RIOT HOUSE

by Hart, Callie

  “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 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, and I didn’t want to be an asshole and flat-out refuse to go. This is a convenient out—no one in their right mind wants to wind up as a third wheel in a movie theater—and Carina looks secretly pleased. In her shoes, I’m sure I would be, too.

  “You’re sure you’re not just saying that to give me some
alone time with the boy?” she asks.

  The boy. She says it affectionately, with a giddy glimmer in her eyes; she’s attempting to hide her excitement about this date, but that really isn’t working out for her.

  “Yes, I’m sure. When I get a migraine, I need to curl up in bed and sleep. It’s the only way to get through it. I’ll probably throw up everywhere if I come. You should swing by my room when you get back, though. Tell me how it all went.”

  Carina bites her bottom lip, grinning like an imp. “But what if I don’t come back?”

  “Carina! You’re gonna sleep with him?”

  She shrieks like a five-year-old, ducking out of my reach as I try to slap her arm. “I don’t know. Maybe? I filled out the absence sheet just in case. Does that make me a slut?”

  “No! Not at all. If you think he’s a good guy, and he’s treating you right, and you think you’re ready, then why the hell not?”

  My friend smiles from ear to ear, though a little calmer now. “Yeah. I mean, he’s really sweet. I have to instigate every piece of contact between us ‘cause he’s trying to be a gentleman. Honestly, I kinda want him to just throw me up against a wall and fuck me already.”

  “Carina!”

  She laughs. Her expression changes when she sees what I’m holding in my ha—

  Ahh, shit.

  I’ve forgotten all about the feather. I’ve been absently twirling it around in my fingers, pressing the blunt end of the hollow shaft into the pad of my thumb while I’ve been talking to her.

  “That’s pretty,” Carina says, taking it from me. She holds it up to the light. “Wow, that really is beautiful. Where did you get it?”

  “Oh, it was out on the lawn. I found it on the grass.” It’s amazing how easily I lie to her. I don’t like doing it, but I’d be a fool to tell her the truth. She’d freak the fuck out if she knew Wren had been up here. She’d cancel her date and spend the rest of the night trying to talk me into reporting Wren for sneaking up onto the girls’ floor. This incursion is the least of his many sins, but Carina will seize it with both hands if she thinks it’ll be enough to get him expelled from the academy.

  “I’ve never seen a feather like that before. It’s perfect,” she says, offering it back to me.

  I take it from her. “Yeah, it is.”

  “You should keep it. Do something pretty with it. I know how to make it into a hair clip. I can show you if you like?”

  “That’d be cool.”

  She claps, pulling in a deep breath. “Okay. I’m gonna get out of here. Wish me luck! I might have stories to tell when I get back.”

  I wait for her to disappear down the hallway and turn the corner before I take out my cellphone and begin to type out a message.

  ME: It’s beautiful, but I’m not keeping it.

  Three dots appear, almost immediately.

  WREN: Liar.

  ME: You’ve got to stop.

  WREN: Why say something you don’t mean?

  ME: What the hell are you talking about?

  WREN: You tell me I have to stop. But you don’t want me to stop. That’s the last thing you want.

  Goddamnit, this asshole makes me want to scream.

  ME: You don’t know that. You have no clue what’s going on inside my head.

  WREN: I know it’s Friday night, and you aren’t going anywhere.

  ME: Yes, I am. I’m going out with Carina.

  WREN: Strange. I just saw her burn down the road in that shitty Firebird of hers. And you weren’t sitting in the passenger seat.

  ME: Stalker!

  WREN: I notice things, Little E. Sue me. You stayed at the academy because you want to see me.

  ME: You think so fucking highly of yourself, don’t you?

  WREN: Raw honesty looks a lot like arrogance to the untrained eye.

  ME: God, just stop!

  WREN: Meet me.

  ME: NO.

  WREN: Give me one hour. If you don’t come, I’ll have to come to you. Then you’ll see just how much of a stalker I really am.

  ME: YOU’RE INSANE! You wouldn’t dare come to my room.

  My blood’s almost at boiling point. I can’t believe this motherfucker. He’s unconscionable.

  WREN: I might. I might not. Safer for you to come to me, though.

  ME: You really think I’m stepping foot back into that house? Where the three of you could do god only knows what to me?

  The little dots don’t fire up right away this time. It takes a full minute before they reappear, and I stand by the window in my room, staring out at the gradual dusk that’s creeping toward the academy, questioning my own sanity. Why do I want him to reply so badly? How can I be this stupid?

  WREN: Pax and Dashiell would never lay a finger on you. They know they’d never walk again. But whatever. If you don’t want to come here, I’ll come there. Meet me in the attic. 8pm.

  The attic? He knows about that place? God, is nowhere at Wolf Hall safe from this guy?

  ME: NO, WREN.

  He doesn’t reply.

  ME: I’m not gonna meet you, Jacobi. I do NOT have a death wish.

  My phone sits in the palm of my hand, silent, until the screen fades to black.

  17

  ELODIE

  “I told him I didn’t love him, but he just won’t let it drop. I don’t know what to do. He follows me around like a lost puppy that I just kicked. If I didn’t feel so guilty about hurting him, I’d probably be mad at the fucker. He’s even got Levi petitioning on his behalf now. Stop laughing, Elodie, it’s not funny!”

  Jesus, I’ve missed the sound of Ayala’s heavily accented, beautiful voice. Her parents are both from Dubai, but she grew up in Spain. She spoke just as much Spanish as she did Arabic when she was in kindergarten, and by the time she was eight she could speak French and German, too.

  “Poor David,” I groan. “He’s been obsessed with you for so long. He must have thought he’d won the lottery when you agreed to go on a date with him. And then you crush him like an ant beneath the heel of your Manolo Blahniks. It’s just…it’s so sad, Ayala,” I tease. “Maybe you should give him a chance.”

  “Lord, don’t you start. You guys are my friends. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  Lying on my bed, I stare up at the ceiling, trying not to think about the space above my head. The attic isn’t directly above my room. I haven’t been able to pinpoint the precise spot that it sits over; from my many educated guesses over the past eighty minutes, I’ve decided that it’s probably over the stairwell that leads up to the fourth floor and the entry way on the first floor, but I can’t be one hundred percent sure. Regardless of where the attic actually is geographically, architecturally, whatever, it feels like it’s right over my head, and Wren is up there already, sitting there in the dark, waiting for me like the eternally patient predator that he is.

  “I am on your side,” I tell my friend. “He’s just so sweet.”

  “And when was the last time you went all weak at the knees for a sweet boy?” Ayala counters. “I know you, Elodie. Where guys are concerned, you and I are carbon copies of each other. We might think we want someone kind and caring to dote on us, but the moment that becomes a reality, we run for the hills. We’re both as fucked as each other. We like our boys bad and belligerent, or there’s just no spark.”

  My cheeks grow very, very hot. “I don’t fall for bad boys, Al. I just don’t. Why would I wanna punish myself like that?”

  Ayala’s boisterous laughter pours out of my headphones. “You’re kidding, right? You do remember Michael? The guy you lost your virginity to? He treated you like a goddess, and you broke up with him because he, and I quote, ‘didn’t stand up for himself when you had a fight.’

  “That’s normal,” I argue. “Who doesn’t defend themselves if their girlfriend’s being crazy?”

  “So you were being crazy, then?”

  “Yes! I was crazy all the time, and Michael just sat there and took it. Which meant he was even cr
azier than me! I’m not gonna date a psychopath like that!” I’m aware of how crazy I’m sounding right now, but I’m sticking to my guns on this one. Just because I wanted a guy with a backbone doesn’t mean I have a thing for bad boys. Ayala’s so wrong.

  “All right,” she laughs. “Well, I’m gonna have to go anyway. It’s four thirty in the morning, and I need to go drink a gallon of water so I don’t end up with a hangover in the morning. We miss you so much, y’know. I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re not dead.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad you’re not dead, too.”

  “You know what I mean. Your dad’s such an asshole, Elodie. Seriously. If it wouldn’t earn me a whole heap of really shitty karma, I’d wish something really bad on the guy. Like two broken legs. Or that he’d be involved in some horrific accident while on a training exercise and his dick and balls gets blown off by an I.E.D.”

  “I’d prefer not to talk about my father’s junk. But yeah, a couple of broken legs would be nice. I’ll wish it on him for the both of us and take double the bad karma if that helps?”