Riot House (Crooked Sinners Book 1)

by Callie Hart

  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 more intimate needs.”

  “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.”

  “Hah! What makes you think Pax is an addict?”

  “He looks like that guy out of that movie with the Scottish junkies.”

  “I don’t think you can accuse someone of being a drug addict because they have a shaved head and they bear a passing resemblance to a young Ewan McGregor.”

  He grunts, clearly of a different mind. “You want more?” He thrusts the Johnny Walker at me.

  “It’s the middle of the afternoon, man. Despite what you might think of me, I’m not a degenerate.” Laughable. The lie is just so fucking laughable that even I grin like a piece of shit when Patterson holds his belly and roars. The things he’s seen me do. The states he’s seen me in. Jesus. “I have a question for you, Pat,” I say, leaning forward so that the edge of the bar digs into my ribs. “You’re a married man, aren’t you?”

  If Pat had any eyebrows, they’d be up around his receding hairline right now. “Yeaahhhh?”

  “That big lady with the mustache? The one who cleans the toilets? She’s your actual wife?”

  His eyes, already so set back into his face, practically disappear as he glowers at me. “Are you looking for a smack boy?”

  “No, no! No offense meant.”

  “Oh, well, in that case, none taken!” There he goes with that sarcasm again. He’s a fucking pro.

  “I just mean…how long have you been married to the lovely Mrs. Patterson,” I ask, changing tack.

  “Seventeen years.”

  “Shit. How…how the hell did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “How did you convince her that you weren’t an evil, heartless piece of shit in the first place?”

  Patterson rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, chuckling merrily to himself. This time, he doesn’t seem to be mocking me with his laughter; he seems genuinely amused. “Oh, lord, Wren. God, you crack me up sometimes.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I. Oh god.” Gathering himself, he plants his meaty hands on the other side of the bar, bracing himself like he’s preparing to lay some serious wisdom on me. “The key to convincing a woman that you’re not an evil, heartless piece of shit, Wren, is to not be an evil, heartless piece of shit.”

  Well, I can see that I walked myself right into that one. Even so, a lick of fury rises up my back, tingling between my shoulder blades. It’s in my nature to want to punish the guy for such insolence, but now there’s this nagging voice in the back of my head, asking how I would be acting if Elodie were here, and I don’t even know what to do with myself anymore. “Duly noted,” I say tightly through my teeth.

  “I never thought I’d see the day!” Patterson caws. “You pompous Wolf Hall asses come in here, reeking of privilege. You play at participating in society like normal folk, but you’re so like those fancy, expensive cars you all drive—too low to the ground, no room for more than one person inside. The moment you hit a bump in the road, or you’re asked to think about carrying even the slightest burden, you’re bottoming out and struggling to carry anything at all.”

  “Your metaphor�
��s falling apart, Pat.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Look, heaven help whoever this girl is if you’re interested in her, but this shit is simple. Don’t be selfish. Don’t be a dick. Put her needs before your own. Jesus, what the fuck am I…” He shakes his head. “Why am I even bothering?”

  I leave Cosgrove’s feeling even more confused than when I went in. It all seems straightforward, and I know that Patterson’s speaking the truth. In order to get Elodie to trust me, I need to make a few changes. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how the fuck I’m going to alter my very genetic cod—

  whhaaAAAAT THE FUCK?

  I stop dead on the sidewalk, the wind whipping at me, tugging on my clothes, but I barely notice the cold. I can’t be seeing clearly. There’s just no fucking way…

  Across the other side of the street, in a deserted parking lot on the other side of high chain link fence, two people stand at arm’s distance, talking animatedly. The tall guy on the left gesticulates, using his hands to make his point. The girl—much shorter, dressed like she’s about to clock on for her shift at a strip joint, a sheet of black hair hanging down her back—laughs, shoving him playfully in the chest.

  I’m crossing the street before I even know what I’m doing. There’s no entrance to the parking lot from this side of the road, it must be on the other side of the lot, but that doesn’t stop me. In one jump, I’m halfway up the fence. A second after that, I’m vaulting over the top of it, jumping down, landing on the ground with a bone jarring rattle that makes it through ankles, knees, hips, back, and ends with my teeth crashing together so hard that I nearly bite off my fucking tongue.

  They see me.

  But only when it’s too late.

  My fist launches into Fitz’s jaw, connecting with an almighty, satisfying crack. He goes down like a sack of shit.

  “What the fuck!” My sister’s shrill scream is loud and high-pitched. I grab her by the arm and pull her out of the way. “Get the fuck off me, Wren. Christ, what’s wrong with you, you fucking psycho!”

  On the ground, Fitz presses his fingers to his mouth, laughing like a maniac when they come away red. His blood coats his teeth and runs down his chin. “Nice to see you, too, Jacobi.”

  “Are you invincible, Doc?” I snarl, grabbing him by the front of his t-shirt. “Have you discovered the secret to eternal life?”

  He arches a sardonic eyebrow. Not a flicker of fear in his eyes. Not a scrap of concern on him. He glances down at my mouth, his eyes lingering on my lips, and I just know he’s getting fucking hard right now. “No,” he says.

  “Are you indestructible? Are your bones unbreakable? Do your wounds close immediately and stop you from bleeding out?”

  “No, Wren. As well you know, they do not.” He enunciates every single word, purring like a cat.

  Alive with rage, I shove him, hard enough that the back of his head bounces off the concrete. “Then stop doing shit that’s gonna wind up getting you killed, motherfucker.”

  “What the hell are you thinking?” Mercy’s in front of me, now, her hands on my chest, pushing me, pushing, pushing, pushing, forcing me to take a small step away from the English teacher. “We’re in fucking public, Wren. Are you insane? You can’t fucking hit a member of faculty in front of people.”

  As menacing as can be, I dip down so I can shove my face in hers. “I’ll hit him anywhere I like. Go and get in the car, Mercy.”

  “I’m not getting in any car with y—”

  “GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!” I’m vibrating, overflowing, spilling over—pure and blinding rage. It takes chunks out of my insides with every ragged breath I suck down. Mercy’s expression voids out, turning blank. She blinks, then turns around and begins to walk across the parking lot, towards the red Volkswagen Beetle our father bought for her last year.

  “I don’t see the harm in talking to a student if I see them out in the wild,” Fitz says airily, propping himself up on one hand. “What am I supposed to do? Ignore you guys?”

  Oh, ho, ho. My god, this motherfucker right here. Slowly, I crouch down in front of him, resting my forearms on top of my thighs, observing him with utter contempt. “You don’t look at anything that belongs to me. You don’t touch anything that belongs to me. Outside of your remit as a teacher, you don’t speak to anybody that’s connected with me. Do you understand?”

  With eyes full of heat, Fitz sucks on his bottom lip, both nostrils flaring. “It doesn’t have to be like this, y’know. Things could be like they were before.”

  Fuck, he just doesn’t listen. I close my eyes, shaking my head, unable to believe the gall of the bastard. “Just keep your word, Wes. Or life’s gonna become really unpleasant for you, yeah?”

  I get into Mercy’s stupid, girly red Beetle, slamming my fist into the dashboard so hard that the plastic cracks. “Wren! You asshole! What the fuck are you doing?” Mercy hits me, landing a blow to my upper arm. She’s always been far more interested in being skinny than fit, so she doesn’t pack much power. Won’t even bruise. “Just because you’ve already broken all of your stuff, doesn’t make it okay to break mine,” she pouts.

  I feel like I’ve just run a marathon. I can’t catch my breath. “Grow up, Mercy.”

  “You don’t think he’s gonna report you to Harcourt now?” she hisses, her eyes flashing daggers at me. “You think he’s just gonna keep his mouth shut if you knock him on his ass in the middle of town? You humiliated him.”

  Yeah. I fucking humiliated him. But there won’t be any recourse for my actions in this parking lot and Mercy knows it. I know it, and Wesley Fitzpatrick knows it most of all.

  He isn’t gonna say shit.

  His problem has always been that he wants me to hurt him. To humiliate him.

  Almost as badly as he wants me to fuck him.

  When we get back to the school, I pull over at the side of the road by Riot House and I get out of the car. Mercy switches places with me.

  “You’re fucking insane!” She yells, as she burns off up the hill toward the academy. If she expects this to be some sort of revelation to me, then she’s shit outta luck. What I’m about to do is proof enough that she’s right. I take out my phone and I type out a quick message before heading inside to throw some clothes into a bag.

  ME: Going away for three days. Catch you when I get back.

  21

  ELODIE

  There are cracks everywhere, of course. And a few spots where the color of his wings is gone, replaced by smooth, white ceramic, where a chip or a shard of his original veneer was lost. But the bird my mother gave me is mostly whole again, and of all the people in the world, Wren Jacobi put him back together for me.

  For me.

  I have questions. Namely: where did he find all of the pieces? How did he retrieve them? Harcourt said they were vacuumed up and disposed of. Did he tear open the vacuum cleaner to get them out? And how the hell did he piece the figurine back together? It would have taken hours. Days. I can’t even comprehend how much time it must have taken. How much patience such an undertaking would have required. Far more patience than I credited Wren with possessing, that’s for sure.

  It doesn’t take long for an uncomfortable suspicion to take root in my mind, like a weed pushing its way up through the cracks in a pavement. Wren didn’t put the bird back together. He just couldn’t have. In no reality would he have taken the time to do something that required that much effort. Which means that he forced, bribed or threatened someone else and made them do it. And then he dropped his little turquoise box off at my door, smug as fuck, pretending like he’s some kind of hero for returning something so precious to me. I go from grateful and amazed to jaded and disappointed in three seconds flat. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.

  At six in the evening, I get a message from Wren, saying that he’s going away for three days. His short, ‘catch you when I get back,’ makes me so unreasonably angry that I lock myself in my room and I don’t come out until Sunday afternoon. What
happened to the attic? Three days getting to know him my ass. I’ve expected this kind of behavior from him since the word go, so then why does it still sting?

  I skip dinner, telling Carina I’m not hungry when she asks if I want to join her in the food hall, and I brood in my room, pacing up and down, wearing a trench in the floorboards as I whip back and forth like a lion in a cage, all the while staring at the bird like it’s a hand grenade, about to go off on my mattress.

  How can he do something like this and then just bail? It makes no sense.

  Monday and Tuesday scrape by, and every little thing gets on my nerves: the line in the cafeteria; Damiana’s snarky, relentless comments in English; the fact that there’s no creamer left for my coffee; my assignments, which have piled up to the point that I have to stay up all night on Tuesday to complete them. Carina notices my shitty mood and comments on it, but I tell her I’m PMSing, and she seems to take it all in stride. Inside, I’m boiling away like a pot left on the heat. It shouldn’t bother me that he just left without explaining himself. I shouldn’t care at all that I find out it was Mercy’s birthday over the weekend, which means it was Wren’s birthday, and he went off with his friends to celebrate. But it affects me. All of it does. God, what kind of fragile, pathetic kind of loser have I become?

  When Wren doesn’t show up for class on Wednesday, I’ve become so irritated by the whole thing that I decide I need to do something about the situation. For the sake of my own sanity, if not for poor Carina’s.

  Underneath all of the frustration and anger lies the sickening worry that I hurt Wren when I didn’t take his hand in the library. He could be pissed that I didn’t immediately drop to my knees in gratitude when he told me that he cared about me. I’m sure that’s what he was expecting me to do. If he’s salty because of some perceived rejection on my part, then maybe that’ll be it. He’ll leave me alone and I won’t have to deal with his attentions anymore.