RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,68

“Jesus. Stop. I’ve had enough screeching for one night, thanks. The drive back from Boston was miserable. I had to hike all the way back here from town because the Uber driver wouldn’t come up the mountain. And then I arrive home to find two petty thieves in here, sneaking around in the dark.”

Carina grabs me by the hand. “Did you get what you came for?” she asks me.

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

“Elodie, wait.” Wren shoves away from the wall. “Here. Take the book. I want you to have it.” He holds out the maroon leather-bound book with the gilded edges, offering it to me.

“Don’t,” Carina warns. “Remember Persephone? She accepted those pomegranate seeds from Hades and doomed herself to the fucking underworld.”

Wren grins wickedly at Carina. “I appreciate the comparison, but you’re being a little dramatic. It’s nothing but a book. There’s nothing magical about it. Or…rather, it’s magical in the same way that all books are magical. But it’ll hardly bind her to hell.”

“Elodie...” Carina tugs on my arm, trying to pull me away.

Only a stupid, foolish girl with no common sense or care for her own well-being would take a gift offered by Wren Jacobi. I know this. So why do I reach out and take the book from him? And why can’t I break eye contact with him as Carina drags me away down the stairs?

16

ELODIE

A week passes. And then another. I go to class. I read the book Wren gave me under my sheets at night, armed with a flashlight, like someone might burst in and catch me doing something perverted. When I finish it, I read it all over again. I hang out with Carina and Pres.

The residents of Riot House don’t even spare a look in my general direction, which is to say that Pax and Dash continue their lives like I don’t exist, and Wren studiously ignores me whenever he gets the opportunity. A seat miraculously opens up on the front row of my French class. Doctor Fitzpatrick doesn’t call on me for any more embarrassing tasks in English. Wren sprawls out on the couch with his usual, practiced level of boredom, but he also keeps his snarky comments to himself.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect that he was on his best behavior.

This all changes on a Thursday afternoon, however, when a tall, willowy girl with luxuriously thick, long black hair saunters into Doctor Fitzpatrick’s den, and Pax curses so loudly and so unexpectedly that Angelica, the timid girl who always wears her hair in braids, snaps her plastic ruler in two.

“What the fuck?” Carina groans next to me. “This has got to be some kind of sick joke.”

“Greetings, Fitz.” The girl with the black hair preens, doing a little curtsey for the Doctor, who’s jaw is on the floor.

“Mercy? To what do we owe the pleasure?” His mouth says pleasure, but his eyes say Dear God, no. “I had no idea you were swinging by for a visit. I assume that’s why you’ve come all this way? To see how your brother’s faring?”

She slaps him lightly on the top of his arm in the flirtiest display I’ve ever seen. “No, silly. I re-enrolled! Switzerland was beautiful, but the cold got the better of me. New Hampshire’s tropical by comparison, this time of year.”

Staring at this old/new student, I get the feeling that everyone in the room is leaning away from her. Including me, and I don’t even know why. “Uh…what’s going on?” I mutter out of the side of my mouth.

“That’s Mercy,” Carina says, rolling her eyes. “She was a student here until last June. She decided to go study in Europe because America was too ‘gauche.’ No one was sad to see her go. Least of all Wren.”

“Wren? Why? Was he…were they…?”

“Eww, no!” Carina kicks me right on the ankle bone, and it hurts like a fucker. “Check yourself. She’s his sister.”

His sister? Seriously. What fresh hell is this? No one’s ever mentioned another Jacobi. Another creature who shares the same diabolical genes as Wren.

“They’re twins,” Carina continues.

Oh, ho, ho, this just gets better.

“Wren’s eight hours older than Mercy. Their parents were gonna call her Helena but they changed their minds when Mrs. Jacobi kept screaming Mercy! Mercy! during the delivery. Their mom got so sick after giving birth to them that she went away for six months to recuperate afterwards and their father hired a nurse maid to care for them. Mrs. Jacobi