These Violent Delights (These Violent Delights 1)

“Just as those Communists you were speaking to would find the first opportunity to drag down their Secretary-General.”

Kathleen made a noise of offense. “Were you eavesdropping on my conversation?”

“And if I was?”

The arrests seemed to be slowing now. There was a straight path from here to the door and then Kathleen would have freedom, escaping with her newly acquired information bundled to her chest.

Too bad the White Flowers had the exact same information now.

“Mind your business,” Kathleen snapped.

Before Marshall Seo could steal anything more, she marched away.

Twenty-Two

Morning turned to noon with an exhausted flop, beams of gray daylight streaming through the dirty windows of the burlesque club. Juliette waved at the cigarette smoke that wafted below her nose, grimacing and holding back her cough.

“Is the radiator broken?” Juliette yelled, her voice carrying loudly. “Turn the heat up! And get me more gin!”

She was already wearing a long coat lined with fur thicker than her father’s account books, but each time the doors slammed open, a cold breeze swirled in and further chilled the brisk day.

“You finished the whole bottle already?” one of the waitresses remarked. She had a cloth in her hand, scrubbing at a nearby table, her nose scrunched in the direction of the glass in front of Juliette.

Juliette picked up the empty bottle, examined the delicate detailing, then set it down again upon a flyer. She had found the thin piece of paper on the streets before she came in. The corner was rumpled now from how much she had been fiddling with it.

GET VACCINATED, the flyer read in large lettering. At the very bottom, there were two printed lines offering an address in the International Settlement.

“Tone down the judgment before I fire you,” Juliette replied, the threat delivered without much conviction. She clicked her fingers at a passing kitchen hand. “Come on! Another bottle!”

The kitchen hand hurried to accommodate. The crowd in the burlesque club during the day was sparse, and for the gangsters who came during these hours, there was nothing to do except dawdle around and watch Rosalind’s watered-down daytime routine. At night, all the stops were pulled out and Rosalind kicked and cha-cha-ed her way into extravagance. The lights would glow to their fullest capacity and the hum from the floor would be enough to power the chandeliers, which twinkled gold against the hazy red ceiling. But while the sun was up outside and the bodies scattered amid the round tables were few, it was as if the place were hibernating. Rosalind usually worked two hours during the day and she clearly hated them, if her inability to pay attention was any indication. From the stage, she had raised an eyebrow at Juliette, wordlessly asking why Juliette was throwing a fit from the audience and, in the process, missed the first few notes of her next song.

“Drinking at one in the afternoon?” Rosalind remarked when she came up to Juliette an hour later, finally finished with her set. Having changed out of her flashy stage dress, she slumped onto the chair opposite Juliette in her dark-green qipao, blending into the deep green of the seat. Only her black eyes stood out in the bland lighting. Everything else became strange and gray.

“Well, I’m trying.”

Juliette poured deftly, then offered the half-full cup to Rosalind.

Rosalind took a sip. She grimaced so severely that her usual pointed chin morphed into three.

“This is awful.” She coughed, wiping at her mouth. She looked around then, eyeing the empty tables. “Are you meeting someone here again?”

A merchant, Rosalind was suggesting, or perhaps a f

oreign diplomat, a businessman—people in power who Juliette was supposed to be rubbing shoulders with. But since Walter Dexter, who had been more of a pest than anything, her father hadn’t given her anyone else to meet with. She had one task only: find out why the people of Shanghai were dying.

“Every time I knock on my father’s door to ask if there are any important people he would like me to sweet-talk, he waves me off like—” Juliette performed an exaggerated imitation of her father’s harried expression, flicking her wrist quickly through the air like a limp fish.

Rosalind bit back a laugh. “You don’t have anywhere better to be, then?”

“I’m merely spending some time in your talent,” Juliette replied. “I’m so bored of these ordinary people who don’t know the difference between a dropkick and a flat kick.…”

Rosalind pulled a face. “I don’t even know what the difference is. I’m almost certain you just made those terms up.”

Juliette shrugged, then threw the rest of her drink down. The answer she had given was the truth. She only needed to be seen at the burlesque club for long enough that it would not be suspicious when dusk came and she slipped out to meet Roma.

Juliette shuddered. Slipping out to meet Roma. It was too reminiscent. A wound so long removed, yet still fresh and open and sore.

“Are you okay?”