Finally, Juliette couldn’t stand her boredom. She stood and started to wander about the lab, picking things up at random and setting them down after inspecting them: the beakers lined along the floor, the little metallic spoons gathered in the corners, the neatly organized files at the end of the worktables.…
A hand snatched the files away from under her nose.
“Those aren’t for your prying eyes, lovely,” Marshall said.
Juliette frowned. “I wasn’t prying,” she countered, “and if I were, you would not have been able to tell.”
“Is that so?” Marshall set the files down, then shuffled them away from her. She resented the action. She was putting her own neck on the line to work with Roma. In what world would she take the risk to be a double-crosser?
“Marshall, sit back down,” Roma called from across the room. Benedikt Montagov did not even bother looking up from the sketch pad he had retrieved from his bag. Lourens, on the other hand, cast a worried glance down from the second floor. If the direction of his gaze was any indication, he was not afraid of a brawl starting, but rather that any rough nonsense would d
amage the glass beakers around the labs.
“Why don’t I show you some of my inventions?” Lourens tried, his voice a loud bellow. “They may be the most innovative materials that Shanghai has yet to see.”
Neither Juliette nor Marshall paid him any heed. Juliette took a step in. Marshall matched her.
“Are you insinuating something?” Juliette asked.
“Not just insinuating.” Marshall grabbed her wrist. He pulled it out toward him, then reached for the hem of her sleeve, where he yanked out the blade she had hidden. “I’m accusing. Why did you bring weapons, Miss Cai?”
Juliette made a noise of disbelief. She caught Marshall’s other wrist with the hand she had free and twisted. “It would be stranger if I didn’t bring weapons, you—ow!”
He hit her.
To be fair, it had certainly been on instinct—a jerk of his elbow in reaction to the pressure she was applying to his arm—but Juliette staggered back, her chin smarting from the blow of bone against bone.
From his seat, Roma bolted up and shouted, “Mars!” but Juliette was already pushing Marshall back, her throbbing jaw giving way to anger and her anger intensifying the pulsating pain making its way to her lip. This was the way of the blood feud: a small infraction and then a return without thinking, furious jabs and fast hits moving before the mind could register—no reason, only impulse.
Marshall grabbed ahold of Juliette’s arm again, this time twisting it hard until her whole limb was folded against her back. The fight could have ended there, but Marshall still had her knife in his hand, and Juliette’s first instinct was to fear. Temporary peace or not, she had no reason to trust him. She had every reason to kick a foot against the nearby worktable and propel herself upward, until she was using the tight grip Marshall had on her arm to roll over his shoulder, spinning over him and landing with a solid thump on her two feet. The maneuver applied enough pressure on Marshall’s arm that he was sent hurtling to the floor, his skull thumping to the linoleum with a grunt as he lost his balance from her brutal yank.
Quickly, Juliette swooped for the knife he had dropped. In that moment, she didn’t know if she even intended to kill him. All she knew was that she did not think when she fought; she only knew enemy from friend. She only knew to keep moving, to bring the knife up in the same motion that she had retrieved it, raise it high until it caught the light, only moments away from an arc that would end with it buried in Marshall Seo’s chest.
Until Marshall started laughing. That sound alone—it tore her out from her haze. It stopped Juliette in her tracks, the knife loosening in her grip, the tension in her arms collapsing.
By the time Roma and Benedikt hurried near enough to stop the fight, Juliette was already extending a hand toward Marshall, pulling him back onto his feet.
“Whew. How long did it take you to practice that move?” Marshall asked, dusting his shoulders off. He propped his shoe on the corner of the table as Juliette had and tested his weight. “You were truly defying gravity for a second.”
“You’re too tall to pull it off, so don’t try,” Juliette replied.
Roma and Benedikt blinked. They had no words. Their faces said it all.
Marshall lifted his head up, addressing Lourens. “Can we still see your inventions?”
Lourens’s mouth opened and closed. The animosity in the room had now given way entirely to curiosity, and it seemed the scientist didn’t know what to do with it. Wordlessly, he could only leave his machines to rumble and trek down the stairs. He waved them to the shelves near the back of the first floor, eyeing Juliette and Marshall, who followed him eagerly while Roma and Benedikt trailed with more hesitation, watching the two like they were afraid this peace was merely part of a longer fight.
“These little knickknacks were not made with White Flower funds and are unrelated to your gangster nonsense, so don’t you go babbling to your father, Roma,” Lourens started. He picked up a jar of blue salts and popped it open. “Take a sniff.”
Juliette leaned in. “It smells good.”
Lourens grinned to himself. The motion looked a little funny with the new bald patch at the center of his chin. “It induces seizures in birds. I usually sprinkle it in the grassy area at the back of the building.”
He moved on to a gray powder, bringing it down for Marshall to see. Marshall passed it to Benedikt, who passed it to Roma, who passed it back. Between the latter two, they hadn’t collectively looked at the jar for more than a second.
“This creates a sudden, quick explosion of air when mixed with water,” Lourens explained when it came back into his hands. “I usually throw it into the Huangpu River when I am having a stroll and the birds are trying to waddle along with me. It scares them off rather well.”
“I’m starting to pick up a pattern,” Juliette said.