Page 62 of Our Violent Ends
Marshall wandered deeper into the room—not that there was anywhere to go in such a small space—and collapsed on his mattress. “Is that why you have arrived without gifts to bear?”
Juliette palmed a knife into her hand and pretended to throw.
“Ah!” Marshall yelped immediately, throwing his arms over his face. “I jest!”
“You’d better be. You certainly pick up enough things to eat and drink whenever you go outside.”
Juliette put her knife away. With a stride that could be described more as stomping than walking, she made her way over to the mattress too and dropped down beside him, her dress clinking with noise.
“You’re my only White Flower source right now,” she said. “What do you know about your communication with the Communists?”
“The Communists?” Marshall echoed. He had been lying back, elbows propped on the sheets, but now he sat up straight, brows knitting together. “Most of the Russians in this city are Bolshevik Revolution refugees. When have the White Flowers ever liked the Communists?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Juliette grumbled. She blew a piece of hair out of her eyes, and when that did nothing to get the lock away from her face, she huffed extra loudly and pushed it back, smooshing it with the rest of the tangle.
“Given, it is not as if I am very up to date with the latest White Flower goings-on.” Marshall reached for something tucked near the wall, his whole arm straining to make contact without moving from position. When he finally retrieved it, he returned to Juliette with a flourish. “May I? It’s hurting my eyes to look at you.”
Juliette squinted at what he was holding, trying to pick out the label in the dim light of the safe house. She snorted when it registered. Hair pomade.
She inclined her head toward him. “Please. Make me pretty again.”
In silence, Marshall scooped a clump of pomade and started to brush through her hair with his fingers. He made fast work of re-forming her curls, though his tongue was sticking out in concentration, as if he had never tried shaping longer hair but he would be damned before Juliette told him he was doing it wrong.
“You should ask Roma,” Marshall said, finishing a curl near her ear. “It’s his job, is it not?”
“That’s a little difficult right now,” Juliette replied. The blood feud pushed away her answers about the blackmailer. Politics pushed away her chances at protecting the city so they wouldn’tneedanswers about the blackmailer. Why did everybody in this city insist on making life sodifficultfor themselves? “None of this would even be happening if General Shu would just let us distribute the vaccine.”
Marshall froze. He tried to hide it, tried to resume with the curl as if nothing happened, but Juliette sensed the delay, and her head swiveled to him, interrupting his work.
“What?”
“No, nothing—let me—”
“Marshall.”
“Can I just—”
“Marshall.”
The edge in Juliette’s voice got through. With the slightest shake of his head, Marshall continued to feign casual, but he said: “I had some ties to the Kuomintang before joining the White Flowers, that’s all. General Shu is bad news. Once he latches on to something, he won’t let go. If he doesn’t want a Scarlet vaccine distributed across the city, it’s never going to go out.”
Juliette supposed she wasn’t surprised at that, given what she already knew about the man. But:
“Weren’t you a child when you joined the White Flowers?”
Marshall shook his head again, more firmly this time. “It was a youth group. Now...” He shifted one last curl in place. “You no longer look like a rickshaw driver dragged you through the mud. Happy?”
“Overjoyed,” Juliette replied, getting to her feet. Something still sounded a little off, but she hardly had the time to prod at it. “I’ll take my leave now, but—”
“Stay inside, I know.” Marshall waved her off. “Don’t you worry about me.”
Juliette shot him a warning glare as she walked to the door, but Marshall only grinned.
“Goodbye, you menace.”
Twenty-Two
As it turned out, when Lady Cai said that she needed accompaniment to the city temple in the afternoon, she meant the very minute noon passed, and now Juliette was late. When the car came to a stop, Juliette leaned into the rearview mirror and retouched her hair once more before tumbling out, searching for her mother and her cousins. She tried not to bristle when indeed she found Rosalind and Kathleen alongside her mother, as well asTylerwith a group of his men.
