RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,92

your bones unbreakable? Do your wounds close immediately and stop you from bleeding out?”

“No, Wren. As well you know, they do not.” He enunciates every single word, purring like a cat.

Alive with rage, I shove him, hard enough that the back of his head bounces off the concrete. “Then stop doing shit that’s gonna wind up getting you killed, motherfucker.”

“What the hell are you thinking?” Mercy’s in front of me, now, her hands on my chest, pushing me, pushing, pushing, pushing, forcing me to take a small step away from the English teacher. “We’re in fucking public, Wren. Are you insane? You can’t fucking hit a member of faculty in front of people.”

As menacing as can be, I dip down so I can shove my face in hers. “I’ll hit him anywhere I like. Go and get in the car, Mercy.”

“I’m not getting in any car with y—”

“GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!” I’m vibrating, overflowing, spilling over—pure and blinding rage. It takes chunks out of my insides with every ragged breath I suck down. Mercy’s expression voids out, turning blank. She blinks, then turns around and begins to walk across the parking lot, towards the red Volkswagen Beetle our father bought for her last year.

“I don’t see the harm in talking to a student if I see them out in the wild,” Fitz says airily, propping himself up on one hand. “What am I supposed to do? Ignore you guys?”

Oh, ho, ho. My god, this motherfucker right here. Slowly, I crouch down in front of him, resting my forearms on top of my thighs, observing him with utter contempt. “You don’t look at anything that belongs to me. You don’t touch anything that belongs to me. Outside of your remit as a teacher, you don’t speak to anybody that’s connected with me. Do you understand?”

With eyes full of heat, Fitz sucks on his bottom lip, both nostrils flaring. “It doesn’t have to be like this, y’know. Things could be like they were before.”

Fuck, he just doesn’t listen. I close my eyes, shaking my head, unable to believe the gall of the bastard. “Just keep your word, Wes. Or life’s gonna become really unpleasant for you, yeah?”

I get into Mercy’s stupid, girly red Beetle, slamming my fist into the dashboard so hard that the plastic cracks. “Wren! You asshole! What the fuck are you doing?” Mercy hits me, landing a blow to my upper arm. She’s always been far more interested in being skinny than fit, so she doesn’t pack much power. Won’t even bruise. “Just because you’ve already broken all of your stuff, doesn’t make it okay to break mine,” she pouts.

I feel like I’ve just run a marathon. I can’t catch my breath. “Grow up, Mercy.”

“You don’t think he’s gonna report you to Harcourt now?” she hisses, her eyes flashing daggers at me. “You think he’s just gonna keep his mouth shut if you knock him on his ass in the middle of town? You humiliated him.”

Yeah. I fucking humiliated him. But there won’t be any recourse for my actions in this parking lot and Mercy knows it. I know it, and Wesley Fitzpatrick knows it most of all.

He isn’t gonna say shit.

His problem has always been that he wants me to hurt him. To humiliate him.

Almost as badly as he wants me to fuck him.

When we get back to the school, I pull over at the side of the road by Riot House and I get out of the car. Mercy switches places with me.

“You’re fucking insane!” She yells, as she burns off up the hill toward the academy. If she expects this to be some sort of revelation to me, then she’s shit outta luck. What I’m about to do is proof enough that she’s right. I take out my phone and I type out a quick message before heading inside to throw some clothes into a bag.

ME: Going away for three days. Catch you when I get back.

21

ELODIE

There are cracks everywhere, of course. And a few spots where the color of his wings is gone, replaced by smooth, white ceramic, where a chip or a shard of his original veneer was lost. But the bird my mother gave me is mostly whole again, and of all the people in the world, Wren Jacobi put him back together for me.

For me.

I have questions. Namely: where did he find all of the pieces? How did he retrieve them? Harcourt said they were vacuumed up and disposed of. Did