Page 45 of Riot House
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 thefuck?” Carina groans next to me. “This hasgotto 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 sayDear 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 screamingMercy! 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 knownthis, 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.
