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Ali’s eyes turned glassy. Her hands slackened, the chunks of torn flesh sliding from her loosened grasp and dropping to the ground.

Juliette wanted to throw up. The blood pouring from Ali’s throat ran and ran, seeping into the soil until the earth was stained dark, until the stain grew large enough to stop merely a few feet away from the former site of the old servants’ house, where Nurse, too, had met her end.

This is why, Juliette thought numbly. This is why we shall not love more than we need to. Death will come for everyone in the end—

A terrified scream shot out from the main house.

Kathleen.

Juliette bolted to her feet. “Kathleen!” she roared. “Kathleen, where are you?”

“Juliette, come!”

Juliette slammed through the front door and sprinted through the living room, drawing concerned gasps from the few confused aunts who had risen from their gossiping on the couches. In a frenzy, she skidded into the kitchen to find Kathleen standing by the long counter, her body frozen in horror, hands pressed to her mouth and muffling her words in an effort not to scream.

A cook was writhing on the floor, blood already trickling down his forearms. Three feet away, under the doorway into the main hallway, another maid was in the process of collapsing, leaning against the jamb and striking herself to resist the madness.

“Step back—”

The maid collapsed. The first arc of blood from her throat flew wide, staining the intricate carvings of the doorway and painting the beige walls into an abstraction. Faintly, Juliette wondered if they would ever be able to get such a stain out, or if it would remain in this house forever. Even when painted over or scrubbed viciously from the jamb, its presence would remain, stinking up the room with the Scarlets’ failure to protect their own.

The maid stilled. It seemed that was what finally jolted Kathleen into acting, because she surged forward then with a strangled gasp, her long hair swinging and shaking into her face in her haste.

This madness—it could be contagious.

“Stop!” Juliette shrieked.

&n

bsp; Kathleen froze in her steps. The only sound that could be heard in the sudden silence was Juliette’s heavy breathing.

She turned back, facing the two aunts who had cautiously crept into the kitchen. They covered their mouths in horror, but Juliette didn’t give them time to be horrified.

“Send for some of the men out front to clean this up,” she said. “Tell them to wear gloves.”

Eleven

Juliette slammed the trunk of the car shut, clicking its latch so vigorously that the vehicle shuddered up and down on its tires.

“Ready,” she called to the driver. “Go forth.”

Through the rearview mirror, the driver gave a grim nod. The car started to pull away from the gravel driveway, rumbling in the direction of the front gate and toward the nearest hospital. The dead bodies in the trunk would be out of Juliette’s hands then. She hoped the hospital appreciated how delicately the Scarlets had wrapped the corpses in thick bedsheets.

“Miss Cai.”

Juliette turned, finding a messenger coming her way. “Yes?”

The messenger gestured back at the house. “Your parents have come downstairs. They ask what is occurring.”

“Oh, now they come down,” Juliette muttered under her breath. Not when there was screaming in the hallways. Not when Juliette was yelling obscenities so the gangsters would hurry up with the spare bedsheets and the maids would fetch water so the servants could attempt to scrub out the stains on the floorboards.

They were going to need to hire some heavy-duty cleaners.

“I’ll go speak to my parents.” Juliette sighed. She strolled past the messenger, shoulders heavy with anticipation. Her parents might have been taking a meeting upstairs, but dozens of relatives had witnessed the terrible deaths, and talk in this house spread fast.

But when Juliette came back into the living room, she had to do a double take, seeing what seemed to be the entirety of her family.

“Are we having a party I wasn’t invited to?” Juliette jeered, halting to a stop at the threshold. There were still bloodstains in the kitchen, and her relatives were all gathered here en masse? Did they want to get infected and die?