Roma’s mouth formed into a hard line.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you this,” he said quietly, “but stay well away from her. Juliette Cai is dangerous.”
Alisa rolled her eyes. “Surely you don’t believe those stories about her killing her American lovers with her bare hands—”
Roma cut her off with a sharp look. His scowl didn’t last long, however, because his attention was wandering off, and whatever he had registered caused him to tense all over.
Alisa followed his gaze, confused. Juliette’s expression was no longer one of cynical amusement. She nodded once at Roma. Noting Roma’s equally serious expression, Alisa decided that she was definitely missing something here.
“Alisa.”
She snapped her eyes back, facing her brother, who had already looked away.
“What?”
Roma frowned, then reached over and eased her hands away from her head. She hadn’t even noticed that she was scratching intensely, pulling white-blond strands of hair out from their roots so that they were twisted around her fingertips like ropes of jewelry.
“Sorry,” Alisa said, knotting her hands together behind her back. A hot prickling was spreading down her skin. It was possible that she was overheating with her jacket on, but a line of goose bumps along her collarbone said otherwise. “I’m so warm.”
“What, do you want me to fan you?” Roma muttered. He pulled out a chair for Alisa, then took his own. “Sit still. Let’s hope this doesn’t go to shit.”
Alisa nodded and sat back, trying not to scratch.
* * *
When Juliette walked into the room, it was the weight of her gun pressed against her thigh that focused her against the weight of the stares. She nodded at her parents to acknowledge that she had arrived, then moved her gaze across the rest of the room. In the first few seconds, she took in every face, matched them to a name, then ranked them in order of dangerousness.
There was Dimitri Voronin, who she had heard was aggressive and impossible to control, but today Lord Montagov valued diplomacy—or so he claimed—and so Dimitri would remain quiet. There was Marshall Seo, twirling what looked like a blade of grass between his fingers as if it were a real blade. Beside him, Benedikt Montagov sat with a neutral expression, looking like a pensive stone statue.
And there was, of course, Roma.
Juliette joined Rosalind and Kathleen at their seats, pulling a chair out and dropping in. With great reluctance, she concluded that none of the White Flowers seemed more volatile than Tyler, who was practically trembling in his seat in effort to keep silent.
“This is for you,” Kathleen said, noting Juliette’s arrival.
She slid over a square piece of paper. Juliette lifted a corner and read the brief scribblings of numbers and street names. Kathleen had done it. She had met with her contact again and retrieved Zhang Gutai’s personal address.
“Did you find anything at the Bund?” Juliette asked, tucking the address away.
“The bankers were clueless,” Kathleen replied. “Only one old woman had any information and she thought she saw a monster in the river.”
Juliette chewed over the thought. She said, “Interesting.”
Rosalind cleared her throat, leaning in. “What are we whispering about?”
“Oh.” Juliette waved a hand. “Nothing important.”
Rosalind narrowed her eyes. It looked as if she was going to say more, accuse Juliette of being dismissive. It would not have been undeserved—Juliette truly was trying to shut down unnecessary expansion on the subject, to keep quiet while they were in a warehouse full of White Flowers. But Rosalind took the hint. She changed the topic.
“Take a look at Tyler. He’s two seconds away from throwing a tantrum.”
Juliette turned around, her face pinched with distaste. His trembling had only intensified. “Maybe we should ask him to leave.”
“No.” Kathleen shook her head, then rose from her seat. “I’ll talk to him. Asking him to leave would be making more trouble.”
Before Juliette or Rosalind could protest, Kathleen was already off, pushing her chair back and walking toward Tyler, dropping into the seat beside him. Juliette and Rosalind couldn’t hear what Kathleen was saying, but they could see that Tyler wasn’t listening, even when Kathleen reached for his elbow and gave him a sharp shake.
“She’s too kindhearted for her own good,” Rosalind remarked.