Chapter 53

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 was 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 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 found out it was Mercy’s birthday over the weekend, which meant 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 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.

This thought should make me happy. I’ve been frustrated by him for weeks, and with him backing off I’ll be able to settle into life at Wolf Hall properly now, without fear of further complications.

But.

Ugh, why is there always a fucking but? Why can’t I just do a celebratory dance and move the fuck on like any sane person would do?

I sit in the dark in my room, stewing. I scarf down half a bar of chocolate, but the sugar tastes sour and the candy curdles in my stomach, making me nauseous. I do whatever I can to take my mind off of the fact that Wren still hasn’t messaged me, frittering away an hour playing Animal Farm on my Nintendo Switch, and then chatting with Levi on WhatsApp, but I still can’t shake the disagreeable funk that has me in its grasps.

The clock on my cell phone finally clicks over to ten p.m. and I tell myself I should go to bed, but… fuck, what the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I just forget about this entire thing? This is for the best!

I should text him.

I should ask him what the fuck he’s playing at, sending me the most confusing mixed messages. I mean, what is he hoping to accomplish here? I’ve wound myself up so tightly that I feel like I’m going to snap by the time I grab my Doc Martins from the bottom of the closest, jamming them angrily onto my feet.

A text message isn’t good enough.

I need an explanation from him, face to face. I need to know if he did force someone else to fix the bird for me. And, loathe as I am to admit it, I want to know if I hurt him by rebuffing him in the library.

You’re such a fool, Elodie. He’s not worth your energy. Seriously, take your shoes off, get into bed, lose yourself in a good book, and forget about Wren Jacobi. He’s a manipulative creep and nothing more.

Instead, I pick up the book he loaned me—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, A Study In Scarlett—and I jam it into my bag.

You’re better than this. Better than him. You don’t damn well need him.

The pep talk’s a good one. I repeat it in my head as I try to tip-toe down the hallway. It’s on a playback, cycling over and over again as I sneak my way down the stairs. I hear it again and again as I slip out of the academy and I begin to run down the long driveway, headed down the mountain.



I didn’t have a car in Tel Aviv. I didn’t need one. A vehicle would be really handy here in New Hampshire, though, especially since I live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Carina offered to lend me the Firebird and said I could use it whenever I wanted, but I couldn’t ask her for the keys tonight. She’d have wanted to know where I was going, and no way could I have told her the truth: “Oh, I know, just thought I’d pop down to Riot House. After hours. Alone. To discuss my non-starter, bizarre relationship/rivalry with the boy that you’ve warned me until you’re blue in the face to stay away from.”

Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

So here I am, jogging down the hill, jumping out of my skin at every sound I hear, just waiting for something nasty with sharp teeth to come lurching out of the forest. I haven’t seen a single car since I snuck out of the academy, and with no streetlights anywhere on the windy, hairpin road, I only have the small flashlight on my cell phone to ward off the darkness.

I knew this was a horrible idea before I left Wolf Hall, but it’s only hitting home now just how horrible an idea it was. If anything happens to me, I’d better just die and get it over with. If I don’t, Carina’s gonna murder me, and I’d rather get eaten by a bear or buried in a shallow grave by the Riot House boys than have to see the look of disappointment in her eyes when she puts me down.

Eventually, I reach the narrow dirt track that branches off from the main road, leading to Wren’s home, and panic closes around my heart like a fist. I can’t see any lights. No lights are coming from inside the house. There’s no one home. Which means I’ve come all this way in the dark for nothing, and Wren…Wren’s still not back from his party weekend with the boys, and he’s out there somewhere, having a great time, having completely forgotten my existence.

Just fucking great.

Oh.

Wow.

The realization hits me like a bucket of ice-cold water’s just been dumped over my head: this is not the kind of person I want to be—some stupid girl wandering off on her own in the dark, all bent out of shape because of some boy who can’t seem to make up his mind about her. I have more common sense than that. More self-respect. Clenching my hands into fists, I stare off into the night, my decision made. I’m going back to the academy. I’m not falling prey to this kind of insanity.

Before I can start the long walk back to Wolf Hall, a light suddenly comes on up ahead, casting a yellow glow out into the darkness. Riot House rises out of the ink-black forest, appearing out of nowhere, and my frantic heart rate slows. So, they are home after all. A part of me is relieved by that knowledge, but the rest of me is frustrated that I’d even let myself ca—

A steel bar wraps around my neck, cutting off my air supply. “Scream and you’re fucking dead,” a vicious growl warns.

What the…what the fuck?

For a second, I am fear personified. My mind just…blanks. I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t think…

The impossibly strong band around my throat tightens. “Little sneak,” the voice hisses. “Tiptoeing around in the dark, spying on people. Very bad, petite pute française. Very bad indeed.”

The blockade that slammed up inside of me shattered, falling apart. That phrase: little French whore. That’s what Pax called me when I walked into my very first class at the academy. I do not doubt that it’s him standing behind me, trapping me in a choke hold, and with that knowledge my fear evaporates. He’s not a monster. He’s not some supernatural creature, prowling out of the woods, looking for his next meal. He’s just a guy with an attitude problem, and I’ve been trained on how to deal with those.

I slam my elbow back and up into his ribs. He’s so much taller than me that he’s had to bend himself over to grab me, which means I can get a lot of momentum behind the blow. Pax huffs out a surprised breath, winded, and I use the opportunity to my advantage. Twisting, spinning in his arms, I jam my knuckles into his throat, slamming them into his Adam’s apple, and his hold on me disappears.

“Fucking…bitch!” he roars. “Come here. Get your ass here right fucking now!”

He blinks, shocked, when I obey him without a second thought. Sure, I’ll come to you, motherfucker. I’ll be right with you. He exposes his teeth, anger burning brightly in his eyes, and grabs me. I have him by the wrist, though. I yank his arm around, slamming my palm against his elbow, forcing the joint to bend the wrong way, and Pax reacts the same way all the big boys do when they’re about to get their arm broken: he drops to his knees, crying out in pain.

From there, it’s easy enough. I release his arm, but I’m not done with him just yet. The sole of my Doc Martin lands between his shoulders when I kick out, putting all my strength behind the blow. He topples forward into the leaf litter, cursing furiously, and then I’m on his back, anticipating what he’ll do next, already waiting for him to try and twist around underneath me. My fist’s raised, wound back as far as they can go, ready to break his fucking nose and end his pretty boy modeling career for good, when—

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” a polite voice informs me. A hand closes around my wrist, tight enough that I can’t wrench it free. Pax jackknifes, bucking me off his back, and I fly sideways onto the ground. Dash stands over me, his face a blank mask, his expression utterly unreadable. With only the dim light from the house spilling over his features, he looks like a statue of a man. An inanimate carving is left out for the elements to claim.

“Crazy...little…fucker…” Pax pants, whirling around to face me. He’s about to lunge down and grab hold of me again when a third figure materializes out of the shadows. Like a pale wraith, Wren stands over me with his hands hidden in his pockets, dark hair obscuring half his face. His crooked smile looks more than a little wolfish.

“Well, boys. Better break out the good china,” he rumbles. “Looks like we have ourselves an unexpected house guest.”