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constant activity consumed their attention instead. Couples were whispering over decks of tarot cards, men were shaking one another with vigor, women were inclining their heads to gasp and shriek in recollection of whatever story was being told over the flickering gaslight.
she would do a damn good job of being who she was because she could be no one else.
Switching to either of their native tongues would have been like taking a side, so they settled for a middle ground.
the more the people speculated, as if just by speaking the possibilities they could stumble upon the truth. But the more people talked, the further truth slipped.
Begrudgingly, slowly, Juliette removed her knife from Roma’s throat and raised her hands high. She released her deathly grip on him, each step as prolonged as possible until she was standing up, striding backward to put herself two paces away from the pistol. In unison, with no other way to avoid a deadlock, they put their weapons away.
her voice as calm as the morning tide, “I want a name.”
Roma wasn’t sure if Benedikt and Marshall were fated to eventually kill each other or kiss each other.
it is easy to forget that the natural state of night is supposed to be darkness. Instead, night in Shanghai is vibrance and neon, gaslight flickering against the triangular flags fluttering in the breeze.
That is what this city is. The party at the end of the world.
several strides away, she wanted to commit homicide a little less.
“Don’t look so smug,” he whispered while Juliette passed him. “That’s just my face,” she hissed back.
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.
Yet dispersed in different sections of the garden, three loners stood unassociated despite their best efforts to look as if they were occupied in proper business.
thought it preposterous that her father had to ask permission to run business on land their ancestors had lived and died on from men who had simply docked their boat here and decided they would like to be in charge now.
They believed themselves the rulers of the world—on stolen land in America, on stolen land in Shanghai. Everywhere they went—entitlement.
facing the human equivalent of stale bread.
Chinese and Western standards alike were arbitrary, pitiful things. But Juliette still needed to keep herself in line, force herself to follow them if people were to look up to her. Without her looks, this city would turn on her. It would claim that she didn’t deserve to be as competent as she was. The men, meanwhile, could be as tan, as fat, and as old as they wished. It would have no bearing on what people thought of them.
those hands were of such grace, but she knew better than anyone that blood was soaked through and through the lines of his palms. Lines that read like scripture in appearance were in truth nothing but sin.
moonlight out of her room and its changing faces out of her heart.
The shadows of the nearby house were heavy. Roma and Juliette stood right where the shadows ended, right at the strict divide between light and gloom.
In the early-morning light, it was hard to remember what danger tasted like.
to remember that she was still her own person, not just shards of a mirror, reflecting back a thousand different personalities most fitting for the situation.
There was something awful about the shrinking distance between them—like the coiling of a spring, winding tighter and tighter. Any sudden movements were bound to end in disaster. “Of course,” Roma said. His tone was dull. His eyes were electric, like he, too, was only remembering just now. “Forgive me for that particular oversight.” A tense moment passed in stillness: the slow release of the spring back into its usual position.
This was a city shrouded in blood. It was foolish to try changing it.
Juliette embraced danger with open arms.
was drafting a reply to a message from Juliette. He’s been at it for three hours. I think he’s going to pull a muscle.”
Once he had proofread it a tenth time, he wasn’t entirely sure anymore whether he had spelled his own name correctly.
cold of the delicate glass seep into her bones. “I have an American accent,” she replied dully. Paul waved her off. “You know what I mean.” Do I? she wanted to say. Would I be less if I sounded like my mother, my father, and all those in this city who were forced to learn more than one language, unlike you?
Juliette reached into her dress, tore out the gun she had hidden in its folds. With the hand she had free, she pulled the safety and pressed the barrel to the underside of his jaw—to
put his hands protectively around his slice of honey cake. “Just because your food hasn’t come yet doesn’t mean you should ruin someone else’s.”
He suddenly felt so much like his old self again. Like the boy who had kissed her for the first time on the rooftop of a jazz club. Like the boy who didn’t believe in violence, who swore he would rule his half of the city one day with fairness and justice.
believed it when they sat under the velvet night and looked out at the haze of lights in the distance, when Roma said he would defy everything, everything, even the stars, to change their fate in this city.
The stars incline us, they do not bind us.
