Page 80 of Riot Reunion
“Ham! Country ham!” Dash crows, emerging from the fridge with a hulking piece of meat held over his head. “Nothing a ham sandwich can’t fix.”
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I spin around, and I catch the movement this time.
There’s a bird at the window, its small, dark shape little more than a shadow perched on the windowsill on the other side of the glass. He’s getting drenched, though his midnight feathers are smooth as an oil slick. They flash with a metallic blue-purple, as the strangely brave creature tap, tap, taps its beak against the window.
“The fuck is that crow doing?” Pax whispers.
“It isn’t a crow. It’s a raven,” I say, still staring fixedly at the bird. “He’s beautiful.”
“Hope he has the common sense not to fly in this,” Dash says, stuffing the country ham into Pax’s bag of treats. “Be a shame for him to get smoked by a lightning bolt.”
As if the raven can understand every word, he lets out an indignant “RAWWK!” and leaps into flight, wheeling away into the night.
“Back the way we came,” Pax says, rushing out of the kitchen in a flurry of frenetic energy. “We’ve already taken too long.”
I’m as eager to get back to Elodie as they are to get back to their girlfriends, but the sight of that raven perched on the windowsill has done something bizarre to my brain. Why the fuck was ittappinglike that? I stare after it for long seconds; Dash has to grab me by the shoulder and physically spin me around in order to usher me out of the kitchen.
Down the corridor, past Harcourt’s office. Past the stairway that leads up to the girls’ bedrooms. Along the wide, sweeping hallway that will take us all the way back to the laundry room. Past the English room. Past history. Past te—
My legs become leaden, my feet locking to the ground as if the soles of my shoes are suddenly glued to the stone. “Wait.”
Pax and Dash both stop at once, both donning looks of confusion as they glance back at me. Pax hikes the bag of our liberated goods higher on his shoulder. “It was abird, Jacobi. I know you love feathers and that shit, but the damn thing was outside, and it flew away anyway.”
“The door…” I murmur.
“We can’t go out of the front d—”
“Shutup, Pax. For fuck’s sake, I’m trying to fuckingthink.”
With his shaved head and all of the ink marking his body, you might be forgiven for assuming that Pax Davis is incapable of looking hurt. But you’d be wrong. “All right, dude. No need to be an asshole.”
“The door,” I say again, more firmly this time. “The door to the English room was closed when we walked past it on our way to the kitchen.”
“And?” Dash and Pax say it at the same time, their voices layering over one another.
“And when we walked by just now, it wasopen.”
26
ELODIE
“Three bedrooms.Two more than we need right now,” I say, jamming the poker in between the happily burning logs in the fireplace. I tilt the one on top to feed the fire more air. It’s getting nice and toasty in the gazebo now, and none of us are complaining. My hair is mostly dry, as is Presley’s. Carrie’s has been dry for a while now since it’s a little shorter, but her curls are corkscrewing madly, completely out of control. They look amazing. “We want to turn one of them into a shared office for us, though. A kind of library, too, I guess. There are all these really cool bookshelves. And then the other room will be for when guests come to visit.”
“Can I just move in with you?” Presley moans theatrically. Some of the color has returned to her face, which is a reassuring sign. “I’ll be your house elf or something.”
“I don’t think being Elodie’s house elf will help your situation,” Carrie says. She sits behind Presley on the couch, rubbing her shoulders for her, giving her a massage.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Presley says. She hisses when Carrie circles the pad of her thumb into Pres’s shoulder blade, digging it into the muscle. “God, that really freaking hurts. Ahh—”
“Don’t be a baby. I’m barely touching you,” Carrie chides.
“Being Elodie’s house elf would be great. My dad and Pax will finally stop playing tug of war with me. I’ll do all of your housework and keep the place neat as a pin, so I don’t have to go back to Sarah Lawrence. And I’ll just forget that I’m pregnant, and…and…”
