Page 13 of Last Violent Call
Juliette hummed a noise. “It only seems strange to me that Lourens would be experimenting with this.”
She remembered what Celia had told her in a hush, almost a year after she and Roma had fled. Rosalind getting sick, then recovering with the most bizarre side effects. Now she had been recruited by the Nationalists to make use of what no one could understand—her inability to age, her rapid healing, never needing sleep—and Lourens was the one who had done it. These days, Juliette was as close as ever with Celia, but she hadn’t spoken to Rosalind in years. Not since Rosalind had betrayed her and Juliette had responded in kind by keeping her tied up at a safe house and forcing her to divulge everything she knew about her then-lover. Though Juliette eventually released her cousin, she thought about their last encounter constantly. Whether there had been anything she could have done so that they hadn’t left each other on such a sour note. Whether Rosalind was beating herself up over it as well, because as far as Rosalind was aware, that was the last time she’d seen Juliettealive.
Rosalind had been one of her best friends. As angry as Juliette was at the time, the years had mellowed her out, had meant she missed Rosalind more than she blamed her for making a mistake. Still, a long time had passed. She had no way of knowing who her cousin had become, working as a national assassin. What her cousin had been made into by Lourens’s hand.
“He is an incredibly talented man,” Juliette went on. He had already saved Rosalind before he met Mila, if she was understanding their time line correctly. “What is the need for these small experiments? It is a feat to have others do your bidding, very well, but from what we have heard, Lourens had inventedimmortalityalready. I am having trouble believing there isn’t more to it, perhaps existing outside of Mila’s understanding.”
Roma had grown still. It took Juliette a few seconds to realize it wasn’t in reaction to what she had just said, but rather that he had spotted something in the newspaper before him.
“You are correct. This is beyond belief.” With a smooth swivel, Roma turned the newspaper spread so that it was facing her, allowing Juliette to scan the text. He pointed to a paragraph at the very bottom corner and read aloud:
“?‘… Initially suspected as foul play, the deaths of two Russian showgirls in the French Concession have now both been ruled as suicides. After analysis, investigators have deemed their wounds to be self-inflicted, and are working with the possibility that these cases are inspired by the madness that swept the city five years ago.’?”
“What?” Juliette blurted. When Roma lifted his gaze to meet her eyes, they looked at each other with equal befuddlement. “The madness?Ourmadness? There’s no chance the two girls decided to go imitating an event they weren’t even in the city for. Surely it was made to look that way.”
Roma folded up the paper, sliding it to the other side of the table so it wasn’t in his line of sight anymore. “I can’t imagine why someone’skilling them by clawing their throats out either. You don’t go eliminating experiment subjects if you want the research. Nor do you wait three years if it’s a pressing matter of shutting them up.”
The clock in the kitchen ticked loudly. It echoed across the dark green wall tiles, each passing second louder than the previous as the sound built and built. With a sigh, Juliette stretched her hand out on the table, and Roma leaned forward to lace his fingers through hers.
“I don’t suppose Paul Dexter has risen from the dead to invoke chaos?” she murmured. “The other option would be Dimitri, and I would rather deal with undead Paul.”
Roma’s grip tightened on her hand for a moment. Then he loosened his hold, tapping his index finger against the soft pad of her palm.
“Hang on,” he said. “There’s an interesting thought, actually. How did we solve this the first time around?”
Juliette shuddered at the thought. “With a lot of fumbling and false assumptions.”
Roma blew a puff of air at her, dismissing the answer without words. Juliette’s nose scrunched immediately, pretending to look angry.
“No,” Roma said before she could gather a big breath in her lungs and return the favor. “By going to the source. Imagine if we had realized earlier that Paul Dexter had the most to gain out of anyone.”
Juliette understood what he was getting at. “You want to find this Mr. Pyotr fellow, don’t you?”
“Shouldn’t be hard for us. We have contacts in every township from here to Suzhou. My only question is how we ought to begin. He must be located in the vicinity if he is sending Mila letters without postage.”
It was a quarter after midnight. Juliette tapped her chin. “We couldprobably break into the operating center first and see whether anyone in the area has made international calls to Vladivostok. I imagine there cannot be many, and it could reveal Mr. Pyotr’s identity. Gives us more footing before we go asking about him.”
Roma was already up, grabbing his jacket from the hook. “Brilliant. You’re brilliant. Come on.”
Juliette couldn’t resist the twitch of her lips as she stood slowly, watching Roma grab her jacket too after he had put his own on. Automatically, he held hers out for her so she could slip her arms in more easily, shaking the fabric around when Juliette stayed by the table with a smile.
“Comeon, dorogaya,” he prompted.
Juliette hurried over, raising her arms and putting the jacket on. “Let’s go.”
6
The night stretched ominously around them, the late hour falling heavy and thick. Juliette peered over the fence, her shoes squelching in the wet grass.
“All clear?” Roma whispered.
To tell the truth, Juliette couldn’t see much in the dark. There were no streetlights nearby, and the half-moon only vaguely illuminated the small telecommunications center that loomed ahead. Given that there didn’t seem to be any movement in the vicinity and the building sat entirely still, she assumed that the coast was, in fact, clear.
She huffed into her hands, her breath misting visibly in a thick shroud. “It looks empty. Give me your neck.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Juliette was already reaching her freezing cold hands into his collar, tucking her fingers against his bare skin. She hadn’t expected the temperature to plummet this low tonight when she’d left the house without gloves. The operating center for their general area was located in a town situated a half hour’s drive away from Zhouzhuang, in the nearest hub that resembled a city more than the rural countryside. Despite its comparison with their cozy township, the roads were still nowhere near Shanghai’s hustle and bustle, as exemplified by the fact that there wasn’t a single soul around when Roma parked under a streetlight and the two of them snuck along the shadows to get to the operating centeron the next street over.
