Page 44 of Riot House
Wren holds out the book to me, curving a villainous eyebrow at me in an open challenge. He’s daring me to come close enough to take it from him. “A Study in Scarlett. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s not poetry, of course, but I think you’d like it,” he says.
“I didn’t come here to talk books. I came here to get my phone back. Why the hell did you want it in the first place. What were you going to do?”
He frowns, giving this question some real thought. “Would any explanation be sufficient?” he muses. “If I tell you my reasoning and give you the truth, will it make what I did okay?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll save my breath.”
I’m gonna kill him. I am going to fucking murder him until he’s dead three times over. “What iswrongwith you! Just tell me what you were gonna do!”
Huffing, —He’sfrustrated?Heis? —he steps toward me, holding the book loosely in his hands. I go rigid, frozen still in place as he draws closer. It isn’t until he’s standing a foot away from me that I realize how close I’ve let him come, and that he could probably stave my skull in with that book if he wanted to. “I should have run,” I whisper. Out loud? God, I said it out fucking loud. Never mind Wren: what the hell is wrong withme?
“Yeah, you probably should have,” he says. “But everything’s okay. I’m not a psychopath. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are when you’re panicked?” he asks. “You get these spots of color in your cheeks and your eyes come alive. I’m glad you didn’t run.” He tacks his last statement on at the end, like he’s only just realized this himself. “It means you’re not scared of me. I knew that, but it’s nice to be proven right. As for your phone, I’d say it was pretty obvious, wouldn’t you? I wanted to strip all of your father’s malware from it so I could message you, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t being spied on by one of the most belligerent men in the United States military.”
“Hah! Lord, you are fucking with me, right? You seriously expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t expect you to believe anything.”
“Then why are you trying to paint yourself as a good guy?”
“I’m not. Would I have gone through your photos? Looked at your texts? Gone through your call list?” He laughs bitterly. “Sure. I’m not a good guy, Elodie. I’ve been informed by numerous trustworthy sources that I’m utterly reprehensible. But do you wanna know my one glorious and shining redeeming feature?”
“Not really.”
“Ineverlie.” He declares this with a gravity and sincerity that rings true. An absolute. A check I could take straight to the bank. And I believe him. “I never lie, so when I tell you something, Little E, you can believe it’s true.”
This superior, self-righteous ass. I hate him. “All right. Let’s try this again, then. Try telling me that you didn’t destroy all of my stuff after you broke into my room. Let’s see how that pans out for you, because—”
“I didn’t.” He looks me dead in the eye when he speaks, his shoulders square and back, his chin held scornfully high. And the same honesty I heard in his last statement lives in these two small words, too. “Icouldhave broken into your room. I had no reason to.”
My throat’s on fire. Out of nowhere, my eyes are stinging like crazy. “My mother’s bird was smashed to pieces, Wren. So…maybe you didn’t break into my room yourself. Maybe that’s how you’re getting away with this vague half-lie, but you could have had someone else do it. Whoever came into my room broke the only thing I had left of my mom, okay? It was the only thing that was precious to me. It broke my heart, seeing it shattered to bits. And I willneverforgive you for that.”
My voice is thick with unshed tears. I’ve been putting off thoughts of Mom’s bird ever since Harcourt told me it had been vacuumed up, but now the emotion crashes down on me. It feels as though I’m trying to breathe around a brace of broken ribs. Wren’s shoulders drop. He lowers his chin, looking down at his hands. His expression’s hard and unreadable. “I’m sorry you lost something so precious. I know what that feels like. But I didn’t have anything to do with it. I swear on my own blackened heart.”
“Elodie! Oh my god, Elle! I think he’s in the house! Move, move, move!” A thunder of footsteps crashes up the stairs. Carina arrives on the top landing, gripping hold of the handrail. She bends over, panting, and looks up at me with wide eyes. “I heard a voice. I can’t see anything, but I think he’s in th—OH MY GOD! FUCK!” She rockets a foot off the ground, her eyes bugging out of her head when she looks to the right and sees Wren standing right there.
“Hi, Carrie,” he says smoothly. “Yeah, I’m in the house.”
Carina draws herself up to her full height, doing a stand-up job of marshalling her surprise. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she says, flattening down the front of her purple dungarees. “I tell you to stay away from her, and then you go out and steal her phone? You’re fucked in the head.”
Wren folds his arms across his chest, leaning against the wall beside his bedroom door. “Jesus. Stop. I’ve had enough screeching for one night, thanks. The drive back from Boston was miserable. I had to hike all the way back here from town because the Uber driver wouldn’t come up the mountain. And then I arrive home to find two petty thieves in here, sneaking around in the dark.”
Carina grabs me by the hand. “Did you get what you came for?” she asks me.
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
“Elodie, wait.” Wren shoves away from the wall. “Here. Take the book. I want you to have it.” He holds out the maroon leather-bound book with the gilded edges, offering it to me.
“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 thatallbooks 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?
