Page 18 of Riot House
“Can you kindly fuck off,” I hiss. “This is a private conversation. You’re not welcome at this table.”
Dashiell looks to his left and then to his right, his eyebrows hiking up to his hairline. “Sorry,mon amour.I’m over here at the counter, minding my business. What fault is it of mine if you’re talking loud enough to wake a dead man and give him a hard on? I heard something about Amalie Gibbons on her knees with someone’s dick in her mouth and I lost all sense of propriety. And then…” He laughs, holding up a finger, “…and then, I remembered thatIhad Amalie Gibbons on her knees andmydick was in her mouth, and things just got really messy. Because that was a really fun time, girls. Areallyfun time. I am sad you don’t want to play with me anymore, though, Carrie. I guess I should have said I was sorry or something. Better late than never, though, right?”
Ho-ly shit. The stones on this prick.
Jazzy arrives with our drinks at the worst possible moment. She hums under her breath, swaying from side to side as she sets Carina’s coffee down in front of her and then arranges my tea paraphernalia for me. Her smile disappears when she sees that Carina’s been crying and her cheeks are still wet. “What in god’s name…” She looks at me like I’m responsible for her friend’s distress, but then she sees Dashiell loitering by the counter and her expression darkens. “Oh no. No, no, no. I don’t know who you are or what your name is, boy, but you better be outta my sight in two seconds flat or you are gonna wish you had never been born.”
Dashiell nearly purrs. “Ma’am, I am a nihilist. I don’t really care if I live or I die. Mustering up the amount of energy it would require to wish I’d never been born is very unlikely on my part. I commend the rousing speech, though. Can I get a wet cappuccino when you have a second?”
Jazzy just stares at him. “Boy, you musta got knocked on the head when you was a child. You ain’t getting no wet nothin.’ Now get the fuck outta here before I call the cops on your ass.”
I admire Jazzy’s tenacity. She’s a waitress in a small-town diner, probably scraping by on minimum wage. She knows Dashiell’s a Wolf Hall student. She must know that, with one call from Dashiell to his father, Screamin’ Beans will have been bought out and shut down before she can even aim a kick in the spoiled bastard’s pants. Still, she speaks her mind; she won’t let herself be cowed by him. A brave woman, indeed.
Dashiell grins. It’s unsettling, that grin. It makes me want to duck for cover. “You remind me of my grandmother. I didn’t like her very much. She was a very outspoken woman.” He runs his tongue over his teeth, shoving away from the counter. “I’ll honor your request and make myself scarce. My friends might order a to-go for me, though. I’d appreciate it if you kept the saliva to a minimum. There’s a love.” He stalks off without acknowledging Carina again.
“That smug little piece of shit. I’m betting he never had his hide tanned for him. I oughta do him a favor and put him over my knee. Wallop the shit out of him on account’a that smart ass mouth of his.”
“I wouldn’t, Jazz,” Carina says morosely. “He’d only enjoy it.”
An hour later, after we’ve picked over our meals and emptied our coffee cups, neither of us really in the mood to hang out anymore, Carina drives me back to the academy. She stops in the middle of the road a couple of miles before the long, winding driveway that leads to Wolf Hall. She sits in the middle of the road with the car engine idling, staring straight ahead out of the windscreen.
“Carina? What is it?”
She blinks, as if coming back into her body. “On the right. Through the trees. Look hard enough, and you’ll see it.”
“See what?” I squint over my right shoulder, peering through the thick tree foliage.
“The house,” she says. “Riot House. That’s where they live. The three of them, together—their little fortress against the world.”
It takes some effort and a re-angling of my head, but there...yes, I see the outline of the building now. A three-story affair—wood, concrete, glass—so expertly blended within the camouflage of the forest that it’d be impossible to pick out if you didn’t already know it was there.
“If you ever find yourself stranded and alone on this road, donotgo knocking on that door for help, Elodie,” Carina mutters. “Whatever you do, no matter the circumstances, donotstep foot inside Riot House. For better or for worse, you won’t come out the same.”
I didn’t even see Wren back at the diner, but I’d felt his presence sure enough. As Carina throws the car into gear and slams her foot on the gas, I experience that same prickling sensation again. It feels as though Wren Jacobi is watching me. And Carina can speed away from Riot House as fast as she likes.
I won’t be able to escape that place…
…orhim.
8
WREN
Back at the diner,leaning against the table in our booth, I’d pressed the flat, dull blade of the butter knife into the fleshy pad of my thumb, staring at the back of her head, wondering what that hell was going on inside her skull.
I’venevercared what a girl’s thinking or feeling before, but I can’t stop myself from trying to piece together the enigma that is Elodie Stillwater. Does she miss her old life? Her old friends? Does she miss the sun, and the heat, and the ocean, and the sand? Would she kill to be back there in Israel with her father and the life she was accustomed to?
I’ve become a parody of myself as I walk the old, familiar pathways to my classes at Wolf Hall, trying to maintain an exterior of practiced boredom and complete disinterest, when in truth, I am anything but disinterested. I am anything but bored. For the first time in a very,verylong time, my ears are pricked, my mind’s engaged, and every part of my being is turned toward a girl I do not know in the slightest.
I want to know everything there is to know about her, and I want to possess that knowledge, to own it, just as I want to own her. I’m determined to make her my creature. My pet. The challenge of such an inconceivable task makes my dick harder than fucking tungsten.
“All right. Settle down. Eyes on me, friends. I need to know each and every one of you is listening. That includes you, Jacobi. Come on. Shades off. Why the hell are you wearing shades indoors anyway?”
Fitz is wearing his corduroy blazer today. Baby shit green. He only wears that blazer when he’s been readingByronorRilkeand fancies himself one of the romantics. Poor bastard. He hasn’t been tortured enough in this life to make a good poet. With exaggerated care, I slide my Wayfarers down the bridge of my nose, eyes drilling into him as he dumps his record bag down at his feet. I don’t have to explain myself to him. I’m sure as hell not gonna tell him that I wore sunglasses to this English class so I could watch a certain delicately beautiful student sitting on the other side of the room, undisturbed. “You know me, Fitz,” I rumble. “Youalwayshave my undivided attention.”
He pulls a face. “Yeah. Right.” No come back. He mustn’t have had a coffee yet. Even as I’m thinking this, our illustrious leader flips back the front of his record bag and pulls out a Thermos, popping the little white cap from the top of it and unscrewing the seal, flooding the room with the bitter, fragrant smell of arabica. “It’s that time of year again, guys. Storm season. We’ve had a number of new students since the start of last winter, so this information’s important. Even if you were a student here last winter, I’d still appreciate a few seconds of your time to go over this. Think of it as a refresher.”
On the other side of the room, sitting on a yellow, worn sofa beneath a cliché and utterly classless print of Gustav’s Klimt’s‘The Kiss,’ Carina nudges Elodie with her elbow and whispers something into her ear. In my mind, it’s me leaning into her, bringing my nose to her hair, close enough to catch the scent of her and store it to memory. I’ve imagined what the silken, smooth texture of her skin looks like up close, too. I’ve pored over her image on electronic screens and studied it committed in ink, but I haven’t held her down and inspected her features in person yet. I want to. More than anything, I want her underneath me, straining against me, as I figure out the way she frowns. I want to see what her fear looks like. Most importantly, I want to see the lie on her. The one all girls try to tell, when their panic catalyzes with their desire and they try to comprehend their own traitorous nature.
