Page 4 of Crooked Crows (Boys of Briar Hall 1)

“Hurry up, would you? Before someone sees.”

I did as she said, not because I was afraid of some mysteriousCrowsbut because if there were any way I could avoid lugging this fucking thing up all those stairs, I was taking it.

Painfully aware of the trail of dirt and bits of gravel I was leaving in my wake on the waxed marble, I strode into the elevator and Becca released the doors.

“Who are the Crows?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me as Becca jabbed a button, careful to wipe it with her sleeve when she was finished.

Better to know in advance who to be on the lookout for.

I had to get through this last year of school, and then I would be home fucking free. Nothing was going to get in the way of that freedom. Not if I could help it.

Like Pops always said,head down, eyes open, Ava Jade, that’s how people like us make it in this world.I’d never been very good at thehead downpart, but a girl could change.

Becca cut a sidelong stare my way, arching a brow. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

She bit her lower lip, thinking something through before she responded. “Tomorrow afternoon,” she said finally as the doors opened again, letting us out in a long, dark hall.

“Tomorrow afternoonwhat?”

She shushed me, indicating the doors as we passed them, and I got the picture that these were the dormitories. The doors were too close together for them to be the larger rooms. At almost two in the morning, all of the students would be asleep.

Once we were clear of the corridor, Becca led me through a set of double doors and around a steep turn in the hallway. A sign in the same pewter serif as the front door of the building read,East Wing.

“At lunch,” she continued as the door closed behind us. “I’ll explain everything you need to know.”

She took out a handful of keys from her pocket and separated two rings, handing me one. On it were two silver keys. Though I noticed there were not two, but three keys on hers. “We’re just through here.”

Becca unlocked the wooden door with the number 3 on it and pushed it open, flicking on a light switch as she stepped inside.

And holy motherfucking shitballs.

Equal parts stupefied, ecstatic, and disgusted, I strode past the wide foyer where a row of neat iron hooks held several jackets and hats and into a fully furnished living room. A black sectional U-shaped couch hugged a polished black square of a coffee table. On the gray stone wall across from it, a fire licked lazily at its chimney.

Behind the couch was a kitchen made up of a long bank of cabinets with a fridge at one end and a stove near the other.

Not like a cooktop or something. No, this was a monstrosity of polished chrome and black glass. With at least six burners. Matching cherry wood doors stood opposite one another to either side of the main living space. One sealed shut, the other slightly ajar.

“Holy shit.”

I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until Becca stepped up beside me, making me jolt. “Yeah. I like black. It just kinda matches everything.”

When I didn’t reply to her right away, she pursed her lips. “I mean, I can live with some color if you wanted to change anything—”

“It’s fine,” I hurried to say, picking my jaw up off the floor.

The living room and kitchen alone were damn near the size of mine and Dad’s basement apartment back home. Definitely bigger than the trailer we lived in before that.

A painful jab in my chest made my lips tighten.

“I like black. But I thought we weren’t allowed to change anything in the rooms anyway? My aunt drilled me on all the rules on the way here.”

After she tried to convince me to stay with her and have Jarvis, or whatever the hell that dickwad driver’s name was, drive me to school every day. Until I shut her the fuck up by literally jumping from the moving vehicle. No way in hell that was happening.

Becca shrugged. “My dad donated a new library to the school and has promised them a new gym, too.”

She paused.

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