RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,40

be your ultimate downfall. The most remarkable generals in history always met force with force.

Still. I’m aware how ill-advised this is. I should have left a note, requesting that something pithy and deprecating be engraved on my headstone: She lived recklessly and died the same way. God grant her the wisdom to make better choices in the afterlife.

Something about the view of the maze from my bedroom window gave me the creeps. I didn’t like looking out at it, but I did force myself to map out a vague route to its center. Left, left, right. Straight, left, right, right, then the hairpin, then, left, then one last right. My teeth chatter, clashing together violently as I try and follow the directions I have committed to memory. The walls of the hedges are high, though, sinister and imposing; it feels like there are arms reaching out at me from within them, hands grabbing for me, pulling at my clothes, trying to yank me into the sharp, dense walls of the labyrinth. It’s just rogue branches and twigs, catching on my jacket and the thin knee-length cotton of my pajama bottoms, but I can’t shake the awful panic rising in me that I won’t make it out of this godforsaken obstacle course alive.

Soon, I’ve gotten so turned out that I have no idea which way I’m supposed to be heading. I can feel my father’s disappointment radiating all the way from the Middle East. He wouldn’t have gotten lost in this nightmare place. He’d have bulldozed his way through the fucking walls, armed and ready to face whatever danger awaited him at its heart.

I’m not too worried about having lost my way. I know if I just keep turning in the same direction, over and over again, I’ll eventually reach its center point. So that’s what I do, turning to the left at every intersection or fork in the path, the soles of my boots crunching on the gravel, and I work on calming my nerves.

Panic will kill you quicker than anything else.

Panic will kill you quicker than anything else.

Panic will kill you quicker than anything else.

That’s what my old surfing instructor used to tell me, back when we lived in South Africa. I repeat it over and over like a mantra, driving the words into my brain, making them feel true. I just need to stay calm.

“Fuck!” A rumble of thunder crashes directly overhead, and I nearly jump straight out of my Docs. The force of it vibrates inside my body, resounding in the hollow of my chest. Lightning rips across the sky—giant forks of brilliant, piercing light that shoots from left to right. I try not to picture what it would feel like if one of those fearsome fingers of light were to strike down and make contact, using my seventeen-year-old dumb ass as a conduit to the ground. It’s enough to know that it would really fucking hurt.

I keep on walking, head bent, shoulder constantly into the wind, which doesn’t seem right since I change direction every few seconds, but it appears the wind is just as trapped inside this maddening network of pathways as I am. It skirls and eddies around, around, around, and no matter how quickly I hurry, I can’t get ahead of it.

Just when I’m about to give up and look for a place to shelter, another hand reaches out and grabs hold of me, fingers closing tightly around my upper arm.

I scream.

Jesus, do I scream.

I hate that I react so dramatically, but in the moment, it feels so fucking real that I believe it. I know with a terrifying certainty that some unknown specter has emerged from the eye of the storm, taken me by the arm, and is about to drag me down into the darkest pits of hell. I’m not cut out for hell. I’m more of a cotton candy and endless backrubs kind of girl. An eternity of damnation does not sound go—

“Jesus, Stillwater, quit screaming. You’ll wake the fucking dead.”

Startled, I close my mouth, my teeth making a sharp crack as they snap together. Not an unknown specter, it turns out. I’m familiar with this demon, with his raven black hair and his shockingly green eyes. Even in the rain and the darkness, Wren Jacobi’s eyes look too, too vivid. He smirks, his hair arranged in artful, wet curls that flick up around his ears, rivulets of water coursing down his handsome face, and I almost let out another