RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,151

leave. Otherwise...I know this is stupid, I'm stupid, but I'm worried that Poe might kill me.

38

ELODIE

I sit amongst the charred pages of Mara's journal with my soul bleeding out all over the floor. This can't be fucking happening. There are so many pieces of evidence in Mara's journal that have clean taken my breath away. I'm too scared to acknowledge most of them.

Poe?

A hidden relationship, kept secret from the members of Riot House?

Carina's abject hatred for Mara's lover?

The connection with Damiana?

All of it...

I swipe the hot, angry tears from my cheeks, trying to make sense of everything I've just read.

Edgar Allan Poe is Wren's favorite poet.

How many times has Wren told me we can't tell Dashiell and Pax that we're together?

Carina despises Wren.

And he did screw Damiana. Carina told me all about. He fucked her a month before I showed up at Wolf Hall. Does it make sense that he'd been interested in her for a long time, only to get bored of her once he'd had her?

Mercy already implied that Wren and Mara Bancroft were seeing each other. But they were fucking? And she was petrified of him? Scared that he was going to murder her. And then she just went missing out of the blue? What the hell am I supposed to make of all of this?

How could I have talked myself into forgetting about the girl who used to sleep in my bedroom? What the fuck was I thinking? Too desperate to keep the only real friend I’ve made here, not wanting to rock the boat, I let Carina take the journal. I believed her when she said she was going to turn it over to the cops, but she didn’t. She fucking kept it because she’s hiding something.

Many of the pages in Mara's diary are so burned they're impossible to read. The fire destroyed much of the first half of the book, so I'll never know what she wrote there. The flames left her final entries intact, though, and they paint a damning picture.

I haven't heard the door to the gazebo open. I haven't heard him come inside. I go very, very still at the sound of his voice. “Elodie.”

What a disastrous mess I must look, sitting on the floor in front of the fire, loose pages covered in loopy blue ink scattered all over the place, the ends of my fingers black with soot. Wren stands over me, dressed in a white t-shirt and a pair of ratty blue jeans. This is the first time I've ever seen him dressed in anything other than black, and the sight of him in those clothes causes something to stiffen in my chest. He's never what I expect him to be. He always does something or says something to surprise me. I am officially taken aback by him now; I mean, is he who I thought he was at all?

Two tiny lines form between his brows as he bends down and picks up one of the pieces of paper at his feet. “What are you doing, Elodie?” He sounds wary. Unsure. As well he should.

“Tell me about Mara.” My voice doesn't sound like my own. Or maybe it's just that my ears feel muffled and everything seems so very far away. “You were seeing her, weren't you?”

A strange, flat look forms on his face. He reads the journal entry on the paper in his hand, slowly shaking his head from left to right. It doesn't look like he's happy about what's written there.

“What is this?” he asks, holding up the page.

“Her diary. She wasn't very consistent about writing in it every day, but she managed to get most of the important stuff down. Why don't you tell me about her?”

“What's to tell? She was a student here. She went missing. It was all over the news.”

“I was in Tel Aviv when she disappeared. I wasn't paying much attention to small-town New Hampshire news reports back then. Fuck, I didn't even know this place existed then. You didn't answer my question, Wren. You were seeing her, weren't you?”

His odd expression deepens. “I told you there were girls, Elodie. Before you. I'm not proud of how many girls I dated last year. I didn't think you were gonna crucify me for it, though. I went out with Mara once, but it didn't amount to anything. I'm sorry, this—” He shakes his head. “This isn't what you think it is.”

“This isn't what I think it is?” A scathing burst of laughter