“At noon,” he promised.
Forty
They had boarded up the lab, going as far as to smash one of the windows in advance, so Scarlets passing by would think it already scouted and searched. Any moment now, the bugle call would sound across the city, summoning all those under Nationalist command.
Juliette wondered if any Scarlets mourned. If, in hearing of her death, they had felt a genuine drop of sadness, or if she was merely a figurehead they had been forced to respect. By now her parents had surely poked through her scheme, had received condolences back from the Nationalists about their dead daughter and searched through the house to find her missing. It would not take long to put two and two together and figure that Juliette was the one who had announced her own death.
“Miss Cai.”
Juliette lifted her head off Lourens’s kitchen table. His apartment was at the back of the labs, and after throwing a pile of shelves onto the floor to make the hallways look ransacked, they had deemed it unlikely any of the gangsters or soldiers would find their way here. Still, Juliette had shoved a knife across the door latch, and if anyone was to try barging through, they would have to snap the steel first.
“Yes?”
Lourens passed her a thin blanket. Juliette had trouble reaching for it, only because she could not see where she was reaching. She had been awake for long enough that her vision was starting to blur, and there was only one candle for light, flickering in the adjoined living room. The sun would be up any second, but they had just finished taping the windows of Lourens’s apartment with layers upon layers of newspapers, blacking out the outside and preventing the outside from looking in.
“If all is settled, I am going back to sleep,” Lourens announced.
Roma looked up suddenly, frowning from across the apartment. He was on the sofa with Alisa, a needle and thread in his hand as he fixed a rip in Alisa’s sleeve, leaning the both of them so closely into the candlelight that there was a risk Alisa’s blond hair would catch aflame.
“Lourens,” Roma said, almost chidingly as he finished his stitching. “How can you sleep? There’s about to be mass slaughter outside.”
“I highly suggest you children do the same,” Lourens chided back. He plucked an orange from his fruit bowl and set it down in front of Juliette. “Take it from someone who ran once too: when you leave all that you know, you want to be well rested.”
Juliette picked up the orange. “Thank you?”
Lourens was already shuffling away, moving from the kitchen into the living room. “Miss Montagova, you will take the spare room, yes? Miss Cai, you should find that the sofa will suffice, and, Roma, I will find a floor sheet for you.”
Juliette watched Roma frown, watched him look at the sofa and mentally measure its width, finding it would probably fit two.
“You don’t have to—”
“Thank you!” Juliette repeated, cutting in. Lourens disappeared down the hallway.
“Juliette, what—”
“He’s old, Roma.” She pushed herself up from the kitchen table and took the orange with her, peeling the skin into neat strips. “Are you trying to horrify him with your social impropriety?”
“Social impropriety while there is mass slaughter outside,” Roma grumbled.
Juliette pulled an orange segment free and plopped it in her mouth. She started to walk around the living room, inspecting the various vases that Lourens owned. As she poked her nose here and there, she heard Alisa begin to mutter to Roma, only Alisa’s version of muttering was loud enough that each word was quite clearly enunciated.
“Roma.”
“What is it?” He prodded her sleeve. “Another rip?”
“No,” Alisa whispered, frowning and drawing her arm away. “So did you . . . ? Did you marry Juliette Cai?”
Juliette choked, the orange immediately lodging in her throat.
“I—” Even by the dim light, Roma looked faintly red. “We are well acquainted.”
Half spluttering, half holding back the most inappropriately timed laugh, Juliette managed to cough the orange out of her windpipe. Roma, meanwhile, cleared his throat, getting to his feet and nudging his sister up too.
“Come on, Alisa. Go get some rest.”
He quickly pushed Alisa down the hallway, exchanging some words with Lourens before Lourens retired into his room. Juliette thought she heard vaccine and are you certain? There was some more murmuring from the guest room before Roma emerged again, fumbling around in the dark with something that looked like a mat.