RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,69
died when they were three. Apparently, she never regained her strength after the pregnancy and she just faded away until there was nothing of her left. She was a pretty awful mom by all accounts.”
I’ve had questions about Wren for a long time. I know so little about him, but there was no way I was asking Carina. Especially not after the fucker tried to tamper with my phone. She would have strung me up and gutted me like a fish for being so stupid. But I feel like I should have known this, somehow. I should have known that there was another piece of him out there in the world.
Mercy turns and beams at the class, and I lean back into the couch, startled by the striking resemblance she shares with her brother. Her features are more refined and delicate, but they have the same shape face. The same chin. The same eyes, though the green of Mercy’s eyes is nowhere near as vivid as Wren’s. She sees her brother and waves. In his usual spot on the leather couch, Wren stares straight through her as though she isn’t even there.
“Yeah. Like I was saying. Wren and Mercy used to be close. But not anymore,” Carina whispers.
“Well, I guess you should find yourself a seat then, Ms. Jacobi,” Doctor Fitzpatrick says with a tight smile.
Mercy waltzes over to the leather couch and sits herself down on the end of it, at her brother’s feet. She swats at his boots, trying to get him to give her space, and a look of disgust forms on Wren’s face. He gets up, silent as the grave, and heads for the exit. For the first time in two weeks, he looks at me properly as he walks right out of the door.
“Wren! Wren, these classes are not optional!” Doctor Fitzpatrick yells after him. He’s wasting his breath, though.
Wren’s already gone.
The next evening, when I return to my room after dinner, I open the door and something rushes upward in the air, swirling in front of my face. I shriek, lashing out to defend myself in a rather shameful display of panic. I assume it’s a bat, but I realize my mistake when the fat, lush feather softly floats down to the ground.
It’s black. Deeply black. But when I pick it up and hold it up for closer inspection, an oily, metallic, blue-green catches the light and shines through. It’s beautiful, it’s vane on either side of the thick, woody spine perfect in every way.
A feather is a miraculous thing. So commonplace and every day, we barely even notice them poking out of our pillows, or caught on a gentle breeze, or bobbing along the surface of a lazy river, caught in the eddies and rushing vortexes as it’s swept downstream. But a feather is a feat of engineering. And this feather, the one that must have been slipped beneath my bedroom door, is a beautiful one to be sure.
It’s also a message. Some guys would slide a note under a girl’s door. Even lazier guys would just send a text and have done with it. The guy who flicked this feather under my door is a fan of more subtle forms of communication. It started with the Morse code during the storm but even that must be too obvious for him now.
What is this feather saying? Beyond, Remember me? I exist, I have absolutely no idea. All I know is that Wren was on the fourth floor of the girl’s wing and he was standing right outside my door.
“Hey, are you almost ready?” Carina stands in the hallway behind me. She’s got a cheeky grin on her face, because things have been heating up between her and her Andy Samberg lookalike and we’re due to meet him in front of The Vista theatre in an hour to catch an evening movie—some sci-fi flick about robots taking over the world. I slowly hide the feather behind my back.
“Uh, y’know what? I think I’m getting a migraine. I’m not sure sitting in front of a brightly lit screen is the best thing for me right now.”
She pouts. “Oh no!” Her eyes are bright, though. She invited me to see the film before Andre asked her out on a date, so she asked me embarrassedly if it would be okay if he came along. I told her I didn’t mind if she went with him alone, but she’d railed against that suggestion, wouldn’t even consider it,