With a sigh, Juliette retreated from the telephone, her fingers red from the excessive cord twirling. At this point the switchboard operators probably recognized her by voice alone, given she was calling so many times a day. She had no choice. What else was she to do? Suffice it to say, after Tyler’s arson, their cooperation with the White Flowers had ended, and when Juliette asked her father if it would not be beneficial to meet at least once more, her father had thinned his lips and waved her off. She couldn’t comprehend why Lord Cai would be eager to work with the White Flowers one moment, and when Juliette was finally onto something—when she needed their resources to find the identity of the Frenchman who had transformed into a monster—suddenly it was no good working with the enemy.
Who was the one whispering into her father’s ear? There were too many people coming and going from his office to ever begin making a list. Had they been infiltrated by White Flowers? Was it the Nationalists?
“Hey.”
Juliette jumped, her elbow banging against the jamb of her bedroom door. “Jesus.”
“It’s Kathleen, actually, but I appreciate the holiness,” Kathleen said from upon Juliette’s bed. She flipped her magazine. “You look stressed.”
“Yes, I am stressed, biǎojiě. How perceptive of you.” Juliette pulled her pearl earrings out, setting them onto her vanity and massaging her lobes. It turned out that wearing earrings and pressing a receiver to her ear for hours at a time did not go well together. “Had I known you were home, I would have roped you into helping me.”
At this, Kathleen closed her magazine, sitting up quickly. “Do you need my help?”
Juliette shook her head. “I jest. I have it handled.”
For the past week, since the White Flower safe house burned to the ground and Roma hadn’t responded to any of her delivered messages, Juliette had been calling every French hotel in their directory, asking a series of the same questions. Was any guest acting peculiar? Was anyone making a mess in their rooms? Leaving behind what might look like animal tracks? Making too many noises at random hours of the night? Anything—anything—that might signal someone keeping control of monsters or turning into a monster themselves, but Juliette had gotten nothing but false leads and drunks.
She heaved a long exhale. At present, gravel was crunching from somewhere outside, beyond Juliette’s balcony doors. When Kathleen walked over, peering through the glass, she reported, “That looks like your father coming home.”
Seconds later, Juliette identified the sound of tires rolling down the driveway.
“You know what strikes me as strange?” she asked suddenly. The front door opened and closed. A burst of voices downstairs signaled the arrival of visitors accompanying her father’s return, interrupting an otherwise leisurely late morning. “There has only been one attack thus far, two if we count the train. And it is awful of me, but I cannot help but feel as though there should be more.”
“But there have been sightings,” Kathleen said. She leaned up against the balcony glass. “Numerous sightings.”
“Largely at the workers’ strikes,” Juliette countered.
The first time, she had brushed it off. Roma thought it to be a rumor; she had thought the same. Only now the rumors were coming from police officers and gangsters, more and more of them arguing that they were unable to defend their post—defend against the striking workers as they tore down their factories and stormed the streets—because they had spotted a monster in the crowd.
“I don’t know,” she went on. “I imagine releasing insects would spread fear much faster than mere sightings.”
Kathleen shrugged. “We have labeled this person a blackmailer for a reason,” she said. “It is not Paul Dexter. The purpose isn’t chaos. The purpose is money and resources.”
But still, Juliette bit down on the inside of her cheeks. Something did not sit right with her. It was like she was looking directly at a picture and seeing something else because someone had already told her what to look for. Just as she had charged into a wonton shop without thinking about how it didn’t make any sense for it to be a vaccine center. She had merely assumed from the beginning—from the moment she laid eyes on that flyer—because that had been the case once before.
So what wasn’t she seeingm now?
“Miss Cai?”
Juliette tucked a curl behind her ear, turning her attention to the messenger when he stuck his head into her room. “Yes?”