RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,66

“I’m sure there are plenty of things you’d lower yourself to if you wanted something bad enough.”

“You’re sick, Jacobi. Where…oh my god, where the hell’s Carina?” I didn’t hear her panicking downstairs. She didn’t shout that someone was coming. She’s been silent since she last called for me. “You’d better not have fucking hurt her, Wren,” I snap, hurtling toward the door.

He doesn’t try to stop me. Laughing softly, he pulls a book from the shelf, running his hand over the cover with a gentle reverence. “I didn’t touch her. Don’t panic. I might use force on misbehaving nerds from time to time…but I don’t hurt girls.” He runs his tongue over his teeth, his eyes fixed on the book in his hands—from my position by the door, his face is lit by the moonlight pouring in through the windows, highlighting the obsidian coloring of his long eyelashes against the stark paleness of his skin. “She’s still downstairs, waiting by the front door. I came around the back.”

I stare him down, looking for the lie.

Wren shrugs. “Stick your head over the bannister and take a look. You’ll find her right where you left her, hearty and hale, doing a really shit job of keeping lookout.”

I won’t take him at his word. I back out of the room, my body awash with adrenalin, railing against the voice in my head that’s screaming at me to run. When I lean over the handrail and look down to the first floor, I see Carina hopping nervously from one foot to the other, standing by the open front door, scanning the night for the guy who’s already snuck his way into the house.

“You can tell her to go back to the academy if you like,” Wren mutters. He’s leafing through the pages of his book now, his eyes roving quickly over the pages. How can he just stand there so nonchalantly? How can he not show the slightest signs of remorse for what he’s done? He’s taken my private property, planned on doing god knows what with it, and now he’s just standing there, calm as you like, suggesting that I send my friend away and stay here with him? The guy is out of his fucking mind.

“Why the hell would I do that?” I hiss. “You could skin me alive and wear my fucking head as a hat if she leaves me here with you.”

“Ha!” Wren throws his head back and laughs, just once, snapping the book closed in his hands. The tendons and muscles in his throat work as he swallows.

“Elodie! Was that you?” Carina calls out. “Did you hear that?”

I lock eyes with Wren, waiting for him to tell me to keep my mouth shut, but he just shrugs again. He doesn’t care if she knows he’s here, clearly. His wordless confidence is driving me up the fucking wall. “She’ll call the cops, y’know. If you do anything weird,” I warn him.

“I should think so,” he agrees.

“And you don’t care?”

“No. I have nothing to worry about. I’m not gonna do anything to you, Elodie.” That smile spreads, taking up more real estate on his treacherously handsome face. It’d be so satisfying to slap that smug arrogance right off him. I imagine what it’d feel like to do it and my right palm tingles beautifully.

“Elodie! What the hell!” Carina yells.

“I’m coming!” I volley back to her over the handrail. “Just a second!”

Wren holds out the book to me, curving a villainous eyebrow at me in an open challenge. He’s daring me to come close enough to take it from him. “A Study in Scarlett. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s not poetry, of course, but I think you’d like it,” he says.

“I didn’t come here to talk books. I came here to get my phone back. Why the hell did you want it in the first place. What were you going to do?”

He frowns, giving this question some real thought. “Would any explanation be sufficient?” he muses. “If I tell you my reasoning and give you the truth, will it make what I did okay?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll save my breath.”

I’m gonna kill him. I am going to fucking murder him until he’s dead three times over. “What is wrong with you! Just tell me what you were gonna do!”

Huffing, —He’s frustrated? He is? —he steps toward me, holding the book loosely in his hands. I go rigid, frozen still in place as he draws