Page 60 of Riot House
“Three days. We leave tonight.”
“Wow. Well, someone’s feeling presumptuous, aren’t they? What if we don’t wanna go on this little jolly of yours? What if we don’t wanna miss two days of school?”
“Then I’d have wasted thirty thousand dollars. And you’d be the most confusing person in the world, because whodoesn’twant to miss two days of school?”
“We haven’t filled out the paperwork with Harcourt,” Pax points out, taking a smoke out of a dogeared pack and lighting it.
“I took the liberty of completing it on your behalf this morning.”
“Asshole,” Dash groans. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
“Come on, Lovett. Wouldn’t want to ruinmy birthdaynow, would you?”
“That’s a low fucking blow.”
“At least it sounds like we’re flying first class,” Pax mumbles.
I grin. “Nothing but the best for my boys.”
“God, don’t you just hate it when he does that? It’s fucking terrifying when you smile.” Dash’s shoulders sag in resignation, though. He’s coming with me on my little sojourn. And if Dash is in, then so is Pax. The guy in question rubs a hand over his shaved head. “Fine. We’ll go where you command, no questions asked. But wearehaving a party when we get back, Wren. I get the feeling you’re gonna owe us one after this. And there had better be fucking strippers.”
* * *
Cosgrove’s is a squat, ugly building on the outskirts of Mountain Lakes—a bar, managed by a short, balding guy called Patterson, who has the misfortune of looking like Danny De Vito. The guy’s in his late fifties, has a penchant for polishing a glass at least three times before putting it back on a shelf, and does not like me in the slightest. Primarily because I’m underage and shouldn’t be drinking in his bar. But also, because I’m his boss.
He complains murderously under his breath when he sees me walk through the door into the empty establishment, his beady, almost black eyes boring a hole into the countertop as he studiously ignores me. “We’ve been over this,” I say, sitting myself down on a stool in front of him. “Pretending I don’t exist won’t make me go away. It’ll make me mad.Madder,” I say, correcting myself. “And I’m sure neither of us wanna be dealing with that today.”
“Shouldn’t you go lurk out the back?” Patterson grumbles. “Sheriff King likes to come in here drinking on a Saturday afternoon.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He might. Wouldn’t wanna risk getting this place shut down now, would you?”
I laugh, theatrically pointing out the sea of empty seats that surround me. “Hell, Pat. Wouldn’t want to jeopardize the roaring trade we’ve been doing of late? It’ll make zero difference to me if this place closes its doors to the public. It didn’t make money before I bought it, and it hasn’t made a dime since either. You should be grateful I keep you gainfully employed on the off chance that I might wanna get out of the house.”
Patterson’s mouth twists to one side. He opens up the register and begins to count the money inside it, shuffling through rumpled bills and the same coins I’m sure have been sitting inside it since the dawn of fucking time. “I need more money for the float,” he says.
I squint at him, laying my hands flat on the bar; the wood’s splintered, the varnish worn off years ago. I should do something about the general state of disrepair in here, but Cosgrove’s is a dive bar. The cracks in the walls and the fact that you run the gambit of getting a splinter whenever you order a drink, well, that’s all just part of the charm of the place. “You do get how a float works, right? It’s there to make change for paying customers, not for you to dip into every time you wanna buy a pack of smokes.”
Patterson just glares at me. Mountain Lakes isn’t a thriving town. Used to be a logging town before the surrounding forests were designated national park land. Now, the only real industry here is the pulp mill three miles beyond the town limits. And Wolf Hall, of course. The people who don’t work at the mill, or tend the gardens, cook in the kitchens, or clean the hallways at the academy, work odd jobs or in the stores along the main street to get by. It’d be fucking easy to replace Patterson. I could have someone else here, grateful of the job, inside half a fucking hour and the grumpy old bastard knows it. Like I said, though. The tumbledown, broken, worn patina of the place was a selling point when I decided to buy the bar, and Patterson’s curmudgeonly snark was a part of that, too.
“Forty bucks should do it,” he says flatly.
I pull a hundred dollar bill out of my wallet and flick it across the bar at him. “I want a shot of whiskey in front of me in the next thirty seconds, asshole. And I swear to god, if you try and pour that lighter fluid from the rail for me again, I will end your sorry existence.”
He pockets the hundred instead of putting it into the till, which I say nothing about because, at this stage in the proceedings, I find his open belligerence entertaining more than anything. He steps up onto the wooden box he keeps behind the counter and takes down the bottle of Johnny Blue from the highest shelf Cosgrove’s has. Instead of pouring me a fifty mil pour in a shot glass, Patterson flips over a rocks glass and free-pours four fingers of the burnt golden liquid into it, smiling sarcastically. And yes, the man has perfected the art of the sarcastic smile. He’s one of only a few people I’ve ever seen accomplish the task.
I lift the glass to my mouth, eyeing the one hundred and twenty dollars’ worth of whiskey he just so artlessly dumped into it, and I smile my most savage smile. “You really are a fucker aren’t you, Pat?” The whiskey leaves a trail of fire all the way down my esophagus, but it’s a smooth burn. One that glows rather than bites. I manfully swallow down the rest of the whiskey, polishing the lot off in two mouthfuls, and then slam the glass down on the woodwork.
“Having a hard time up there on the mountain?” the bartender asks, without the faintest hint of sincerity in his voice. “They run out of fois gras? Has the champagne stopped flowing out of the faucets?”
“Fuck you, man.”
“I can imagine how difficult it must get for you poor kids up there, having to brush your own teeth and wipe your own asses. Must be pure torture. They really oughta hire some extra serfs to cater to our little princeling’s moreintimateneeds.”
“If you don’t quit with the vitriol, I’ll lock you in the beer cellar again.”
That shuts him up. ‘Cause he knows I’ll do it. I’ve done it before. I think Patterson enjoys our verbal (and occasionally physical) sparring almost as much as I do. He doesn’t like it when I kick his rotund ass down the stairs that lead into the basement and I lock him down there for the afternoon, though. He flashes teeth. “Where are those friends of yours? The English toff and the addict.”
