RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,64

and I are here together, the palms of our hands resting on top of the same buffed metal, like he and I are holding hands, and—

Dear god, Elodie. What the fuck is wrong with you?

I wrench the doorknob around, not really wondering if it will be locked anymore, knowing that it won’t be…

And it isn’t.

Next thing I know, I’m standing in Wren Jacobi’s bedroom.

If I were brave enough, I’d turn on a light and get a proper look at the place, but I’m more jittery than I thought I’d be. There’s enough moonlight flooding in through the two huge north facing bay windows that I can see well enough, anyway, and I don’t want to risk alerting any passersby on the road that there’s someone inside the house.

The room is massive, at least twice the size of my quarters on the fourth floor of the academy. A monster of a king-sized bed dominates the space, with a carved, solid wood headboard behind the mountain of pillows that is stunning in its intricacy. With all the colors in the room muted and muddied by the encroaching dark, the sheets could be grey, but they could also be blue. Something inside me twists sharply when I see the military corners Wren must have folded this morning, the moment he got out of that titanic fucker of a bed.

The walls are covered in shelves, which are stacked high with books. There are so many books, old and new, tatty and worn, glossy and unopened, that they’re jammed into the spaces, lying flat on their sides, and wedged into tiny gaps wherever they’ll fit.

What else do we have? Let’s see…

No photographs in frames hung proudly on the walls. No pictures at all. A patinaed mirror in an antique gilt frame is propped up against a chest of drawers to the left of the bed. Aside from that, there’s no real decoration to the room.

Hmm. No television.

Stacks of paper sit forgotten on top of the shag rug, before the open maw of a recently used wood burning fireplace. Balled-up scraps of paper sit in the corners, discarded on the floor and forgotten about. In some form or another, there’s paper everywhere: old ticket stubs tucked under the lip of the paneling by the window; a pile of old posters, dogeared at the edges, rolled into tubes and held together by elastic bands, lean drunkenly up against the closet door; stacks of letters collecting dust on top of an old-fashioned writing desk.

I look up, and my breath stoppers up in the base of my throat. Well, fuck me. This place is full of wonders, especially when you take a beat to check out the view above your head. The ceiling is no ordinary ceiling. It’s pure metal. My grandmother used to have a tin ceiling in her parlor that was stamped and embossed back in the 1890s, but this is nothing like that.

It’s copper, burnished, beaten and shining even in the half-light—a vast expanse of polished copper that rises in the center, forming a focal point that draws the eye.

It’s staggering and beautiful and completely impractical, and I can’t picture Wren commissioning something like this. Nor can I imagine him squabbling with the other boys to make sure he bagged this room before either of them could.

It must look incredible when one of the floor lamps has been switched on. When Wren gets into bed each night, he gets to stare up at the light playing across the striations and the grain of the beautiful metal, and he probably doesn’t appreciate it. Its magnificence is probably lost on a miserable fucker like him.

Something about the room feels nautical, like the captain’s quarters of an old galleon ship. There’s no reason for me to feel that way—there are no nautical trinkets, or themed decorations. It just does. There’s a haphazard disorder to the place, combined with the ruthless organization of other aspects within the room, that gives the impression that this bedroom is occupied by a most eccentric mind.

“Elle! Hurry up, for fuck’s sake! I’m sweating down here!” Carina’s voice floats up to me from downstairs, crystal clear and loud enough to startle the crap out of me.

She’s right, Stillwater. You didn’t come here to gawp at the guy’s interior design skills. Get moving!

I obey the voice of condemnation whispering into my ear, hurrying across the room toward the desk. Up until now, I’ve been roiling in doubt. I’ve believed (hoped? God, I’m pathetic) that Tom was