Alisa climbed out of the small cupboard, straightening to her full height. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
Juliette reared back. “How did you know?”
“How did I know . . . that you were dead?” Alisa asked. “I heard Benedikt bring the news in. Roma ran out as soon as he heard.”
Oh. Oh, no, no, no—
“Where did he go?” Juliette breathed. “Alisa, where did he go?”
Alisa shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking in the cupboard since then. I was about to mourn you too, you know. It was only ten minutes ago.”
Juliette pressed her fist to her mouth, thinking fast. Within the house, there came a chiming sound, and she was willing to bet that it was signaling the hour: one o’clock, the new morning.
“Listen to me.” Juliette kneeled suddenly, so that she wasn’t looming over Alisa. She clamped her hands on the girl’s shoulders, her grip tight. “Alisa, there’s a purge coming. I need you to go downstairs and warn everyone, warn as many people as you can. Then I need you to pack whatever you cannot bear to live without and come with me.”
Alisa stared forward. Her eyes were as big as a doe’s, amber brown and filled with concern. “Come with you?” she echoed. “To where?”
“To find your brother,” Juliette answered. “Because we’re leaving the city.”
Thirty-Nine
Where could he be?”
Juliette kicked a shopfront wall, scuffing her shoes with dust and mud. Patiently, Alisa waited for Juliette to kick three more times, chewing on her nails. There was a loud noise in the distance, and at once, Juliette and Alisa peered down the dark, silent road. No result came of the noise. All around them, the city simply sat waiting.
“Perhaps the Bund,” Alisa suggested. “Along the Huangpu.”
“At two in the morning?”
Before vacating the house, Alisa had warned as many White Flowers as possible to run and hide within the city while there was still the shield of night; word had likely gotten out to the wider circles that something was soon to come. There was something in the air already. A high note, ringing beyond the human ear. An inaudible hum, operating on some different frequency.
“He thinks you’re dead—who knows where he might go?”
“No. He hates vast spaces. He wouldn’t go near the water to mourn.”
Juliette paced along the street, smacking lightly at her own face as if physical sensation could draw forth some ideas. Alisa kept chewing on her nails.
“It didn’t just seem like he was running out to get away from the news,” Alisa said slowly. “It seemed like he had something he needed to do.”
Juliette threw her hands in the air. “We had little else to do except—”
Find Dimitri. Stop the madness.
“Did he say anything about going after Dimitri Voronin?”
Alisa shook his head. “I thought you didn’t know where Dimitri was.”
“We don’t.” Juliette gave Alisa a sidelong glance. “How did you know that?”
With a roll of her eyes, Alisa tapped her ear. It was hard to believe this was the same girl who had fallen comatose so many months ago, waking thin and frail on her hospital bed. She seemed to have grown a spine that was twice as thick in the time since then.
“I know everything.”
“All right, Miss I-Know-Everything, where is your brother?”
Alisa only sagged in reply, and Juliette immediately felt terrible for her attitude. How old was Alisa Montagova now? Twelve? Thirteen? Pain at that age was an eternal thing, a feeling that might never fade. It would, of course. Pain always faded, even if it refused to fully disappear. But that was a lesson that could only come with time too.
“I’m sorry,” Juliette said. She slumped against the wall. “I’m scared for him. If we can’t find Roma before the Nationalists release their men onto the streets, they will get to him first.” They would not hesitate. The Kuomintang had held back for so long. Had looked upon this city for years and years as it lived its glory age of jazz clubs and silent films, had broiled in anger to see Shanghai singing while the rest of the country starved. Perhaps their true target of anger were the imperialists hiding behind their chain-link fences in the Concessions. But when one held guns and batons in their hands, did a true target of anger even matter? What else mattered except, at last, an excuse for release?
Alisa suddenly perked up again, her head tilting to the side. “Even if Roma doesn’t know where Dimitri is, what if he is still trying to stop him?”