Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(13)

“Thank you, Ah Tou. It’s appreciated. Talk soon.”

She hung up, then waved goodbye to Mrs. Gu before taking her leave. As she walked her usual route home, passing the storefronts of small restaurants and sidestepping the crates left out on the canal sides, she was lost inside her own head, nibbling on the last pieces of rice stuck to the dried bamboo leaves.

Juliette almost didn’t see the knife flying in her direction until the very last second.

She stepped back quickly, letting the blade clatter to a stop at her feet. It had been going at a rather low and shaky trajectory, so perhaps it would have only given her a small scratch, but she still put her hands on her hips. Her glare was not directed at Yulun, who’d thrown the wayward knife, nor at Mila, who looked mortified, but at Roma, who was overseeing the two kids.

Roma looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“Are you trying to kill me?” Juliette demanded. “Again?”

“At least this time I’m sending wily assassins after you,” Roma replied. “Yulun, that was a good try.”

“So sorry!” Yulun said to Juliette, hurrying to pick up the knife. “I was most definitely not aiming in your direction.”

The target board had been pinned to the weeping willow tree, which was in the other direction, so Juliette could only imagine that the knife had flown out of his hand while he geared up for the throw.

“Here’s a tip.” Juliette scrunched up the bamboo leaves of her finished zòngzi in one hand, then used the other to push Yulun’s arm straight up. “You start here. This arm does not need to go all the way backward for momentum. You’re going to dislocate your elbow doing that.”

Still, when Yulun tried again from the right position, the knife didn’t land anywhere near the target.

Juliette grimaced. Roma encouraged the boy to try again. When she went to stand by Roma’s side, she looked closer at the target board and saw that a few knives had landed successfully on the outer circles after all.

“Phone call has been made,” she said.

“Ah Tou didn’t know anything?”

“No, but he is asking.” Juliette tipped her chin at the target board. “Your work?”

He puffed up like a proud mother hen. “Mila’s, actually. She’s a natural.”

“Hardly,” Mila countered, already listening from where she stood. Her expression was intensely devoted as she geared up to throw again, putting her full attention on each attempt. “Two of them were lucky.”

“You’re still much better than Roma when he started out,” Juliette decided.

Roma swiveled at once. “Untrue!”

“He could barely throw a marble when he was fifteen. It was horrific to witness.”

“These are utter falsities. The number of times I defeated you in our marble games—”

“All right!” Juliette cut in, turning on her heel. “Let’s go inside before it gets dark. I’ll save you from Roma’s throwing lessons with my stabbing lessons.”



* * *



The clock turned one minute past midnight. Juliette had forced Mila and Yulun to take the bedroom for rest, coming close to making threats if they kept refusing out of politeness. Once they finally agreed, they had insisted on letting the door remain open, as if they were afraid of being seen as delinquents.

The two had both fallen asleep within seconds of lying down, desperately needing the rest. Maybe it would take more than one day to master the complete art of knife-stabbing, but Juliette was glad that the evening seemed to have taken their minds off the attackers on their tail. The bruise on Yulun’s temple had started turning purple, which must have hurt, but he hadn’t complained once.

She watched them from the doorway. An odd feeling stirred at her chest—some mixture of nostalgia and recognition. Yulun with Mila was different from Yulun who had come into the house alone. Strong-willed instead of hesitant. Bold instead of unsure. He was only seventeen. As was Mila. When she looked at the two of them sleeping, Juliette felt like she was seeing herself and Roma as their past selves, young and frantic, trying so hard to hold the world at bay and exhausting themselves in the process. Fending off attack after attack, desperately wanting to keep what they had found.

Juliette closed the door quietly.

She supposed it wasn’t a direct mirror, though. She and Roma could have torn a city apart if they chose to, used their hands to crack at the cement and then dig gold from the ground, and they had turned away from it. These two didn’t have that same power—these two had to ask for help, and now she and Roma had become the ones to offer it.

It was a welcome change.

Roma was at the kitchen table when Juliette wandered back out. Multiple stacks of newspapers sat piled in front of him, his eyes moving fast as he skimmed through the headlines.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

Roma beckoned her closer without pulling his attention away from the papers. She circled around the table, then wrapped her arms around him and pressed her chin to the crook of his neck. It was a familiar position: she would often settle behind him like this while Roma wrote his letters or sorted through invoices out of nosiness at what he was doing.

“Shanghai’s papers,” Juliette noted, catching sight of the headlines. “Are you trying to send us back, my love?”