The monsters howled into the night. Loomed closer.
“In this life and the next,” Roma returned, “for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours.”
Juliette squeezed his hand. In that action, she tried to communicate everything she couldn’t put into words, everything that didn’t have a spoken form other than I love you. I love you. I love you.
When Dimitri stepped forward, when the monsters finally approached within good range, Juliette turned the spark wheel on her lighter.
“Don’t miss,” Roma said.
“I never do,” Juliette replied.
And with Roma’s nod, she threw the burning flame onto the bags of highly flammable vaccine.
“What could be taking so long?” Benedikt demanded. He had his foot on the pedal. They needed to be ready to go the very second Roma and Juliette appeared.
Alisa whimpered from the back seat. Marshall strained against the rear window, waiting to see if anyone was coming up the street and within sight.
The ground beneath them seemed to shudder. One thump. Another.
Then Marshall turned around, swearing so loudly his voice cracked. “Go, Benedikt, go!”
“What? But—”
“Drive!”
Benedikt pressed down on the accelerator, the car tearing through the street so suddenly that its wheels shrieked into the night.
Behind them, with gasoline drenched into every square inch of the pavement, the explosion rang so loud and hot that all of Shanghai rocked with the blow.
Epilogue
April 1928
There is scarcely any movement around this part of Zhouzhuang, scarcely any sound at all to disturb Alisa Montagova as she kneels by the canal, folding yuánbǎo out of silver paper. She doesn’t think that they much resemble the ingots they are supposed to look like, but she is trying her best.
Today is the Qingming festival: Tomb-Sweeping Day. A day of veneration for ancestors who have passed away, for gravesite cleaning and praying and burning false money into the afterlife for the dead to use. Alisa has no ancestor to pray for in Shanghai. In Shanghai, there are only gravestones, laid side by side over empty graves.
Nobody had argued against it. With the explosion twelve months ago, the papers the next day had gotten ahold of a marriage certificate that sent the city into an uproar. A certificate that showed Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai married, bound together this whole time while the blood feud tore the streets apart.
Alisa adds another yuánbǎo to her pile. In truth, the certificate never existed. But Alisa heard their vows that night, eavesdropping instead of going to sleep. She had forged the document and sent it to the press. The blood feud may not have fallen apart immediately, but that was the first moment it started to fragment. If their heirs did not believe in the feud, why should the common people? If the heirs had died for each other, what was the basis for their people to keep fighting?
They had buried them together. There were no ashes, no bones. Kept apart in life, allowed together in death.
At the thought, Alisa sniffles suddenly, finding her nose to be running. She didn’t believe it. The first time she saw their gravesite, she had dived at the headstones, trying to carve the engravings right out.
“They’re not dead!” she screamed. “If you can’t find their bodies, they’re not dead!”
They said the explosion had been too hot. That they found the monsters because of how tough their skins were, that they found Dimitri Voronin body because of his distance from the blast. But no Roma and no Juliette.
Benedikt had to pull her off. He had to throw her over his shoulder so she wouldn’t dig the grave up, but even as he walked her away, her eyes remained pinned on the stones.
“They’re gone, Alisa,” Benedikt whispered. “I’m sorry. They’re gone.”
“How can they be gone?” She clutched her cousin, burying her face in his shoulder. “They were once the mightiest people in this city. How can they just be gone?”
“I’m sorry.” That was all Benedikt could say. Marshall crouched down beside them, offering his presence. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Those aren’t even their names, Alisa wanted to scream. Those headstones have the wrong names.
Now, she finishes her little pile of false money and gathers them into a tight circle. Twilight creeps deeper against the horizon, bathing the sky in orange. Alisa is here because she cannot stand the insincere gestures in Shanghai, cannot bear to join the crowds at the cemeteries, all the sobbing faces who didn’t even know her brother. Benedikt and Marshall had fled the city a month after the explosion. They wanted to take her with them to Moscow, where no one knew who they were, where no one had heard of the Montagovs and their legacy, where Kuomintang generals wouldn’t be on the hunt for them. Alisa refused. She wanted to know what happened to her father. She wanted to see what would happen to her city.