RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,3

the right-hand side. I check hopefully for an elevator, but I already know that such a thing would be an impossible luxury in an old building like this.

The place is silent as the grave.

I’ve been in plenty of old houses before. They creak, and they groan, and they settle. But not Wolf Hall. It’s as if the very building itself is holding its breath, peering down on me and casting judgement as it observes me reluctantly wrangling my suitcase up the first flight of stairs. The place didn’t look that tall from outside, but the stairs never seem to fucking end. I’m panting and clammy by the time I hit the second set of stairs, and by the third, I’m openly sweating and laboring for breath. Through an ancient door with frosted glass panels, I find myself staring down a narrow hallway straight out of The Shining. A dim light overhead flickers ominously as I drag my bag over the dusty, threadbare runner that covers the bare floorboards, and I mentally tick off all of the ways that a person could die in a haunted-ass place like this.

I notice the brass numbers screwed into each of the doors as I pass them. Normally, there’d be colorful stickers and name plates tacked onto the wood—little personalizations that help the students make their rooms feel like home. Not here, though. There isn’t a sticker, photograph, or poster in sight. Just the dark, depressing wood, and the gleaming, polished numbers.

410…

412…

414…

416…

Great.

Home sweet home.

I open up the door, glad to find it unlocked. Inside, the bedroom’s bigger than I expected it to be. In the corner, a double bed has been made up with crisp grey sheets complete with military corners. Only two pillows, but I can live with that. Against the wall: a large chest of drawers underneath a grim looking painting of a gnarled old man, bent double against a howling blizzard. Such a weird choice of subject matter for a piece of art. Technically, it’s good. The brushwork is so fine and precise that it could almost be a photograph. The content’s miserable, however, and inspires a sense of hopelessness that feels crushing.

On the far side of the room, a large bay window overlooks what I assume are the gardens to the rear of the academy. The world’s dark, all bruised purples and midnight blues, punctuated with coal black, but I can make out the shape of tall trees in the distance, still, as if no breeze, no matter how strong, could shake them.

I discard my bags at the foot of my new bed, walking to the window, wanting to get a better look at the view. It’s only when I’m standing right in front of the glass that I can make out the gloomy shape of a large, complex maze in the center of the lawn between the building and the trees.

A maze? Perfect. That wasn’t on the damn brochure. It has to be very old, though, because the hedges are tall, taller than any man, and so dense that there would be no way to peek through them on ground level.

I don’t know why, but I shiver violently at the sight of it. I’ve never been a fan of mazes. At least from here, in the daylight, I’ll be able to memorize the route to its center. Not that I plan on going inside the damn thing.

The showers are easy enough to find. At the end of the hall, two bathrooms face opposite each other, doors propped wide open. A large white sign hangs from the tiled wall inside both—I know, because I check—which says, ‘Three-Minute Showers Enforced. Violators Assigned Latrine Duty.’

Latrine duty? Christ. It’s worse than I thought.

I give the sign a hard eye-roll as I strip out of my travel clothes and shower, taking way longer than the allotted three minutes. Who the hell’s going to know? And fuck it, anyway. They can’t police that kind of shit with a student who hasn’t even officially enrolled at the academy yet. I use the carbolic soap attached to a frayed piece of rope inside the shower, wrinkling my nose at the smell and promising myself a better wash with my own shower gel in the morning. Then, I use a scratchy, paper-thin towel to dry off before putting on my PJs and hurrying back to my room with wet hair.

I already have plans to dye my long, blonde locks dark brown again. Most fathers wouldn’t want their daughters bleaching