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“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 different one could have won the blood feud with the White Flowers generations ago. Perhaps a different 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 floating 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 find.” 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 horrified to find a gouge in the door. She smiled at the thought and remained rather amused, until she entered her room and spotted a lone figure 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 identified 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 miffed 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 flare-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—to
ward her maternal aunts who tried to take the place of her dead mother; toward her father, who valued the strengthening of his guanxì 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 muffled 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, terrified 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 final time.
