathleen asked. Though she questioned, she was already getting off the bed, grabbing her nearby coat and shrugging it on.
“He may have the Larkspur’s true identity.”
Kathleen pulled at her coat collar, then tugged out the hair that had gotten caught inside. “I’ll send a messenger over with whatever I find. Do you need it before your meeting?”
“That would be optimal, yes.”
Kathleen mocked a salute. She moved fast, her objective square in her head, but just as she came to the doorway, Juliette called, “Wait.”
Kathleen paused.
A beat passed. Juliette sat up straighter, drawing her knees to her chest. “Thank you,” she said, her voice suddenly shaky. “For sticking by me. Even when you disapprove.” Even when my hands are dripping with blood.
Kathleen almost seemed amused. Slowly, she came back into the room and settled into a delicate crouch before her cousin.
“I get the feeling you think I’m a little judgmental of all you do.”
Juliette shrugged. Earnestly, she asked, “Aren’t you?”
“Juliette, come on.” Kathleen got out of her crouch, opting to sit beside her cousin instead. “Do you remember Rosalind’s friend? The annoying one?”
Juliette wasn’t sure where this was going, but she searched her memory anyway, sifting through the few friends she remembered Rosalind to have had.
She came up blank.
“Was this before we all left for the West or the first time I came back?”
“The first time you came back. Rosalind was working at the burlesque club already.”
By the look of Juliette’s constipated expression, Kathleen figured she wasn’t remembering.
“Her name was some gemstone,” Kathleen kept trying. “I can’t remember exactly what, but… Ruby? Sapphire? Emerald?”
It clicked suddenly. A suppressed laugh escaped from Juliette, and then Kathleen—even as she tried to clamp her lips together—was laughing too, though the memory was hardly something to be humored over.
“Amethyst,” Juliette said. “It was Amethyst.”
Amethyst had been at least five years older than all of them, and Rosalind had worshipped the ground she walked on. She was the long-legg
